Hello fellow pilot,
You will, as a pilot, understand that Martha and I have passions for both flying and entrepreneurship. When Martha and I formed our partnership and marriage, we decided to be equal partners in everything we would do. It’s been 57 years and I am still struggling to be an equal partner. I want to make it clear right now—Martha is
only a little bit better pilot than I am.
In order to be equal partners, we felt we needed to be entrepreneurs; we considered it unlikely that a large company would hire us as equal partners. We have been partners in business ever since. We’ve been broke and not broke–we like not broke a lot better. We went broke swinging for the fences, as they say. We wanted to be big-time operators.
It wasn’t until we discovered our love for flying in the 1970s and started teaching ground schools that we saw our way through to make a living doing something we really enjoyed. When home video came along, we realized we could teach far more pilots on video than we could if we had to meet with each pilot personally. So we started selling our ground school courses to flight instructors, and then direct to consumers. Since then, we have learned to keep up with the changes in technology. We have learned to electronically place typeface, graphics, and animations on-screen behind us as we teach pilots. Plus, through the decades our courses have been delivered on CD, DVD, and now, online. As entrepreneurs, we learned to extend the reach of our teaching to many thousands of learning pilots. In the normal course of business, entrepreneurship has allowed us to be a positive influence on the broad aviation community.
You already know that we are inveterate teachers. We work hard to take relatively complicated material and clarify it, simplify it, and make it fun. If you share our passion for entrepreneurship, you may enjoy our recent book on the subject: LIFT—How to Start, Run, and Grow Your Own Successful Business.
Of course, we all have a great passion for flying. As you might guess, Martha and I have for decades been writing stories on aviation. We have put them together into our latest book: SKY KINGS, Flying Adventures with John and Martha.
P.S. For more information on both these books, or go to KingSchools.com/Books
Dear Martha and John,
My name is Nancy Potts and Barb Parsons has asked me to write a biography of Martha for middle school and high school students. I am a writer and have written 12 books so far and 3 are aviation biographies. I have a 4th that will be published later this month or next month. All my books are available on Amazon so you can check out my bio there and you can email Barb at baroma@aol.com. You seem to have a very interesting life. If you are interested in Barb’s idea please let me know. Sincerely, Nancy