Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - #102: From Lawyer to Tattoo Artist to Airline Lawsuits: The Remarkable Journey of Irina Wynn

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

In this episode of "Escaping the Drift," we delve deep into the extraordinary journey of Irina Wynn, a lawyer turned tattoo artist turned airline lawsuit expert. Join us as we explore Irina's unique path, her strategies for success, and the pivotal moments that transformed her career. Discover how Irina's experiences and insights can inspire you to break free from the ordinary and pursue your own unconventional path to success.Highlights:"I became a tattoo artist and I became that good that I was paid more than any lawyer that I ever knew would have ever been paid.""One of my biggest mistake that I ever been in my life was giving half of a business thinking that someone else will have my drive and my passion to scale something like I do.""Building a good partnership is knowing what happens when it fails upfront, building a separation agreement before you even start the business."Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction and Wild Story01:28 - Discovering an Amazing Angle02:22 - From Romania to Norway03:49 - Becoming a Tattoo Artist07:01 - Suing Airlines for a Living09:57 - Leveraging Skills into Education13:19 - Enforcing Passenger Rights18:24 - Partnerships23:42 - Scaling the Business27:00 - Transitioning to CEO32:14 - Building a Strong Team36:07 - Systems for Growth

That was the only way that, you know, we only had a chance. Either like you do something about it or you're going to be, you know, poor and live on the ghetto for the rest of your life. I can only imagine coming from a background like that, that you just have zero tolerance for the woe is me American attitude. And now escaping the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford.

And I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift. And it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of Escaping the Drift. And dude, I got a wild story for you today.

And I'm going to give you some color. I'm going to give you some backstory on this story and the guests we have in the studio today. I was at a dinner the other night with a friend of the show, Steve Sims, which of course you can go watch his episode whenever you'd like. And I'm at a dinner. And the cool thing about Steve is when he throws a dinner, there's always a lot of people at the table and there's cool people there. You don't really know who they are a lot of times, but you know that everybody there is kind of cool in their own way. Right. So as I'm sitting at the table, I'm sitting next to this, this woman to the left of me

or to the right of me, excuse me. And I don't really, I haven't talked to her cause I'm talking to everybody else, the table, blah, blah, blah. And it gets around and I catch a glimpse of her tiny hands and she's laughing cause she knows true. And I'm like, Oh my God, you have like the littlest hands I've ever seen. They're tiny. They're like tiny hands. Right. And I'm like, okay, little hands. Tell me, tell me the story, right? What's going on with you? And she starts to tell me how this very kind of tactical story. That very something something very normal you would hear to start telling this very normal story and then it takes a hard right into kind of something that is so to me amazing that i i was so captivated she didn't get done with the story where i was like i gotta get you on the podcast

you gotta get down here i've got to get you on to tell the story because I think it's amazing because there is a chapter in the upcoming book, Escaping the Drift, my book about seeing the angles and about figuring how to exploit the angles and things, whether you're qualified to do it, whether you're trying to do it or not. And this, this people is an amazing angle. So without further ado, I'm going to let her tell her story and my guitar. So welcome to the program. Ladies and gentlemen, this, people, is an amazing angle. So without further ado, I'm going to let her tell her story and my guitarist do it. Welcome to the program. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Arena Nguyen. Arena.

Hey. How are you? I'm great. How are you? First of all, because they're watching this on YouTube. They're wondering now. Hold the hands up. Show the hands.

Hold the hands up. There they are. My tiny hands. Tiny hands. They're like the littlest hands in the world. So first of all, before we get to your story, which of what you do now, that's great intro, by the way, people will know me, the girl with the small hands. Exactly. Now you're the little hand person, right? I went with tiny hand person. So

tell me about where did you grow up? Tell me about you, because listen, you don't get a, you don't turn into a hustler like you are now without growing up being a hustler. So let's talk about early you first. Um, I was born and raised in Romania. Okay. Um, I've been raised mostly by my dad. Okay. What did, what did dad do? My dad was an engineer. Okay. Simple, hardworking man. Um, I barely ever seen him because he was working that night to be able to support us. Um, you know, we were just out of communism when I was born in 90s. Yeah, right behind the block, yeah. So we barely had any food on the table, but, you know, we figured out a way

how to get out of there, I guess. Okay, so you moved from Romania to where? I moved from Romania to Norway after I finished school. Okay, to Norway. Is that where you are now? No, I live in Los Angeles. You live in Los Angeles now, right.

