Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 5)

Joel Thomas: On January 6 of 2014, when I showed up at work, there were resignation letters. Everybody had quit and gone to work at another company. It was really challenging. I had just gotten engaged a year before.

To wake up on my birthday and not have anybody at the company was scary. I had invested in a large office space at the airport. I was left with two sales people and myself, Garrett, and Terry. They weren’t friends from before.

I met Terry from an aviation conference that I was speaking at. Garrett had been with me for two years at that time. He’s an older guy. He stayed. We worked from 2014 until recently to rebuild our company. This year, we were within striking distance of our best year yet from a revenue standpoint.

Sramana Mitra: When all this trauma was going on, what did you go down to?

Joel Thomas: $4.1 million in 2014. I was losing $80,000 a month for the first six to seven months. It was horrible.

Sramana Mitra: What do you attribute that success of being able to build things back to?

Joel Thomas: That’s a great question. I was heartbroken in a lot of ways. All these guys who had left were friends of mine. Generally, guys attribute their self-worth in society by how much value they’re creating for other people. I got sales agents making anywhere from $80,000 to $200,000. I was super proud of the value I’ve created there.

Overnight without warning, it just disappeared. I was on the verge of quitting. My friendships were gone. I give my fiance a lot of credit. She really is an amazing girl who tried to encourage me through it. I chose to dive back into work. I was really depressed.

My fiance at that time had called my parents and had my mom and my stepdad take me to lunch. She told them what I was going through. My stepdad said something magical to me. I told my dad, “This is what’s going on. I’m brokenhearted. I don’t enjoy going to work anymore. I’m losing all this money.”

He said, “It wasn’t them who built your business. You worked extremely hard. You created this brand.” My dad reminded me of these things. He said, “If you want to build this company again, you’ve got what it takes.” Those simple words changed my life. I felt energized.

That reminds me of another story where he impacted the trajectory of my life. When I was starting this company, he helped me financially. For every marketing decision, I would call him and ask for his opinion. One day he said, “You’re the CEO.” That happened in 2007.

Those three words empowered me to start making decisions for myself. I no longer looked at the business like he’s helping me out. I looked at it as this is my life and responsibility. He empowered me to build this company.

The Director of Sales came back to me a year ago. He called to apologize for the pain that he caused for me, himself, and everybody else. I forgave him for what happened. 

This segment is part 5 in the series : Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets
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