He Made MILLIONS in the Emergency Dispatch Industry | Founder of Flight Vector - Scot Cromer

[0:00]  all right guys we're here for an episode today of our sin city success stories today we're talking to the founder of flight Vector Scott chromer and as you can see he's doing pretty well so we're at his crib we're going to hop in we're going to give him an interview so let's go meet Scott and take a little tour of his house dude look at the size of this roof up here oh my gosh absolutely insane here's our guy hey Scott what's going on thank you so much for having us over we're appreciated to come over here and check it out yeah man how has it been kind of living on top of the hill with this absolutely uh the view does not get old o

[1:52]  guys welcome to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast this is a brand new part of our sin city success stories and I'm here with Scott Romer Scott thanks so much for joining me man I really appreciate it so we're here to talk about your entrepreneurial Journey but also the amazing company that you created flight Vector so one of the things that I think about is often in today's world we think about businesses like Drop Shipping we think about all the other consumer coaching businesses that are so popular in today's world but your business is completely different so why don't you tell us a little bit about flight vector and kind of what it does and the service that you guys provide so flight Vector is used mostly in the emergency medical field to dispatch assets whether it's an air or ground asset to the scene um or or just even transport patients from one location to another and uh so we have the ability to

[2:42]  capture everything from the beginning uh with phone call comes in all the way to the end when the transport has been complete uh we share all that data with a number of systems we interface with 60 different uh other systems so we can share the data with a patient charting system or we can share the data with a billing system and so all of that stored in the database and it stays there for as long as they want it so there's always the ability to go back in and and get the data about that transport how did you come up with this business in the first place so I actually you know everything happens for a reason and it's always timing and for me I was writing software for what a company that became gar that Garmin bought and

[3:30]  because of that it was a multi-function display that's used in in aircraft and we interfaced with a number of different systems so I got to know a lot of people there was uh a company in Kansas that wanted a dispatch software but they didn't like what was out there so they talked to somebody that I know and told them about it and he said well I think I know someone who could probably do this so he got a hold of me and we met they explained what they were looking for and I told them okay I can do this but I'm going to make a business out of it and I'll get you guys the first version so that's what started the whole process so when you're working for Garmin back in the day you're working for a big organization and my question for you is when that opportunity pops up did you have any hesitancy to kind of pursue

[4:17]  that and say I'm going to start my own business did the company that you were working for at the time say it was okay for you to do this stuff or like what was that kind of Journey like so the interesting thing about that part of my life is I had already uh wrote software and we had started two other companies even when I was doing this so it was you know 20 hours a day type of thing besides doing what I'm normally doing and the other stuff that we've been working on so everything with that was kind of coming together and it made it easy at the time to decide I'm going to leave this stable environment and I have something that's going to last me for a little while I'm going to go out and start pursuing everything man it sounds like the classic elements of kind of like the

[5:03]  entrepreneurial journey of like taking that big leap I want to back up a little bit and kind of talk about how you got into the space of software development so knowing that entrepreneurship is a huge part of your life today did you have any early influences that kind of showed you that being an entrepreneur was possible what was your like parents like like what were they doing did you have any examples early yeah it's funny when I think about this uh in high school so I'm just turned 57 when I was in high school computers were just becoming a thing and my sophomore year of high school I had I took a computer class the seniors had to take the computer class and uh we'd get an assignment that day I'd go home that night I'd get it all coded come in the next day and you had two weeks to do this but I would Implement everything watch it work and then play Star Trek I

[5:51]  think is what we did back then for two weeks and uh the seniors that had to take the class and pass it saw me playing games and I started selling the software to them no way yes and so I thought you know if I can make money in high school doing this maybe this is what I want to do man it sounds like you had some of those early experiences of being an entrepreneur so like when people are approaching you and asking hey can you basically do our homework for us what was kind of your response did you have like that moral kind of tug that I guess you would have like naturally I I didn't look at it that way um you know I I it's just like today I wrote software you wanted my software I'll sell it to you yeah and so that's what my you know flight Vector does that today you know you write you have one

