My honest advice to someone who wants to be a pilot

so a few years ago I got into an email exchange with a guy who was wanting to become a pilot kind of struggling to get there we'll call him Ryan it's not his name but I'm going to reference him because his St his his story his story is really really encouraging so let's give him a name so I offered Ryan some advice we went back and forth a few times via email and then a few years later this is the coolest part I'm not making this up he ended up being the flight instructor sitting in the right seat of my airplane right next to me giving me instruction and I'll tell you more about that at the end but it is so so encouraging to see how he went from kind of struggling and had a lot of obstacles in front of him all the way to becoming a certified flight instructor signing my own log book and so it got me thinking I know that there are so many more Ryan out there so to speak I know that many of you are maybe wanting to do this and thinking about it maybe struggling to get there from Fear uncertainty or doubt or all kinds of things so I wanted to share Ryan's story with you and some of the things that I share with him and some of my other advice in case it can be encouraging to you and so if we're just meeting my name is Charlie gasm I'm a commercially licensed pilot based here in Dallas Texas I also own my own airplane and I make helpful content for private pilots and aspiring Pilots I've been flying for about 20 years and so I really just want to share my journey in case it can be encouraging to anyone else that wants to become a pilot and own their own airplane one day so four years ago Ryan sent me this email hey Charlie I really have enjoyed your videos I've been watching since August of 2020 and I've decided to follow my passion and find a flight school and go after my dream I just recently got my medical and a handful of hours in a 172 and I'm now working on on Ground School my dream is to be a pilot and I've talked with loved ones about the idea of pursuing flight school as a career and I've been met with zero support or you're out of your mind to take out a loan and become an instructor and go to the Regionals I'm reaching out to you because I don't have any support or people encouraging me that I can make my dreams come true I know I can do this it's just hard having no one in your corner but yourself so it would mean a lot if you could give me some advice to show me that it is doable so here are some of the things I told him and some of the other things that come to mind if you are wanting to pursue flying as a job or even as a hobby so first I think you need to know that not everyone is going to share the same passions as you or interests I know it blows my mind that that not everyone wants to be a pilot because I just think flying is literally the coolest thing in the whole world uh but not everyone I don't say that with hyperbole I just I really believe that but not everyone's going to feel that way and so you are probably going to experience some push back or at least people kind of questioning like you sure you want to do that that's a lot of work you're going to be met with some of these questions and so I think you're going to have to give yourself permission to pursue the things that you're uniquely interested in um because other people aren't interested in the way that that you are and that's okay and then I think you have to make actionable plans to go pursue those things because other people aren't going to create the plan for you to go do the thing you want to do because that's not their dream and they're not as interested in that as you are and so if you're meeting some obstacles and other people not being as encouraging as you want I think you have to tell yourself like okay well then I'm going to have to be I'm going to have to put the plan together to go realize this dream because other people aren't as interested in it as I am now it is really really hard to pursue something when your loved ones aren't supportive of it or or even maybe if they're not all the way unsupportive but maybe they're just not as jazzed about it as you are I understand how hard that can be because you might not have the wind in your sales or the wind at your back so to speak but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it so I told Ryan this verbatim when I quit my job a few years ago to pursue entrepreneurship fulltime not everyone in my life was supportive and that just crushed me but I believe there's wisdom in following your passions because I think you have those passions and interests for a reason that's also not a reason to throw caution to the wind when those around you are encouraging you to not make that decision so for me it came down to a lot of prayer a lot of analysis and a lot of waiting to validate whether or not I was being flippant about a big financial and career decision or if it really was a sustained calling of sorts to change careers that had a very real Financial risk associated with it and so that's my advice to you too Proverbs 15:22 says without Council plans fail but with many advisors they succeed and even if you aren't a Christian there's still a lot of wisdom in that verse so definitely listen to the Council of those around you but also remember you might differ in your passions than others and that's okay and so secondly from a financial perspective I told Ryan that taking out a loan to go to flight school is really just a financial puzzle can you reasonably pay back those loans with the trajectory and road map of your pilot income and if you can then I don't think I don't think all debt is bad necessarily so if it can be used as a tool and it's not just Consumer Debt where you're just buying things you can't afford but if it's a tool that you're using to hopefully actually go make more money then I think it's a good tool it's just a financial puzzle at that point now if you're paying for flight school to be a pilot just as a hobby then obviously you're not going to be making money on it so it's it's a different Financial puzzle and I think it just comes down to living within your means which means spending less than you make and then being intentional about where you spend your money so for me flying is an expensive Hobby and I spend around $20,000 per year plus or minus owning and operating my own plane but for me that's totally worth it and how I want to