Okay, cool. So you're in Norway. Yeah. You went to school as a kid, even in communist, behind, you know, the red curtain. Did you have like a hustle as a kid, a way to make money? I think the only way to make it out of poverty, right? It was just to study very, very hard. And we didn't really, you know, knew anything, but try to figure out

the way how to get out from the poverty. That was it. Yeah, that was it. That was the only way that, you know, we only had a chance either like you do something about it or you're going to be, you know, poor and live on the ghetto for the rest of your life. I can only imagine coming from a background like that, that you just have zero tolerance for the woe is me american attitude like oh things are going so hard for me i can't even get starbucks today like i like zero tolerance for that i mean zero i i guess because you know if there is a country on this planet that actually gives you a chance and an equal opportunity To make something out of nothing. I think it's United States. It's this one. This is home USA, baby

That's how it works But I think I think it's so funny because I found that people we've had on the show over the years that have immigrated from Other places that were terrible places that did not have opportunity. Like when you start bringing up the entitled, it's like, they're like, they don't know what real poverty, they don't, you don't know what real problems are. Like you don't understand what real problems are until you live in some of these situations. I do agree. I still think that, you know, I've been to 80 plus countries and I wouldn't call any, any of them home, but United States. I love that. Yeah. I love one of my favorite sayings. Uh, my buddy, Chris Connell said it on the program once he said, I've never

met a well-traveled racist. That's so true. I love that. I love that. So yeah, if you, if you, if you are a racist, go see the world is the lesson of that, I guess we'll say, but there we go. Um, so study, study, study. Yeah. You went to law school right okay so so where did you go to law school i went to law school in my hometown cryova a small law school that nobody heard of okay yeah was it like out of out of the back of somebody's house or no actually we have a legit proper university a whole proper university you know education uh it's very cheap in romania and we have a lot of foreigners going and getting their degrees, which you could equivalent pretty much everywhere in the world. So it's a very well-established school.

You wouldn't hear of it because, you know, it's not Harvard. Sure, of course. But it did a job, I guess. But you didn't love that. That wasn't your thing. No, I've never, you know, I've been channeled to go to law school because that was the only way to make it out of poverty. You are either a doctor or lawyer, a judge, or you had pretty much, you know, no chance in life. And, um, yeah, I guess I, I resented the fact that

I went to law school and I quit on the graduation day. Uh, I've never practiced law in my life. I've never to today pick up my law license from everyone's practice. Not once. All right. Not even up to today, which is funny that, you know, I'm, I'm leading a legal team today. All right. So you quit practicing law and you started doing something else. Yes. I became a tattoo artist. Right. And by the way, guys, this is not the right turn. This is not the hard right yet. Cause right now, let me take, let me take you back. I'm going to take you back in time to the dinner to when now she says I'm a tattoo artist. And I'm thinking to myself, what is going on? Like Steve brought a tattoo artist to this dinner. What is happening right now? That's what I was thinking in my head. When you said I became a tattoo artist, this is not

the, not the hard right yet, folks, not the right that's not where we're going came a tattoo artist and what happened so tell me about that i had a face um when i really wanted to express my art because i've never been able to do anything but study so i started to microblade people and i was one of the first ones who brought microblading to United States. We created schools in different locations in the United States. Still not the right turn. This is still not the win. Long story. I will make it a short.

But let's talk about that, though, because you found a way to do something you would love. I mean, again, this is, I promise it's going to go somewhere amazing for you. But this is in itself. Let's stop here for a second, because I want to talk about this because you had something that you loved. You were doing something you did not love, which was, which was law, even though that's, that could have been massively profitable for you. Your heart wasn't in it. So because your heart wasn't in it, you didn't want to do it. So this was a twist. I became a tattoo artist

and I became that good that I was paid more than any lawyer that I ever knew would have ever been paid. Right. But but why? Why? Because I loved it. Because you loved it. I was so passionate about it. So passionate. I wasn't. That's that's the key. Doing something you hate, if it doesn't align with your values, you're always going to earn eventually somehow some way more doing something that resonates with you and is online with your values. I love that. So, but not only were you doing, you were making more money as an artist, you figured out how to leverage that skill into education. I did because I realized there is so much I could make. Yeah. I had a six months waiting list and people would fly from all over the world to get this eyebrow statute. But there is not that much that you can scale.

And I started to hate it because I had no life. I was working 12 hours a day, making a great income per hour. But that was about it. So I created a school teaching people how to do that. It's called leverage, kids. Leverage. I guess, you know, the classic coaching program, come get your certification, pay $5,000. We're going to get you to a workshop. We're going to

teach you how to do it. Then we're going to give you all the support and so on. So I've done that for a while, but so think, so think about this real quick. So now you go from, now you go from, cause how much does somebody pay you the the originator of this technique, to get themselves microbladed? About $800 an hour. Okay. So they pay $800 an hour. So you can sit there by yourself making $800 an hour, which is great. Or you can fill a room with 10 people watching you do this for $5,000 a ped.

