Timeless Business and Building Strategies

Elevating Aviation and Purpose: Eric Farewell’s Journey from Passion to Community-Driven Success

• Tony Johnson

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Imagine turning childhood passions into a thriving career. That's exactly what Eric Farewell did. At just 13, he started selling airplanes online, and today, he's at the helm of five businesses, including the largest paramotor flight school. In our latest episode, Eric shares his mission-driven approach to entrepreneurship, where purpose takes precedence over profit. We explore how his ventures cater to diverse clients, including special forces, and his unwavering commitment to innovation and safety in the aviation industry. Eric's story is one of inspiration and the pursuit of elevating human consciousness through his work.

The journey of an entrepreneur is filled with both triumphs and trials. Eric opens up about his transformative experiences, particularly the impact of personal loss on his professional trajectory. The tragic passing of his brother served as a catalyst for reevaluating priorities, leading him to embrace the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and a more values-centered life. By stepping back from day-to-day business operations, Eric discovered that aligning personal values with business practices not only brought fulfillment but also financial success. Through his coaching and consulting work, he shares insights that inspire others to reclaim their lives and focus on what truly matters.

Community sits at the heart of Eric's ventures. We discuss the power of creating mission-driven communities that inspire and connect people beyond mere business or brand affiliations. With initiatives like Aviator and National Stoll, Eric is fostering environments where individuals can overcome fears and feel a sense of belonging. This episode unpacks the importance of meaningful connections, especially for the younger generation in today's disconnected world. We also touch on the significance of mentorship and the transformative Accelerator program, designed to promote personal growth and clarity in core values. Join us as we explore these compelling themes with Eric Farewell, a true visionary in aviation and entrepreneurship.

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Tony Johnson:

no-transcript. Today we have Eric Farewell with us out of Texas. Eric, thank you so much for joining us today.

Eric Farewell:

Truly a pleasure to be here. My friend, Thanks for having me.

Tony Johnson:

Yes, sir, we have a ton of different topics. Eric is a serial entrepreneur, has five businesses and does nothing all day. He seems to like to relax and spend all his quality time just watching these businesses grow. Eric, thank you so much for joining us today.

Eric Farewell:

Hey, it's truly a pleasure, man. I love what you guys are doing and your businesses as well. My little bit of research on you I think that you might be the most passionate builder I've ever even heard of.

Tony Johnson:

Yeah, we love to build and love to make people happy, and that's all we care about. So, yes, so you are. Mission driven businesses is what you've stated. That is you, so explain that in a little further detail to everyone.

Eric Farewell:

Well, I believe that businesses that are designed just to make money are designed to fail. They may make lots of money, but everyone in that business will eventually burn out and end up feeling like they've lost their sense of purpose. So I've been really blessed that every time I found a passion in my life from a very early age. About the age of five I turned it into a business, and those businesses are in wildly obscure niches and somehow they have flourished, largely because we get clear enough on what our mission is. So each of our businesses is really directed toward helping elevate human consciousness and kind of go above fear, because I think that everything above fear is where you find joy, it's where you find peace, and there's a lot. We can go a lot deeper there, but that's the basis.

Tony Johnson:

I absolutely love that, yeah, so okay. So you're saying from five, you own five businesses currently. At what age did you create your first business that had some success?

Eric Farewell:

First business with employees. I was 13 years old. I had been saving for six years, working at my grandparents' restaurant, to buy my first airplane because I wanted to fly. I got my first airplane right at three years old and I knew that flying was going to be the place where I could be me, where I could overcome all the adversities of being a child and, frankly, it became such an obsession I worked full-time at a restaurant at seven years old and at 13, I'd saved up enough pennies and bought my first airplane kit and quickly discovered that ADHD kids are not designed to build airplanes.

Eric Farewell:

So I put it up for sale on this new thing called the internet. It was 1999 and it sold, and very quickly. The guy I bought the airplane from said the interwebs Now. He was about 78 years old at the time and he had a hanger full airplanes and offered me a commission to sell them. So fast forward, over the next five years we'd sell several hundred airplanes and had mechanics and just an incredible team of people. That was built around that and that was my first kind of brush with entrepreneurship at scale and it changed my life forever.

Tony Johnson:

That is amazing and so that developed a passion for you. I guess you already had the passion, but it allowed you to live out a passion for aviation that you've had. And so one of your main businesses right now, a couple of your main businesses, they all seem to intertwine a little bit with aviation. So your main businesses right now, a couple of your main businesses, they all seem to intertwine a little bit with aviation. So your main business right now could you kind of go through that, Because it goes in the private sector and the public sector.

Eric Farewell:

It does and it's a weird one. So a paramotor is a fan you strap to your back and a paraglider. You run into the sky with this paraglider above your head and it's kind of the ultimate freedom machine. I got into these. I don't know if you have kids. I have three nine, 11, and 13.

