Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com. It's guest time on the show, and I'm very pleased to have with me the founder and president of Par Avion, Janine Iannarelli. Janine, welcome to the BusinessMaker Show.

Janine: Thank you, Russ. It's great to be here.

Russ: Great. So for those of you that are tuned in on the radio, thanks for tuning in, but you might want to go to www.thebusinessmakers.com and check out the video version of this interview, because we're not in the studio and we're not in the office. In fact, we're in the cabin of a Hawker 850. So Janine, tell us about this rocket ship.

Janine: Well, first of all, welcome aboard.

Russ: Thank you.

Janine: This airplane has the capacity to transport seven to eight passengers, and as you can see, in great comfort and style.

Russ: Absolutely.

Janine: The aircraft, the rocket ship, as you describe it, has a normal cruise speed of about 430 knots. It'll travel about 2,500 nautical miles with four passengers and what we refer to as IFR reserves.

Russ: What's IFR reserves?

Janine: Well instrument flight rules, i.e. that you don't have clear sunny days in both your point of departure and the arrival point.

Russ: Okay. And this is a very serious aircraft, right?

Janine: Oh, absolutely. Sophisticated, serious, professional tool.

Russ: Okay. Meaning you'd have to have your own pilot and perhaps copilot as well.

Janine: That's correct. This is a two crew member aircraft.

Russ: Okay. Okay. It blows me away that people travel around in planes like this. This is so, so neat. But let's go back to you and Par Avion. Tell everybody about Par Avion.

Janine: Par Avion is an aircraft brokerage/marketing firm that I established in 1997. The premise of the business itself is that we provide a very personalized service to those people seeking to acquire or sell existing airplane assets.

Russ: And that's the way the industry works, right, where you usually benefit by having an expert represent you on either side of those transactions, right?

Janine: That is predominantly how aircraft are traded within our industry.

Russ: Okay. And in your case, Par Avion, do you find yourself predominantly representing buyers or sellers?

Janine: Mostly sellers, though that has changed a little bit in the last couple years. Representation of buyers has increased in terms of the volume of business that I do.

Russ: Wow, okay. So let me fantasize a second and say I'm suddenly a buyer. What would be wrong with me just sort of searching on the Web and trying to find planes like this for sale and doing it on my own?

Janine: First of all let's analyze your needs. Most people have a vision of what they want to do and don't necessarily marry in what they need to do. And so perhaps it becomes more of an emotional purchase as opposed to - I don't want to say people don't think it out very well; they probably spend a lot of time thinking about it. But they need to take into account the mission profile and crunching it down to perhaps the most important of all the trips that they take. Then after that if you start going into the marketplace it becomes a little bit confused. That may sound strange, you know, how could hundreds of airplane sellers mistake what's going on.

Russ: Right.

Janine: Well, because not that many people, whether it's a boom market or a slow market are actually making inquiries after aircraft. And you could maybe stir the market up to believe that there's quite a bit of activity, consequently the buyers start to become a little bit firmer, dig their heels in. You really need someone's who able to weed through, separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and find an airplane, one that's really for sale. And by that I mean you have a motivated seller or a willing seller who you can match up to your willing buyer, as opposed to someone who is simply promoting an aircraft for whatever reason; fishing, if you will, for a deal.

Russ: Okay, well that makes sense. In fact, as I think about it there aren't a whole lot of people in the country, on the planet, that can go buy one of these. And so I would also imagine at any given time there might not be that many of them that are actually for sale, which seems to me might have really serious price implications. I mean the highest priced Hawker 850 might be significantly higher than the lower price a willing seller. Is that kind of accurate about the market?

Janine: It does happen, and then it becomes very difficult to average prices and make an assumption as to what you should be paying. I mean there are a number of questions that need to be asked that unless you're in the business of doing this day in and day out, may get overlooked. I mean it is a unique asset that you see to purchase; it's not like buying a luxury car, it's not like buying any other capital asset. It's a highly technical, very specialized field.

Russ: Right. And I assume all buyers, none of them really ever finance these, do they?

Janine: No, actually there is a huge market for aviation finance.

Russ: Huh. Wow. Okay.

Janine: Now if you asked me what percentage of my business the people actually sought financing, very, very small. I could probably count on both my hands in my entire career the number of people that actually approached me and said, "Can you assist us in finding aircraft financing."

Russ: Okay. 'Cause they're usually just writing a check.

Janine: They're coming to the table with cash.

Russ: Okay, cool. So when you buy one of these you're not just buying it, once again, like you buy a car, because, I mean you have to have a very special place to keep it, you have to have a crew to fix it or relationships with some sort of service thing, and then you actually have to have a staff to operate it. So does that ever sort of come into your business and your expertise of what you do at Par Avion?