So now you're making, if it takes you two hours, you're making $25,000 an hour. Yes. Accurate. Pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much. That's leverage kids leverage. It's learning how to leverage yourself right there, but that's still not the best story. It's still not the best story. So coming off the tattoo thing. And then what did you finish your story with me what did you say is the final thing that you do um well i guess right now we are suing airlines for a living yes that's what she said that's what she said she said i sue airlines for a living and i went what what is it now now it goes from partial attention of tattoo artist to full attention of airline sewer.

So walk me through how you sue the airlines. So there are a lot of rights that you have as a passenger when you're flying that you're probably not aware of or 99% of the people are not aware of. Yes. So according with certain laws, passengers are entitled to compensation if the flight is delayed or canceled. They have to be rebooked in a different flight. They have to get meals, accommodation, and so on. But all those things are on a tiny blueprint that nobody ever read. So what we do, we are enforcing a new law, a very niched side, you know, of the law.

Yeah. It's called EU261. It's in Europe. It's in Europe. It's on the EU space. By the way, it's going to come in the United States within 12 and 18 months too. So we're just getting warming up in Europe, making some pennies before we are coming to the United States. I love it. Making some pennies before we are coming to the United States. I love it. So what we do, we do have physical teams

in several airports. We are watching the flight radar on our back end. We do know when the flight is delayed. We know why it's delayed. So the airlines will come and tell you, oh, it's a technical problem. It's nothing we could do about it.

Here's a $2 voucher. Go bye-bye, right? Right, right. So what we do, we're actually sending proper people to the gate, right? We're giving them a paper. problem it's nothing we could do about it here's a two dollar voucher go bye-bye right right so what we do with actually sending proper people to the gate right that we're giving them a paper we're informing them so let me so let me if you're not following this let me let me help you out so she's there in eight major eight major airports in europe the biggest airports in europe they're not the biggest but very profitable airports because they are very they have low-cost airlines so oh you want the worst run airports oh my god yeah we're not going

for the fancy shot of the better oh my god so you're you're like value jet where do they go that's where i want to head so essentially you have a team of people sitting in an office in the airport correct and they're watching the And they're watching the boards. They're watching the boards. And as soon as that flight moves to delayed or even probably better canceled. Yeah. What happens? We're sending six to eight very nice, kind people informing them about their rights. So six to eight people all dressed in very official looking clothing.

Oh, yeah. They are wearing badges. Wearing badges. Yeah. Run down to the gate as fast as they can go. Correct. And start yelling, who wants free money? Pretty much.

Is that accurate? Yeah, you nailed it. Who wants up to 600 euros? Up to 600 euros. Not me. At which point, because people, as the fact that if you're broke, like for example, if you order DoorDash

or you order Grubhub and you're broke, that's on you. But how many people do that tells me why this works. Because what they do for these people, anybody could do it. But you're standing right there and you want to do it for me. Correct. So what do they do then? So we are telling people how it works.

They don't pay us nothing. We get a small fee from the settlement if we win. So there is no risk for them. They write a form, which takes about two minutes. They give us the power of attorney to go ahead and pursue this on their behalf. And then when we have this money, we just reach out to people. Hey, we need your bank account. Here are your money.

And they assign the reward so it's coming to you. So they're waiting on money from you, not you waiting on money from them. So if you hear this, I want you to just think about, because I very quickly after hearing this story, I started thinking to myself, okay, how many flights get delayed? I just like a normal day in the airport that you see this, or God forbid it's snow, or God forbid something crazy happens. What happens in the airport? Think about that Southwest debacle a couple years ago, right? And I'm thinking, how many people fly on an airplane?

How many flights a day? 600 euro. I'm like, I'm trying to do the math in my head, and I just can't get there quick enough. And finally, I look at her and I go, Irina, what did you guys net last year? Go ahead. Go ahead. It was our first year. First year.

One year and five days. One year, five days. We are around 15 million last year. So I think we are onto something. But that's not the reward. 15 million? 15. 15 million.

15 million profitability, running through the airport, telling people, do you want to make money because your flight got delayed? I mean, okay. This could be the greatest business I have ever heard.