Eric Farewell:

And when we were pregnant with our first, I was still flying every day in my family's airplane my uncle's airplane at the time and airplanes are expensive even if you don't own it and I was flying to an airport and I'd stop and I'd write. I was writing a lot of copy at the time. I got into marketing and all that, and at the time I was just enjoying flight. And then we found out we were pregnant and it was a total shock. And so I said I have to find a way to keep flying, but do it cheaper. And the paramotor is so affordable. It's about $5 an hour, $8 an hour to operate, so it's so affordable. And then I went and learned and it kicked my butt. Man, it was so hard.

Eric Farewell:

Aviation had always been the thing that I was good at that I was kind of a natural at and this was so physically demanding I'd broken my back in an accident about seven years before in an aircraft accident. So I had a lot of pain and you're putting 70, 80, 90 pounds on your back and sprinting. So long story long, once again my hobby passion turned into a business because people started asking me to teach them how to fly them. I was already an ultralight flight instructor. It's kind of a natural fit.

Eric Farewell:

And then my goal was how do we kind of revolutionize the industry, how do we make this more professional? How do we inspire people and make it as safe as possible? So from that point forward now, 13 years in that business, it is by far the largest paramotor flight school, which sounds like the weirdest compliment because it's still a weird, obscure business. But we employ about 25 people and we have hundreds of students every year, whether they're learning to fly for the first time or they're getting their tandem certifications they can take someone with them or training the special forces we trained the Delta, we trained SEALs. We've had such an incredible opportunity to work with those different folks. And now research and development for all sorts of crazy things I can't talk about, which is a lot of fun.

Tony Johnson:

That's amazing. So people who understand this. Basically, you're taking a paraglider and putting a motor on your back, if I'm understanding it right, and how far can you travel on one flight typically?

Eric Farewell:

So it depends on the glider you're flying, depends on conditions, everything else Most people will fly for 30 minutes to an hour at about 30 miles an hour. As you get more experienced, more advanced, like my glider does, about 60 miles an hour, 58 miles an hour. One of my students, dear friend of mine, flew 1100 miles in just a few days. I would not recommend this for travel. This is meant to see the world.

Tony Johnson:

It's more like riding a motorcycle. Yes, you can travel the world on a motorcycle. I've done it and I'll tell you it's wonderful, but also your body hates you afterwards, absolutely. Yeah. So this sounds, you know, to me this would be almost. You know, I don't know that you have to be kind of a little bit of a rebel, wild and fearless to be going up in a paraglider with a motor and just flying all around, although you know that is a great way. It's almost creating yourself as a bird. So you're not just going up for a short period. I know. Initially, when you mentioned it to me, I'm like it's not like those little rockets, but those are. You just go up and you really you don't. You can't travel high enough. You don't have a long distance, you can go.

Eric Farewell:

We can fly up to 18,000 feet up to 60 miles an hour fully aerobatic, if you want to be. I've been so blessed to fly in dozens of states, and probably close to a dozen countries now, and taking off out of a winery that you spent the night in before in Czech Republic, flying through three different mountain passes, circling castles, dropping into the next winery to spend the night. It's a pretty unique and exceptional way to see the world.

Tony Johnson:

That is great. Now are there restrictions when you go to other places in order to fly these things?

Eric Farewell:

There are. Every country has their own rules. It really depends on where you go, For instance, in Costa Rica. We actually had a partner school in Costa Rica for a couple of years and as long as you stay away from the major airports, they didn't care what we did. There was no rule. It was beyond crazy to me. Places like Czech Republic are much more restricted, but it's really actually a fabulous thing because the restrictions in the US are limited but they're really designed to keep people safe on the ground and in Czech they have more restrictions around what makes the aircraft safe, will save on the ground and in check. They have more restrictions around what makes the aircraft safe, and so you're allowed to fly over cities. You're allowed to go downtown. We flew into an industrial park and looked at where they were building parts for repair motors. It was the most remarkable experience. It wasn't a rainstorm. The rainstorm part may kind of suck a little bit.

Tony Johnson:

Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Okay, oh, wow, that is awesome. All right, and so, and with this business, you have worked your way out, and so we discussed a little bit. So we talk a lot here about entrepreneurial operating system, the EOS, and how long ago did you bring EOS into this business?

Eric Farewell:

So in 2018, a bunch of things happened in my life. My marriage was on the rocks, like in a terrible place, and it probably had something to do with the fact that I was working between 80 and 105 hours a week and had been for years. But I had a couple of students who came through and learned to fly with us, who were phenomenal entrepreneurs, and they both were EOS implementers, and they brought us up to Atlanta. We sat down and I was able to go through the process of implementing EOS initially. Shortly thereafter, my brother passed away and he was 22 years old, died in a car accident and I really I hate to say this because it sounds glib but I woke up here I am making at that point, probably close to $6 million a year, feeling like I'm on top of the world. I finally made it. My ego feels like I have value, like I actually matter, I've got all these employees coming to me and I'm feeling awesome.

