Eric Farewell | How a Lifelong Love of Flying Led to a Thriving Paramotoring Business

Eric Farewell 12:05

you actually did a pretty good job, much better than the average Joe. So good job, your dad’s

John Corcoran 12:10

rubbing off while you use it. But fans, that’s probably the better way to describe it.

Eric Farewell 12:13

But fan makes people smile every time. So it is a fan on your butt. It’s a backpack you wear and it supports a harness that once you’re in the air, it’s like sitting in any comfortable easy chair. But it is the only form of flight that you literally run into the sky just like you do in your dreams. So you feel like a Superman every time right? The glider comes up above your head, it takes the weight of the motor off your back. And as you lean back and add power, you’re gone. And then you’re flying and the basic numbers every wants to know yes, you can fly it without a license, you can fly almost anywhere in the US you just have to know the laws takes about two weeks learn to fly costs about 12 to $15,000 to get into it, then about $8 an hour to operate. The average wing for beginner flies about 25 miles an hour, the more advanced wings fly about 55 to 58 miles an hour. They are fully aerobatic if you want them to be. Which it’s super fun. It’s like being on the swing set that you can actually go over the top every time. It’s super cool. And the total time most people will fly Julia about an hour to two hours. But it depends on the engine and your weight. There are guys who are flying 6789 hours a day.

John Corcoran 13:15

Wow. So going out for long periods of time. And what was it like for you? I remember when we spoke last time, you’d been in a tremendous amount of pain from all the different injuries that you’d had broken bones and whatnot. And for you this was like a literally a weight off your back. Right? Yeah, so

Eric Farewell 13:35

it’s kind of a mix. We found that we were pregnant with our first and at the time, I was running a couple different companies. One was copywriting. One was photography and I found myself hopping in and one of my family’s airplanes and flying to an airport land and smoke a cigar I’d write or I’d edit photos and I fly back and you think it’s an airplane that cost maybe 40 $50 an hour to operate wouldn’t be bad, but then you find out that you’re pregnant, you’re like, Oh, crud, we gotta I gotta tame this, this spinning out of the way because it’s couple $100 a day is starting to hurt. And it’s gonna repair motors. I had started my YouTube channel about six months before and about 25,000 subscribers and I reached out to a couple of companies and got a paramotor and I got training and you know, as the sponsored pilot to promote it on my youtube and it honestly it kicked my butt man. My childhood sounds pretty fantastic. And like everybody, you know, you can sugarcoat everything, but I had a really traumatic really challenging childhood with being one of five siblings, and traveling as much as we did. We didn’t have that sense of home that you would have you had friends at home. I had my cousin’s and they were great, but their friends all bullied the hell out of me because I was this weird homeschool kid. And you know that, that never feeling quite at home really created a part in me that just felt like I needed something more. And if you think’s two years of therapy now my therapist is going through my childhood photos. She’s man, you only ever really look happy when you’re up high on a mountain. And I was like Yep, yep. When I’m flying, I’m terrified of heights by the way, but when I’m flying, I feel alive. And so coming to Paramount, you’re

John Corcoran 15:07

not afraid of heights when you’re in an airplane, not at all. Not at all. It’s totally

Eric Farewell 15:11

different. And what was really cool is, you know, throughout my high school life, I could always get my airplane in escape all the BS, escape all the judgment escape all the trauma and all the abuse. But when I was on the ground, I was exposed to it. So when I got into paramotoring, and it did the exact opposite. Here I am with a broken back through 85 pounds in my back trying to sprint, I’m asthmatic. I’m like the skinniest fat dude, you know, right. skinny dude, you know. And it was really hard. It looks easy in the videos, but it’s very physically demanding, very mentally demanding. And I’d never been bad at everything in aviation, and I was terrible. So I did what I usually do, which are family crests, what is terrible me

John Corcoran 15:53

and like, you have trouble getting off the ground, or once you’re in the air, you can’t stay aloft