[6:38]  source code One Source base with that program but you sell it over and over and over isn't that an amazing thing about software I mean when I started getting into my entrepreneurial journey I started thinking about like how can I make myself as scalable as possible and back in the day when we started our telea health company we had a lot of Hardware basically like iPads and hardware systems and in 2019 I started pushing everybody towards developing software because it made us so much more scalable and then the pandemic occurred and everybody needed software but one of the Early learn lessons I learned was if you can duplicate something without cost it's an amazing way to just spread you know how your business grows exactly it's crazy did you ever start any other type of businesses that weren't software based no everything that I've done so far has been software based wow so I have a question for you when it comes to

[7:25]  kind of identifying the opportunities and the gaps that were in the market place so you're working for Garmin early somebody comes to you and says hey we've got a multifaceted system that we need developed what was it that Garmin wasn't doing at that time that you kind of saw the opportunity to make this flight Vector I guess opportunity something that was real so everything that we were doing with uh Garmin was avionics and this uh system that we have today did not need any avionic so it was all groundbased system and when I looked at it the other competitors that were out there at the time they came at it from the medical perspective they were maybe created by doctors and and they were worried about everything on the medical side but having the aviation background I looked at it and said wait

[8:13]  a minute you know you may have Pilots going over their Duty time that that could be a fine and so I came at it from the aviation side and made sure that they adhere to all the FAA regulations so they don't have any issues which you know maybe the medical people weren't so concerned about that at the time and that's what differen differentiated us at the time from the other uh from our competitors man when it comes to developing a software platform like that how did you kind of incorporate like customer feedback did you go go out and start like interviewing people or asking questions about like what would make the best system possible because I know that medical space in itself is often kind of very narrow pointed like this is what the system needs to look like and it seem like you were coming at it from like a different angle

[8:59]  yeah and everything that we have in the system uh besides our our core Aviation pieces of it that we started with is all based on what our customers uh have to say about it so as as we got customers you know we start off with your first customer and we spent almost a year developing everything around this first customer and then we're were able to go and start selling it to other customers so by the time in this industry which was small uh that we were able to get a couple more customers then we get the feedback I mean customers aren't afraid to tell you what they think about things yeah and so you start to develop the software around what they need and you know next thing you know you got another customer now you got more feedback and so we just continue to this day to uh all of our features that we have are

[9:46]  based on our customer suggestions I had a when we were developing our first like real tella Health platform the COO of that organization up in Seattle who we work with to this day said we are willing to be your first because we're willing to run the bike as we're building it did they kind of have that same mentality to be able to say like Hey listen we know you're building this we're your first customer did they know you were your first they were your first customer as well yes okay yep so when we right out the gate everyone knew you're our first customer we're going to build this together and so there was a lot of testing trials tribulations all that and so man I wonder what so when we start off a new company often we're the only person who's in the shop pulling late hours early mornings what was it like in those early days when you were kind of

[10:32]  building the company were you kind of showing up doing those 15 hour days those 20 hour days what was that like oh absolutely 15-hour day 7 days a week you know I was the I was the software engineer I was the CFO the COO the CEO the janitor I mean everything I wore so many hats and it took it took a few years before I was able to finally get some traction and hire somebody were those days kind of like cast strapped were you in kind of the position where you didn't have the resources to invest into the team and stuff like that was it stressful what was that like no I because of all the other things I was doing I I I was working too much but I had two other sources of income at the time that uh based on a company that had started with some buddies of mine and

[11:21]  doing some software work for another company so I had I had the two sources of income already and working on this and it was it was a lot but I I think one time in my whole uh that whole time before I got that really big customer I I think I told my wife one time well maybe I should go out and get a real job instead of you know playing around with this but stuck with it and uh and it turned out how do you feel like tenacity has kind of played a role in your life especially as an entrepreneur and I know like one of the things I've been focusing on a lot more recently is kind of the relationship we have with our partner has a huge element of if we fail or if we succeed and so it sounds like your wife was incredibly supportive of

[12:07]  you in those early days and trying to do all this work oh yes yeah she and she helped out as much as she could um and you know kids growing up at home so she took care of a lot of things and that was the nice part you know we we've been remote since I started this business and I always tell people you know we we we did it before it was cool you know Co happened if you had if I didn't know Co was happening nothing was different uh everyone's still working at home and so we've had that uh you know that ability to bring people to the company even during you know times like that and we found even better people

