CIT "Behind the Business"

As an entrepreneur, you ask yourself one question when you look at a business plan: is this a fad or is it a trend? Take Whole Foods—is it organic or brand or natural? Going to be inching up and taking the place of Nabisco more and more every year? I would say right there it’s a trend, not a fad. The Vitamin Water non-carbonated beverage category… also trends. Then you can look at some other things that are maybe a little bit more ephemeral. Everybody thought rollerblading was the next thing. It sort of disappeared. You do see it in a lot of fitness stuff and diets. In [the aviation industry], the trend is pointing to private aviation.

If you have success at any level, and I don’t care if it’s Marquis level or any level, then you really need to take a percentage of your time, which sometimes is more valuable than money, and invest in things and people who don’t have the opportunity that you have. Personally, I’m currently involved with the Jack Martin Fund, which is right now funding a big children’s oncology project in Mount Sinai Hospital. At Marquis Jet we have a division here called Marquis Cares. When we’re approached by our Card Owners for causes that we think we can go pitch in and add some value to, we get involved. As a citizen of the entrepreneurial community, when you’re having some success, you’ve got to support the next guys/gals coming up.

I’m passionate about my family. Passionate about sports—I have only one team that I root for: The University of Wisconsin Badgers. I also root for people who fly Marquis Jet! In the finals we [Marquis Jet] had four guys on the Spurs, and we have Lebron James. So either way, Marquis Jet won.

All that Marquis Jet does is Marquis Jet. I think we have to respect this business and keep everything else that we’re either investing in or sitting on a board in totally outside the Marquis Jet confines, which is tough. Being an entrepreneur, you see a million different things you want to do. We’ve been disciplined enough to keep Marquis Jet clean in terms of extensions happening off the main brand. But I also want to support entrepreneurs, friends and other models out there because I had support when we had to raise money for this business.

I reach out to my network when things get tough—and when things are good. Handling a business of this size, you have to be careful not just of the tough times but also of the good times. You want to be strong in peace time so that if you need to go to war, you’re ready for it. If you sweat in peace time, you don’t bleed as much when it’s time to go to battle. And I think we really work hard on keeping our troops and people that work here at high alert any point in time to handle something.

We don’t advertise luxury. Thurston Howell would never be in our ads! We are about efficient lifestyle. In Europe, it’s positioned more as a luxury. In America, it’s a culture where people work 12 hours a day. Entrepreneurs, people in the finance business, people that have reached the tops of all their businesses, whether it’s entertainment, sports…it’s a validation of hard work. If you’ve earned it, you can fly the best, and that’s really how we’ve positioned the brand.

Lisa, an old high school girlfriend of mine was a line producer on the first season of The Apprentice in 2002. As Donald Trump, Mark Burnett and the producers were planning the season’s episodes, Lisa said, “My friend started a private jet company with Richard Santulli, NetJets, Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway. We should work that in.”
Sure enough, we were featured for 45 minutes on the second episode, and for the brand that was 35-40 million homes. We couldn’t pay for that. That was probably worth $20 million to the brand.

No never means no. It means “no, not now.” If you ever took the “no” mentality as a sales guy, you would never get an order. So “no” – that’s when you start selling. If you’re a sales person, if you took no for an answer, you’d never sell anything. And if it’s always yes, you’re just an order taker. There are a lot of people that think they’re sales people that are not. They’re selling a hot product, and they’re taking orders. The real sales guys start selling when the person across the table says “no.”

A lot of big firms have the big recruiting firms recruiting their talent. I go and get it myself 90 percent of the time through referrals. The best people we’ve had working at Marquis are people we’ve met through our employees or Marquis Card Owners (we call our clients “owners”). We let our people know we’re looking for X, and they deliver X. It’s been an incredible, incredible thing. If you have good people, they’re going to attract good people.

One of the sports I played in childhood was basketball. Although I look like a linebacker today, I was a point guard, and my job was always to measure the success of the team by one stat – did we win or did we lose? I think I play that position at work — you surround yourself with guys that are actually better than you and smarter than you but keep the team together. In basketball you try to keep them on the court and keep winning. In business, you just got to keep everybody happy.

When we looked at the market, there were three ways to buy private aviation, and I saw a gaping niche. You could have your own plane (major financial commitment, limited to only a small group of people/companies), have fractional ownership [a timeshare] or charter a plane as needed (service can be inconsistent). So we wondered if we could get the consistency of fractional ownership without having to buy the assets – and we came up with the simple idea of a prepaid “phone” card with jet time.