spend part of my time in resources and my wife is on board with that as well and then in terms of training I really really think that you need to anticipate the middle of your training so what do I mean by that well the beginning the beginning of anything is fun because it's new and exciting and you have lots of energy the end also gets a little bit easier because you can see the finish line so you get Renewed Energy but that middle slum is where things get really hard because you're fatigued you have an appreciation for the amount of work involved and you have an appreciation for the amount of work left so those three things combined to make the middle really difficult and this is where most Pilots quit and they waste a lot of money and time because of it and so you really have to anticipate the middle because that slump is coming for you in a very real way and I think one of the best ways to get through that hard part of training is to surround yourself with like-minded people so if you're at a flight school try to meet the other students if if you're if if you're not at a flight school and you just have a one-off instructor join your local EA chapter get surrounded by other Pilots that are going through this or have been through this and be friendly with them practically I I would suggest this just find one other person and just start by asking your flight instructor hey what's the name and number of one other student that you're teaching that uh would would like to have kind of accountability partner or would like to talk to me and find a way to meet with them once a week it can be over a phone call Zoom call whatever just just give a progress update of your training say here's here's what I accomplished here's what I'm struggling with here's what I'm thinking about and and and it could be a really quick call and see the results um transparently I've been doing this lately for YouTube guy that's become a really really close friend of mine Barrett he has a really cool Channel called pickle ball kitchen you should go check it out hey Barrett we have a weekly Zoom call where we just talk about what's going on as creators things that we're struggling with ideas we have um things we're seeing that have gone well things that haven't gone well and we just talk about it and we're just kind of in the trenches together he lives in my city and we've become really really good friends and it's given me A Renewed Energy to push through some of the harder parts of being a Creator because I feel seen and understood and you have a buddy to go through it with and I can't find the link to the actual study I looked I looked hard for it but there are loads of Articles citing a study from the American Society of training and development back in 2010 that said you're 65% more likely to complete a goal if you tell someone else you're committing to do it and then get this and you're 95% more likely to accomplish that goal if you have consistent check-ins with that someone so it doesn't have to be complicated f find one way to make a new friend to say hey can we just encourage each other via text or just kind of be partners as we're going through this thing and have someone to talk to I promise it'll make a big difference the other way you can anticipate the difficulty of training and get yourself through it is to understand that learning to fly is kind of like learning a new sport that's also in another language your body has to learn new muscle memory for this sport but your brain also has to build fluency in the new language at the same time so that is some of the best advice I've ever gotten from an instructor it's simple that learning all this stuff is just building fluency in a new language and if you've ever learned a new language before you know how much practice and repetition it takes because you are learning new vocabulary new Concepts new verbs new everything right and so flying is really really similar and so I think if you can understand that you're just going to have to build a new fluency and that it's a new muscle and it's going to take practice I think you'll extend yourself a lot more grace because you won't be as freaked out about Air Traffic Control Communications for example because you're like oh yeah the reason that's overwhelming is cuz it's a freaking new language and I'm not fluent in it yet and so you'll give yourself some Grace when you say like man I really flubbed that that ATC transmission or whatever thank goodness no one heard it or whatever my instructor had to bail me out of that one it's fine you're learning new language and you're learning new sport and like there's nothing to relate to it so it's all all new now I still feel this problem even now 20 years in and th000 plus hours in it takes a lot of work to maintain your fluency on all the regulations and all all the things right and so I am working on a new helpful resource that I'm really just trying to solve my own problem of maintaining fluent INF fluency in this but it's something I'm be able to share with you really soon and I just launched an insiders newsletter where once a week I'm sending out an email kind of sharing some of the behind the scenes at airplane academy uh sharing a lesson that I've learned in aviation and how it can help you and then some links to my other content so you don't miss anything and this new resource that I'm working on that I'll be able to announce hopefully in the next couple months I'm going to be sharing first with my Insider newsletter and so uh you can sign up over at airplane academy.com insiders hopefully I'll be able to help you uh with more lessons and more helpful content and I'll also be sharing some sneak peaks of of this resource that I'm working on and I hope to see you there it's free airplane academy.com insiders I'll also put a link down in the description another really important lesson to learn about training is that there's never going to be a perfect time to do this and I fell victim to this while ago a year ago I was really wanting to go back well I've been wanting to get my commercial for a long time I started and stopped it many times I've talked about on this channel but a year ago I was telling my wife I said gosh I just I really want to get my commercial cuz I really want to get my CFI commercial feels like a lot of work there's a lot of stuff I have to relearn cuz I got my private forever ago um but I don't I don't