Eric Farewell:

And then my brother died and he moved in with us when he was 18. So we had a one-year-old and we had an 18-year-old which is a very interesting experience and he worked for me and when he passed, I just kind of woke up and said none of this matters Like. None of this matters. The money doesn't matter, the fame doesn't matter. That the you know constant gratitude from employees and customers didn't matter to me anymore. All that mattered was fix my marriage, get to know my kids I get to work before they woke up and I get home after they went to bed for week after week. And it had to change.

Eric Farewell:

So EOS was implemented and it took me a while. It took me a couple of years to really get out of the way, to have the ego death of saying I don't need to be the solution to everything. And then over the last so I guess it's been about two years now since I've worked in that business two and a half and it's been like a whole new, a whole new reawakening of who I am Like without the title of CEO. How do I matter? Right, even though I have all these other companies and some of which I still have that title, I'm not doing CEO work and it's really been fascinating to see how systems and operations, things like EOS, can step in and just fulfill such an incredible role, because they get you so clear on your vision, they get you so clear on your mission and I've taken a lot of those things from EOS and Gazelles and everything else I can and now built it into what I'm doing for clients and my coaching and my consulting, and it's really been amazing to witness these humans, who are already super cool people, start to reclaim their life and what happens for their businesses as they begin to align with what their real values are.

Eric Farewell:

And it's just I mean, money's a byproduct of living in alignment. It really truly is, in my opinion, and these people are just attracting money, like you wouldn't believe, and they're actually feeling confident about what they're doing, and we track their time to make sure that they're only doing things they actually like to do, and they hire people to do the stuff they hate. They sell the businesses that don't serve them. It's really fun.

Tony Johnson:

That's fantastic. Yeah, it's critical in understanding this.

Eric Farewell:

now, you just gave a bunch of information very fast there. Uh, sorry, that's great.

Tony Johnson:

No, it's, it's fantastic. I just want everyone to be able to, you know, to absorb some of these items in one. First of all, yeah, it's great that you were having your brother live with you. I'm so sorry, uh, that you lost your brother. I can only imagine I have a brother. He's, you know, my best friend in life, so I'm sounds having your brother live with you. I'm so sorry that you lost your brother. I can only imagine I have a brother.

Eric Farewell:

He's you know my best friend in life, so I'm.

Tony Johnson:

It sounds like your brother was to you, so give him extra hugs, buddy Give him extra hugs?

Tony Johnson:

Absolutely, yeah. But you know many things that you mentioned. So one marriage right. So a lot of entrepreneurs. It's actually one of the main things that happens when you are a driven entrepreneur your relationships all fall to the wayside for the business because you do everything business and everything else pales in comparison. That's just the way that a lot of entrepreneurs are wired. So you know. Great for you for realizing that and trying to take some proactive steps.

Tony Johnson:

I've been through the same thing. Where it comes to a point in a marriage where your wife doesn't want to just sit around anymore waiting on you and doesn't really care how much money you make. There gets to a point where, as long as everyone's living well, the rest of the money doesn't make any difference. Right, it is, it is goes back to you just ego. So one thing that you said that I really think is something that we should discuss a little more is, once you get to a position of delegating out all of these things as an entrepreneur, you lose and you question what's my purpose? I don't have anything to do anymore. So a lot of people have a hard time letting go of these day to day things because that's their purpose. So could you go through a little more of the iteration of how that kind of formulated for you and what that path looked like?

Eric Farewell:

What I think is really fascinating is that most of what we do as entrepreneurs is really working to cover up all the insecurities of our childhood. It's working to cover up the pain of not feeling loved enough, of being bullied, of being tormented, of being mistreated, whatever may have happened. We find things that we're good at and that people tell us we're good at, and we believe that these are the things that make us have value. I've done a ton of men's work. I'm in a couple of different communities with men that are just some of the best men I've ever met. One was called Front Row Dads. It's a group for family men with businesses, not business men with families, and that group changed my life because I learned that, even though these men were doing hard work, somatic work they're doing the meditation, they're doing the therapy, they're doing everything they possibly can the number one challenge that these men held in common was they did not know how to love themselves. They could love themselves at work, they could appreciate how they showed up there, but they didn't understand that their value as a human was more than the sum total of the work they did. And I'm saying they a lot, but what I really mean is me. I didn't know how to have a value outside of what I was producing.

Eric Farewell:

I was a striver from such an early age because it allowed me to believe that I had merit on my own, that if I could set a goal and pass it or surpass it, I actually mattered. And that's nothing you know. I could sit here and berate my parents or my siblings or whatever else. That's not my point. My point is we all have stories. We all have stories of our life in early childhood that we were running from for most of our adult lives. And when we get successful, we triple down because, oh my God, now I'm good, now I'm lovable, and we look at that outside influence so much so, as I was moving away from work, realizing that I wanted to align my priorities with my family, I was like and the funny thing is the number one thing that changed COVID hit and I was high risk. I had bronchial spasms, asthma type.

