What The Funk?

0:00 Okay, we are back on what the funk. I have the sky cam aviation team checking in from Livermore, California. Is that right? The rule? That's correct. That's right. That's right. And a newer

0:15 entrant into oil and gas, I guess we could say Not a newer entrant into flying planes. That's something you guys have done for a very long time but um friends of mine a funk futures client Um

0:29 promising solutions, I would say for oil and gas in the aviation space of course with Methane being a very hot topic right now. How do you capture it from all levels both kind of at the ground

0:40 continuously along the pipeline Um On drones and then of course from planes as well. That's one of the offerings that sky cam brings to the table We'll get into all of that, but I have to hit you

0:53 guys with the question the hardest question first And that is. Who are you guys, Sam? Christine, why don't you give the audience a little bit of who you are?

1:06 Well, I was born in Livermore. We're presiding right now. I've moved in my life 10 or 15 miles from here and I've already parthered.

1:15 Love the area. I've been a pilot since I was 17. Sometimes I have to say, soon to be my 53rd year flying. Nice. Lights.

1:26 I did a lot of flying in my 20s It's for me, it was always a great hobby, a terrible job. I kind of went away from it out of the businesses. And I got back in aviation and had an opportunity to

1:40 buy a small camera plane actually. I don't know nothing about cameras or computers and bought it. Didn't work, of course. So we worked to perfect it and became a new exciting thing for me to do,

1:54 something fun. So that's how we got to SkyCab Here we go.

2:01 Better than what we had Making new technology and making new things work Christine through my friend for 20 years Yeah, and I think I Overstepped my friendship with her after enjoying the sky cam so

2:16 Christine well, I'm a native, California as well and The oil my gas business is totally

2:40 new for me as well as Sky cam and the aerial and imagery I have spent my entire career in the fashion industry Cool. I retired from that and then Sam was looking for some help here at sky cam So I

2:44 came aboard to help with business development I have totally enjoyed learning About imagery planes flying and now the oiling gas industry It's just it's been a great experience

3:02 All right, well, there's a lot of real world things here. So we can keep it as light in terms of oil and gases we ever have on the What The Funk Podcast. And that's totally fine. So I want to dig

3:12 into a little bit about flying a plane at 17 years old. So that's kind of wild. Sam, you decide to go out. You're going to become a pilot at 17. Like I would say was this a vision that you had

3:25 when you were a kid, but you're still a kid when you started to get your pilot's license. So talk me through that process What was it like 50 some odd years ago to go and get your pilot's license

3:35 and start flying planes at 17 years old? 'Cause Lord knows, I was not mature enough at age 17 to be flying around and play.

3:43 Why don't know that I was either. But

3:47 yeah, my stepfather flew, I flew with him. And I didn't have a lot of interest in anyplace sports in high school or anything, but I had often learned to fly at Tracy,

3:58 25 miles from here, one's going to be in local Livermore. Very small flight school, I have two planes. And put my mind to it, and set the target to get my license on my 17th birthday. And so my

4:10 training worked out, and it actually happened. The day of my birthday, I took my check right. So it was just - for anybody that's not into it, give it a try. I've got a lot of friends that say,

4:24 well, then we want to fly and ever do this and take it for a ride They love it. So I've been a master for that for a lot of people. But it's a fun thing. Everybody enjoys flying, and there's

4:35 nothing better than to go on a early morning flight just around the local barrier for 45 minutes here. Look out the window, see what's going on. It's very, very fulfilling for me. Flying is fun.

4:47 Everybody should learn. That's super neat. So I kind of - yeah, I could see that being almost cathartic or they're meditative, right? You just kind of fly around as the sun's coming up and take a

4:58 look around you, see what's going on in the Bay Area. What kind of planes have you flown? Have you flown everything from smaller planes to sesnas and commercial airliners? Like are there rules

5:11 with what you actually even could legally fly? Yeah, there are rules. My career, I flew corporate in my 20s, up to turbo props, never flew a jet, not because I wasn't licensed or couldn't have,

5:26 just never had the opportunity.

5:30 And it's, flying is a very easy thing to do. It could be very boring.

