Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Jedrek.
Tim, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Before being the owner of Right Rudder Marketing, my career was in food manufacturing. I had worked my way up from entry level quality technician to leading the quality and food safety department as a quality manager.
It was one of my goals from the start to become the quality manager when I started working in the factories, but once I got there I realized I was overworked, stressed, and unsatisfied with my job.
In the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to be a business owner and “be my own boss”, but I didn’t know how to attain that goal. I had tried a few things in the past, but nothing ever became profitable enough to go full time. I had tried being a musician, a producer, and I had also sold sanitizing spray during COVID. Me and my father were also looking at commercial properties to start a restaurant or a bar. Luckily that was around the time of COVID and all of the service businesses like bars and restaurants closed down so we didn’t pursue that.
In the process of trying all these different businesses, I knew that having a website was important so I would spin up some websites via squarespace or wordpress. I got pretty good at it, learned how to code on the side as well, and then tried selling websites too.
Before Right Rudder Marketing, I had a few website clients. I had a restaurant, a lawn care company, some interior designers… I was willing to take any clients to grow the business.
Well as luck would have it around 2022 I was laid off work from the factory. Seeing that I had made some money on the side doing web dev and design, I put my whole heart and soul in launching a web dev/design business. I read a lot and studied how to make a profitable business.
In one of the books I read, it talked about going away from being a generalist and specializing in a certain niche. It also talked about how instead of just selling websites, you sell an entire marketing program that way you could charge more while delivering better results.
So I ran with it, but I didn’t know what to specialize in. However, aviation had a particular ring to it and it’s what I eventually landed (no pun intended) as far as specializing and niching down.
When I was working in the factories, I knew I wanted a career change – didn’t know it would be owning a business at the time – and was considering being an airline pilot so I had already started pilot training.
Well one thing led to the next, and I eventually got my first flight school customer. They’re a flight school local here in STL over in STL downtown airport called Ideal Aviation. I’m still with them today and RRM still does their marketing.
I kept it going and slowly but surely we kept adding on more flight school customers and we’re now around $1M marketing agency. I skipped a few steps there from first client to now, but a lot of lessons were learned along the way and I’m proud to see where we are and what we’ve achieved.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not. Losing our first client was rough. Hiring, training, and building the team has also been a never ending journey. I’d say terminating team members is probably one of the hardest things a business owner has to go through.
The first termination was a big learning point for me. At the time it felt like an enormous burden. The team member showed up consistently, tried his best, and put a genuine effort in. However, his performance was not the best and I knew it wouldn’t work out long term. I kept telling myself it was my fault. Maybe I didn’t do training right, or maybe it was how I managed.
Another time, I had one of my A-star team members quit. Again the same feelings. Maybe it was the work environment, my management, the way I did things.
In reality, it was none of those things. His heart wasn’t in aviation and his parents had a family business that they wanted him to take over.
Now, we’ve updated and upgraded our hiring process, we’ve expanded our training, and we make an effort to grow the culture the right way which I think helps mitigate some of the terminations and heart aches. People will come and go – whether that’s clients or it’s team members – but us as business owners need to have the right protocols in place so that when these things happen, the entire system doesn’t break.
As you know, we’re big fans of Right Rudder Marketing. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a marketing agency that specializes in pilot training schools (flight schools). We help these small to medium aviation businesses grow and scale to train more pilots and expand their fleets.
What sets us apart is one, our niche focus. Not only am I a pilot, but also people on my team are also pilots so we understand what our customers, and our customers’ customers, are going through.
Additionally, we don’t market the same way typical agencies do. What I see a lot of marketing agencies do is rely on WordPress and other page builders to launch and maintain a website. I myself as a programmer, I’ve hired a team of developers and specialists to build this stuff out the right way. We code our websites from scratch which helps on the SEO (search engine optimization) and GEO/AEO (generative AI optimization) front due to better page speed and efficient code that way our flight schools get seen on the top of Google and in AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, etc.)
What I’m most proud of is seeing the life changing results that our clients have seen. I’ve seen a flight school business that was almost bankrupted and about to go out of business, and with our marketing and our help, seen them get more student pilots and be able to expand their fleet.
What I want people to know is not really about us or Right Rudder Marketing. It’s more on the aviation industry as a whole.
I think many people still believe that becoming a pilot or pursuing flight training is out of reach and near impossible to do. What I want people to know is that that is completely untrue and false. It is definitely attainable.
It does take a lot of effort. You have to want it and really have a passion for aviation. You might need to make sacrifices, whether that’s saving a few several thousand dollars to train and go flying, or put in the time/effort and study the books instead of going out to the bar with friends… But it’s definitely worth it.
Especially now with recent legislation and regulatory updates, pilot training options are now way more palatable and getting a sport pilot certificate (which now you can fly typical trainer aircraft like a Cessna 172) can be done under $10k.
Seeing the world in the eyes of a pilot several thousands of feet in the air changes your perspective on life and the world we live in, and it’s an absolute privilege to be able to see things from this perspective. If you’ve been on the fence with becoming a pilot – I highly recommend checking out a local flight school (like Ideal Aviation in St. Louis) and going up in the air with a flight instructor.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rightruddermarketing.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rightruddermarketing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RightRudderMktg/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rightruddermarketing/
- Twitter: https://x.com/rightruddermktg
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rightruddermarketing
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/right-rudder-marketing-farmington
- Other: https://timjedrek.com/