Eric Farewell:

So before we knew what it actually was and how bad it was, we had the affluence. We just said, okay, let's stay home. So we didn't see another human for four months. By the way, that's a great way to either fix or destroy your marriage. We repaired, thank God.

Eric Farewell:

My wife and I are in an incredible place. We didn't see them for four months, and then I did the logical thing, which is a normal entrepreneur thing is I bought a bus and I loaded up my kids and we actually made it as far as South Carolina before the bus blew up and we had to buy another bus, so we bought bus number two. We also put a videographer in the trailer and so he stayed in the trailer and we hit the road for what was supposed to be a six-month trip Turned out to be four. We get home, we found out some crushing news about a partner that had been with the business and some negative things that happened there, and suddenly we get a call from our warehouse manager saying oh, I'm going to go work for your ex-partner, okay, oh boy.

Eric Farewell:

Five days notice and my wife, who's been a stay-at-home mom all this time. This is now October, November of 2020, my wife goes. I can do it, so she goes into the office and I have to stay home with three kids homeschooling. You know how quickly you have to let go of your ego when, all of a sudden, your entire world is reversed. I'm not in the office. No one can ask me questions. Suddenly. I have to build systems because if they keep asking me questions, they keep interrupting math time. Right?

Tony Johnson:

Oh boy Yep.

Eric Farewell:

So definitely an interesting journey and voyage and so so grateful for that push, because that push really started the domino fall of how do I build the right systems, ask the right questions, hire the right people, have the right vision and just clarify everything to such a point that now, when we hire people, not only do we hire people for a fraction of their former salaries because they believe in the mission and they're paid well I'd love to pay everyone billions of dollars, but sadly business doesn't work that way but we hire people who have so much passion that I don't have to be there to carry the torch. So 18 months ago, 19 months ago, we realized that what we were lacking most in our life was community. So we left the businesses in Florida, packed everything up and in five weeks, from the decision-making, from the visit to decision, to leaving, to moving into a new house, we moved to Texas. So, proof positive, the businesses are still working without us.

Tony Johnson:

That is amazing. Now, based on what you're just saying, hiring people for passion and alignment with the mission how are you identifying those traits in the interview process?

Eric Farewell:

So one of the things that we've done is we very purposefully have almost exclusively hired former customers. So over 95% of our staff are people who have deep passion for whichever business they're in. They love it, they live it, they breathe it. About 30% of our employees literally bought vans, turned them into campers and parked them outside of our business. This is their life. This is not a lifestyle job. This is a life, and when you have people that bought in, it's hard not to have them, and when you have people that bought in, it's hard not to have them. The number we turn away is actually really sad, because I'd love to hire everyone that wants to come work for us. It's an incredible, incredible environment. Actually, flying back to Florida in a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving, we throw Thanksgiving at the hangar with all the employees, their families, all the students that want to come. We may have somewhere between 60 and 150 people there easily. It's the family. They chose.

Tony Johnson:

Yeah, that that is amazing. So when you were transitioning um, could we go through a little bit of these iterations? So, when you're saying that you decided to start getting out of the business to focus on family and started you and giving away, delegating responsibilities, how did that look? Who did the documentation of the processes? Did you have someone come and help you? Did you figure all this out on your own? How did that look?

Eric Farewell:

I can't take all the credit, that's for sure. I'm very grateful for the team that we have. Most of what I've discovered over the years is, if you have an SOP that goes into a binder, that binder never gets opened again. So it's more about empowering your team to make good decisions. One of our core values is to be entrepreneurial. We want them to believe that if they're 80% confident that their decision is right, don't run it up the flag chain. There is a limit. If there's a half million dollars attached to them, let's have a conversation. But the reality is, if they're confident, we hire them for their smarts.

Eric Farewell:

We just started to iterate to the point where our employees take more ownership, and certainly there are systems and things in place to ensure that we have KPIs we can follow. Our shipping department makes a mistake. We know what percentage of packages are shipped to the wrong place that kind of thing, because it is I mean it's a fairly vast operation. We have 3,800 SKUs on our online store. There's a lot of different moving parts and suppliers from all over the world. All of a sudden, covid hits and you go from a 30-day backlog to a year backlog on receiving things and you have to anticipate what you can do, and there's a lot to do, but most of what it's been is, yes, creating systems that if someone dies or quits or leaves for a month, the business can still operate.