[12:54]  that way cuz you know it's tough to go into a market let's just say I wanted to look in Las Vegas and find everyone that I need to fill a position I could probably do it over time but I don't know if I can replace this person and that person just because of being here so everyone that has worked for us has worked from home and almost everyone has another significant other that's been supporting them and that's I think help I feel like that's one of the huge advantages of being a software company in the first place is you do have that that an that anonymity to be able to be flexible and do the things that you want to do and I feel like that's a early part of your success I kind of want to talk about the process of like scaling from a one-person team into a multi-person team who was your first big

[13:41]  hire that you had that really kind of had an impact on your business so the first hire I had was a developer uh in the same town I was in I was in Oregon and uh actually two of my best friends one was a football coach and one was the athletic director and I told them I don't have a lot of money I I got to start looking for someone and they both looked at me and said well we got this guy Peter Reed and he's on the track team that's how they knew him from a sports aspect genius and so I hired him in in high school and he was in high school he was in high school how old were you at this time uh 35 or 36 maybe no way so you're putting all the trust of your first hire into a young boy Genius yes yeah and he uh so he worked for me uh through college

[14:29]  uh so he got his uh his Bachelor and his Masters all in four years and I happened to get a really big contract with the state of Maryland at the same time he was uh getting ready to graduate and he had offers and so I was able to get a better offer to him and so he came to work for us and I had enough to probably maybe for a year or two the two of us can continue on and I thought well let's do it and see what happens and you know we'll figure out some stuff if if a year or two from now we didn't get any other customers so my question for you is this kind of goes to like a fundraising perspective when I think of software today everybody's talking about raising money and you go out to the marketplace you get VCS and things like that it sounds like you were maybe bootstrapped in these early days or kind of how did you leverage was it all human capital or

[15:16]  what did you do it was all uh bootstrap so I I funded us I funded myself up to that point because I had those other sources of income so I was able to have money coming in it's just I'm working 15 16 hours a day uh once I got that big contract I was able to hire someone who really helped build up a lot of the software and at that point uh you know we went from maybe two or three customers and then we've gone to today uh close to well if you take all of our software's capabilities our all of our software components that we have probably about 150 160 customers so how do we grow this business because obviously you can't be if you're talking about your first customer coming from

[16:03]  Maryland you're not knocking on doors or like you networking or like what is the process like of acquiring customers you know in this industry it's very small everybody knows everybody and there's an annual conference you go to uh so people would see us and the first couple years I went there it was oh hey there's a new kid on the Block let's see if they're here again next year and so next year comes around oh okay the new kid Block's still here well let's give them one more year before we decide that we're going to pull the trigger and maybe see what he has to do so you know after a few years they start looking at what you have and we had enough customers interested in the way we did things and and that so they you know we started building our customer base once you do that they start talking um one of the higher turnover jobs in

[16:53]  the industry is dispatchers so if they leave one customer they'll go to another one and as soon as they get there hey I was using flight Vector at my old company you guys I think we should look at it so then that gets the ball rolling there we haven't done any marketing other than being at the shows and everyone talks and as you grow the company it's just small enough that everyone knows everyone else did those early days of them saying you're the new kid on the Block let's see if you're around here next to year that kind of put like a chip on your shoulder to be like I'm going to show you guys what's going on I'll be here and I'm going to dominate this entire it it did a little bit yeah I mean I I knew I was going to be here and uh it was it was fun going back and to those shows every year and

[17:42]  now not only are we here but we went from a 10x10 Booth to a 20x 20 booth and you know went from one person there to six people in the booth so it's it's been it was nice for that progression and to show people we're here to stay and we're just going to keep building our software man you know when I think about the world of business today there's two ways to grow your business you can go out and you can market and you can advertise right but that in itself because of the marketplace is a diminishing return because on all platforms it's becoming more and more expensive so it costs more money to acquire customers every year and it sounds like your competitive Advantage was the experience and the overall product that you guys built because when you had dispatchers who were unhappy when they moved to a different job they'd say hey we need to use flight Vector so do you think like your product

