I recently spoke to John and Martha King, co-founders of King Schools and and co-authors of LIFT: How to Start, Run and Grow Your Own Successful Business.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

John: We started out swinging for the fences, trying to make a huge amount of money in a business for which we didn’t have a particular passion, a lubrication service for truck fleets, and we went broke. Afterwards we said, “Wow, that hurt. Let’s not do that anymore. Let’s do something fun until a serious business comes along.” We started teaching courses for pilots, a subject for which we had a great passion and which let us fly our own airplane around the country while working with pilots. It’s been 47 years, we’ve made millions of dollars, and still haven’t found a serious business.

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?

Martha: The secret of business success is to seek out and take care of the needs of customers, fellow workers, and vendors. 

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea and know it was worth pursuing? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test business ideas?  

John: We had a demonstrated passion for flying and decided it would be fun to teach pilots for a living. Learning pilots take formal “ground school” lessons as they learn. Ground school traditionally is provided once a week for seven or eight weeks. For pilots living in remote areas such as on ranches in Wyoming, North Dakota, or Montana, this requires driving hundreds of miles into town each week. Our original business proposition was to provide the entire ground school courses in one weekend in hotel meeting rooms in hub cities in rural areas. We marketed the courses by mailing to learning pilots within about a 300-mile radius of a rural hub city. We personally taught the classes in hotel meeting rooms 50 weekends per year for 10 years. I taught the learning private pilots, commercial pilots, and flight instructors in one hotel meeting room, and Martha taught learning instrument pilots and instrument flight instructors in another meeting room. During that time, we developed the skills of getting into a subject in a way that did not confuse the learning pilots. We developed jokes that helped illustrate our points. Over a decade we had taught over 500 classes each and finely tuned our delivery.  

When home video became available friends started telling us, “You should put these courses on video.” My response was, “This goes to show you don’t know anything about our business. It won’t work on video. Success requires our personal dynamic presence in the classroom.” Our advisors said, “I don’t know how you can say it won’t work if you haven’t tried it.”

When we did try our courses on video, our polished delivery came through on the video and our customers loved them, and the video lessons got great results for our customers who were preparing for knowledge tests. We were able to use our direct marketing skills to sell the courses nationally. Soon we were teaching half of the pilots in the country learning to fly. 

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Martha: Folks often ask us, “How come you are still eating regularly after over four decades in the same business?” Our reply is that we follow two simple rules.

First, we have always solicited customer feedback and been very responsive to it. Our philosophy is that our business success is based on seeking out and taking care of the needs of our customers. We won’t know whether we are taking care of their needs unless we actively solicit customer feedback and respond to it.

Second, we have kept up with changes in technology. We started out giving live classes using overhead projectors—that’s where you put transparencies with the message on glass with a light underneath and mirrors projected the image onto the screen. From there we went to video cassettes, which allowed us to vastly multiply the size of our audience because we could mail the courses out to learning pilots everywhere in the country—and even internationally. And learning pilots could take ground school in their own living rooms. Then we put the videos on computer compact discs, CDs. Next, we put them on digital video discs, DVDs. From there we put our courses online. And then we developed apps to let folks take our courses offline on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?  

John: We recommend you PLAY with TNT. I will explain that soon.

PLAY is our mnemonic to suggest that you practice habits that allow you to accumulate knowledge and skills that give you something to sell that will benefit your customers.

Here’s what our word PLAY stands for:

• Passion – Successful entrepreneurs need a Passion

• Lots of interests – They help you develop more passions

• Always learning – Deeper knowledge of topics turns interests into Scrabble letters

• Yet again – This gets repeated because you have made these behaviors habits

These are, in our opinion, characteristics that most successful entrepreneurs have that help you get Scrabble letters. We think everything that you know more about than other people do, gives you something to sell. We call those things that you know more about than other people do, your Scrabble letters.

When people hear the word Scrabble, most instantly think of the board game with letter tiles that has been around for generations. The way the Scrabble board game works is that the more valuable letter tiles you have, the more valuable words you can spell. And the more valuable words you can spell, the higher you will score. The secret to winning the board game is to spell valuable words.

Now in the board game Scrabble, you only get seven letter tiles. And you don’t get to choose the letters, you draw the tiles blindly from the pile. But the good news is that in the game of life it’s much different. You can have as many Scrabble tiles as you want, and you get to choose what the letters will be based on your interests and passions.

Our Scrabble analogy says that areas in life and business that you know more about than other people are like Scrabble letters. And the more areas of knowledge you know about than other people, the more successful business ideas you can put together and the better you will do. So, one goal of an entrepreneur should be to develop areas of knowledge you know more about than other people, so you can put them together to make winning business ideas.

Even if you haven’t started a business yet, you are sure to have some Scrabble letters. Maybe you’re really good at public speaking. Maybe you can create websites that look fantastic. Maybe you’re a great salesperson. These are all Scrabble letters and each of these skills can be put together with other skills to create successful businesses.

On the other hand, maybe you have a Scrabble tile like a passion about smartphone technology, or a love of modern music. These passions might not seem like they can help you in business right away, but at some point, those Scrabble letters might combine with something else to be helpful after all. The goal is two-fold. Always be collecting Scrabble letters and always be looking for ways to combine your letters so you can create new words.

In our case we made a successful business out of teaching aviation ground schools. Our story in Scrabble letters goes like this:

• Aviation – was our first passion and our first Scrabble letter. It let us develop knowledge we could teach to others.

• Teaching – let us conduct small ground school (aviation knowledge) classes based on that knowledge. 