Eric Farewell:

And so in 2022, it's exactly what I did. I left the business for a month and I took my wife with the time, with our warehouse manager with me. We went to Alaska with the kids no email, no phone, all right. Now what? And we came back and we had more profit that month. We killed it. The employees were all happy. I felt like the most rested man I'd ever been. My wife was overjoyed. Life is good, right, so building out systems that can sustain without you is doable, but it's all about finding the right people who believe in what you do. And if you don't believe in what you do, you have to get so refined on that, because the mission can't just be making money. It doesn't work, and maybe in wall street it works. It just doesn't work for me.

Tony Johnson:

Well, I, and I would tell you it's so refreshing to hear you saying so many of these things are the same things that happen at my business. So I wholeheartedly believe in so much of what you're saying. And not a lot of people say this. We get a lot of platitudes when you have people on and they talk, but this is the simple reality. And just to speak to your point of empowering your employees. So it is difficult. Some employees they want to come bounce things off you. They want to come bounce things. So, especially when I get new employees, they want to bounce off. Most people don't bounce them off of me, but they bounce them off of everyone.

Tony Johnson:

And I'm the same way Make decisions, Make decisions. I would rather it cost me money. You make a bad decision and it costs me money, Then no decision be made and you have to rely on me because you're never going to grow at that point. And so my whole goal is for any of them that works here is to for them to. But what are your goals? Let's set your goals. So that's one of the biggest things we do here is we set the 90 day goals. I follow up on their goals. We add in their personal goals, everything. So we have to outlook on what does someone want, to make sure that's in alignment with what we're doing right.

Eric Farewell:

I think there's a huge opportunity that people lose. When I was in the office in 2021, excuse me, 2020, my assistant would use a stopwatch to see how often people would open my door when there's no other person in the office. Hey, can I ask you a quick question? It was, on average, every 45 to 115 seconds right, Less than two minutes. Someone's asking a question.

Eric Farewell:

My personal assistant when I hired her part of that process was hey, I would love to help you, but I'm paying you to help me. Before you ask me a question, please Google it. For three hours, I have never been asked a question by her, ever. What's remarkable is that the scope of work when you hire a VA, oftentimes it's like I don't know whatever it needs to be. So this week, she found RVs for rent in the areas I had to rent to go camping with my family and to go to this last air race that we had, and sent me a spreadsheet with which ones I should pick and made it so simple, probably saved me 20 hours of work. No joke that if you've ever rented an RV, it's the worst experience on the planet. I don't understand RV share. Please call me. I can help you make it better, but she has this philosophy she's not going to ask me questions. So when I asked her to make me a new website, she never made a website before, so she Googled it and she just did it. And she said which websites would you like it to look like? And I sent her a whole draft of different websites that were good and dude.

Eric Farewell:

I don't love my website. It's fine, it has my bio on it, a way to contact me, but it's why do I need to be perfect? Right, it's just. It's just a page for people to find out more information about me. I don't have to be Mr Perfectionist and ask for things to be changed. I do send her whatever I do to podcast. Hey, throw this in the website. I have no idea what the login is for that website. I have no idea where it's hosted. I don't know anything about it. I just know that the website's up now and when you hire people with that idea that they have so much onus, they have the ownership to be able to believe that they can make decisions and they need to learn, especially these younger generations, because everyone you know our age and older is terrified that these kids don't want to work. No, they need boundaries. Sports aren't fun without rules, right? It's great to create a boundary that says, hey, let's be insatiable learners all the time.

Tony Johnson:

Well, that's great. Now, something you just brought up is another one of your businesses. You brought up air races, so tell us a bit about that business. I know we discussed it before, but you own a company that does air racing, and so tell us what is that.

Eric Farewell:

So it's a bizarre experience. I grew up in aviation, started all aviation businesses. My biggest dream in life was to be an air show pilot. This is, after all, my other dreams died when I broke my back, but I was very excited to be an air show pilot. That dream came true in 2016. We got to fly at the world's largest air show with my paramotor aerobatic team and through that I'd started air show announcing, because apparently I can say a lot of things very quickly and that's good in the air show announcing business and I can't seem to forget any aircraft fact. If someone mentions what engines in their airplane or what pistons they're running, I'll remember it forever. I don't know, I can't remember my name half the time, but that stuff just sticks.

Eric Farewell:

So in 2020, I started getting asked to come out and announce for this new company, national Stoll. It's S-T-O-L or short takeoff or landing. These are bush planes, like you'd find in Alaska, that are designed to take off in incredibly short distances and land in the same, and we have full-blown race airplanes that are taking off in less than six feet, landing in like nine and a half feet, and we have big airplanes that have six eight seats that can take off still in a hundred feet or less. So what happened was I'm here announcing and the founder is like, all right, this is so much work, we're losing money like crazy. And I'm like, well, yeah, you started an aviation business. It's a sure way to lose money. So he wanted to roll it back. He wanted to go from four events a year to two and the opportunity came up to invest in the series and we did, because what's incredible about this series is it inspires so many people to fly. We have over 83 million viewers in the last 12 months.

