On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I always tell the employees, the most money, the fu money is in follow-up money, and that's what the FU stands for. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real successful business today.
We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way that give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and keys like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast, I'm your host today. I've got Mike Howard on the King Sage.
Mike, thanks for being here. Yeah. I appreciate you having me. Yeah, man. Super interested in this conversation. Haven't had anybody from this industry on the show. So interested in in getting some some insight, man, but tell the listeners what you do. So I do a few things. I I mean, I I originally started with a cleaning company. That's kinda what got me started into entrepreneurship.
And then I was working for a jet business for a while for about two and a half years and kind of just learn the ins and outs of business on my cleaning side and then learn the aviation industry side of things and one point, there was a there was like a moment where I was like, dude, I could I could do this on my own. And I'm already doing a business on my own. I could do this jet industry on my own. As Wolfe. And just went swimming all in and have a look back since.
We're we're coming up on year 4 right now of a jet setter. That's awesome, man. And so inside of jetsetter, just, you know, quick easy plug here, what is it that you do? What what what what do you what do you offer? So we don't own any type of aircraft. What we do is we are from point a to point b. We'll get you on a private charter.
Like I said, from point a to point b. You're just renting the aircraft for the trip that you have coming up, or if you have a round trip, one way, whatever it is, we can help out with that, but you're not buying an aircraft. You're just renting it from us. Yeah. That's incredible. Well, I think that the the at least the attention of the audience should be grasp because I think it's a pretty cool industry.
And a lot of things, a lot of I guess maybe things that people would wanna know of an industry. A lot of we see we see the the people of the world that are flying these incredible pieces in his hand, what that would be like. You know? I think that, we'll be able to get a little bit of that to the audience. I wanna know before we jump into a little bit tactical in your story and stuff, why are you doing this, man? What's the bigger picture for you? What's your purpose? So it was funny.
When I first got into business and starting my own business, I I worked in the gym industry for, like, 7 years, and it's always comes back to the cleaning company. I had a cleaning lady who worked at the location that I was at. She wasn't making she was making whatever minimum wage was at the time, 11 bucks, something like that here in California. And I just she was there 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week, getting the, getting the time and a half or whatever you get when you pass that 40 hours.
But, yeah, she was working 6 days, but they were kind of a different type of they weren't corporate. It was more of a small business, so they were cutting corners, and I'm gonna work 7 days and stuff. And I'm like, man, kinda get her out of this. She was like, my main focus. Like, I didn't even I didn't have a family at the time. I didn't have any oh, I Chaz I just got married, but I didn't have kids at the time. So I was like, man, my main focus was that lady right there.
So I ended up thinking, like, man, what we're gonna do for the 1st business? My dad's like, Hey, you ever want to start a business, come out with me with a business plan. And I was like, alright, cleaning. He's like, you never cleaned your room when you were younger. What do you mean? Cleaning. Yeah. Well, you're right. Right. I said, but I think we can dive into this because I just transitioned into the jet charters for a actual company before I went in with myself.
I was like, man, I can come back and I can take all these crunches over and, like, undercut what they are because I'm cool with the owner still. I left on on good terms and everything. So my first employee was that lady and gave her a raise, got her started, had her work in normal hours, 7 days a week working 5. So she had time with her family and stuff. And ever since then, my main focus was, like, helping individuals, helping other people that needed help at the time.
And, I can give them a better situation. And that's kinda led us to where we are now with Jetsetter. Everyone that gets hired on is, like, fully vetted, making sure I wanna know not just how much money you wanna make. I wanna know what's your family life like, what's your main goal, what's your goal outside of this company? What do you wanna do in 5 years, 10 years? What do you wanna be? What do you where do you see your family and stuff like that? So it's it's always just helping other people.
Yeah. Well, I I, obviously, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs eventually get to that place. It sounds like that for you, maybe that was a fairly early on thing. Yeah. Motivation. Yeah. No. For sure. It was because it's funny because people were like, well, man, you were probably making great money at the cleaning company. I didn't touch a dollar of that that money until I started Jetsetter. So there was about a year and a half of where I didn't get paid through that cleaning company.
Not saying I didn't get paid at all because I was I was working at the jet the other jet company, like, before I had my own, but it's no. They saw this was making sure it was getting allocated to either employees, marketing, or going towards the next thing that I was gonna do. So it's, yeah, it would it's, oh, yeah. It's really just been about helping others, and we're just trying to continue that mission. That's cool, man. Yeah. I think that that's, you know, a year and a half.
