Aaron Wilson Podcast Transcript
Aaron Wilson joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Aaron Wilson. Aaron Wilson is a venture capital investor, author, and serial entrepreneur who has blazed a trail and array of industries, including, but not limited to technology, human capital, private aviation, and private equity.
He received his bachelor’s degree in business from Binghamton University School of management, where he currently sits as a board member. And started his career in finance at JPMorgan Chase. Wilson is a co-founder at Approved Jets, one of the country’s fastest growing private aviation companies. At Approved Jets, Wilson and his co-founder, Kelvin “PJ Kev” Mensah, service a robust client base that includes, but is not limited to the NBA and NFL athletes, physicians, attorneys, technology entrepreneurs, and private equity professionals.
Approved Jets came to fruition in 2019. And since the company’s inception, they have generated over 30 million in revenue through organic growth strategies.
Well, good afternoon, Aaron. Welcome to the show!
Aaron Wilson: Oh, good afternoon. Thank you for having me, Brian. I really appreciate it. Happy Tuesday.
Brian Thomas: Happy Tuesday to you as well.
And you know, we go through different time zones, different weather patterns. As you know, we’re going through some very tornadic weather here in Kansas City. So, I’m going to hold on to my hat, cross my fingers that the power doesn’t go out, but hold on. So, Aaron, jumping into your 1st question, could you briefly walk us through your journey from your career at JPMorgan Chase to becoming a co-founder of one of the fastest growing private aviation companies Approved Jets.
Aaron Wilson: Absolutely. So, I started out my career, my post undergrad career at J. P. Morgan. I was an analyst. The role was focusing primarily on just auditing like functions working directly with the external auditor at that time, which was Deloitte and Touche. But it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. So I was looking for something that was significantly more dynamic, something that could be a lot more fast paced, something where I could be strategic with the moves that I was making and the role I was interested in a little bit monotonous.
So, I was actually considering going back, getting my MBA and rebranding myself, getting into a front office deal side kind of role. So, potentially investment banking, or in, like, an M and a capacity, or doing some work in equity research when I had actually spoken to a recruiter. Who had suggested that I take a look into recruitment prior to enrolling in an MBA program.
So, I took a look into human capital consulting and recruitment. Fell in love with it and was fortunate to excel pretty quickly, started my own firm in Manhattan alongside a former colleague. And we were fortunate to be able to scale that pretty quickly. I did realize during my time in the recruitment space that I developed an affinity for.
Hyper growth startups, there’s just so much more of an ability to make an impact as opposed to working with the more established fortune 100 and fortune 500 companies. So, while I, of course, didn’t enjoy working with the more established enterprises, it was just a different kind of feeling that you got when you were able to have a measurable impact on a startup.
So, I eventually transitioned out of the recruiting space and began working in the technology and startup space. And that’s where I met my co-founder, Kelvin. He was the head of sales at a startup. I was actually the strategic advisor to the CEO. So, and one day, he said, you know, I think that based on the client base that was built and based on the impact that we had where we were, we could do a lot more and in a more robust way.
If we went out on our own. And that’s when approved jets was brought to fruition back in 2019.
Brian Thomas: Love the story. There’s a story for every podcast and I’d love the ones, the, the entrepreneurs that really get out there and hustle. So, I really do appreciate that Aaron and jump it into the next question with the expansion into approved experiences, you’ve entered what you describe as the Lux Tech industry. How do you define Lux Tech and why do you believe this is a critical area for innovation?
Aaron Wilson: So how I define LuxTech is operating at the intersection of innovation and also servicing the luxury leisure and lifestyle space. Those 3 L’s luxury, leisure and lifestyle completely embody and cover so much right as it pertains to consumer goods as it pertains to different types of lifestyle oriented products as it pertains to travel and everything that people aspire to want and aspire to be. And it’s often overlooked because we focus more on utility driven products. And when I mean, we, I mean, in the emerging technology landscape.
So, with that, the Lux tech space is super important for innovation because there are big spenders who are in the space, and they want things to be easier. They want things to be more convenient. They want to be able to live their lifestyles on demand. So, we found an interesting opportunity in the market.
And we’re hopefully doing the right things to be able to satisfy a need and solve problems for individuals.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And it’s interesting how that works in a business. You start to see the market shift or there’s been some sort of disruptive changes and you have to adapt to it or in your case, maybe another opportunity here.