[18:30]  in itself was really kind of your competitive Advantage which gave you that organic growth oh yeah most definitely uh and as more and more people got to know what we did and like I said we we listen to our customers so we're building software now based on what our customers are saying this is what we need to really make our business do well within the Communication Center so we're building what they want and we're providing it to more and more customers that are now familiar with us because may maybe someone is working where that that uh didn't work there before did you guys have any type of because you guys are serving dispatchers primarily and the experience that they have did you ever put into place any type of customer success managers or

[19:18]  people like that who really kind of like manag the relationships and made those people happy so we do have I mean we've done like maybe one customer success manager for the company and uh we're we're getting to that point now though where we're going to start hiring more uh it's just you can handle so many customers with one person and and that's what we've been doing lately is we're on a uh big growth spurt for hiring people to come into the company why you guys growing so much uh we're getting more and more companies that are very interested in what we're doing uh more enterprise-wide companies and so we're having to hire more more and more people to to help with all that I know that one of the biggest challenges we face as companies in general especially leaders like you

[20:06]  is how do you kind of build the team but the culture within the team because you guys are all remote you guys are doing so much different stuff so how do you kind of approach culture and kind of making sure everybody's congealed especially in like this remote world you know it's that's one of the things we would have a lot of the team interview people just to make sure we all seem to get along and that helped a lot um it wasn't just me saying okay I want this person and this is what we're going to have we would really you know vote him off the island if that was the case if we didn't want it but we had to vote them on the island as well and as the majority ruled and that's helped a lot with bringing people in that do work well with uh everyone that is remote I have a question kind of about your leadership style so I know that this has

[20:54]  been your baby since day one you're working the 20-hour days you're grinding seven days a week how do you start putting trust in the people who are now your generals and lieutenants especially when it comes to like making sure that the business is doing what it's going to do and showing up as you're supposed to with the expectations you guys have in the marketplace so it it it became quite easy for me to do that because I I had no choice um we had too much stuff going on and if I were to try to take it all on myself nothing would get done so immediately I I had trust in the people that I had working for me that were doing the things I needed them to do and and Reporting back so that that key is communication as long as you know I can have 30 people out there doing things as long as they're reporting back that this is what's going on these are the hiccups we have run into or these are the

[21:43]  success success stories that we've had so far having that information helps guide the company down the path that we want to go but it is communication just the number one thing and for us it was you know that communication helped us with customer service cuz if as far as we're concerned customer service is for our customers the number one thing and you know we've even helped customers call in for support on something my printer is not working well that's not us but you know what we're going to help you get that printer going and and you do things like that and they remember that and it's that's helped us through the entire process I mean it sounds like you guys go above and beyond we have and and you know it's I've had some of our team members say ah you know it's it's so and so ACC calling and I know they're

[22:32]  going to have a question that's not software related but they know as well even though it's tough to do sometimes they want to do it because they want them to at the end of the day be able to say that team at fight Vector is so good we really enjoy working with them and you know what hey they even helped me with my printer one day and so it's it's been our uh formula for Success how about negative team members cuz I know that every h you made maybe it has been hasn't been a perfect tire so have you kind of had people who have been oil to your guys' water how have you kind of approach the process of letting them go because one thing that I really focus on today because I speak to so many different Business Leaders we talk about culture a lot and often I feel like there's a misconception that an a player who is toxic to your team is worth

[23:19]  keeping because of the results that they bring so how do you kind of identify when somebody's not a good team member and how do you kind of like Usher them out of your present so we've had a handful of team members that we've hired that we thought would be good and and they weren't and uh it always starts with a talk with them uh to go through and see is there something going on that we need to know about that I need to know about um and give them some time to be able to correct things and generally if they're going to be able to correct them we're going to know pretty quick if not we've had to let them go and that is that is the toughest part I've never been in a position or thought that I'd be in a position where I'd have to let people go I'd rather just hire people and everyone's happy but we know how this goes and not everyone is going to be the right fit it's going to sound

[24:06]  like they may be to begin with but then they end up not and we it doesn't take long especially in the software World it it's pretty quick to find out if someone's going to fit in or not if they're developers um so you know give them a little bit time to see if they can make it and if they can't you you got to get rid of them and move on how would you consider consider your leadership style because one of the things that I've always appreciated about you is you are one of the most genuine nice people who I've ever met and to talk about kind of where we're sitting today looking over Vegas we've got an amazing house we've got an amazing view and it seems like you've always been so grounded and so humble so my question for you is did you grow up looking at any type of leaders like Steve Jobs as an example who were just these tyrants and kind of like leveraged