Eric Farewell:

And what's really neat for me, the reason I'm so passionate about aviation is aviation is the. For many people, it's the one entry point they'll have to ever seeing the world and then thus themselves from a different perspective. Astronauts call it the overlook effect. It's that opportunity to see the world differently, and you can get there with meditation, you can get there with therapy, you can get there through lots of different means, but for me, aviation was my gateway drug to getting to know who I really was.

Eric Farewell:

So I want the whole world to fly and this aligned with that mission perfectly. So we we get to go all over the country promoting aviation and really cool humans that fly these airplanes some really crazy airplanes and we get to inspire the next generation. So our whole mission there now is how do we get it to pay for itself? So if you, if you happen to have an N, our dream sponsor is Viagra, because we're the only motorsport guaranteed to get you up and we have 30, we have 35 to 65 year old guys that watch our shows. That's all it is. It's all, almost all male, and it's all 35 to 65 year old guys. It's Viagra's target market. I'm just saying, if you know somebody, we'd love to make something happen.

Tony Johnson:

Oh wow, yeah, yeah, we'll get. You should target hymns or something.

Eric Farewell:

We've talked to a few. We need the right person, though it's all about people.

Tony Johnson:

That's right. Oh, my goodness, that's great. So a couple of this is well, this is going in so many different directions it's hard to keep up. So one of the things that you just mentioned right Was 80, 83 million views on, and we're just like anybody who's listening to this, whoever does anything on youtube. It's like you know, most people jump on youtube. They throw some things on there. Uh, you maybe get a thousand views, two thousand views. So my daughter is very good. She got some things with a million views. You know million views. That's her. Nobody's getting 83 million views. So what the heck are you guys doing on youtube to get that many views for aviation, for crying out loud?

Eric Farewell:

I know it's pretty wild. Our videos go mega viral on all the different platforms because it's so surprising. Our actual average viewer time per video is between 1.7 and 1.96 times per video. They don't watch the video once. They watch it almost twice because they can't believe what they've seen, which is why it's great for sponsors, because they're getting that ad, that ad feedback twice, and that's part of why we invested in the series. The goal was how do we actually make this? You know it's? It's like owning moto gp or formula one in the 1950s, like we have all these opportunities and cool things we can do with it, and the crazy thing is this so here, hear me out 83 million views is cool. We have zero employees.

Tony Johnson:

We have over 700 volunteers.

Eric Farewell:

We have one contract employee. She's our COO. She manages all the events. She's incredible and she did it for the first year for free, all right, absolutely incredible people all aligned on a very clear mission to understand what they're doing and how it's making the world a better place. I'm telling you, it's not rocket science. Eos had this figured out years ago and I just keep following that system, plus all the other systems I've learned throughout my life. And we build these incredible communities because it's not just about the brand and the money and the views. It's about the communities. It's about bringing people together that feel like they're with their family. This last event we had in Texas was our finals for the year and I watched people hugging like they would never hug their brother. These are people who have escaped death together. Right, it is an incredible community of people. I tell people like the brands behind me. I have my logos of different businesses. I have friends who've gotten tattoos of my logo as their first tattoo.

Tony Johnson:

Like that tells you you built a brand.

Eric Farewell:

That's about community. It's about something bigger than just me. It's never going to be the Eric Farewell show, right? I want it to be about how we make the world better.

Tony Johnson:

Yeah, I mean, you know a brand's made it when they don't even know who the heck you are. That's what you'd like. You don't even want them to know who you are, so you know, that's. That's the biggest thing that you can see is normally when someone's naming business with their name in it. Then you're like, oh, this is you know? Are they really trying to elevate and create something or it's? It becomes more of an ego thing. But go back. So the things that you're saying are validating this. Now, when, when these people are first engaging, how are how are they understanding your mission, or is it? Yeah, because this? This is astonishing to me that you're getting all of this. Where is the mission? Is there a mission statement? They're seeing. How is the mission getting understood?

Eric Farewell:

So it's a really excellent question and I have two answers for you. Every business actually has a different answer. For many, many years we always said that at Aviator, our parameter company, we said look, our job is to get them in the door and then surprise them that they're not just here to learn to fly, because they think that's what they're getting and people want to get what they pay for and of course, they'll learn to fly. But our real mission is to inspire them to overcome their fears through that flight and start to shift other things in their life that they've been fearing. Right, that's the real mission. That's the real mission. That's the mission of Deviator At National Stoll. People want to come out and watch something really cool and they want to be a part of it. They want to volunteer, they want to fly in the competition. You know we have 280 pilots that fly with us something like that now and yet we finally offered our first cash prize in four years, right, and they're spending $20,000 to $40,000 a year on Avgas to go to the events. It's not cheap, right, but they come for the camaraderie, they come for the people, they come for the fact that the biggest shift over the last 2000 years.