5:36 But yeah, I flew off, I fought a phone, 150 different makes and planes. Just out of curiosity, flying different planes. And

5:47 corporate life is not pressure to go and you don't want to go, but schedules to keep everything else, just a lot of them.

5:57 A lot of pressure for not as much fun. And the flight a nice sunny day is much better than flying through a snowstorm. Not that it's any easier or harder, just much more pleasant to be able to look

6:09 down the ground from 1, 500 feet and see what the calories are doing or moving with the farmers' tolerance field or what's going on. Very, very relaxing.

6:18 I like it. So, Christine, have you been up in any of these sky cam planes where you've been on these flights or not? I have. I did sit in the back seat of the flight here while we were imaging

6:34 some areas, but I also took a flying lesson. Wow. Yes, much say I'm cat pushing. You have to get your pilot's license. And I really, I did

6:49 like it, but it's not a passion So I will say I didn't continue and take more lessons. I love going up in the plains and flying with some of the instructors here or the pilots, but it's not

7:05 something that I have a strong desire to do myself,

7:11 but it was cool. It was fun and cool. We're not done with that thought yet, but we'd love to be continued. Nice. He's very persistent. Yeah, and obviously passionate about it, right? So could

7:23 you like,

7:26 could you just be like, Well, I want to fly. I've decided I want to fly to Denver, right? I'm going to go out and visit Jeremy and some of his team for the day. Could you just do that? Like,

7:33 what is the process of you having planes, right? Could you just walk me through what that looks like? Could you even do that? Do you have the planes that could go that far? Could you just decide

7:43 on one day? Well, it's a Thursday. I'm going to go fly out to Denver.

7:48 Yes, many times earlier on, it was quite a busy day on now Yeah, I do that a lot of times, get a weather briefing.

7:58 a lot of course, sandwich gash you need and I'm just going to take you some of the way points with the new modern aviation radios and things, that's very, very easy. It's literally, you could

8:08 step into playing, I could even go there and go on one of our planes with a hanger, this guy can't play, it's punching pair of strands and say this many mouths are going to take this long and

8:18 actually navigate the whole way and just punch you to one thing. So it's very easy It's very easy to do, cautions good, be aware, don't be

8:32 frivolous about it, but it's not that hard to go to a Denver, then the main times, they literally

8:41 decide right now and easily an hour being there. Amazing. Does it take less time to get here on a smaller plane like the ones that you fly, then what commercial airliner?

8:54 Not that.

8:57 The corporate planes, we, we, I usually had one, um, twin engine pressurize system. It would be, it'd be about the same by the time you could go into the airport, go into the security

9:09 apartment car, new and all that. It'd be about the same, but the flight would be longer. The actual air time would be longer, but, um,

9:17 yeah, probably three and a half hours from there to Denver, four hours to Denver. Got it. Okay. So a little bit longer. Our now But the ease of doing it, um, no traffic jams go to the airport.

9:31 TSA.

9:34 So yeah, it's, it's a very pleasant, easy thing to do. Yeah, it's cool. It's not hard. Don't, don't be, um, don't be afraid of it. That's, that's good advice. Cause I do think that it's,

9:46 it's something, at least when I was younger, I'm still relatively young, I guess, in the grand scheme of things. But there was a point where I'm like, I want to get my pilot's license.

9:57 You know, you start having kids, you start having family time passes, you start to lose your passion. But then there's also just this fear, right, of what could go wrong. Because you hear about

10:07 these plane crashes. There was just this helicopter crash yesterday in New York City that I think has made big news with the CEO of Siemens or whatever. So, you know, there's a fear and it sounds

10:18 like you're saying don't have that fear, right? The odds of that are extremely low

10:25 Yeah, I think the last that just guy saw your 30 or 40 times more likely killed in a car record and airplane record you flew all the time. Yeah. So,

10:37 airplane accents make the news, they're sensational, but it doesn't have very often. It just doesn't have very often. And most of the time, I will say from all my years of flying, people have

10:47 known, you know, have accidents or accidents I've known about It's 999 pilot or, you know, it always is. And if you explain to somebody. Um, well, the person had a few drinks, got on the free

10:60 wind middle of the night, turn the headlights off and drove down the through and hit an abutment. People say, well, what do you expect? Is that type of negligent? A lot of these accidents, how

11:10 it happens.