Janine: On occasion. We have assisted a number of first-time aircraft buyers with an acquisition of an airplane, and then all those other questions come into play. We try to be a single source for whomever wants to get into an airplane. And even if we can't answer the question directly, we usually can steer them in a direction or at least give them a variety of different entities or experts within those respective sectors of the aviation industry that they can consult with and otherwise seek those answers. But we've certainly helped people decide on where to base the airplane, to what extent certain services are required. We help them with the procurement of quotations for things such as insurance. Completion services, if they need to or desire to repaint the airplane, refurbish the aircraft, upgrade the avionics, that's certainly within our capacity and something we do far more regularly, assist these people in pursuing those answers.

Russ: Okay. I'm talking with Janine Iannarelli, the founder and president of Par Avion, and we're doing this inside a very beautiful Hawker 850. I'll be back with more with Janine after this. You're listening to the BusinessMaker Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com.

[Aflac Commercial]

Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on inside a Hawker 850 with my guest this morning, Janine Iannarelli, the founder and president of Par Avion. Now, Janine, when we left for the break we were talking about, you know, the complexity of the purchase, that there's all these associated services and places that you have to keep an airplane and staff. But you mentioned that you do that and help a lot for a first-time aircraft buyer. My first question is what percentage of your buyer business do you think you represent as a first-time aircraft buyer?

Janine: Again, that's probably a relatively small percentage of the overall business that I've done.

Russ: I'm sure. Right.

Janine: But interestingly enough, because of the opportunities that were presented in the market in the last 18 months it's ratcheted up quite a bit. I'd say I've helped - we do ten airplane deals a year, 30-percent of that is first time aircraft buyers.

Russ: Wow. So on the subject of associated services, pilots, support service, it's kind of different for a buyer that's not a first-time aircraft buyer, right? They've already got relationships and all that sort of stuff.

Janine: Exactly.

Russ: Okay. It just seems to me that if I were buying one, the person that flew it, the pilot, the staff would be enormously important. Do you find that amongst buyers, or do they just sort of - is it assumed that anybody that has a license can fly these things?

Janine: No. I mean certainly the potential employee is scrutinized probably to a greater degree than if you're simply hiring someone to fill a marketing or management position. I don't want to take anyway from the due diligence process that's done in other companies or other industries, but it is above and beyond the job that they need to do; it becomes a personal relationship. Because imagine the amount of time that's spent on the road together, and so there is a rapport that needs to be established, a mutual respect that goes above and beyond just walking into an office each day, completing your task, and then leaving. These guys and gals are on the road with the principals and business executives and they're looking after their every need when it comes to their transportation requirements.

Russ: Okay. Now I know a lot of these are bought by groups that use them intermittently and so forth, but some are literally bought by individuals or companies. When that's the case is it usually like the pilot or the staff, are just full-time employees and always ready to go at the drop of a hat, or do they call them only when they're ready to go somewhere and plan ahead, and they're only paying them when they're out on the road flying? How does that work?

Janine: Well, as far as compensation, if you have a full-time employee, regardless of whether you're flying or not, they're on salary.

Russ: Right.

Janine: As far as the flexibility with which to become airborne, that's the whole premise that business aviation is built on, is a great deal of flexibility. But it's not this on-demand, "I want to go to Las Vegas." That's an ill-conceived notion and perhaps maybe something that existed back in the '70s. Today I think everyone is very cognizant of quality of life as well as marrying up to the need to accomplish something. So for business travel schedules are built, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I need to be there now and the team's on go and they pull together.

Russ: Now let's say that I owned this beautiful aircraft and we wanted to go out to Santa Barbara for a week. So my pilot, I would arrange, I would plan my pilot would fly me out there. Would he or she also just stay in Santa Barbara for a week while I was there?

Janine: You know, that's an individual decision that's taken. Sometimes corporate policy is established that x amount of days on the road the flight crew will be sent back to the home base via commercial airline. Sometimes the option exists that, you know, we're not sure of our schedule, it may change, so we need you to stay nearby.

Russ: Okay. It seems like it's a fairly special group of people that would be buyers and sellers of aircraft like this. Do you find yourself enjoying working with that group or are they so elite that sometimes they're very difficult to work with?

Janine: Oh, well, buyers come in all shapes and sizes. I have to say that I enjoy them all. I mean I'm a people person to begin with. Otherwise I should not be doing this job. And so if you encounter a situation that perhaps is not going exactly as you had anticipated it would, I think part of the skill set that a good salesperson needs or has to have is the ability to work around that particular issue.

Russ: Right. Good. Well you answered that well I'm sure. So how did you get into the business? How did Janine decide one day, "Well, I'd kind of like to represent buyers and sellers of these incredibly neat aircraft that fly elite people around the world"?

Janine: Well, I don't think I woke up one day and said, "I want to be an aircraft salesperson."

Russ: Okay.

Janine: And I have to admit that it's pure circumstance. It's being in - today I will look back and say the right place at the right time, with the right skill set. An opportunity presented itself as a young woman; I was still in university. I met a pioneer in the business aviation marketplace, went to work for that person, discovered a whole new world that I never knew existed.

Russ: And what was that first job doing?

Janine: Research. It was research. It was a start-up company. The principal was out looking for a potential employee and sourced us out of the career resource center at my local university, and I was the person that they hired.

Russ: Wow. And what university was that?

Janine: I went to Montclair State University in Northern New Jersey.