[24:54]  and ran with an iron fist how would you kind of consider your leadership style and maybe contrast to some of those people so my role model really was my dad so he was the Executive Vice President of the power company and everything I learned from leadership I spent so much time with him and I worked at the power company during the Summers so I learned a lot from him and and it was I I one of the things I wanted to do when I did this is I'm going to listen to everybody now five people may say one thing and if I really feel strong about it I will veto it it but for the most part I like to get everyone's feedback spend some time to think about it and then make a decision that that feels right based on what everyone has to say about it and and that does I think keep

[25:43]  you grounded I've never been one of those Iron Fist people that said this is my way or the highway and and there's been a couple decisions that I've said okay I may not agree with this but we're going to try it cuz most of you think that this may be the way to go some of them been worked some of them I've been able to sit back and tell myself okay I told you so but I'm not going to tell you I told you so I'm just going to think it that night and and move on to the next day do you have an example that you can kind of just give us at like a high level view of like one time when you thought you were right but your team came with a better solution and everything worked out for you oh boy putting me on the spot like that um I think that if I had to think of one time it was probably on to hire of somebody and I just wasn't sure that

[26:32]  that was the right person and they all said we think they are right and so I okay fine we'll do it and it turned out that the team was right and so I I didn't voice my opinion that much when it was during the process uh but they were right about that and and I'm glad because it it it worked out for the whole team that's got to almost give you like that proud papa bear type moment do you know what I mean because you built a culture where everybody can make good decisions and they're doing the best by the group and you don't have to oversee all of that kind of stuff as well yeah exactly and you know I've have people in places that I trust within the company so that they can continue on and if I have to be somewhere else I know that things are going to happen and if there is an issue they'll let me know but it's a I I

[27:20]  created a well oiled machine is how I like to look at it so I could if I one day needed to go and entertain some client somewhere or you know I get invited to a golf tournament by a customer I don't have to worry about what's going on in the office they've got it all handled and I'm able to step aside and and do things like that yeah I mean that's amazing I want to ask you kind of about your personal Journey so has there ever been a time in your entrepreneurial Journey building flight Vector where you just felt like you were the most challenged like when the darkest days because every day can't be a good day right I so um after we got started uh I think it was a year into it and I uh teamed up with another um company and we went to the show uh our air

[28:12]  Medical Transport conference day one of showing up to that show we got served with a lawsuit by one of our competitors and was a lawsuit joint infringement on their patent okay and uh so you know here I am how am I going to handle this how am I going to deal with this and so it took three years to get out of the lawsuit we went to trial we lost they continued I was finally able to get out of it because the The Joint infringement lawsuit meant the two of us together when we teamed up but based on our contracts and I will always thank my original attorney and how he prepared our contract but based on our contract

[28:59]  it specifically said there's no joint infringement here I mean we don't control them they don't control us so everything that meets the definition of the law for joint infringement we had a contract that said they don't do it but yet everyone in the court just decided that you know we're going to lose so the judge eventually let us out and those were the those three years were some of the darkest ones I remember that competitor that did that um they're no longer in the industry anymore and they called me one time and I was standing in my front yard and they offered me I think it was if if I think it was $100,000 that they would uh pay me and they'd make it go

[29:49]  away and I thought about it for a minute you know cuz I was I had way more than that from lawyer fees and I just decided no I'm not going to do that I'm going to really make this thing go and so I told them forget it and today now they got bought by one of the competitors our last competitor and then they shut it down and they're actually paying us to service their customers oh man that's got to feel sweet yes oh my gosh so let's talk about kind of so you get sued right before you go into the show you're early in your entrepreneurial Journey first year how do you kind of refocus yourself in those moments when it seems the world's falling down because I know you have to show up you're also the CEO the CEO the CFO all these people at the time so how are you showing up to the show with like the positive mindset of like we're going

[30:36]  to make this go especially when everybody else is talking about we'll see if you're here in a year and this is a formidable Threat by somebody laying you with like a lawsuit what was that kind of process like keeping your mind right you know I I look back at that time and I wonder if I was even thinking about what was happening because it I I don't know um you know I know we were going through this whole thing and I still had my other sources of income and so I still had stuff that I was doing but at this at this time now I was spending more of that on attorney fees and I I think the only thing that actually kept me going with that is knowing that we didn't do anything wrong and I figured that the courts would finally realize that that's probably the