Because, okay, let's break down what you're doing, right? You're sticking it to the airlines who could give a shit about their passengers in the moment of somebody's dismay and despair that they are furious that their flight is delayed, canceled or whatever else you roll in like Santa Claus. I mean, you, you, which might explain the small, the small hands, because you literally are operating, you're running Christmas at the airport for people. It's what you're doing.

Tiny hands. Yes, little tiny hands. And you're getting $15 million a year profit out of it. That's wild. So let me ask you a question. Are you, did you know, how did you come up with this? Well, I guess I was that frustrated passenger that would keep losing my luggage eight times in a row. They, you know, flight is canceled so your regular average

person don't know what to do they go they buy their own hotel and think about it's a family of five people right and they're getting stuck and and you know the the provider of the family don't go to work and yeah you have to admit like 90% of the people struggle, especially on the low cost airlines that they're flying with, with low cost airlines. They are not the people that they can say, Oh, it's no problem. I'm going to just enjoy New York one more day and go take my family. Sure. They're thinking about, you know, I don't, how do I pay the hotel and like, you know, food for all those people, transportation? And it's a hassle to get your flight delayed.

And I think the fact that they were so unapologetic with people, I guess I had a first world problem. They downgrade me from first to the business class. Those sons of bitches. To economy plus to fly to Paris. So first world problems. But other people were stuck in the airport and you're so unapologetic about it. And I was like, I think I'm going to make a company and sue you.

Like, was this the biggest mistake of an agent? I don't know. So you don't actually file lawsuits. You're just going through their system. Or is it more of a just a demand letter? And they know that they're right. So they just settle without it ever. We're actually, you'll be surprised that they wouldn't settle at the first instance.

Probably we settle about 40% of the cases at the first instance. They're like, okay, we agree for the, you know, the liability and we're going to pay. When are we going to pay? We don't know yet. But they agree to pay and we are taking it. We are happy with that because it's a process. But a lot of them, and they'll be very reputable companies that you could think of, they wouldn't pay. They'll be like, sue me.

And we do have a, you know, a group action, which is just similar with the class actions over here, but simplified. And we're actually suing them. And they're starting, now we are seeing, because the whole legal process takes a while. Yeah. And now we're starting to win the first cases to the court. Because they don't want to roll up in that group action. Yeah. And when they started to see that we are actually,

because there are other companies in the market doing this, but they don't pursue the lawsuits. Oh my God. You're not going to be able to buy an airline ticket. Firstly, they're like, nope, not on my airline, not fly on me, lady. Sorry about your luck. Well, only if they knew that I'm in one of their planes. So I try to avoid the people you fly with, you avoid them. That's smart. That's a smart move. Yeah. So you saw, you saw the need

here. So how did you, what was the, the original business plan from seeing this idea and seeing the whole in the market? Walk me through like, okay, I want to make this a business. Walk me through the steps that you took to get from this might work to, I mean, did you just, did you go all in or did you test it? Did you, what did you do? How did you just go? Actually, that's a very good question. So I didn't even know if this would be legal or the airports would want to work with us. You'll be surprised that most of the airports would not want to work with us. Oh, I'm not surprised by that at all. Because it's such a big, you know, it's like a mafia between the airlines and the airports. It's like a money machine. And they forget that the passenger is the customer, not the airlines,

that they're supposed to pay the big checks to the airlines, not us. Well, to the airports, the airline is the customer because they're selling their gigs. Yeah, but actually the customer is the passenger. Oh, I know. I get it. I understand what you're saying, but this is why the people get lost in translation. This is why. So airports, most of them, they do everything in their power to hide the rights of the passengers

so they can have a good relationship with the airlines and get more routes and so on. So the passenger is the least that anyone cares of. So what I did, I went back to my commercial law teacher from law school and I told him what I tried to do. And he was like, huh, let's see if we can do that. Let's start to work with the Romanian airport, see what they think about it. So we got into the negotiation process for a couple of months and they were like, yeah, I think we can do that.

You pay us a hefty rent and yeah, we'll give you a half. We'll give you a storefront and go, go, go. Yeah. So you started the business there. I started in Romania in Autopen International Airport, which is a pretty large airport. You'll be surprised about 12 million people

passing every year. And the rest is history like so no we can't just say the rest is history there's some steps everyone because somebody's like how do i do this or how do i build a business like we can't just go from i had an idea and i have 15 million dollars there's nothing in between that's not yeah so you guys got the storefront so did you capitalize the business yourself did you take on your law your law uh professor as a partner uh we hired them first we got one of their lawyers we couldn't afford we were like self-funded at the very beginning we didn't raise any money as most people are yeah we didn't have a storefront either we couldn't afford because the rents in the airports are