know if right now is the right season you know like I was working on a couple startups that that I'm still involved in uh one of which is this Channel and I have two kids two and under and so by the time we put them to bed at night gosh I'm just I'm just exhausted I wake up and this just doesn't feel like a great season but I but I really want to do it and I'm so thankful that Corey my wife eventually just heard me say that a number of times and she just lovingly challenged me she's like you know I don't think there's going to be a better season than this I'm like what are you talking like this feels like a really difficult season to try to go back to flight school and relearn all this stuff and stay up late studying etc etc she goes yeah but like when when's it going to get any easier I mean okay a couple years from now yeah the kids are going to start staying up later and we're going to have sporting events and different things I mean like yeah you're tired by the time you put them to bed at 8:00 at night but they go to bed at night every night at 8: and then you have to stay home cuz in bed and we're not going to leave the house so isn't that actually the perfect time at night to be studying Like That season might go away soon and it's you're going to get even more involved in the evenings and stuff and I hadn't thought about it like that I I wasn't thinking opportunistically I was kind of thinking glass half to empty and so I took her on that advice okay you know I'm going to do it and uh it was hard getting back into the rhythms of studying and doing early morning flight lessons and stuff uh but I did it and I got through it and passed my commercial and then I did the same thing with my multic commercial a few months later and so I think you just have to realize there's never going to be a perfect time to do it and if you're looking for it it doesn't exist and so think about yeah how could I actually do it in this season instead of putting it off and the thing that had to more or less get cut out during that season was Netflix social media things that you can inadvertently waste a ton of time on and I didn't I didn't knock it out or or cut it out completely like I still I still watched you know shows and things as as a point of rest or whatever I wasn't just completely redlining like hustle bro just cut it out I mean I was it was like in moderation but I think most of us myself included spend way more time on this stuff than we possibly think and so that's my next piece of advice if you're wanting to become a pilot stop wasting time and I love what Ali abdal had to say about this recently on his YouTube channel he he's got a huge Channel he makes content on productivity and other things and one of his recent videos thought he said something really clever he said you know for someone that wants to watch three hours of Netflix and social media at night but then also says they don't have time to study or work towards their goal he said we either need to change the goal or change the plan in other words just stop wasting time you can't say you want this goal but you're unwilling to give up you know all this other time that you're spending on lesser things uh you like one of those has to give either change the realistic goal and quit saying you want to do this thing or be willing to give this up because giving this up is going to enable the time to go actually pursue the goal so don't spend and waste time on all these lesser things when what you're really wanting is this bigger thing you're working towards the other thing that I think will really help keep you motivated during training is to try to come from a place of thankfulness this is going to sound simple but please hear me out cuz this is this has really helped me lately in flying for example there's lots of tests that you have to take there's a written test there's an oral test and then there's a practical flight test plenty of tests and that can be really really intimidating when you're studying for that it's easy to come from a place of stress and thinking oh man all these things I have to memorize all these Concepts all these regulations all this stuff and uh you get really stressed out about it because there's a ton to know and then as your test date approaches it's it's easy for for stress to kind of consume you and it can make the whole process unpleasant and so instead of coming from a place of stress and control trying to come from a place of thankfulness and saying man like if you're stressed about your check ride that oral and and flight portion at the end um all of us get stressed for check rides it's part of it but maybe try coming from a place of thankfulness say man I'm I'm really thankful I'm at the point in my training where I'm almost to the check ride you know I'm not I'm not light years away from this thing I'm almost to the end and thankfully if I fail it like yeah that's going to hurt my ego a little bit but if I fail it I get to go retake it it's not like a oneandone sort of thing and so I'm thankful that I'm almost to the point where I'm done with this thing or you know gosh what an amazing time to live where even though I have to memorize all this stuff at least it's all in front of us because people for thousands of years didn't have access to this and they were just wondering they were looking up at the birds and like how the heck did we do that and they didn't know and they weren't anywhere near like figuring that out in their lifetime but we're here now and it's all in front of us in a book and in YouTube videos and all this stuff where we get to learn it it takes a lot of effort to learn but at least I'm thankful that we have the ability to learn it and so it's a small thing like please don't over and be like a it's hokey like it it's really really meaningful just take 10 seconds and say what can I be thankful for in this and I found that instead of getting really intimidated by The Challenge in front of me helps me be thankful for what I can be thankful for and helps me actually approach the challenge instead of just being scared of it and quitting early and then of course it goes without saying but I'm going to say it anyways like in case this is coming off as like a first world problem I just want to acknowledge the fact that we're even get to talk about this at all and like if this is our biggest problem is trying to me memorize a bunch of Aviation regul so