Russ: Okay. Wow. So that was your first job while you still were in school?

Janine: Last semester; I was winding up my education and I had a job lined up in an ad agency in Manhattan, and I turned that in.

Russ: Chose this instead. So there also had to be a big step along the way from being an employee in a company that did this to starting your own company. Describe that for us.

Janine: Well, from that first job I springboarded into an aircraft dealership here in Houston, where I spent the next 14 years of my career honing my skills. And as I proved to myself the workload was added or the responsibilities were added, and I realized that I was becoming a fully functional business manager; I could take that deal from start to finish, I could help run the operation. I think by virtue of working in a small company you become a very well-rounded individual. You have to some degree become a master of many different trades, even though there's that old saying about "Jack of all trades, master of none".

Russ: Right.

Janine: If you're paying attention and you're working diligently and always in a learning curve. And I think that's one other aspect I'd have to say that I was never immune to the fact that there's always something new to learn and always willing to listen to someone who had something to teach me. And I think at a point in time I started to realize how easy it was starting to become. There were challenges here and there. I felt like I had plateaued. And it's at that point in time, and you start to assess where are you in your career and where do you want to be in the next 10 to 20 years, and I made the decision that it was now or never.

Russ: And when was that?

Janine: 1997.

Russ: Wow. Okay, so you've been doing this now 13 years.

Janine: On my own.

Russ: Wow. Wow. Well when we come back I want to ask you a little bit if there have been any challenges along the way or has it just been smooth flying the whole way. Okay? Okay, I'm talking to Janine Iannarelli, founder and president of Par Avion. And we'll be back with more with her after this. You're listening to the BusinessMaker Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com.

[Aflac Commercial]

Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, hears here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com. And continuing on with Janine Iannarelli, founder and president of Par Avion. So when we went to the break, Janine, we were just talking about the fact that you've been doing this 13 years now. And my question is has it been easy and a piece of cake and continuous growth the whole way, or have there been a few challenges along the way?

Janine: Oh, there have certainly been some challenges of differing style and size, if you will.

Russ: So difficult that maybe you even wondered if you were doing the right thing?

Janine: Certainly. But I only second-guessed myself for a split second.

Russ: Okay. And what have been some of those?

Janine: I would have to say that one of the most interesting challenges I face, and not necessarily as Par Avion, but let's say as an aircraft salesperson earlier on in my career. And again, the challenges have evolved as time goes by.

Russ: Sure.

Janine: It was perhaps the cultural borders that are faced. And I found that this is an area that I excel at for whatever particular reason. But I'd like to say that my last name really helped me operating overseas.

Russ: Wow.

Janine: And one of the difficulties I found is that obviously we don't all think alike or think at the same time the same thing. Taking domestic buyers, and by that I mean residents of the United States, into the overseas marketplace, particularly in the '80s, was a tremendous challenge. Convincing someone that the better buy might be across the pond.

Russ: Yeah, wow.

Janine: So one we got over that hurdle, showing them on paper that basically this is the reason why this is the particular airplane you should target for acquisition, we'd go there. And then it was interesting to see that if - well, most people speak English. On a professional level most people around the world are well-spoken in the English language. But still it was a little bit intimidating for my clientele. And I was a bit surprised by that. So I found myself becoming the hand-holder. In fact, my former employer nicknamed me "The Hand-holder," because I would help massage the whole transaction, make sure that all sides were thinking alike and meeting in the middle at the very least. So overcoming cultural barriers and differences that didn't really exist; they were perceived to exist, was a great challenge.

Russ: Well it almost sounds like you turned that challenge into an asset for yourself too.

Janine: Oh, absolutely. It became my forte.

Russ: Cool. That's really cool. Okay. Well, before I let you go, we like to ask this question to all the entrepreneurs that we have on the show. But let's imagine that there's a young aspiring entrepreneur tuned in right now, hearing Janine's story and thinking, 'Wow, that is so cool. I'd love to take a similar path.' So what advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur?

Janine: Well, several pieces of advice. I think first and foremost I would say that you need to build a good team. And I don't necessarily mean employees on staff, which of course that's important, but a good team of advisors. You need people that you can turn to that are experts, or at least people that you trust implicitly within certain areas; finance for one, maybe outside marketing, outside managing, mentors in other words.

Russ: Right.

Janine: The other piece of advice I'd have is do more. Every time you think you've done enough, do more.

Russ: Do more.

Janine: Because there's always someone who's looking for something more. And you're always going to be called upon to do a bit more, so do it without being asked.

Russ: Right. That's real cool advice. I really appreciate you sharing your story with us this morning.

Janine: It's been a pleasure to be here, Russ. I enjoyed it immensely.

Russ: You bet. And I appreciate you introducing us to a Hawker 850. Now after we finish this up you're going to go up in the front seat and take us for a ride?

Janine: Absolutely. And we'll go visit some other aircraft.

Russ: All right. Great. Well that wraps up our discussion with Janine Iannarelli, founder and president of Par Avion. And you've been listening to the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at www.thebusinessmakers.com.