stupid so they just let you operate there they just operate us we were giving flyers to people like giving the flyers scan the qr code if the flight is getting delayed or canceled. Oh, so originally, okay, so the business model changed a little bit because originally you were, okay, so that's a great point. So the original iteration or the original test was very passive. You were notifying people that if this happens, let us know. So to be able to work on the secured area in the airport, there is a process. You have to go through certain steps. So that takes about six months in every airport to be able to pass the clearance and the background to be able to work

on the secured area. So we first started on the public area and giving people flyers because we couldn't be at the gates at the beginning, right? Until they cleared us out. It took about six months. So that's phishing. It was phishing. But by that time, we were able to operate at arrivals. So based on, you know, we are incoming flights. We'll process the claim. We already validated the concept.

Because you already knew it. Yeah, we already knew. We were just waiting for the, you know, government clearance. I want to talk about that. Have you ever watched the show Naked and Afraid? You ever watch that show? I have not. All right. Essentially, it is what it is. They take two people. want to show naked and afraid, you ever watch that show? All right.

Essentially it is what it is. They take two people, they're naked. They dump them off in the worst possible place. You can like the Sahara and Africa or whatever. They have to survive there for 21 days. Now, what I found is there's something that almost everybody,

if they're near a body of water, all these survivalist people always do this. They build the fish trap, right? Okay. It's just stupid to horn a plenty looking thing that they build and they take the fish trap and right? Okay. It's a stupid horn of plenty looking thing that they build and they take the fish trap and they put it in the water and then they hope something's going to swim into it. Okay. The fish trap, right? I've seen like one fish get caught

ever in the fish trap. The people that depend on fishing and waiting around for something to happen, never do well. The people that do well and survive and thrive and do well out there are the ones that hunt. And so if you're thinking, the reason I bring this up is if you're thinking of a marketing technique, like would you say that you would be as successful as you are now, if you guys were just still just handing out flyers as you are, if you absolutely get aggressive and go to the gates when you see the problem happening? Oh, absolutely not. It's not even close. Yeah. Not even close. But so many people start a business and they think to themselves, I'm just going to open whatever it is,

if it's an online store, if it's a, if it's a, a ice cream store down the street and they think I'm just going to open this business and people are just going to come because I'm here. That's fishing. You got to hunt. You got to hunt. You got to go get it. And I think that that's one of the things I love so much about the story is the hunt it's always a grind and a hunt hunting for new contracts hunting for you know new airports and you know to be able to extend all that stuff yeah so the first airport's going well you now get behind security where you can go how long before you opened up location number two oh while we knew that the the approvals are coming because we got a confirmation we're already on the second area of the process. We already knew. You had proof of concept quick because people were

hyper receptive to this. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever, whenever you catch fire, I mean, that's another great lesson there. If you have something that's catching fire, I mean, let it, let it burn, let it burn, let it go. So many people get nervous when things start going well, they want to try to contain it and see what happens but you may miss your window i mean you know especially in something like what you're doing which there's no competition no competition it's wild to me yeah you got to grow that as quickly as possible because you just got to be first we're just getting warm up in your know while we are waiting to,

for the FAA to pass the regulation in the United States. And it's almost there. It's not enforceable yet, but we sense that it's going to come the moment. And yeah, we hope to be in every single airport in the United States. Oh my gosh. That's so magical. So how do you hire the people that work for you to do this?

Talk about how you hire Salesforce, what you pay them, how that works. So we pay people, we pay people more than anyone else in the, in Romania will ever pay them. Like they will almost have American salaries working in Europe. So we build a relationship with most of them. And I was there by myself for a couple of months and I hired the whole team. We're about 60 people now total. But pretty much we hired the first 10 people and then we kind of give them the freedom to build their own team because they were commission-based, more passengers

you serve, more you're getting paid. So we didn't really babysit or like we hire like really good kids and then we let them build their own team. And we just watch from behind the operation. And so your partners are, I'm not going to accuse you own it all. They don't own a piece of it, right? When you bring management, they're all employees at these places. Uh, most of the people, I have a co-founder. Right. But okay. So these, but these people that are running the locations are, are management with bonus. They're not, they're not, they're not owners. No, no. Okay. When you decide now that that's another scary thing, right?

Like when you guys are bootstrapping this thing up, did it ever occur to you to like, let these people have a piece of the pie? It was like, always like, we are going to keep and hold all of our equity. I think we grew with such a big fast that we didn't really think of that, but obviously, you know, more you share, more you get. Because this is, they love that. It's like a lifestyle for them. Like they're very motivated and very passionate.