You know, Chaz, I would say, you did a did a phenomenal job there of of getting into a profitable place quick enough to be able to to benefit yourself even though you're trying to help other people because I think a lot of entrepreneurs missed the mark, and they're not even trying to help people. They're Yeah. They they missed the mark on paying themselves and and just budgeting and finance.
Not even really trying to help people, but, I think that you obviously had a different motivation, but so just appreciate the perspective let's let's go tactically here. I wanna go, you know, you got a cleaning you had this cleaning business and, of course, Jet Center, you know, is is a relatively still new company.
Obviously, you're crushing it, but tactically speaking, I wanna know if a good decision that you made, maybe one or the other in in the business Chaz far as the cleaning company or jet setter, but something that would be applicable for the audience. Like, you'd just do this thing over and over and over. It was such a good decision. What is it? Going and all the way in on myself. Literally going all in on myself.
So I Wolfe I basically told myself when I started a Jetsetter, and I left that cleaning company, told myself I'm mentally unemployable again. There's no plan b. This has to work. I cannot go back to something else. And, like, when I was flirting with it, okay, if I start this, Chaz always go back and I Chaz go clean all those accounts, or I can go back and work in the gym industry again, or I can go do this and this. And then one day it was just like an moment. I was like, f Chaz. This is it.
This is gonna work. I'm gonna make it work. And if it doesn't work, this is just a learning curve right here because the next thing I do is going to work. And ever since then, like, I, I tell myself that every day I wake up, and I just show some gratitude, but then I'm like, Hey, don't forget you're mentally unemployable. This is going to work today. Let's win today.
Yeah. I love it's a it's a it's a definiteness about the mindset that it's like, you don't have to burn bridges in a negative way of get rid of the ships that were that are option b, c, and d. It's not not like that, but it's no. No. No. I'm going to make this this work. What was that moment, though? Like, you said you came to that realization. What what happened to make you have that moment? My wife was pregnant at the time with my son, and I was like, man, started thinking about it.
I was like, okay, I'm having a boy. He's gonna go through sports. I'm gonna be, I wanna be there for this. I wanna be here for that. I wanna be here for that. I don't wanna be working I don't wanna be working 10 to 7. Whatever. I always say 9 to 5, but there's no sustainability of 9 to 5 anymore. It's 10 to 7. So it's whatever the 8 hour shift is.
And I'm like, no. But I finally like I, like I said, I told myself, I was like, if I get this going in between the time that she's pregnant and finally get the machine flowing, I'll be able to have that time not saying I'm never gonna work because there's times last night. I was up at 2 AM to 4 AM working on a trip for a client, get some sleep, but I was able to take him to school. I'm able to pick him up.
He has some with the model with the, some fundraiser thing where it's, like, in the middle of the day, my wife says, Hey. Do you wanna go? And I'm, Yeah. I can. So it's, yeah, that was really just having that knowing what the future is gonna come and putting my stuff in that position was the main thing. Yeah. That's so good, and it's rich. It's the right thing, but it's it it we hear this sometimes, you know, over and over.
And for for maybe the listener today, they're they're thinking, I've heard it before. It hasn't become real to them, but you're right. When you have that moment where it sinks down and you become unemployable where you're just like, no. No. No. I'm I'm I'm stopping. I remember everything you just said. I remember doing that going, well, if this doesn't work, then I know I can go there. I've got skill sets there. All the way around. And it's just, no, is is the answer eventually.
Yep. What about what about a bad choice? What'd you do Chaz was just save us some time, man? Help us to skip past your mistake. Had those had those same conversations we just talked about for a good solid year plus. And it was, like, literally just every day having that conversation, I wish I would have jumped way sooner.
Sure. And everyone always says that every time they make a good decision, they're like, man, I could've done this so long ago, but it's always tell people if you're if you're sitting out, you could sit on a $1,000,000 ideas, but they're always just heavy idea unless you jump, make that, make that decision to just go on on yourself. But that's probably, that was probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made was just waiting, sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting, waking up every day.
Telling myself I'm gonna do this and not doing it. Yeah. What what kept you there in that Yeah. So I think, I think the main thing was, like I said, wait, Wolfe kind of fear, but waking up every single day and telling myself, like, no, I can't do this. Well, I, I could do this, and it probably would work out. But it was finally came full circle. It was like, man, I finally made that jump. It did work out. What if I would have done this 365 days ago? I'd be a year ahead right now.