Eric Farewell 15:59

nearly as getting off the ground. So in, in flying, generally, landing is the hard part with parameters is taking off. And so because you’re trying to balance the glider coming up, but if it shifts this way, you have to run underneath it get with it, the power on your back, every time you add the power, it wants to tip you forward, which would drive you into the ground, all these different elements. Yeah, and so I would go out and try to fly and it might be 12 or 15 attempts before I get get off, right. And so my training experience had been a little lackluster. And it was in a little broken down hanger with the rain pouring through the roof. And our entire ground school was just basically, you know, two hours of explanation of weather and, and airspace and you’ll figure it out. And that didn’t sit right with me, I you know, coming from a fixed wing background, I was like, You’re teaching people how to fly, you got to take this seriously. So in that first year, I fluor 500 hours and got physically fit, got mentally fit, found a way to keep flying really, really cheap. So I get it attain that kind of sense of meditative state, which is what flying for me is. And then people start asking me to teach them. And I would help them with the ground school and I pass them off to an instructor. And eventually I realized what the instructor was doing was what I had done as a fixed wing instructor and ultralights, I could do the same thing with them. So we built a system hired some really great people who helped build the system even better. And over the last 11 years, we’ve kind of become the 100 pound gorilla in the industry.

John Corcoran 17:21

And I love what you’ve done with the YouTube channel, which is really kind of an extension of the business. And if I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen such a perfect fit between the medium of YouTube and video, and the business of what you do. Because it’s beautiful, you have these beautiful videos of what it’s like to go paramotoring. So talk a little bit about how you’ve used that and leverage that as a tool. And I know you’ve also leveraged other influencers out there who have become advocates for your school.

Eric Farewell 17:53

Yeah, so for me, especially in something that’s so visually stimulating, like paramotoring, you need to be able to tell the story, people need to be able to see themselves if you go to our website, aviator PPG or aviator paramotor.com you’ll see a pair of feet, dancing above the clouds solidus that’s the intro to what we do, we give you the opportunity to place your feet above the clouds. And so telling stories with video was something I got really passionate about even prior to opening aviator paramotor because I had been a photographer for all these years, and I loved taking pictures and I got good at it enough to make a decent living. But video is this whole new Marvel okay, how do I take what I know in photography, I understand light editing, shutter speed, shutter speed aperture, you know, I get all of these things, right? Oh, excuse me, but how do I add to that movement and audio and get good at it. And so I took all my photography equipment, and everyone else was making these videos that were you know, they’ve got their phone out, they’re taking a video and I’m I’m standing here with a $25,000 with a camera and lenses mounted to a tripod that I hit mount to my hips, and I get my wife to set the focus just right at F 1.2. So that my eyeballs are in and I have a conversation with the camera moving around with what I didn’t realize I was just building what Hollywood builds as these rigs might just hurt my hips more because I had tripod legs and but it was really fun. For me it was a new challenge. And I think that for throughout most of my life, I usually have like a three year lifecycle between interests. And I forced myself to harness my attention for 11 in this business, but I’ve been really blessed over the last several years to have developed even more systems and what so I have a great team. I’m basically hands off with aviator, I have this team that manages everything and I might show up to one of our little tins every month or two but that’s about it. And

John Corcoran 19:40

that’s enabled you to dabble in other businesses and we’ll get into some of the work you’ve done with the dads community group of dad entrepreneurs. But also you recently acquired the national stole business. Yeah, sorry

Eric Farewell 19:57

you cut out a little bit there but national stole is National STOL are short takeoff or landing. And still airplanes are Bush planes. These are planes that are flying in Alaska to deliver mail to deliver food for years for nearly 100 of those years now, right? They were an opportunity for airplanes to get in and out of spaces that they couldn’t before. And a few years ago, the founders of this, this company were sitting on a sandbar in Texas, and they just landed their airplanes in the sandbar they’re all having a nice time. And how do we how do we bring this to the world? How do we show normal pilots? How they can become better pilots? You know, because practicing STOL, you have to be on the line, you can’t land long into the water, right? And so, national stole was born from the desire. And thanks to my partner, Tom Flannery, Tom is a whiz kid. He’s the kind of guy who can look at a problem go, Hey, you, it’ll be really cool. What if we livestream this? What if we took this not to the audience of 1500 people live or 2000, or whatever, but let’s take it to the world. And so we started creating content around it, I actually came on board as an announcer, I’ve been in love with air shows since I was a kid. And I think going to air shows a lot of my own air show team as well with a pair of motors. And we, they asked me to come on and help them announce, because I’ve done out a bunch of air shows. That’s a sure I’ll do that whenever I have time. So I will add, the last year, I got invited to come to an event in Louisiana, which actually just had again last weekend. And I had the best time and I was so blown away by the people. So these are the best people in aviation, like they just are, there’s no bickering, there’s no BS, there’s, there’s a little bit of wrestling after someone loses. But it’s all in good fun, you know, and I decided that I was like, I’m gonna buy this company, if I can find a way for them to sell it to me, I’ll buy this company, because I think that there’s a few missing pieces that my business background can bring to take it to the next level. And since we’ve closed on the business, my wife and I own it. It’s been really remarked, actually, technically, she owns it. I work for her. Thank you taxes and IRS and trying to figure out all these different business structures. But she so since December, we’ve seen our view count. And our numbers start to explode based upon actually having a schedule for how we post it post content. We’re on track for 120 million viewers this year. Wow. 120 million, 9 million on desktop alone last week. Wow. It’s this crazy numbers. And so what we’ve realized is we have 45 to 55 year old white males in America, Brazil, Germany and the UK on lock, right. And so now we need to find companies who want to market to them. So it’s whether it’s a testosterone clinic, or it’s you know, it’s keeps her Viagra. We’re trying to find these companies that want to be in front of a Superbowl size audience for a fraction of the price. That’s the new challenge we have next we’re developing the content, we have the story. The back end of that is that I our filmmaker from aviator we actually stole from Disney during COVID. He’s amazing. And he he’s baking a TV show of national stole much like Dr to survive from Formula One. So we’ve been in talks with a couple different networks, but we really want Netflix call us we want to have it side by side which I just survive.