[31:23]  only thing that kept me going and trying to be positive but it was just uh one of those things where you know back to the grindstone every day trying to make this work and and hope that the time I spend on it was worth it that's what I think about from like a journey of Entrepreneurship perspective like we spend years so many nights laying asleep waiting and thinking about is this actually going to be worth it someday and I feel like we don't actually see the reward until the one day when we hit a huge milestone right so what was one of your first like key Milestones that highlighted your SU ESS that kind of kept you going to say like hey I'm actually making it and it doesn't seem like I'm kind of like navigating into this world of Darkness that was the Maryland State Police contract that's when I thought okay you know we got we have enough money to keep going for a

[32:10]  while and uh at that point our lawsuit was done so we could start getting customers you know no one would touch US during that three years because they didn't want to have a lawsuit and buy the software and then have to take it away so that was the big moment of getting the letter from the judge saying you are not part of this lawsuit anymore and you can't be and then getting that contract just shortly after it what was that feeling of Celebration like cuz I'm sure you remember that day like it was still yesterday yeah I I'm I know I had an extra drink that night yeah um it it just took so much weight off your shoulders and uh you know but you celebrate for just a few minutes cuz then you're right back at doing your 15

[32:59]  hours a day so that you can get through everything and and keep growing it I always think about kind of like a sense of ultimate accountability and I'm going to kind of Riff on this for a second but because of my family heritage and where I came from right we came from humble beginnings my great-grandfather was a sharecropper from Arkansas my grandfather was born in 1930 my father was the first entrepreneur in my family and he was the person who actually put me in a position to be successful I think about the need for me to continue to show up every single day is kind of like I'm drawn towards just the highest version of myself and I wonder if you kind of had those early experiences of saying like yeah we had this big victory with the Maryland um police department but what do I do now and why did you kind of show up with that same hunger of trying to just like work those 15 hours

[33:46]  and be successful you've always had like that chip on your shoulder like what's that like I I mean it's what I grew up with is to be successful and you know I watched my dad climb the company ladder and so that that's what I knew and that's what I wanted to do and so it really it just I didn't know any other way honestly it uh I wanted to be successful when I did I remember when I think I was 10 years old I remember I told somebody I'm going to be worth $10 million someday so I had it back in my mind then that I wanted to do something to be successful and and to be able to enjoy it do you believe in manifestation uh I haven't thought about that because it sounds like very early on you are a

[34:32]  10-year-old saying I'm going to be worth 10 million bucks someday do you know what I mean that like doesn't come out of nowhere and I feel like we have so many subconscious thoughts I mean if my dad always said if you see it you can or if you believe it you can achieve it and that was something I really didn't put a lot of emphasis on when I was younger until I started getting into the times of hardship where it's like our mindset completely transforms the way we see the world I mean if people have negative thoughts on a daily basis they see a negative world around them and they limit their own exposure to opportunity and so I think maybe you had a little bit of that hard programming in your brain that was getting you to be successful and you were willing to do the work that was necessary yeah a lot of it for me is I don't even see it I mean it's just it's who I I think I've always been and so to to stop and think about it okay yeah I I see what you're

[35:20]  saying but at the time and all the way through my career I never stopped to think about it it just happened there's a there's a really powerful book out there it's called The Gap in the gain and it's about High people with high achieving mindsets and it talks about people with high achieving mindsets often find themselves in the distance of where I'm at right now and where I'm going and the guy in the book uses the Horizon as the metaphor he says you can run and Sprint and even fly towards the horizon as fast as you want but you'll never catch it and often when we're on this world domination path of like I need to be successful I'm going to do these things we find ourselves in the gap of where we're at and where we're trying to get to and so sometimes we feel like we're a little let down and we have to fulfill that hole if you will and the gain on the opposite side of that is pausing with a form of gratitude