And then you start having different conversations like, oh my goodness. Stop having that conversation because if you start having that, you're gonna think, oh, it could have been this far this, but no. Just start where you are now and just keep going. Yeah. And it's so so simple, but yet so profound. You know, I find myself saying that often, but, really, it is the things that really moved the needle for us. Yeah. And are just like that. We we know this.
We all know There's there's guys right now that have already initially jumped, but there's something in their business that they've been meaning to do or go all in on or whatever it is that you're It's kind of an an alignment here, and and they're waiting for whatever reason. I don't know, but maybe not after after today's show. Maybe they'll jump.
What what process we talked about good and bad decision here pretty quickly, but I wanna know, like, at this level of the game, like, you've you've gone all in. You've had multiple businesses. You've got a family. Yep. What process or what steps do you follow when trying to make a good decision today? Always do the right thing for our clients. Regardless of everything that's going on. It always just comes, like, outside of the outside of our family when it's just strictly business.
Every or even with our family, do the right thing. But if we're talking quickly business, it's like always do the right thing for the client. Things happen in our industry. Airplanes break down for people who fly commercial when they say, Hey, you're flight's been delayed. Hey. Your flight's been canceled. That's all that stuff still happens in our industry as well. And usually when it happens to I said, average person who flies commercial. I flew commercial last week. There was a delay.
In my head, it was like, okay. There's a delay. Cool. We'll get back on there. Clients that are are level of the top 2 to 5%. I always say 2 to 5 because the 1% own their own jet. Sure. They don't like hearing the word no. They don't like hearing delays. They don't like hearing something happen. So that's kinda that's that's pretty hard to talk to a fine about that, but it's always, Hey, we're gonna do the right thing for you.
Whether the aircraft breaks down, I gotta find you a new one, and it's gonna cost me $7 more. I'm always gonna do the right thing. And that's kind of what we pride ourselves on is do the right thing, and we'll never leave you stranded on a tarmac. Yeah. Yeah. And and I know you mentioned briefly there for the family, but since we since you went there for half second, what about family of decisions? Obviously, you're married, like, do the right thing. What does that mean inside of a home for you?
So it's funny. My we've all kind of molded into our own different personalities, and it everyone knows, like, when it's family time, when it worked time, I have 2 different ringers on my call forwarding. So the family knows when the business line's ringing, my kids know, hey, oh, Jud center. This is daddy. Like, the, my son answers the phone the same way I do.
But he knows if it's a personal call and I could just sit there and flip the phone over, but they know, in the middle of the night, if someone's calling it, it means business. So when it's time for family time, it's time for family time. When it's time for business time, it's time for business time. And even my five year old knows that. So that's the cool thing about the past couple of years. They've been along this whole journey with me. They've seen the slow days. They've seen the fast days.
They've seen me at Disneyland my son the first time sitting on Main Street with my computer out, sending something to a client before I had a team. Like, it Wolfe they've they've seen it all. So they, they kind of we all know how we operate. They know how our business operates. It's it's cool to see. It's cool that my family knows that and they, they, they get it. It's not hard. Yeah. It's on the phone again. It's, oh, hey, dad's doing a book a trip, or, hey, dad's gonna do this.
Hey, if that'll be done in 10 minutes, so we can go out here and do this. Right. Right. Yeah. A different you're building a different expectation. I wanna parlay this. I don't go this I don't go this way very often, but, obviously, we're both young guys. We've got young kids. This conversation of being our children or or, you know, putting them in a position to be able to, you know, do things even greater than us. Right? You probably very similar to me.
It came from a place where it's, you know, maybe we're already passed where we came from. And so that's the idea, right, is to have our children go past, but What do you what do you feel like you're doing, or is there a maybe a process there or a mindset maybe of, like, the the strategic things that you're, like, building in your children so that they can take over your company or be whatever it is that they're meant to be or go past you, stand on your shoulders. However you wanna say it.
You know what I mean? What are you what are you doing as a dad? Funny. So, like, we, we, me and my son, we've kind of built this whole thing around, like, gender around me being able to take my son to school, pick him up from school. My wife's a teacher. I let her know 2 years ago. I was like, hey, if you wanna, if you wanna be a stay at home mom, you're more than welcome to. And she's all, of teaching kids. Like, I she teaches preschool. She just loves it.
And she's, I would be bored because she gets bored during summer. And she even had that moment where she was like, you know, I could now I'm bored. I, I gotta work. But on the other hand, she misses the kids during the day, but back to that, my daughter, she's gonna she's not even one yet. She'll be one in December. But, like, this conversations we have with my son, it it really catapulted, I'd say, a year ago when he was 3 turned in 4, I realized how much of a spongy was.
