The Rainmakers: Aerial Cloud Seeding Unveiled

Welcome to the Eighth Edition of Airplane Mode - a weekly newsletter for the aviation community, with emphasis on Business Aviation, as well as the Business of Aviation. Leadership, M&A, Advanced Negotiation Tactics, Business Strategy, and applying a growth mindset are all topics covered here on a weekly basis. This week took a more lighthearted approach for some needed levity.

This publication is entitled Airplane Mode because we want to shut off the world for a few minutes (noise), provide quick and valuable insights (signal) to help you get sharper and stronger and clearer without having to read a library or listen to hours of talking. As we amass more data as a civilization, we need to select information that is important, valuable, and that we will actually utilize to grow!

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Today’s Menu:

• Headlines from across aviation.
• Meme Cleanser
• Setting “Impossible” Goals actually makes them easier than 2x Goals.
• Book Club
• Ace Update

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Headline Roundup ????

#1 - Garbage In, Garbage Out. Discernment required.

#2 - We are undergoing the biggest change(s) to the way work happens, and the way we will work going forward. Employers need to adopt a new approach toward younger generations.

#3 - I hate to belabor the beating of a dead horse (AI) but the “experienced pilot shortage” will be solved with automation.. ????????????

#4 - What if I told you that everything you know is a lie?

#5 - Here’s a follow-up to the above article. Peel back this onion if you’d like to burn an entire night alone at your desk, 100 tabs later..

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Meme Cleanser

Book Club - 10x is Easier Than 2x

No relation to Grant Cardone… Just Reverse Engineering and Big Plans!

The 10x mindset represents a seismic shift from incremental growth to exponential achievement - literally. At first glance, aiming for a goal 10 times bigger than your current capability may seem daunting or unrealistic. But according to Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the opposite is true—10x goals are actually easier to achieve than modest 2x goals.

How can that be? The sheer audacity of 10x thinking forces clarity and focus. You can't possibly attain goals of that magnitude by continuing your current trajectory. Instead, you must fundamentally re-engineer your path, shedding distractions and optimizing every variable for maximum impact. In effect, the boldness of the goal acts as a filter—allowing only the most essential actions and eliminating ambiguity about what's important.

With a 10x goal, there is no room for waste or inefficiency. You need to identify the one or two key drivers that will get you there and pour all your energy into mastering those skills. Furthermore, the vision of reaching such an ambitious destination keeps you motivated and pulls you forward through obstacles. The clarity of purpose leaves no doubt about which activities warrant your most valuable time and attention.

10x goals compel you to take a step back, reverse engineer success, and pursue only what will make the biggest difference. The scale of the challenge breeds extreme prioritization and focus. You schedule only revenue-driving activities. You say "no" to anything non-essential. You strip away distractions and optimize every minute. This laser-focused approach allows outsized growth in less time—proving that with the right mindset shift, 10x goals can be simpler to achieve than 2x goals.

This goes beyond the scope of growth mindset! This is a mindset replacement.

Ace Update

Ace is a cloud seeding skeptic, to say the very least.. He comes from simpler times. Times where - they didn’t modify weather, and they all ate dinner together, and the food was nutritious. Yet here he is - strong & silent, unbothered!

“Things don't just happen. They are made to happen.”

?― John F. Kennedy

I will be sending out an advanced aviation negotiators quick-guide to my email subscribers. I meticulously combed through all of my negotiations, the books, the lectures, and the courses and created a quick-guide that will easily walk you through the correct methods and tactics in a given negotiation with a desired outcome. Giving the quick-guide away free. Enter your email at my secure website below and be sure you won't miss it when it drops:

Thank you for reading Airplane Mode! Feel free to send me an email with your thoughts, comments, or concerns - or don’t! Either way hopefully this newsletter brought some actual value, even if it’s just Ace. You can reply directly to this article via comment, or you can reach me here on LinkedIn or at X formerly known as Twitter, or email via [email protected].