11:12 Well put. So I have a quick, um, flight story for you guys, not of the sensational kind of the extremely frustrating side. So, you know, spring breakout here in Colorado was, uh, I don't know,

11:26 two, three weeks ago, and we've decided as a family, we were going to fly to London, um, spend a few days in London and then take the train down to Paris and show our kids a little bit of Europe,

11:35 big, big funk family trip. Well, everything's going smoothly. We get to the airport in Denver. We're on the United Airlines flight or about four hours into the eight and a half hour flight and

11:46 the pilot gets on and you could just hear it in his voice. It wasn't good He says

11:53 to everybody, I'm sorry to share this, but have some. disappointing news.

11:60 So then you brace yourself for the worst, right? Oh my God, this is it. What is this guy going to say? We're going to land in the ocean. This is where it's over. At least we're all together.

12:07 He says, there's a fire at the London Heathrow airport that's caused a power outage. We don't know when they're going to be able to bring the airport back online. We assume it's going to be

12:21 anywhere within the next maybe 24 hours. We've looked into all of the options that we could possibly have right now. And we've been told to divert the aircraft back to Denver.

12:36 Oh, wow.

12:42 So here we are. I'm closer to light in the Denver. That's that was my first thought. I'm like, well, there's, we're not like that far from, I don't know, Boston or the You know, it looked

12:55 like we were kind of over in Nova Scotia because on those international flights, they've got the flight tracker. Well, there's nowhere here that we could go, right? And just get a little bit.

13:04 Now we're going back to Denver and the pilot continued. You know, I've been doing this for 36 years. And this is the first time that this has ever happened And. I'm really sorry. You'll get back

13:16 to Denver and be able to talk to an agent once you return And again, I'm

13:22 sorry. So you see the flight attendants. Everybody's asking the flight attendants questions. They don't have any answers, right? They don't know anything. They know what we know. They're really

13:29 sorry. Does anybody want something a little bit stronger than water to drink right now? All right. Take us back to Denver. This led to a whole crazy series of events, which ultimately we ended up

13:41 flying nonstop the next day to Paris, cutting out the London portion of the trip. And now I'm still in the process of trying to recover some of the finances that I lost because we were in the window

13:52 when you can't cancel things. right? When you plan out your trip in advance, and then there's some sort of 2472 hour cancellation policy, and you're now within that window, it becomes a process

14:05 to then try to get your money back. So dealing with that right now, anyways, we ended up having a fantastic time in Paris, really fun city. And funny, you kind of mentioned it before. And

14:16 certainly, Christine, a big fashion city. So I want to know a little bit about your background too, not in oil and gas Not in aircraft or aviation, but in the fashion world, I didn't know that

14:30 about you. So tell me a little bit about this, like what have you done in the fashion universe? And I do have a story about that too, but I'll get to that much later. I want to hear about you,

14:39 Christine Korkos and fashion. Well, I kind of stumbled into it. It started as a family business. My father and his brother came to the US. in the mid-50s.

14:54 Greece and as young boys they were trained as tailors. So once they got here they opened up their own little tailor shop and then eventually opened up a men's clothing store with some

15:12 made to measure garments and then from there they they got more luxury goods but they were US made garments and I was just brought up around that my entire life and somewhere along the line I think

15:28 after college I got roped into helping them temporarily in doing their books and helping in their office and organizing them but I always loved clothing and fashion as a young girl and next thing you

15:46 know I was going on buying trips and then revamped the entire business to the point where we had four stores in the Bay Area. We changed our focus to luxury European men's clothing. So it was very

16:04 high end Italian goods. And it was just, it was a great career. Lots of fun traveling through Europe on, you know, most of Italy for our buying trips in New York

16:19 Made a lot of wonderful friends both again in Italy as well as other retailers throughout the US. Just loved it. It was a fun career and it gave me the flexibility I needed when I was raising my

16:36 family because it was again my own business.