Because not everyone in my family is an entrepreneur. Some of them are 9 to fivers. They do their stuff, but his, his grandfather was at the house, and they were playing Mario Kart And he came in second, and his grandpa was like, hey, practice makes perfect. And he's like, oh, grandpa, practice makes better. We gotta get better. And I was like, he's listening because I say that all the time. And then, and then you start realizing they're, they're, you're molding them.
So you gotta make sure you're saying the right thing. When he goes to school every day, the teacher's like, hey, Elijah. What's today? And he's it's a great day to be great. And just walks in, and I'm like, man. Okay. Gotta keep making sure, because you're not gonna sit there and say, hey, son, you're gonna be, successful business owner. He's he's five years old.
But if you're saying the right things and he's having the right mindset at just slowly, gradually getting older, I think that'll, that'll pay off in the long run. So Yeah. Every I mean, I've got girls and and my and a son who's about the same age as yours. And all I could think about when you were talking about story, but that's my dude. You know, that's my little dude. You know? Yeah. He's he's marrying you.
He's he's he's literally processing all the things that you're depositing in him such Like, when you put it in that way, like, when I'm building this human Yeah. It is heavy. Like, you gotta take that stuff seriously. And and then put you in perspective. Oh my goodness. Like, all these kids that just don't. They don't have the direction. You know, I didn't know my dad growing up.
Man, all these abilities that are being missed because they don't have what your son has and how much further along potentially he can be just because he's got incredible mindset on a daily You know? Right.
And it's crazy too that we're talking about family like that because when we were younger and whether it's whatever parent you grew up with, I I grew up with my mom and my stepdad, but when I was in middle school or even 5th grade or even into high school, now you can't go over to Stow and Tossow. So I I'd rather you guys just here. And you don't think of it like, why? Who cares? That's my friend. But you they see the bigger picture of what upbringing they have over there and over here.
And I'm, like, thinking about it now. I'm like, Hey, I wanna go to So and so's party. I was like, you know what? I'd kinda see how that family I don't think that's a good idea. And it finally comes full circle when you're the parent. Yeah. And that that trips me out too sometimes. So it's funny. The friends that we have and the inner circle that we have kind of all have the same mindset. They're either in masterminds. They're in different industries.
They're always trying to level themselves but you see that in their kids as well, especially when the kids are hanging out and they're competitive. They're not sitting there cussing at each other, yelling at each other. Oh, man. You could have done better on this one, and they help each other. And I'm like, oh, man. This is us in business and mastermind's doing Chaz. Just not in video games and stuff like that. Seriously. Yeah. That's a pretty incredible picture.
I think Chaz, if if every high level owner had that in mind, like, right? Okay. Let me get 3, 4, 5 other people close by, live by, and where we can actually have kids and stuff together. And then the kids do the same thing, man. It's Chaz just sounds like a, you know, a little a little business unit, a little business mastermind, and and One of the things about that is the old house that I lived in 2 years ago for our first, like, family house.
We lived on a cul de sac, and a kid I grew up lived at the end of the cul de sac, and then his next door neighbor business owner owns 3 different companies. We all kinda met and kinda just became good friends. Well, fast forward the pandemic hit. We all started hanging out every day. Then a year into the pandemic, one of them moved. And I was like, oh, man, he moved. And I was like, okay, I got another baby on the way. I'm moving too.
And then the other dude was like, dude, my we got good value in my house. We all moved within a mile of each other. So we're back to the same we're back in the same room, and it's just We hang out three to four times a week, and all of our kids are roughly around the same age, which is awesome too. So Yeah. There's there's power in that. That that's hard to curate for sure. But there there is absolute power.
My encouragement to the listener would be that there's people around you, and and they may not have, you know, 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000, and maybe they're like you or they cracked the first million yet, but get around somebody that has some positive mindset and Chaz, some challenge in their blood just where, you know, they're just gonna help you raise you up because it's tough. What we do is tough.
Not only Chaz dads, of course, husbands, but but the business on top of those things, it can it can take a toll. So you need a village Okay. So I've got a a speed round here. A couple of questions I wanna throw at you. In the jet center business, I'm curious. If you could only track one metric, dial the whole thing all the way down. What would that one metric be? How often a client goes on to Google and types in private jet.