[36:07]  and looking backwards to see how far we've come do you ever think you find yourself in that gap of where you're at right now and where you're trying to get to even with all of your success today no and uh just as you're talking about that I haven't had time to even think about being in a gap we have been since I started this and well since Maryland State Police on it has been a the biggest challenge I've had is how do I slow down um sales so that my developers can catch up to where we need to be um I've been told a couple times during this process that hey you got to quit selling you've got to quit making customers want to buy the software because we can't keep up and there's too much stuff we have to do so

[36:55]  I I just don't think I've ever been in that Gap it's always been you know right around the corner there's somebody else that wants to start using the software and somebody else so it's it's trying to space them out so that we you know we can handle everything and and I just haven't seen that Gap I think that's an amazing gift to have and I feel like you are an outlier when it comes to that entrepreneurial experience because many of us are grinding and trying to figure out how we're going to survive today so we can get till tomorrow but it seems like you have so much overload of of inbound business that's coming your way that you have a different problem yeah and you know I've I've said this a million times in my life is you got to be at the right place at the right time and so many things in my life have happened because of that and and building the business the same way uh

[37:45]  you know it's we've always had once we started having success it was more success and more success even when we weren't sure or didn't weren't looking for it it just continued to come to us and so I it's been I've been blessed with that um you know we are kind of an outlier um when I look at when companies have evaluated us and they look at our numbers it's okay we haven't seen every company that's able to do something like this and so it's uh it's good but um it's different and so when you start talking about companies that aren't like that you know I I don't look and say well I'm going to look down on you well it's just our I was at the right place at the right time we did the things we needed to do and that allowed us to succeed I want to talk about the

[38:32]  opposite side of the gap which is the gain how often do you kind of slow down and appreciate all the things you've been able to accomplish because before we hopped on here we were out in your garage and we're looking at your Ferrari we're looking at your C you're talking about your new Z6 coming those are material things but you also have like a happy and a healthy family that surrounds you as well do you get enough time to kind of pause and reflect on all the things you guys have accomplished together and the memories you guys have made more so now than we did before um I think it was probably about a year ago where I was able to start with this well oiled machine that I had now I was able to step back and let it do its thing and just be there in case you know it goes off to the wrong direction but be able to enjoy the family time and spend some more time uh doing things that I like to do

[39:21]  I would have to really think about it I still don't know to this day if I've ever had a vacation where I didn't do some business M and that's my goal now is to take a vacation not not have to answer a phone call not have to deal with an email anything just be on vacation and I'm hoping it's going to happen soon I feel like you know in this world of Entrepreneurship today there's so much talk about starting a business that takes no time for you to operate and we all want to get to the position where Scott is in now where you're able to say I want to take time off I want to be a little bit more present and I feel like there's a misconception in the marketplace because a lot of the people who are talking about that work life balance if you will are the people who are successful and now we're trying to emulate the life that they have like

[40:08]  Scott I want to be able to take vacations I want to do these things so let's talk about I guess a message for an entrepreneur today who's trying to start a business and I guess the hard truth of realizing that you're going to go through those years of grinding those years are showing up 15 hours a day and why those are so important yeah and you know I don't know anything else but but that grind um and it is it's it's the most important thing you can do is stay the course and if you have an idea and you want to see it through just continue to work at it and you know hopefully you you also have the being at the right place at the right time part of it I mean that's there's a lot of hard work involved with this but there's a little bit of luck too and uh so you you've got to things have to align a little bit

[40:56]  with you but as if you just continue the hard work and and it's something that you believe in then hopefully everything will work out for you yeah I know I was listening to this podcast earlier today and it was talking about a season of no it's like sometimes you have to go through the season of saying no to all the stuff that's distracting you from getting to where you want to get to and I feel like in this world of exposure social media and everything else there's so many opportunities for us to get off course and so do you feel like you definitely went through that season of no where you had to say no to the birthday parties no to going on vacation no to going to do this stuff yeah yes I I've said no uh or I've done it and then I'm the one on the beach with a computer on my lap or I'm getting up at 5:00 in the morning before 3 hours before the family gets up so I can get three hours

[41:43]  of work in uh you know I've I think about no and with customers I don't say no to customers and you know my answer has always been was just software of course we can do it and and I've brought that into the life with that as well if if I maybe I won't say no but I will find a way to do what I need to do with that and get the other uh the work done that I need to do whether it's I'll show up hey I'm I'm going to be there but I'm going to be an hour late or I got to leave an hour early so I can get some stuff done yeah I mean that makes sense I want to ask you kind of a question as we look towards the future so what is your vision for the future of flight vector and how does you know the way that the industry is consistently