16:41 It, you know, again we had four stores so we were pretty busy there for a while and then we kind of started tapering things off and I had one major store here in the East Bay in the Bay area.

16:58 And I think it was in 2020 when we contemplated our lease that come up in a major shopping model here and contemplated renewing for another 20 year lease. And I don't know what possessed me, but I

17:16 said, you know, I'm getting close to retirement. I don't know if I want that obligation I just want you to miss this. And I look back and say, thank God I didn't move forward because we

17:30 officially closed our store in January of 2020 in the world in March. So I could not have planned that any better had I had a crystal ball The. the relationships. We had a lot of, again, great

17:49 relationships with vendors, but a very interesting group of clients, a lot of entrepreneurs,

17:58 executives, and it's the relationship she truly ended up

18:04 in the States. Well, first of all, congratulations on making a decision like as if you had a crystal wall, because renewing a 20-year lease in January of 2020 in the Bay Area for a retail clothing

18:19 store probably wouldn't have been a 20-year run anyway at that point, unless you had just so much runway from a cash flow standpoint, because things got pretty bad.

18:29 That's kind of cool. And then at some point, so then you head right into COVID, you decided you're going to close out the store. What did you do during that period of time? And then when did you

18:42 entertain coming over to Skycam?

18:45 it was interesting. It was an interesting little period of time. The first month or two where we taught was retirement. I think I cleaned every possible thing I could in my home in it.

18:57 I wouldn't visit my kids a bit. And then somewhere along the line, Sam said, you know, I'll put you to come to my office Tuesday. Be there by 10. Why am I coming? I mean, shouldn't help me

19:12 with something. Nice Nice. And he said, okay. So starting today, you're working for me. And this is what I was going to do. So I don't think I had much of a choice, which was a good thing

19:26 because I really enjoyed it quite a bit. I love it. And like I said, it's been a great experience learning a completely new and different industry. And there's something new that I'm exposed to

19:39 every day, whether it's from the business perspective or the technical side. It's been a wonderful thing, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity. Me too. No. No, no. Wow. That's really

19:56 fun stuff. I love the way that you told that story, Christine. I will say this about fashion or about clothing in general is I think it's a slippery slope. You start at some point and maybe you

20:12 buy some of your clothes at Walmart and then you're a young man like like I was many moons ago and you decide you're going to go to men's warehouse, right? You're going to buy some clothes there and

20:22 then you come back to a store like that and you decide to decide to get a tailored outfit, a tailored suit and then you start to progress maybe a little bit more on your career and you meet like

20:33 haberdasher or something like that. Now they're starting to show you what the world could be and then before you know you're buying a10, 000 suit. You don't think that something like this could

20:41 happen. right? And you roll your eyes up like, how does this happen? But then you start to touch the bra materials and you're like, Oh, no, I want that. And then they start to say, cool,

20:51 well, we can give you that. Well, what if we added some pin strips? What if we added, you know, this liner? What if we added your initials? Right? What if we, what if we match it with this,

20:59 this Italian leather belt? What if, what if we match it with these shoes? And then they show you the bill and you're like, Oh no, how do I explain this to my wife? So I think it's a slippery

21:10 slope It's a slippery slope. So I, I'm into fashion as well. It, you know, I, this is my like day to day outfit, working from home. I just sort of throw on whatever is in my top couple drawers.

21:21 When I leave the house, I do like to dress nice. You dress good. You feel good. Do you feel like that is a thing in the fashion world where all of a sudden, it's gotten out of control.

21:34 You know, I do see it, but with men, again, it was a men's store. So men, traditionally, I don't think, are shoppers. So for them to go into a department store and try to wander around, put

21:49 it together. They love going to a boutique and take care of me. And like you said, they may come in for a suit next thing. You know, it's like, well, OK, can you just put the whole thing

22:02 together for me? And they feel, you know, after a while, you establish relationships. They continue to come back

22:11 and

22:13 again, it's friends. You become very close to your clients and develop a friendship to the point that they're just stopping by to say hi and hang out for 15, 20 minutes while their wife is putzing

22:29 around in the hall. And you do start

22:46 from the2, 000 student and saying, wow, this is great to move in your way up, it becomes addictive. Yes. Kind of feel good. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sure you were great at it, Christine.