Eric Farewell:

In the way that humanity works is we stripped away the idea of community and family in favor of personality and identity. And identity is beautiful. It's powerful. Marry who you want be who you want to be. You can be anything.

Eric Farewell:

I love all of those things, but the gaping hole in our hearts is feeling like we belong somewhere and feeling like the people we are with share the same values. Share that Even if we have disagreements on beliefs like there's a ton of people who vote differently than I do or go to different churches than I do it doesn't matter, because we all believe in something. And what I love about flying is, once you're in a cockpit, it's the great equalizer. It doesn't matter if you're straight, gay, man, woman, doesn't matter, you're just another pilot, right? And that's what's really fun is you start to build these communities. I do the same thing in my entrepreneur businesses, like where I'm coaching and consulting. It's like all of these stories we all have so many similar stories and it's more about how do we bring people together versus trying to polarize and separate them. I hate the polarization. I think there's so much opportunity for growth when we come together.

Tony Johnson:

That is amazing, yeah, and especially this day and age, you know, and to speak to the younger generation, they're so disconnected. It's such a lonesome generation that we have going right now All of the connection on the internet, the social media, the games. It feels like there is such a limit to connection. Kids barely know how to talk to each other. I know kids, they're not dating. Boys and girls aren't dating each other until much older. They don't even know how to speak to each other unless it's through an app and they don't talk, it's all texting. So they have very limited interactions physically, one-on-one.

Tony Johnson:

Your point, and that is probably your biggest driver, is that creation of community and giving someone a feeling of belonging is you. It doesn't matter how much that costs, when you say 20, 40 thousand dollars, what does it matter? Because, to go back to our original beginning, to you, when you're working, you're doing whatever your family, that's all that really matters. All all the financial stuff, that's you know, great, that allows you to do things right, but really, the more money that you have normally, the less connection that you have. So you would give all that money for a deep connection, which is you know what?

Eric Farewell:

what really matters at your funeral right money in your bank account are the people who show up for your family when you're gone. Yep.

Tony Johnson:

Right, I care more about that.

Eric Farewell:

I had to witness that for my 22 year old brother and I watched probably 600 people file into that room from all different walks of life. You wouldn't believe he had community and I want to ensure that the community that walks into my funeral are the best dadgum humans they can possibly be. And I will tell you right now my community is incredible. I say this very clearly community is currency. You cannot be broke when you have great community. If everything wash up today, right now, there's probably 15 people I could call and walk away with seven to eight figures of capital to do whatever I needed to do. Community is currency. Belief and love is currency.

Tony Johnson:

That is amazing. Yeah, now I don't have those connections, but that's great that you do. That is very good. I would say you know you were definitely greater at community than I would be. You know it takes something deeper inside, so that's great. So now to speak to that, as I say that, right. So another business that you're in and one this is fresher, this is your most current new business is consulting business consulting, and probably you know a great thing Listening to you and your story is very inspiring. So, based on that, tell me how you got into the consulting. How is that going?

Eric Farewell:

Well, I was firmly retired. I pretended to be retired and did a whole bunch of work for a mastermind community instead of stopping working because stopping working is really scary, you have to be alone with yourself. But I actually fully didn't do anything. I watched most of YouTube, got near to the end not quite all of it played a bunch of video games with my kids and I was bored. So when a friend asked me to be on his podcast and tell my story, much like this, we ended up wrapping the conversation after an hour. He turns over and he goes Eric, I want you to teach me how you did that. I said did what he said owned all those companies and you don't work. I was like, okay. So for about six weeks we went back and forth and we looked at his business and got all the details and I understood the model and understand the market and understand what he's doing that he hates, which is a crucial question to ask yourself and your employees what do you do every day that you hate? If there's anything on that list, anything on that list, there has to be a way to get off.

Eric Farewell:

For me, it was email. I hated email with such a vicious passion and I hated email with such a vicious passion and I was getting about 400 plus emails a day, right, and I just hated them. It's hours of my day, every day and I'm answering the same questions. At this point I'm in the business for what? Nine years Like? There's very few new questions after nine years, right, there's hundreds of thousands of emails. So eventually I was like, okay, how do I do this? So I would go in and I would ask my assistant to go through and look at the emails and then write replies. And she'd have to Google through my inbox and find the answers and she'd leave them as drafts and I'd go in and I'd make a loom and I'd correct the areas where she messed them up and then I'd send them. So I went from four hours a day to 40 minutes and then after about a month of that, she got good enough that she could send them. And every once in a while I get a mistake right. It's not often, but you get these little mistakes and we learn from them. We make a quick loom. Now it's done.

Eric Farewell:

So I learned these little pieces, these little tools to give things away that I hated. And I did the same thing for my friend, witnessing him discover what his real mission is, what his real vision is, understanding how he can hire and fire based upon those things, and that every time he hires someone new, he's giving them an opportunity to take his passion and turn it into food for their family. And what a gift that is. Changed his business, changed his world, and I had more fun doing that than anything else I'd done in years. It was so inspiring to be able to take my experiences and share them.

