Why is this subject, “LIFT,” important in the world?
Entrepreneurship is at the heart of how people can help others and make the world a better place while earning a living simultaneously. Unfortunately, many of today’s entrepreneur educators (books, online video classes, websites, etc.) teach people how to be “successful” by leveraging some high-pressure sales tactic or social media marketing trick rather than how to be successful by helping others.
What is the pressing issue right now, and how are you addressing it?
While this issue has been problematic for decades, there seems to be a growing (incorrect) belief that entrepreneurs are somehow greedy and take money from people. Sure. Some do, and they should be called out for their bad, unethical behaviors. But we have found that the vast majority of smart, successful entrepreneurs are almost always successful because they help people get the goods or services they want for less than what it would cost them to create those goods or services themselves. We have always had a passion for entrepreneurship, and our book is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs understand both the steps to creating and running a successful business, but even more importantly, our goal is to help those aspiring entrepreneurs fully understand that the best path to business success is to help everyone along the way. The greatest success comes when you help your own employees, your vendors, and of course, your customers to get what they want and need.
John & Martha King Biography
What is your background in this subject?
We have participated in entrepreneurship and family-owned businesses since our high school days. Over the decades since then, we have built several independent businesses and experienced bankruptcy and tremendous success. We currently run the world’s most successful airplane pilot training company, with 50 percent of all pilots taking one or more of our classes.
What is something that most people don’t know about you?
Most people don’t realize that we have family members who are dramatically anti-business because they think all businesses and the people who run them are motivated by money. Besides helping as many people as we can reach, to be better at business by helping others, resulting in a better world all around, we also wrote LIFT to help those family members better understand our motivations and to grasp that successful businesses help far more people than just the owners of the business. The majority of successful entrepreneurs succeed by helping others and fail when they are greedy.
What are your passions outside of your career?
Assuming the strict definition of our career is our flight training school, we have a passion for flying and a never-ending passion for helping others by teaching them things we know. Our book is an extension of our passion for helping people and teaching. On the other hand, if you assume our career includes not only teaching flying but flying itself, and if that definition of career includes teaching entrepreneurs about business, you could say that we don’t have any passions outside our career. That’s actually a good thing because we have developed ways to incorporate all our true passions into our business. We wish the same result for everyone who reads our book and follows our advice.
Are there any social causes that you believe in and support?
We have supported several social causes over the years (and still support them). One example was following the lead of someone who used to work for us, and had a passion for helping recovering addicts. We followed that employee’s lead by hiring people who found it quite difficult to get hired elsewhere.
However, the social cause that receives most of our energy currently is helping entrepreneurs be successful. The ripple effect of those people helping others, will have an incalculable impact.
What is next for you?
We will always be participating in the daily business at King Schools, traveling to air shows, aviation events, and ceremonies around the globe, and flying to destinations for business and social connections. Now we have added to the mix our passion for helping entrepreneurs be successful by helping others.
LIFT
Tell me about your book.
LIFT — How to Start, Run and Grow Your Own Successful Business, is three books in one.
- It is a detailed guide for entrepreneurs to help them create and manage their businesses and marketing.
- It is a collection of insights and a guide to thought processes that will help entrepreneurs to be happier and more successful by serving their customers, employees, and suppliers.
- It is a collection of interesting small stories and anecdotes about our experiences in business over the years and our interactions with world leaders, famous Hollywood actors, and other world-renowned business people.
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Where can people buy the book?
LIFT — How to Start, Run and Grow Your Own Successful Business – is for sale at Amazon in ebook and printed versions.