John Corcoran 22:56

That’s cool. And actually, just a week ago now I saw this video of this Red Bull plane that landed in Dubai. I don’t know if you are involved with that one. But

Eric Farewell 23:08

it wasn’t directly my friend actually built that airplane. Really? Yeah, so

John Corcoran 23:12

it looks plain to the listeners what happened.

Eric Farewell 23:15

So the airplane took off and landed on the top of a helicopter pad in Dubai. And what’s interesting about this is that hella pad is 70 feet long.

John Corcoran 23:25

Last week, feet long,

Eric Farewell 23:27

which sounds crazy, right? Sounds crazy. Yeah, the way that we score National Soil is just like golf. So there’s a white line that you line up on, you take off there’s a measuring tape, how far does it take for him to get off the ground, and then you come back around the land just past that white line. As soon as your wheels have touchdown pass the white line and stop. That’s where you measure your landing and we count them both together. So he had 140 feet combined to land and then take off right. Our winner last week and national stole and swamp STOL in Louisiana is combined takeoff and landing. I don’t want to hear this number. What 35 feet

John Corcoran 24:01

35 feet, okay. 35 feet. Okay, so then 70 So 140 That’s not funny. A

Eric Farewell 24:07

room tiny room. Okay,

John Corcoran 24:08

all right, I feel that you’re gonna be like 210 or something

Eric Farewell 24:11

like, Oh no, he grinded. Eight feet landed and 27 Alright, so we have these crazy competitive and we had a guy in our touring class who’s flying a Cessna 205 Big, huge 62 airplane off the ground and just under 100 feet. It’s crazy. These guys are they’re learning their airplanes becoming much safer pilots and it’s super fun to watch.

John Corcoran 24:31

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. What a cool a cool yeah, the images that I think I watched some videos on. I do watch videos on aviation on YouTube. So clearly targeted me was the right target. Now you you’ve got a couple of kids now and you gotten involved in a community called front row dad’s which I just joined literally like a couple of days ago. That’s a group of dad entrepreneurs. Really interesting community really engaged community from everything I’ve heard heard, although I’m brand new to talk a little bit about how you ended up getting involved in that community.

Eric Farewell 25:05

Yeah, so I am on a deep mission here to talk about therapy, we’re just gonna dive all the way in, I want to deep mission to be present with who I’m truly meant to be, whether that’s through meditation, plant medicine, you know, traditional talk therapy, whatever it is, I want to be the man I was born to be, it’s very important to me to face my own demons and to live beyond the fear. And so I had been on that journey with my wife for about four years. And we really have grown so much together, but there’s always room to grow in different areas of our lives. And for me, parenting has been a really challenging one. Because while I certainly don’t like the way that I was raised, I liked the way I turned out. Like, Hey, I was successful. And the irony, right,

John Corcoran 25:47

there’s lots of people who feel that way, especially if they were raised in poverty, and, you know, or, you know, suffering, they didn’t have every opportunity handed to them. And, you know, then they’ve been successful in life. And they want to get, you know, part of them wants to give their kids the things that they yearn for as a kid. And the other part, you know, you’re saying yourself, like, I can’t do that, because then they will become the person that I’m most proud of that I’ve read them.