[42:30]  evolving and things like that kind of give you a vision on like the next 10 years if you will so my vision with flight Vector is of course world domination so I I mean I'd love to get every customer that we have uh in the US in Canada go overseas is what I want to do next and uh really increase our market share that we have um I want to see more AI built into the software you know we've started some of that process by being able to automatically schedule vehicles for dispatchers so they just sit back they put in we need to transport this patient at this time but we will go through and figure out okay the optimal time is here and not there and we'll rearrange everything and we

[43:18]  will take in consideration what happened yesterday and what happened the day before to help figure out ways to automate some of this this so that they're not having to deal with it all the time they can sit back and watch it and if something happens they can say something but uh I want to see more of uh artificial intelligence programming as part of flight Vector I really want to kind of dive into that for a second because AI has been a Hot Topic since November of 2022 how are you guys kind of approaching AI because everybody thinks about like chat gbt as an example but if we're talking about using kind of like an information flywheel you guys have data on all these transfers to start informing the systems that you provide services for about the best time to do those things yes and so how are you guys kind of attacking the AI

[44:05]  conversation and what does it what does it really mean to you guys slowly is what is how we're attacking it right now um and just like you said so we have data we have years of data on what's happened at particular locations so you can use that information now to say okay tomorrow you need to put an ambulance out at the corner of first and Maine and something's going to happen they they will be closer to the accident they'll be able to get there so and putting uh or adding capabilities like that into the software based on what we have learned over the years is what we want to do but we are we are doing it slowly so that we make sure we get it right and that's the biggest thing with some of that stuff is you get nervous about hey do I want AI taking over everything do I want to just be able to walk out of the

[44:52]  room and it does everything and notifies everyone M I still am old school where okay I will trust this a little bit but I still want to verify it and so that's why we're taking the time to go through it and make sure everything is right as we as we do it cuz I feel like you guys have a reputation to manage as well and I feel like with the rush if you will to try and put out information about AI everybody has an AI integrated system these days but how is it going to have a negative or a positive impact on your reputation because you guys are word of mouth that's how you guys have grown customers and I would hate to see the day where you guys unleash an AI system and all of a sudden things get swirly and then you got people talking about you yeah and that's the biggest thing we have to worry about is because this Market is so small and everyone talks it has to be right and you know we've spent extra time on releases just to make sure

[45:43]  that we have it right before we go ahead and and release it to the the general population because it is it's our it's a reputation at stake and we want to make sure that everything goes well yeah how do you kind of balance that mindset if you will because I know you got younger people in your organization as well and they want to kind of push the envelope if you will forward when it comes to this AI stuff so how are you kind of playing like the anchor that says like hey let's approach this a little bit slower do you have to kind of like navigate that no I don't I I mean they've it it's been navigating itself a little bit because there's so much work that we we slow down ourselves just to try to get all the work done um and you know they everyone has great ideas and implementing these uh great IDE ideas it's just it takes some time and then on top of that all the testing and the

[46:31]  regression testing and everything you do in the software business it doesn't allow for something like that to come out too fast and so I guess we kind of self- throttle ourselves by implementing it yeah that makes a lot of sense I want to kind of wrap up here today by asking you to give a message to the future of entrepreneurs because a lot of people who watch the show are in their young 20s young 30s we're getting started in our professional careers and I think sometimes we're in a rush if you will to get things done and it sounds like you've had an approach of taking things slow but being methodical and how you kind of move the chess pieces across the board for your success that we kind of can display here today so what would you say to the future generation of these entrepreneurs that is the biggest thing I do is I I and again I'll go back to maybe I'm old school but I like to make

[47:19]  sure that everything looks right and then move on and move on um so I also see today though you know people people become successful so quick with some of the social media capabilities they have uh so I really my advice on anyone wanting to get in and being an entrepreneur is take the time to to build what you want to build uh create what you want to create and just stick with it um it doesn't have to be done overnight I I know people want to just see overnight success but you can still take the time to do it and and still be successful that way you're doing it right