It's a big trail. Because it's like, how many passengers did you help in this flight? 100? 150? Right? So more money, more passengers they serve, more money they make. Will they get a piece of the pie? Absolutely at some point, yeah. That's only the right fare to go.

But I think you give them a piece of pie through bonus. Correct, which is very, very big. A big mistake people make when they're starting a new business is being very quick to give up equity to people. And I always say you can't get a little bit pregnant, and that's a very good example of that. Once you start giving away equity, especially to people like you can compensate people very, very, very well without giving up points in your company, especially if you're

bootstrapping it up. I just don't see any, hold on your equity. I 100% agree with that. Keep your equity. Yeah. That will be another story for a different podcast. But one of my biggest mistakes that I've ever been in my life was giving half of a business thinking that someone else will have my drive and my passion to scale something like I do. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, we live and we learn. I guess, right? It's what we do. You know, I think you said you have a partner in this business, right?

Correct. Did you guys sit down? Obviously, from that experience, you learn, hopefully. But did you sit down? And this is what, let's talk about partnerships, because obviously you have one now and you had a bad one. So let's take a turn into that, because that's interesting. And a lot of people don't want to jump into business or don't want to start something

new by themselves. They want that tribal community feeling of doing this with somebody else, it is honestly, it's a nice safety blanket in some cases. But I would say this. I would say if you are getting into business with somebody because you don't want to be in business by yourself, that's a problem. Agree or disagree? I agree and I also disagree. I think, you know, more superpowers you bring to the table, you know, better, better, better. You could cover all the areas because you might be good at some things, but you might not be, you will not be good at other things. That was the point I was

going to say that, like that, that was the point, which is, I always say, if, if your partner, you agree on everything, one of you is not required. Right? But you need to understand what you're bringing to the table and then where you are deficient. And if you want a partner, they better be backfilling where you're deficient. A hundred percent. Because if you are both on the same topic, it's like, what's the value that you're still having a gap

that you have to somehow fill. And every single part, you know, sales, marketing, operation, they're all equal on a startup, right? And one cannot go with the other one if you're too great at sales, but you have no idea of concept of operation. Like, you know, you're going to get into trouble. The worst partnerships I've ever seen as far as like, because being in real estate, doing what we do here, there's a lot of agents that team up and become partners. And when that happens, I always have the same conversation with them. I'm like, okay, number one, why do you guys think it'd be good partners?

What does this person do that you don't? And a lot of times it's like, no, we're just like, we're best friends. And we were like, whatever. Okay. Your best friends, because you're the same person. That's why you like each other. So that's not going to be a good partnership because you're just doing it to do it together, right? You're not really building a business partnership. You're just having a friendship that splits money, which is probably going to end poorly because one of you is going to end up doing more work than the other one. And that's going to be bad, which was your situation you talked about earlier. But I also say this, I say, look, you need to set out a set area of responsibility sheet where, so everybody understands this is

what you do. This is what I do. If something falls flat over here, it's on me. If it falls flat over here, it's on you. And it falls flat over here, it's on you. And that's that. And then there's no misunderstanding of why I thought you were going to do that. I thought you were going to do that. And then the last thing, building a good partnership is knowing what happens when it fails upfront, building a separation agreement before you even start the business. And I do that because it just makes it easier if it's not going to be right. If we split up, you get to keep this, I keep this, we do this, and that's how it works.

Or you do a buy-sell agreement. If you want out, you make me an offer. I either say yes, or I buy you out for the same amount. That's the deal. That's probably the smartest thing that I've heard in a very, very long time. It's pretty much like a prenuptial for business, which, you know, I didn't think of before, but now I'm going to get that. Yeah. Now you can get at it. Yeah. It's just, it's good. Just, it's just good business business to know what happens when things go wrong. We're all eternal optimists. You can't be a good entrepreneur if you're, if you're a pessimist, you're never going to be a good entrepreneur. You've got to be an

eternal optimist as it, but I mean, 50% of marriages end in divorce and probably higher in the business world. So you should just probably know what's going to happen in the event, something goes south and just lay that out up front. I totally, I totally agree with that. And I also think communication, you know, and knowing to be accountable and know when, you know, when you, you should stand for your other partner as well is very important, you know? Yeah. I guess we, we learn from our mistakes and we try to not do them. Yeah. Like you said, stand for your partner. I think, you know, it's like, I said this in a meeting yesterday with the management staff of one of my companies. It was like, look, we can squabble behind the curtain, but out there we're on stage and we are all

kumbaya happy one family when we're out there. We're in front of our customer. We are all happy. We can squabble behind the curtain and that's how it's got to be. And I would never, I would never say anything to publicly disparage any of my partners, even if I wanted to murder them on one day or another, for whatever reason, as I'm sure on some days they want to murder me, but I would never publicly disparage to anybody any of my partners. It's just not something you could do. I think that's the right way to do it, right? Hold the integrity for everybody.