That's been that's been the hardest thing to kind of wrap our heads around because we do get a lot of our clients from Google. We do get them a lot from referrals. We get them a lot from There's there's so many different ways of, there's so many different ways of how we get our lead generation, but I've always been curious to the actual flyers how often they really just sit there and type in, hey, private jet. Who pops up? Yeah. Yeah. That would be maybe some another level of Google analytics.
I don't know. And by the time you figure it out, the SEO on on TikTok will have taken over. So Exactly. Yep. Yep. That'll be the yep. Okay. What what book would you recommend or maybe a resource? Would you recommend for a 6 figure business owner specifically? Oh, I've been reading books a lot lately, but I would definitely say I I would say the core people who probably listen to this know who Annie Priscilla Yeah.
I started listening to Annie Priscilla when the MF CEO pro the MF CEO project came out 5, 6 years ago because one of my buddies was on his episode at the very beginning. Chaz was strictly just for entrepreneurship. Now he's into real AF, which is a lot of politics and stuff, and he's given us 2 every day, but he's bringing back the MFC, you know, for entrepreneurs. I would say go back and listen to all 300 episodes of because Chaz, that was like my holy grail every morning, boom, this and Chaz.
And I implemented so much in the cleaning company and the jet setter into everything I did on the daily with the MFCO project. Yeah. That's that's great. Yeah. I love I love every now and then I I got a guy like you that, you know, of course, there's lots of great books, but, man, we just today, there's just so many different options. You can learn it in so many different ways. So I just appreciate that. And you're right.
If there's a book, if there's a book, I would say one of either the 2 of Tim Grover's books. Oh, yeah. Is it relentless? Is it relentless? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Winning. Uh-uh, either one of those two bugs or an order. Yeah. I know, Tim Grover, phenomenal recommendation, but it's it's okay to to to be in a podcast world or in a YouTube world. I mean, jeez. A lot of our a lot of our consumption education wise is on YouTube today. So, okay, I've got to I got an operational question for you.
If you only had 1 hour to work inside your business? Literally, only 1 hour every single week. What would you do in that 1 hour to operate your business successfully? Follow-up. K. Follow-up with Follow-up with clients. K. I would sit there for 1 hour and follow-up with every single client. And that, like, the one thing that always sticks with me is I always tell the employees the most money, the fu money is in follow-up money, and that's what the fu stands for follow-up.
Yeah. That's where the money is because you get so caught up and it's, K, I sent you a quote for a trip that's coming up, and it may have gone to spam folder, whatever. You forgot about it. I forgot about it. Boom. You get this deal the next day, and you're totally you're just not even in the wind anymore. You send him a quick email. You call him. Boom. Hey. Hey, man. Wanna make sure. No. It was actually in my spam folder. Oh, so you didn't even get it. I love it. Sign it.
Boom. It's it's always there. It's always there. And whenever I'm sitting there and I'm like, man, it's a we're halfway through the month, and we're kind of trajectory. Our trajectory is not where I thought it was gonna be. Everyone get on the phone. Give me 2 hours. Get on the phone. Call every single lead that you send in clients. You will send them a follow-up email right now. It's funny how much business comes out of the day. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. There's always there's always deals that fall through the cracks and follow-up as, yeah, as you said, it's where the money is, for sure. K. I've got to got a I got one last question here for you. Yep. You've been you've been you've been really incredible. Thank you for, just giving. If you could whisper in the younger Mike's ear, What would you say? Get started today. Get started today.
Because I know at whatever point in my life, whether it was I was in high school thinking about doing something when I was fresh out of high school thinking should I do this? I was always having that conversation station that lasted way longer than it should have, of getting started. So I would just, a, get started today. Whatever it is that's on your mind right now, and you've been thinking about for the past 24 hours to 365 days get started today. Yes. So good.
How can the how can a listener find you? Maybe they or someone that they know needs to rent a jet or they just wanna reach out to you, pick your brain as an entrepreneur. How can they find you? Well, if you need anything, regarding a jet, you can go on the number 2 jet set.com. I'm I don't use Facebook as much as I used to. We do for for different things for Jetsetter, but if you wanna contact me personally, Instagram, at Mike, Howard 3, So Mike Howard and then the number 3.
And then that's probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. Perfect. We'll put them in the show notes as well. People can easily find you. And I'm sure there's plenty of trips coming up that people need beautiful private jets for. So, Mike, you've been in incredible. Thank you for being here. Blessings on your family, your business. And we just really appreciate you being here. Thank you. Likewise, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to gathering the Kings.
We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to seven figures and beyond If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group.
What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes, To level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.