22:52 You have a way with people. And it makes sense now that you're on the business development and sales side of stuff. I'm going to tell my fashion show story in a minute But I want to leave that

23:04 toward the end. I want to talk a little bit about sky cam aviation. So

23:09 what is sky cam aviation? What do you guys do? And I know that's a tough question because it's a broad question and say, I feel like I've asked you something like that before. What do you guys do?

23:18 And that could easily be a 15 minute answer. But in a nutshell, right? When someone, you know, you're out to dinner or you're at a holiday party and you say, well, you know, we fly planes and

23:29 we capture data and we process that data and we give it to you This guy came to aviation. So we looked at

23:37 filming, taking pictures from airplanes, remote sensing. So large field, remote sensing means you're away from the target taking a picture. Being a hotter balloon in a satellite, aeroplane,

23:49 whatever you wanna do, put a camera on a kite. So we looked at this, I had some experience flying for a crop survey company, they were remote sensing. I just slide the plane through my first bot,

24:01 after the aviation Probably 10 years ago, I guess, they were doing that. Sorry, I upgraded the plane, so we did that. Red pilots doing that, and I was kinda interested in it. Not really being

24:12 a scientist, but I got interested in it. And it turned out that the, everybody's flying, taking still pictures, like everybody pretty much does that. So we developed a video system that took

24:29 years to do because of the stabilization and the Just a lot of things make a lot different. The GPS tagging, very difficult to do. Yeah. And we got working on it, very interesting to me. I heard

24:42 some smart people helping. And we eventually got it going. So our strong service video, very, very high definition video, that's actually better than your TV. Better quality than your TV, you

24:54 see. Nice. And then we branched out in the other sensors. We fly for Lawrence, a little more loud, Los Alamos, some very high tech science solutions That they're very interesting to me too. So,

25:07 I come up with, I'm a contractor by trade, come from that background or way from the science, but it's been very interesting and very curious person. So we've kind of made great strides in video

25:19 for airplanes. A lot of drones fly a video of it. The videos are a strong suit. And now we fly, we fly, I have six different sensors. Most aerial survey people fly one camera. They have one

25:32 camera in the mountain, they're playing, they do anything with that. So we try to be customizable and it's very interesting to both Christine and myself trying to solve other problems that come out.

25:41 We don't say, Here's what we do, will this work for you? We prefer to ask, What's your problem? What do you need? We have a lot of different ways to do this. We build a lot of all the platforms,

25:51 ourself, very proprietary and we have just a customizable situation as interesting for us. Both Christine and I have a lot of interesting looking new problems So that's how Skycam's evolved to

26:05 curiosity and sometimes they'll discover this to keep going. But yeah, we've solved a lot of problems. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So the video, effectively the super high resolution

26:18 video is your specialty. Do you feel like that's a differentiator over other fixed wing, fly over types of companies? Oh yeah, the um.

26:31 So when we fly, we fly at 150 miles an hour, and we film at 150 miles an hour. Done. And about three cores to a mile away from the target. And

26:43 it's very pleasant to watch. So if you're trying to do a patrol or an inspection, first you're gonna sit there and watch 1000 miles a day. We can fly 1000 miles a day. If you're using still

26:54 pictures, which is the conventional, you're constantly changing picture. Next picture, next picture, next picture This is a very pleasant way to look at it. And to get the resolution, we fly

27:04 multiple cameras, bring five to five cameras on the flight. Actually, more with some other platform on the flight. You give different perspectives. But it's a perspective that, I tell people,

27:14 if you are standing on the ground looking at it, we can take that picture. You don't understand it or look at it. You can look at our imagery and see everything you see standing there. And then

27:26 we've perfected ways to go into AI and modeling and things. very simply and easily. So that's our strong suit. It's not just taking a pretty picture. The pictures we take would be easier to take