Yeah. And, you know, there are always going to be conflicts, like same in a marriage. You have a conflict, but you're not going to bash your partner in public and embarrass them in front of everybody. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think the hardest thing about owning a business, especially when you got scale up? Do you own several now? What do you think the hardest thing about owning a business is, especially when you got scaled up? Do you own several now?

What do you think the hardest thing about it is? I think that's actually a very good question. I think being loyal to your teams and operating with integrity. Always. Always. I think that's the most important thing. Just be good with people. Always.

I'll give you some wisdom of an 11-year-old. One day I asked my son when he was 11 years old, I said, what do you want to do? He's like, what do you want to be when you grow up, buddy? He goes, I'm going to do what you do. And I said, okay. I said, what do I do? And he goes, you're the boss. And I said, okay. And I said, do you want to know the best thing about being the boss is? And he said, what? And I said, nobody gets to tell me what to do. He goes, yeah, that's why I want to do is? And he said, what? And I said, nobody gets to tell me what to do. He goes, yeah, that's why I want to do it. And I said, do you know what the worst thing about being the boss is? He said, what? I said, nobody tells me what to do. That's actually, yeah. It's the best thing is the worst thing at the same time. You've got to like, you want to, you want

to, you want to, you want to sell your own ship ship you're the one deciding where it goes and if you hit an iceberg that's on you you know but that's also very important because um knowing that you could be accountable for your mistakes and learn from them it's it's very powerful not all our people could be accountable and you know take credit they'll blame me either on teams or management you know when let's say you hire a marketing agency and you're going to blame it on them and then they're going to blame it on the salespeople and so on. And it's always that toxic circle. Always. Yeah. So I'll let, you know, unless you're accountable and you actually fix it rather than, you know, blame it on other people. Well, I'll tell you this though. It, even as I just said that, what I just said, nobody tells you what to do. Nobody tells you what to do.

You know, I haven't said that statement. I haven't told that little story in probably a year and a half, two years, right? I probably haven't told that story a year and a half, two years. And as I, right when I was done telling it, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, I don't even believe that anymore. And here's why, because of my good friend, Kent Clothier, who is an awesome dude. And one of my good friends and a great business mentor. His whole thing is you got to make a transition from hustler to CEO. And that's something that I've really tried to do over the last two years. And the only way that you can make that transition is like I said, what I just said that we're saying about being the boss is nobody tells you what to do. That's the hustler mentality. That's the, I have to make every decision.

I have to know everything. I have to decide this. The CEO mentality is I have to be smart enough to hire people that do tell me what I need to do, that do tell me what we need to do. And over the last year and a half, because of that coaching from Ken, I do have people that tell me what to do. I had somebody, I literally had a very tough decision today, a very, very tough decision that I was too close to emotionally that I, my director of operations for one of our companies, I said, look, I am too close to this decision. I'm emotionally invested in it. So I'm going to divest myself from the decision.

I need you to analytically look at it, go through it. And you tell me what the best course of action is with no thought to my feelings. And he did today. And what he told me was for my feelings, not the answer I wanted to hear, but I know for the company, it's the best move. So I said, okay, that's what we're going to do. We're going to go that route. So I do have people to tell me what to do now. I think that's awesome. And also like, I totally agree with what you're saying is like hiring people that there are way better, not smarter, but a way better on this particular field than you are and what they do. Yeah. What they do. I get told, um, I'm still

on, I'm still on the hustle mode a hundred percent, but I also, um, you know, I, I, um, take myself out of the equation of being the CEO of the company and I watch the best interest of the company. Yes. What I think it's fair. So I think it's very hard to like have a healthy boundary between what is fair or what you think is right or what is right for the company. Have you speculated out with your growth pattern? Right. You were already in eight airports. You're trying to get as many as you can. Have you already looked at that and said, okay, I got to get some serious middle management, some serious advice.

I got to get, we got to move to COO, CFO. We've got to start making some of these moves. I mean, you're already generating so much revenue. It's massive with the amount of revenue you're generating. And have you gotten to that point yet? We are exactly at that point right now where I'm actually getting, you know, prepared for an audit for the financials. We already started that to make sure that, you know, nothing was wrong last year. Sure.

