Jonathan Breeze, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Jet Republic, tells us about the values he shares within his organization, about what he believes works best for his company, and in few simple words explains us what Jet Republic is about.
1. What values do you share in life or within your organization?
I think, what I believe in, in terms of those guiding principles, is what we built in to Jet Republic because that way I can run the company. So, that way passion, precision, unity, performance comes in. If you can run your life, if you can run your business in that way, than you're pretty much on the right track: you're looking after people, you're building a team, you're getting results. You know, our job is to look after our customers, is to look after our staff, is to look after our shareholders - that's the three fundamentally important groups. If we fail any of them long term, we will all suffer. So, you run the business in order to try to achieve long term profitability and hard shareholder value, to put a smile on your customers and create a place where people would want to come to work in the morning - want to come to work, not just have to. Everyone's got kids; everyone's got mortgages to pay; everyone's got bills to pay - so, you got to go to work. Fine, but let's make a place where I want to go to work. And, again, a part of that is the selection of people to come in, in the first place; providing you consistent in what you do and you achieve the things that you said you were going to achieve. Then, you should, generally, have a reasonably happy, content work force doing a good job, making their customers happy. Again, you're only going to make them happy if you do what you say you are going to do, and you understand what you're saying is deliverable. It's just about that constant exchange of ideas and information, but that's the precision, that's the performance bit. It's about getting it right; it's getting it right for what you've said you would do, it's about getting the team together - it's the unity, and than caring enough to want to be there. So, if you can do those four things - you're fine: everyone wins - shareholders, customers, our staff.
2. Do you think it is possible for a professional services organization to become a public company?
I'll give you an easy answer to that - it's just the period of which you looking to achieve the results for the shareholders. As soon as you extend that period into a reasonable period of time - years rather than quarters - then your interests are aligned. If you try and maximize shareholder value by achieving very short term spikes in profit by lying to your customers, letting them down, overpromising, underdelivering, achieving ridiculous prices unfairly - you might have a great quarter but the company is finished. It's finished in a year or two or five years time. So, as soon as you start looking at your shareholder's value as a long term proposition, then, I believe, you have absolute alignment of interests. It's when you become short-termist that, I think, you have a problem. And, I think, you've seen some of that recently. I think, you've seen companies trying to hit their quarterly earning targets without realizing that, maybe, they are damaging the long term liability of their company by doing so. And we've certainly seen in the last six months to a year many companies walking back from this quarterly earning target and defining what they are going to do long term - you know, one year, five years, ten years. Our investment in aircraft it's at least a ten-year investment - at least a ten-year investment. We may recycle the aircraft at the five-year point but we've got an obligation to at least a ten-year, your customers are coming in five-year contracts... You know, tomorrow's profitability is interesting but you're running the game for five-ten years. I think, that's really where that alignment comes in.
3. What do you think is unique about your company?
We created a fractional business jet company, the second generation business jet company. We created a company that gives a large cabin service on the mid-sized aircraft. Effectively, in our world, in the business jet world we've moved business aviation in the same way as we saw when we went from the Sony Walkman to the Apple iPod. So, it's that sort of leap. That's, effectively, what we've done with our aircraft and our service on the ground, service in the air a company built.
4. Can you, please, explain your business model in some simple words, so that a scholar could understand?
We sell fractions of aircraft that are always available to a customer. So, for a school boy, instead of buying a whole bicycle buy a tenth of a bicycle and whenever you want to use a bicycle when you walk outside there'll be a bicycle for you to use. You're only using the bicycle for a couple of hours a day, so you don't need it parked there all day round with no one else using it. The challenge is to be able to move the bicycles to the school boys swiftly enough. Magnify that up to a fleet of a hundred and ten business jets and that's what we do. It's a very cost effective way to insure that an entrepreneur can have his or her business jet waiting for them the following day when they call for a flight.
5. What are the most important challenges that you see now for your business and how are you overcoming them?
First of all, what you need is to go raise the money to start the business. So, you better have a great business plan, you better put some of your own money on the table and you better deliver a great team, because the team will deliver the plan. The plan is just a PowerPoint; it's just some spreadsheets. The execution is critical, and execution is people. So, you better get some great people and better know what sort of people you want. Beyond that, it's customer acquisition and then service delivery. These are all simple things. It's what a small corner shop does or a small restaurant does. It's about build the business, build the client base, look after the customer, wait for the customer to come back again or encourage the customer to come back. I think that a lot of businesses forget that. They just seem to think that the customers will arrive where ever - no, you need to go get them and then you need to hold on to them. You need to look after them. You need to be a business, a place where people want to come back to and will tell their friends about you. If you're not doing that - it's all over. In today's world you need to be cash generative, I think, rather than rely on lots of finance. And be aware of that your customers' world has changed as well. People aren't spending lots of capital on new ventures unless they have to. They want to be able to manage their cash flow as well. So, if you can create a business that looks after people, serves them, does what you say you are going to do without asking them to put a reward - you've, probably, got something. And that's, certainly, all part of the construct for Jet Republic.
6. You explained your business model very well, however, it seems to be quite challenging, especially, when it comes to the logistics...
No, no, no, that is relatively simple, because it just works through chaos: the place that most people want to fly from is the place that most people want to fly to, so you have natural pools of aircraft that arrive there. It's no different from any other integrated yet chaotic transport system. So, it works with taxi networks in cities, buses networks in cities as well. The difficulty you have is where people don't want to go back. Basic example of that is shipping containers coming out of China going in to the United States because the United States isn't exporting back: you're sending empty shipping containers home. And, obviously, what we see now is a lot of recycling going home. It's not very effective or efficient but, at least, they are sending something. Our world: people, generally, want to go back to where they started from. So, you have that natural harmony, that natural chaos of an integrated travel system. Again, not much original thought here, this is how most other transport systems work, free transport systems. Taxi networks, limousine networks are pretty good examples of that, they form their own natural patterns. It's where we try to impose patterns that we often see inconsistencies and inefficiencies. So, bus network, rail network, air line networks, which are hard to change, typically have more problems than one where you are allowed to reach a natural harmony, a natural pattern.
Prepared by Katia Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on June 16, 2009