• Direct Mail – allowed us to advertise, which enabled large ground school classes.

• Video – created a product we could send out.

• Computerized Learning – made it much easier for students to learn.

• Internet Course Delivery – made the learning mobile and even easier for students.

• Internet Marketing – made it easier for customers to buy. 

It doesn’t take much insight for people to understand how these letters—our skill sets—interplay to create the structure of our business and how our Scrabble letters spell out B-u-s-i-n-e-s-s  S-u-c-c-e-s-s for us.

What’s interesting, though, is that in our case flying is a core passion that motivates us and gives us energy, and teaching is a secondary passion in that it allows us to share our aviation passion with others and earn a generous living doing it. 

Two other Scrabble letters, direct mail, and video are areas of interest that we turned into areas of deeper learning, and eventually, we learned enough to be able to call them areas of expertise. While they may not be the emotional-level driving passion that aviation is for us, they became Scrabble letters which helped grow our business.

So, if you understand that our passion for flying is a true driving force that energizes us and makes us excited to wake up every morning, but on its own loving to fly doesn’t pay the bills, you start to understand that a Scrabble letter of your passion will power your forward momentum in collecting other Scrabble letters. And from that, a good combination of additional skills can combine with your deep passion to become a profitable business.

Martha: As trainers, we use learning tools and memory aids like acronyms and mnemonics all the time. That's where PLAY and TNT came from, and they will help folks on their Scrabble letters journey.

PLAY is a mnemonic we use to remind entrepreneurs of habits that will help them acquire more and more Scrabble letters over time. TNT is a mnemonic we use to help entrepreneurs remember how to organize their Scrabble letters to make a dynamite business.

Collecting more Scrabble tiles is always a good goal and a fun part of life. Regardless of their current collection of Scrabble letters, here are four letters every entrepreneur needs to have in their collection.

Right up front, you need a strong passion. You need to build your business around something that energizes you while you're working and keeps you moving forward when it seems like things are going wrong. 

If you have two or three or five strong passions, great! Don’t worry yet about which one should be the one that drives your business. The value of specific Scrabble letters is based on the words you can create by combining them with other Scrabble letters. Your passionate pursuit won’t be standing on its own. It will be a part of the bigger picture.

If you don’t think you have one single passion that could light your entrepreneurial fire, you probably do but you’ve just told yourself, “Nobody would pay me to do that,” or “There’s no way to turn that into a business.”

Here’s a little booster exercise to open your mind a bit. Read this sentence and fill in the blank… 

— If I could wake up every day and get paid to _________________, my life would be fantastic!

If nothing comes to mind, come back to this sentence, and read it again later. Read it when you first wake up and see what comes to mind. Read it in front of your friends or your spouse or relationship partner and ask them to fill in the blank with what they think your passion is. Just keep coming back to this exercise from time to time and you’ll generate answers that will highlight your passions.

Beyond your strong passion Scrabble letters, entrepreneurs need these three additional Scrabble letters, or skill sets, as well:

• Salesmanship

• Response marketing

• Creating outstanding customer experiences 

There’s good news about the four Scrabble letters that are so important to entrepreneurs. You get to pick your passion so you’ll be working in a field that moves you. Our message is designed to help entrepreneurs deeply understand the other three and be well on their way to adding them to their collection of Scrabble letters.

John: Now TNT are things that will help you sell with your Scrabble letters. So here is our specific definition of TNT…

• Trustworthy - be Trustworthy

• Needs - seek out the Needs of others

• Triumph - with solutions to those needs

Trustworthiness is necessary to get people to be willing to depend on you. People trust someone they think respects them, has their interest at heart, is predicable, and plays by fair rules.

The way entrepreneurs get ahead is by seeing out and taking care of the Needs of others. A good way to find the needs of other people is to remember what we are all thinking all the time, and that is “What’s in it for me.” We pronounce that “WIIFM.”

The final T refers to Triumph with solutions to the need of others. Put your Scrabble letters together in ways that meet the needs you have discovered, and the solutions to those needs will provide you with a profit. 

In the end, your true entrepreneurial success will come from the words you create with your Scrabble letters to apply TNT. Greater success happens when you have more Scrabble letters that can be combined to make even more words. And of course, with our Scrabble analogy, more ‘words’ means more avenues for entrepreneurial success.

Collecting Scrabble letters needs to become a skill set in and of itself. Pursuing knowledge pays off in ways you would never anticipate. Until you actually acquire a new Scrabble letter, you don’t know how it might be combined with other Scrabble letters in your collection and how valuable it will become.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

John:  Effective leaders provide meaningful and rewarding work in an atmosphere of civility and respect. When we hire a new employee, we get them aside and say, “Let us explain our obligations to you. It’s our obligation to provide you meaningful and rewarding work. That means meaningful and rewarding to you on your terms, not ours. And we insist that everyone, including fellow employees and customers, work with you in an atmosphere of civility and respect.”

When work is meaningful and rewarding to people, they stay with it. A high percentage of our employees have been with us for decades.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

Martha: Use TNT with everyone you work with. That means be trustworthy, seek out the needs of others, and triumph with solutions to their needs.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Martha: The three best tips for working with everybody are TNT. First, be trustworthy. Second, the secret to success in working with people at all levels is to seek out and take care of their needs. And third, triumph with a solution to their needs.  

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?  

John:  Everybody is interested in “What’s in it for me?”, or WIIFM.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Martha: A business is not employees or assets. A business is the identification of a customer need or want that you can fulfill profitably. 

John: Successful entrepreneurs leave everyone they come in contact with better off. Society greatly benefits from entrepreneurship.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.