And I kind of started an audit on every single decision that could impact the growth of this company. So I'm on that process, like starting together. You know, I was like, OK, we did great for one year, but what's going on over here? Let's see. Actually, I hire some of the best things that I could on that department. Yeah. Make me an audit to see where we are standing and how we can improve. Right. Uh, and based on that, yes, we, we're going to build a whole business development, um, team over here and, uh, a whole business or a whole, um, financial team as well. We started to work on that. So we are looking at those ones and, you know, I think for now I'm a good CEO, but more than the company scale, I, I might consider as well getting, uh, uh, you know,

some help. Well, I think, you know, what, what I would, what I would recommend that changed our businesses dramatically was if you don't know what EOS is, or you have never looked into it, since we're entrepreneurial operating system, there's a book called traction that kind of describes that book, but it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an, it's like an operating system. Like some people use windows and some people use Mac or Apple, whatever it is. So this is essentially what that is, but for your business. And it's a way that you can systematically understand where you are through KPIs, through scorecards, through management, and allows you to scale in a way that's very visual and very obvious by setting benchmarks about when we hit this benchmark, this trigger happens

and then this automatically happens. But it's just, it's changed our business so much in the last year. All of our businesses have moved over to that, that I cannot recommend that enough, enough. Just having a systematic system like that, that everybody's running on, to scale up, because I see you scaling large fast. And at some point, I mean, with that amount of revenue, you guys have the resources to do whatever you want. Right. But I think it would definitely benefit you to get everybody operate, especially when you start getting so many people, like everybody's going to have to speak the same language. Everybody's in the same reporting. I mean, just everything's going to need to happen

the same way. All right. Just, I think it's going to, it's, you're going to have a tough time, but I mean, the problem is it's a good, it good problem. It's a great, it's a great problem. Literally somebody said this to me yesterday, we were talking about a problem in our accounting with one of our companies. And the answer I got back from the CFO was, well, the problem was at the time you guys had such massive cashflow, you just didn't notice, you know what I mean? You didn't notice it. And so now, you know,

implementing all these new controls and all these new systems and stuff and we've cleaned up so much uh but in so many places we are leaking because massive cash flow i mean what's a dollar what's a what's a dollar like what's a dollar but then when you really get into it it start going to scale you're like okay i need to know where everything is it just has to be systematized we operated one year having the evidence of those passengers on spreadsheets so go figure we are why i mean a cash flow hides all man we we tried to with all everything that we could but we were scaling that fast yeah we kind of have systems in place but not on the professional level so actually the first three

months of this year, there'll be all about structure before the madness starts in the airports. Look at EOS, look at attraction, look into that. You can hire an EOS implementer for not a lot of money. And you guys can hire 50 of them for your cashflow. You can hire somebody to come in and help you go through this process of setting this up. It is well worth the money. It's well worth it. I get nothing by saying that I'm not affiliated with the U S I don't, I mean, I should get a kicker for it. Like I talk about it, but, but it's a, it's been that changing for us. And everybody that I know that's done this process says exactly the same thing. I've never met anybody that's been like, Oh, we implemented

EOS. Everybody's like moves the needle. I mean, for me, cause we run so many different brands, I can get reports like one day a week and I can look at meetings. I can look at every single meeting summary from every meeting that happened, whether I was there or not. I can look at all the KPIs that are driving and moving the needle stuff. I can see exactly what's going to affect every single business. I see report card, everything lagging indicators, future indicators, the whole nine yards.

And I can break down all of our companies in about 20 minutes every week. That's amazing. It's awesome. I'm getting the spreadsheet version of in about 20 minutes every week that's amazing it's awesome i'm getting the precious version of what you're getting yeah every week and then you're having to sort through it and figure it out and do but then i have two poor ladies that that's their whole full-time job getting the data and putting there for me when i'm reading the reports yeah so that's an amazing advice yeah you got dude got, dude, with that much cash flow, you guys got to get some systems. I love it.

We are trying our best. Oh, well, Rina, I love, dude, I hope you guys think this story is amazing as I think this story is. I think it's such a great story. I can't stand it, but I wish you well. Thank you so much for coming in. If they want to connect with,

if they want to find you, how do they find you? They'll find me on LinkedIn, Irina Wayne or Irina at flyhelp.eu. At flyhelp.eu. So man, I hope you get all the money from those airlines you possibly humanly can. And if you're listening to this, I hope that motivates you to find an angle of your own, man. Just find an angle anywhere out there. Quit drifting along with the currents of life and start swimming against the current.

We'll see you guys next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review.

Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.