27:41 if we didn't try to collect so much data for the AI solution at the back end of the site. So we take a lot of extra data. You don't really see it in the picture, but when you go to process it, it

27:51 really shines through. Well, and the beauty of the video is that you don't miss anything, right? You're not just taking a still picture and a still picture with the video. Totally Absolutely,

28:02 nothing. And like Sam said, we have multiple cameras. So you can use one view to do your initial control. Something may look of interest, it's not. You'll look at another view from one of the

28:14 other cameras and zoom it in. You can see absolutely everything. It gives you great documentation and it's very easy to go back to, let's say, six months from now when there's a question pipeline

28:31 or a right-of-way, you have that documentation and write it in your fingertips and you can use that data for multiple things. It is so data-rich that it

28:44 works perfectly in an AI solution,

28:49 which makes the controller the inspection that much easier as well. You can tag everything for you

28:57 And then for that, we've evolved into the methane detection as well. Yes. And how can we do that on benefit? Exactly. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit because that's ultimately what

29:08 brought us together and working with each other is really, as you would look at oil and gas, of course, looking at pipelines over wide areas, over multiple states, makes sense that you guys would

29:22 be flying over and capturing video of that But then all of a sudden, these. fixed-wing flyover companies, drone companies start to emerge, and they're capturing all of the methane that exists in

29:34 the air. So when did this kind of start to hit your radar? And how do you guys sort of attack the methane space, not just knowing gas, but on agriculture as well, from a flyover perspective?

29:47 We're probably starting about three or four years ago, getting into methane, but we already had the video system. Yep. And I think it's supported initially with that project we have a Florence

29:54 Littlemore lab, did it not? It was a, it was a, it was a hyperspectral solution for something they were looking at and

30:05 about at the test site that we can't talk about, but you can imagine what they'd look at at the test site. But I think a rich hand in. Then they helped us into it. They were, they were working on

30:16 it too, Lawrenceville and I were early working on it. And so we went into that and

30:24 it's been an education process It's been an education process, it's.

30:28 Almost gone full circle, we think, to a totally

30:34 nailed down high-tech solution, trying to get exactly how much gas, and now it's more practical. How big is my leak? Can you identify what I can go fix it? But I have new model plumes and other

30:47 things. And we think it's kind of, the industry's kind of changing, right? Kind of more of a reasonable solution, we think Otherwise, why is it in technology less? We have multiple solutions.

30:59 We have multiple sensors. So depending upon what you need, we have it if you want a simple solution and you want to just identify leaks, whether in categorize them as medium to high to super leaks,

31:15 we have a cost effective system for that versus if you want a real, you know, something very scientific and technical. quantification and plume

31:31 imagery, we can do that as well. So we have, I think we have three different ways for sensors

31:42 to detect from that thing. Yeah, the detection's of course important. You gotta capture it, then you've gotta quantify it, you have to alert. It's a cool space, it's an evolving space, right?

31:51 And I think the way that you guys are attacking it by providing options is logical So we'll keep going with that. So real quick, I want to tell this story and then I have a couple more questions for

32:02 you guys and I'll let you go about and enjoy your California Friday. So when I was about 19 years old, maybe 20 years old, I was at a Fourth of July party at one of my friends' houses just outside

32:15 of Boston. And he was talking to his aunt and she said, she was a psychic, okay? like built a real nice career profession as a. being a psychic. And one of her clients was in the fashion world.

32:31 He was, I believe at the time the chief operating officer of Mark Jacobs, which was an emerging, large bags and clothing line out of New York City. Well, the COO was appreciative of the work that

32:46 the psychic offered her and said, Hey, listen, we have this huge fashion show in New York every year in September Would you like some tickets? Not just tickets to the show, but to this VIP party

32:59 afterwards. There's all kinds of celebrities

33:03 and socialites, any interest in going. She said, No, I'm not interested in going, but I'm pretty sure that my nephew would have interest in going. And I'm witnessing this conversation. I was

33:16 like, Oh, yeah, we'll go. So I've inserted myself now into this process, into this opportunity. And she goes, Okay, well, Dan, I can get you, I don't know, I'll introduce you to Robert, I