So, I appreciate the share. And Aaron, the approved experiences app was released in its beta version recently. What are the core features of this app and what makes it stand out in the luxury travel market?
Aaron Wilson: Absolutely. So, the approved experiences mobile app, it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s something that has been a long time coming.
We’re fortunate to have a very, very strong lead engineer, James. He’s, he’s excellent. And what we’ve been able to do Is focus on a few different core functions. Now, we’re going to continue to add some features as we go along. But some of the primary functions is membership to our social club for the elite.
That’s 1 component of. Excuse me, the approved Lux membership. In addition to that, a 24 7 concierge. And this concierge can do everything for you from making dinner arrangements for you, or sending a loved one flowers, or booking airline tickets for you, your hotel, ground transportation. Arranging a pickup for your dry cleaning, you name it.
In addition to that, we also have a proprietary news content feed that’s curated for our users based on what we know they like. Also, we offer access to empty leg, private aviation charters at a. Heavily reduced rate, so if you’re not familiar with empty legs. Hypothetically speaking, if someone were chartering an aircraft that was based in Miami and the aircraft was going from California to New York, that aircraft would have to be repositioned from Miami to California to pick up the passengers and then go to New York.
So, essentially, that aircraft would be flying empty as we would say, from Miami to California. So, that leg from Miami to California would be at a heavily reduced rate, just so that it’s not flying empty. And these are some of the opportunities and access that we afford to our members. And last, but not least, you have access to our luxury marketplace, the luxury marketplace.
Has access to private aviation charters, access to filler rentals, dot charters, exotic and luxury car rentals, ground transportation, and what’s coming soon is fine dining arrangements as well. So, those are some of the core features of the application and the membership goes for 9999 per month. We’re in the Apple app store right now.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you for breaking down some of the services that you offer, and an app makes it obviously very convenient. And then as you shared some, some examples of how you can provide some deep discounts or some flights. So, I appreciate that. And Aaron, last question of the day, looking ahead, what are some of the upcoming technology products you’re most excited about in your suite of offerings?
Aaron Wilson: Oh, that’s an amazing question, Brian, because. Man, I’m excited about everything. Sometimes I have to contain my excitement, but 1 of which is our end to end. Booking process. That is implementing and leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning within that booking process. So our technical advisor and board member has been heavily involved in us, scoping out exactly what.
Incorporating some of these more complex. Data science-oriented technologies would look like, and it’s something that we find really, really important, especially in the Lux tech sector recommendation technology, and then also streamlining the experience. So that vendors and customers both by leveraging our end-to-end experience, well end to end platform, don’t have to do a lot of back and forth when it comes to booking.
Because the more time it takes to book, the more cumbersome a process, it becomes the more irate both individuals on both end become right. The. Client who’s waiting for the perspective vendor to get back to them becomes irate because they want what they want now. Right? The vendor may become irate because.
They’re not necessarily getting a response from the client in a streamlined capacity, but they’re getting information. That’s piecemeal as opposed to consolidating all at once. So, to further explain that on the front end. We have a chat bot that’s going to be. Implemented in the form of a concierge on the front end for our vendors, we have a portal.
KYV is an acronym for know your vendor. We’re coining that phrase in the financial services space. We’re so used to hearing KYC. KYC know your customer, know your client, but something that is super irresponsible and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it that knowing your vendors, especially when you’re operating in the luxury space, and you don’t own every single luxury asset in the world.
Knowing your vendor is very, very important, and we’re trying to stay very far away from ever becoming close to being a peer-to-peer platform when it comes to vendors and clients interacting. If you’re a vendor, you have to be an established business. If you’re an approved experiences vendor, and we take them through the entire KYB process to ensure that, and that assists us with mitigating the risk of quality or the integrity of the quality of the experience of our clients being hampered For
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, you know, I didn’t look at that perspective, but know your vendor obviously is it’s important to you because at the end of the day, that vendor needs to do a great job for your clients, but you want to respect the vendor and that’s the great service they provide as well.
So, thank you. And thanks for sharing some of the technology and in that space and you’re developing. So, I appreciate that. And Aaron, it was certainly a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Aaron Wilson: Oh, Brian. I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to speaking with you soon as well. Thanks so much for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Aaron Wilson Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