Eric Farewell:

And then his podcast dropped and I got seven people who contacted me and said, eric, we want you to coach us. I said, oh, I don't want to work. I'm working through YouTube. Man, I'm on a mission, but I did take some of them on as clients and it has been such a wonderful year. It's been 11 months and it's been so much fun and I actually had not put anything together official until this past week. So in January we're running our first accelerator and it's the freedom accelerator. How do you build a business around creating freedom for you so that you can leave a real legacy? And, yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. I think we're probably going to. I'm going to keep it small, probably 15 people, but I can't do as much one-on-one coaching as people would like because the reality is I still don't want to work more than six hours a week.

Tony Johnson:

I have my limits now. I mean, I had the inverse problem I had before, right? Yeah, well, that is fantastic. Now, when you're doing this, does it matter? Are you niching it? Your other businesses are extremely niche. Are you niching this to just a specific client type, a specific level of industries? Just a specific client type, a specific level of industries? How are you approaching this?

Eric Farewell:

So what's been really interesting is apparently I'm the niche If people think that I'm weird enough or fun enough or have done enough crazy things, and trust me, I've done them all. Not really. I'm pretty darn cautious, actually as a person. People wouldn't believe that, but it's the truth. What I found is people who are drawn to my story and would like to have something similar happen in their lives.

Eric Farewell:

My current one-on-one clients are in such diverse groupings. I've been with a woman who has a beauty brand mastermind, helping founders of beauty brands, makeup companies, that kind of thing grow. I've got a guy who's in private lending and building homes, single family homes and in mortgage brokering so three different companies. I've got a car dealer very, very diverse and another coach also as well. So there's this very broad group, but they're all the right people and I vet for a long time for one-on-one, especially because it's very expensive and it's my time and I want to make sure it's going to be a win-win for both sides and thus far the results are. I got a text yesterday. One of my clients. She goes Eric, my business is up 21% in the first 30 days of working together and I am up 121%. I'm like, okay, they were doing something right. I'm like, okay, they were doing something right. It sounds that feels good, I like that. So yeah, it's been not really hyper-niched.

Eric Farewell:

It's really more about finding people at the right place in their life, when they're ready to make a big change.

Tony Johnson:

That is fantastic, yeah, and I do always recommend anybody. If you're struggling in your business and one of the is the biggest game changers in life If you can get someone that aligns with you, it has to be the right person, but if you can get someone that aligns with you, your business can skyrocket. If you have someone that can just come in and it will seem in the beginning like, oh, why didn't I think of that? It's so simple, why didn't I think of that? But you really have to take the steps to get that right person to step in and you would not believe how quickly if you get that right player to help you, how quickly your business can elevate and elevate, and elevate again and it is truly you taking.

Tony Johnson:

So now that Eric's taken these reps reps right, so now he has some reps going through with business owners and understanding, you know what just like with any business, once you get some reps in that and you can quickly identify the things that are holding you back from growth and you could sit and think about these things all day. But if you don't have reps on doing that, you're going to struggle. So someone with your experience is massive for so many people's businesses and small business owners all over. So, eric, I think that that's great. I wish you all the success in that. If somebody wants to see if you and them are a fit, what's the best way to reach out and detail that further?

Eric Farewell:

They should absolutely go to my website that my assistant made, that I don't love but works, and that's ericfairwellcom E-R-I-C-F-A-R-E-W-E-L-L. Ericfairwellcom, I'm very easy to find, very easy to reach. Either myself or my assistant will reply to you.

Tony Johnson:

Awesome, and are you still taking clients right now?

Eric Farewell:

So the accelerator in January is really the push. Right now I'm not sure that I want to sign any more one-on-ones, but the Accelerator, the goal is 12 weeks. Every week's a really intensive focus on some different tool. There's different ways that we can start to understand how we're using our time, how we can create the most clear core values. Tons of different frameworks. We have so many cool opportunities and the way that this will be run is going to be very much like a. It'll feel more like a one-on-one experience because each of the different participants will be working together. So you're going to be learning how to share without giving advice and learning how to really be present with other people who are also going through some really cool or hard things. It can be both, and sometimes life is both incredibly rewarding and awesome and incredibly traumatizing and terrible, and that's the journey.

Tony Johnson:

The ebbs and flows of life. That's exactly right. That is it. So again, and I'll put it in the show notes, it's ericfarewellcom E-R-I-C-F-A-R-E-W-E-L-Lcom. Eric, it's been such a pleasure having you on today. I sincerely appreciate you joining us and hopefully we can keep in touch in the future. Sir.

Eric Farewell:

Tony, thank you so much for having me. Eventually we'll have to build some property in Charleston, I guess, or somewhere in South Carolina, so you can help me out.

Tony Johnson:

That's right, sir.