we can fly our own plane like man we are so blessed that that is the problem that we're consumed with today if that's my biggest problem today is studying for a test so I can go fly my airplane like oh my gosh please please reframe my mind as to what what real problems are man I'm just grateful that we can even be talking about this and doing this in the first place because it is an enormous blessing and so from a tactical perspective got a couple pieces of advice first is that I think there are a lot of people watching YouTube and saying oh this this flying thing seems really really cool I'm thinking about thinking about watching videos and that's a great place to start but don't forget that you can go test it out before you commit to all of Flight Training so flight schools have what's called a discovery flight you can call them up they'll know what you're talking about I'm not like setting it's not like snipe hunting here I'm like oh tell ask about the discovery call and they'll laugh at you no this is real that's funny um it's a real thing and you can get it they'll put you in the left seat which is the pilot seat and you'll go do a flight and you'll experience the whole thing sometimes it's 30 minutes sometimes it's 60 Minutes it usually doesn't cost that much in the scheme of Flight Training and you go do the real thing and so kind of take it out of the internet realm of just something you're researching and bring it to real life sometimes they'll even let you record it or they'll record it for you um sometimes they don't want you to do that or whatever but then you can go back and watch it and so take the first step towards actually doing it go take a discovery flight and secondly and really importantly even when you do start ground school and you're learning all that required knowledge make sure you're taking your own notes along the way now that might sound obvious but since online Ground School has gotten so popular it's really easy to just watch the videos and think that you're retaining the knowledge after you watch each video that might work for a few videos but I promise you won't be able to memorize everything on the first take you will need a set of notes that you can study independently without the videos and without an instructor in front of you I made this mistake when I was going back through my commercial because most of it is reviewed from your private so as I was watching the uh the videos and stuff I thought yeah I already kind of know this or I'm certainly already familiar with it or whatever and then I went to start practice tests and I was getting like 80% I thought oh man I thought I'd do a lot better than that I realized there were like a lot of really specific regulations or specific numbers that I was close or I kind of knew the general idea uh but I was getting it wrong and so I had to go back and I realized oh man there's so much here so then I had to kind of make my own study guide so that way I had something to actually kind of uh commit to knowledge because practically you're not going to go rewatch The videos and binge the videos five times a day you need to be building some sort of note guide or study guide that way you can kind of be getting repetition with it so ah made that mistake I don't want you to make that mistake and then after making my own study guide I end up getting a 95% on the commercial test obviously I was going for 100 didn't get 100 but the reason it helps you to uh to score better I mean one you need to know the knowledge anyways right so that's that's the correct answer but practically speaking all the things that you get wrong on the test your examiner is going to have to talk to you about or ask you questions about that on the check ride so if you get a 70 that's still passing but but there's a lot more things that they're going to have to ask you in the check ride you want to try to make the check ride as short as you can reasonably so the higher you get the less questions less scrutiny you're going to get in that regard so again I think this this is a big challenge in aviation right now is maintaining that fluency understanding how do we get a lot of repetition on all those things to commit them to Memory and again I'm working on a really big project that I think is going to be able to help a lot of people I'm I'm building it CU I have this problem so I'm building the solution for me and that I'm want to be able to offer it to other people and I'm going to be talking about it on my insiders newsletter again airplane academy.com insiders and you can be the first to find out about it so back to Ryan from the very beginning of the story so we exchanged some emails and gave him some of the advice that I just shared here and to his credit he went through and and went all the way to become a certified flight instructor and he sent me an email you know a couple years later and said Charlie I just want to touch back in uh I'm a CFI now and I was so happy for him but uh funny enough he was living in the same city as me I'm based in Dallas Texas he said if you ever want to fly let me know and I said well actually I am working on my commercial right now and I found out that there is like one more requirement that I have to get for duel or whatever that I guess I just never checked off the list so actually do need a flight instructor to fly with me sometime would you want to be my flight instructor so we got together and we went flying and he signed my log book and it is so meaningful to me that he had reached out you know years ago saying I'm struggling with this thing um and then to his credit he put in the hard work and became a CFI and now he signed my log book so I think it's so relatable because Ryan's story absolutely can be your story you can absolutely become a pilot get your license own an airplane all these things are accomplishable the problem is most people wait and not only do they wait but sometimes they wait until a point where they actually can't do it at all and it's really really easy to fall into that and so in the video on the screen I want to share with you why right now is absolutely the best time to get started so I'll share with you why that is and how you can get started today so I'll see you in that video

Channel: Airplane Academy

Views: 17,296

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Id: zC039nSFKtg

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024