33:26 can get you like four tickets. Gets four tickets, I get to go, Dan gets to go, and his sister and one of her friends gets to go. Well, we show up, I didn't know what to expect, right? So we

33:38 actually went to like a men's warehouse in New York City. Mind you, I'm like 19 or 20 at this point. And we got nice clothing and we're dressed up. And we walk in and it was like a really small

33:51 like makeshift like bleachers, but this runway right here and all kinds of cameras and paparazzi. And there was probably like three or 400 people there, but 296 of them were celebrities and then

34:04 there was us, right? So we walk in, we walk up to our seats and my friend sister says, you know that you guys just walked right past Donald Trump, right? We're like, oh my gosh. So we start

34:18 walking out and you realize one, You can really address however you want, right? It's more about making like a statement. at these shows than it is about actually dressing up nicely. And then we

34:30 got to go to the after party, not everybody, not even all the celebrities get invited to the after parties, people that are in with the Mark Jacobs crew. So really, really fun, long story short,

34:41 we ended up going to maybe eight or nine fashion shows 'cause they have a smaller one in the spring and a big one in the fall. So this now became a thing. And I think that like the Mark Jacobs

34:52 employees and the people that went including the celebrities like Donald Trump started to recognize us because we stood out like a sore thumb.

35:02 So anyways, it

35:05 was a blast, it was an absolute blast. So that was my exposure to the fashion world. I didn't fully understand all of the things that they were showing off and what was cutting edge and a lot of it

35:14 looked like stuff that no normal human would actually everywhere. But I don't think they're appealing to normal humans when you're selling2, 000 bags.

35:24 Oh my gosh, sounds like a great experience. It was, to go to New York City twice a year as a young kid, we literally, five or six of us would crash at one of our friends like studios. And we'd

35:35 sleep on the floor, oh, to be young again, I'd probably have back paint for like three weeks if I did that for a night now, but those were the days. So the question that I wanna ask you guys, as

35:47 you digest my mini celebrity fashion show story, is what advice would you give to your younger selves? And I like to ask this because the answers that I get are wildly different. And I almost think

36:01 that it's such a broad question that I kinda wanna distill it down to like, if you could somehow flash back in time and Sam, you get 10 seconds with your 19 year old self. Christine, you get 10

36:17 seconds with your 21 year old self And you could just had enough time to say three words. that person. What would those three words be?

36:27 And you don't have to keep it to three words because it's such a broad question, but if you did, what would those three words be?

36:36 So for me, excuse me, for a variety of reasons, I went to college and was a high school graduate, accomplished a lot of things in my life, a lot of industry things, these things. And to this

36:48 day, I work hard,

36:51 basically I have four companies, I just got a cam. And

36:57 I don't get changed a thing. I'm one of the, I'm a very happy content person. And when I tell other, when I tell, I mentor young people, I say, I don't know what you want to do, work hard,

37:10 live a good life, and go forward. People notice, your boss will notice, don't worry about

37:18 while I get a promotion. I just work hard, be on time. And I'm very content. I'm very content. I can't think of um I know it's a dull crazy answer But I'm content to the state people say who you

37:32 work to our movie. I'll be 70 here in another month And do you all you work to are to do this? I love what I do. Yeah, a little whatever So I I don't have a lot of regrets a lot of things look

37:42 back on. Yeah, so maybe maybe those three words or don't change anything. Yeah

37:49 I don't think I would change much either. I I think the one thing I get to buy in a group What I want to is that I would trust my gut more and maybe just take more risk, you know, don't be afraid

38:06 To put yourself out there and take a chance on something don't always play it safe and again trust your gut and Take that chance god that you threw a lot of three word phrases out there. I don't even

38:21 know which one I want to pick but take more risks, trust your gut, don't play safe. I mean, I like all of those, and there's actually, Sam, your answer is not totally uncommon, I think. I

38:35 think a lot of people are like, well, I actually wouldn't change a thing, and I think that that's a more than acceptable answer. No, I think back like on my own life and career, and I've said

38:47 this on podcast before,

38:51 I feel like there were points throughout my career that I felt like I was behind where I was supposed to be. And in a lot of ways, you start comparing yourself to not just others, but where you

39:05 thought you would be, and that can lead to kind of a tough place in your life where it's like, I'm not as far along, and maybe I have worked hard, but I could have worked harder, I didn't get

39:17 opportunities, or I wasn't lucky, or maybe because I grew up or I grew up. wasn't from a wealthy family. I wasn't given the same opportunities. You can spiral and do all of those things. And I

39:27 think for me, I would tell like my younger self, right?