Eric Farewell 26:13

It’s a delicate balance. So there’s a group of an N EO for about five years now. And there’s a group of EO dads on WhatsApp and I was reading through the hundreds of messages and my spare time, and somebody mentioned this group called front row dads, and they listen to podcast with it. And so as I’ll go check it out, and I listened to podcasts. I was like, This guy is sharp, he gets it, he’s my kind of people. And at the time, you couldn’t sign up, you could sign up for a waitlist, they only open it a couple of times a year. And so I did and when the waitlist opened, and I saw the price as like 200 bucks a month. Like bro, That’s so cheap compared to EO or YPO, or any these other groups that were part of it’s like, it’s so freakin affordable. So I joined and I wasn’t overwhelmed. At first, the virtual setting was not as valuable for me, but I signed up for the live they had a live in person event in Austin, Texas in December. And I have been to hundreds if not 1000s of events. And aside from one marriage class that my wife and I took that I credit with like reigniting the, the best marriage ever, like 10 out of 10 I love my wife love what happened out of that. This was the best event I’ve ever been to. And it wasn’t the speakers. It wasn’t you know, there’s there was no one thing. The craziest thing about it was because everyone aligns around six pillars, right? We have vibrant health, we have a thriving marriage, we have all these different pillars, and business is one of them. But the core line for our dads is that we are family, men with businesses, not businessman with families. Family is first it’s the most important priority in our lives. And yes, you want to be successful as hell. So you can spend more time with your family. That’s a good thing. But that group of men, dude, I would sit down to lunch with eight guys. And they’d give us a question to ask like every conference does, you know? And you start to hear these answers. And I was so drawn to the way that these men reflected humility, passion drive, and every their their answers could have been my answers, right. And there was not one person I met in a three day event that I didn’t want to get to know more. And that’s literally never happened. I’ve never been to a marketing conference or a business conference where there wasn’t that one guy in a hotel bar that you just couldn’t stand. Right. There was not a single guy that I couldn’t stand every single one of them I wanted to dive deeper with. And so I went on a tangent and I went on a tear. I came home December 7, I think it was since December 7, I’ve averaged about 15 hours a week meeting with other front row debts. Because it has become this obsession to better understand the things that need to know more than I do. Because just like that question you asked if what do I provide my kids with? I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, that by the time we left for our trip, every March had been broke for four months. You know, Christmas looked like toenail clippers. I got a vacuum cleaner one year. I literally got toenail clippers when you get toilet bowl cleaner in one year. You know, these are like Christmas presents. I’m unwrapping this is this is highfalutin. So that’s obviously not my kids experience, they can have anything they want in the world. And so how do I help keep them grounded. And we were talking briefly before the call or before this podcast. But this idea of travel to me is such an imperative thing and travelled to places where people have a much more challenging life to go in service of them. I just got back from a days in Cuba. And I spent some time there in 2017. And the difference in that country between 2017 and today is so humbling. And so empowering at the same time. It’s like I live in a place where it’s so easy to be a loving father, they had a spring soap, they couldn’t get soap, even the black market, the black market sold out of soap in Cuba right now. Right? Like it’s a crazy experience to be around these people who love life despite not having the things that we have. And so I want that for my kids too. So forever dad’s has been a huge part of that. I never thought I’d ever leave Eo Eo is my family for the last five years and I told my forum last month that guys I’m out put All my time in the front row dad’s these guys are my people. And we want to move we want to go move to wherever the most forever dads. I’ve never felt such a sense of community in my life and I’ve been in a lot of communities.

John Corcoran 30:10

Wow, that’s cool. I get I can tell when you find your new thing you are all in. All in to whatever you do no half assing it for, you know, like toe in the water, dumping it jumping in the deep end. But, Eric, this has been really cool. I love hearing all your stories and everything. I’ll encourage everyone to definitely go check out your book, farewell to normal. And I understand you have a new website. Where can people go to learn more about you and your various different businesses?

Eric Farewell 30:38

Yeah, just EricFarewell.com. It’s EricFarewell.com.

John Corcoran 30:44

Excellent. All right, Eric. Thanks so much.

Eric Farewell 30:45

Yeah, man. Absolutely.

Outro 30:47

Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.