39:33 It's a little bit more than three words, but truly like, you know, just stay the course, right? And I guess that is three words, but it's, it's okay, right? Like I think we all move at

39:43 different, different speeds at different paces. I mean, say I'm here, you are, you bought this company 10 years ago, right? Maybe in your mind, you thought you should have bought a company

39:51 like this 25 years ago. So I think there's a lot of lessons to be taken from that. I don't, I don't look at, um, could I've done,

40:01 maybe make some different decisions growing up, possibly. But I prefer not to look at what if I'd have done this? What if I'd have done that? and hand regrets. They're very blessed. A lot of

40:14 ways.

40:15 And I just overall Try to be a more positive happy person We could all say things we should have done. We should have bought Apple stock where it was 50 cents a share That would have been cool. Yeah,

40:27 that would have been quick. We could do a lot of things, but I Just prefer not to dwell on it. Hey It won't make any difference to me. I just prefer to be happy thoughts Where I'm at. Yeah,

40:40 we're in the Christmas meeting Even though I have a brief fashion show, I have a brief fashion show too. Oh, I want to do this. I don't know. I have a very brief So I'm gonna leave I guy always

40:52 have been So I'm first person I first met where the restaurant and I said, you know, I know you're in the clothing business And Christine, you know, I wear a suit every two or three years. I

41:01 could buy a suit to help your business

41:05 And I'm a big guy Double XL or whatever and she and I know she I didn't realize the quality of the suits there for trim But and she says Well, we really don't have anything for you.

41:19 The whole thing to say, I'm gonna buy a suit from you. What does that mean we don't have anything for you? So I was kind of heartbroken for a few minutes there, but anyway, that's my passion for

41:29 that. As close as I got to high fashion. I got rejected. Did you get over it? Yeah. You're really not. You're still in the middle of it. It's a deep scar that will be in forever, but you know,

41:40 try to cover it up. That's my passion for going on. Oh, I love it. I love it I mean, that one cut deep, but at least you're honest, right? It says a lot about your integrity in business. You

41:50 didn't just go for the buck. You actually went to the authenticity. So where can people find Skycam? You know, website, LinkedIn, all of that stuff, and how can they reach out to you to learn

42:03 more? All over. We are on LinkedIn. Our website is skycammaviationcom

42:14 I think I've found it.

42:18 Or you can, yeah, you can reach out to us will certainly help you get in touch with the right people. And it's, it's, it's cool what you guys are doing. I think that it's a little bit disruptive

42:28 in terms of how you guys price, you know, you want to come through as being an affordable option, not a cheap option. Those are two different, very different things. But skikamaviationcom,

42:39 continuing to push into oil and gas, obviously, very responsive to RFPs, working with the government, working with labs. You got an airplane. It's like, have airplane will fly. So I appreciate

42:51 you guys coming on today and we

42:55 will see

43:13 you next week. Yes. As we have tried to build this and we're maybe semi-scientists, pilots, airplane operators, stuff like that, the marketing, the thump group is brought. It's been very,

43:13 very helpful and I want to pass on to me lifting this. these guys call. They've got a lot of good ideas, and it's been amazing relationship. We basically started January 1st. And we've gotten

43:26 farther than we've gotten in years in our own gas business. So anybody listen to this, give fun to try. It's really, really worth it. Thank you. I mean, that's like one of the most validating

43:37 things anybody said to me in the four years that I've been in this business. So that's what we do it for. And just getting started, excited about the opportunity and you guys make it easy to do the

43:48 work that we do. So thank you so much.

43:52 Have a great weekend, guys. Thank you.