Outlier TV Interview With Tony McCombe Founder of Uplift In Kind Kids Flying Program

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Andrew McCombe:

Hey guys, Andrew McCombe here and welcome to Outlier. In this week’s episode, I’m in Nelson New Zealand where I’m actually speaking to my brother, Tony McCombe. He’s the founder of Uplift in Kind, and he’s doing some great things for the kids.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this, it’s my chance to get back at my brother. Let’s go and meet him.

Wow, this is an Outlier experience in itself. I’m with my brother, my oldest brother, Tony McCombe from Uplift in Kind. Tony, welcome to Outlier.

Tony McCombe:

Thank Andy. Good to be here.

Andrew McCombe:

Now, you’ve got a fantastic cause that’s happening right now. It’s certainly an Outlier in its space with Uplift in Kind, but it wasn’t always that way. Was it? How did the journey begin?

Tony McCombe:

Well, I’ve come a long way from being a surfy bum as you know, growing up in Dunedin, New Zealand with yourself and our other brothers is where it all began really. The high school system and I probably weren’t very good friends and the St Clair beach was quite an attractive option. So anyway, not sure if that’s the right term, but a bit of a sloucher in the schooling system and got round with the surfy boys at the beach and we had a good old time and did a lot of partying and could have probably gone sideways to be fair.

But got there in the end. I ended up moving over to Sydney, living in Manly, in Sydney, Australia with some friends, we went over there to have a surfy lifestyle and did that quite well to be fair. But was sitting on Manly Beach one day and a helicopter flew past and I thought that looked pretty cool. So that was the inspiration to send me back home, save a few dollars and get on and do myself a commercial pilot license.

So from there, I ended up with a bit of experience in the aviation industry and flipped that on its head and now I’m trying to give back through that experience and network of people and thing that I’ve seen on the way I suppose.

Andrew McCombe:

Okay. So we’ll get into that shortly, but my last memory was of your feet leaving the bedroom window as you were sneaking out and running away from home.

Tony McCombe:

Was that when I ran away for three months?

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. So tell us, why did you do that?

Tony McCombe:

Oh well, people were trying to tell me what to do and I wasn’t having a bar of it and the old man’ a good example. I was a bit of a law unto myself to be fair. So off I went, I snuck round to my mate Paul’s house and I hung out there for the first month until his oldies kicked us out and I then went around to my mate Barney’s and we did another month there and then moved on to another joker’s place until I decided in the end I better get my act together and go home and apologize to mum and dad and go and hang out with the family.

Andrew McCombe:

So did you run out of money?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah that’s it? Yeah, pretty much.

Andrew McCombe:

So obviously, there’s this family situation where you feel like your values aren’t the same as the family but there’s also the schooling side of it, you mentioned that, I know school wasn’t for you, you felt a certain way with school and the reason I’m asking is for the Outliers out there who are feeling this sort of stuff. Obviously my perception is they try to put you into a box a little bit as well.

Tony McCombe:

Yeah. That’s exactly it. You’d need to sit in there and check the boxes, tick them off and make your way through the system that just made absolutely no sense. It seemed like a load of garbage to be fair. And I couldn’t understand, with algebra, when how A plus B equals C. I just couldn’t really grasp how that was going to serve me in life. The only way I could put that together was thinking, maybe they’re teaching me how to learn, but to learn a load of rubbish made no sense.

So that’s when surfing became probably more of a priority. Probably a bit lost, I didn’t really understand what this is all about. Everybody else is doing it. And most of them are getting through it and they’re doing well whether or not they agreed with the system was another story, but they were doing the right thing. Whereas I was probably rebelling a little bit .

And what was the catalyst for moving to Australia?

That was probably the freedom factor, just to get away and be my own person. Go and live and have an adventure, go surfing. Go and hang out with the boys, go partying to be honest. Yeah.

Andrew McCombe:

So that’s one side of it. How were you feeling as that was happening? Like knowing that you were doing that and it was fun and that, but did you at any point question yourself around what’s next? What am I going to do? What I am doing in my life?

Tony McCombe:

I think it was that helicopter flying down the beach at Manly that something went off in my head and I was like, “Ah right. I probably need to get organized.” I’d been bumming around effectively. That was the catalyst for get your life in order pretty much. And I’m glad I did.

Andrew McCombe:

So it’s really fascinating. Isn’t it? A helicopter flying overhead. A lot of people think that’s crazy. How can that be a life determining, or life defining moment, but for you it was. Tell us what happened next.

Tony McCombe:

Yeah. In Australia, you could make better money than in New Zealand. So I stayed on for a few months and made a wee bit more money, went home with not a lot. A few grand in my back pocket and went out to the local airport. And I actually started flying helicopter and my few grand didn’t go very far. In the end I was even biking out to the airport to go to these helicopter lessons.

And I did work out through that process and ran out of money not far through that process, but worked out that I’d probably like to fly aeroplanes more so than the helicopters. So back to Australia, actually it was to earn some decent money to have a proper contribution to go toward this license. And so I went away again, this time to The Gold Coast, with some friends and we worked really hard and now I was determined to get this license and do something with my life, I suppose.

Andrew McCombe:

So just on that biking to the airport, how far was the airport from home at the time?

Tony McCombe:

I think it was about 17 or 18 kilometres away each way. The local newspaper thought that was quite hard case. And they ended up taking a photo of the young dude coming out on his mountain bike. Biking out to his lesson.

Andrew McCombe:

So obviously early signs of commitment when commitment wasn’t that forthright I guess, when what was being presented to you originally with schooling and that wasn’t so attractive, but once it became attractive, the commitment started to rise?

Tony McCombe:

Look, I remember it blew the old man away. Cause I’d go to him with ideas and he just thought I was a dreamer, and I was. He’d be like, “That won’t happen.” And I’d shown some commitment to this commercial license. I remember going to Central Otago one day with him, for a drive to do something up in Clyde.

And I came back with him and I was telling him about what I wanted to do. And he was actually listening and I was like, “Yeah, he understands. I’m serious now about what I want to do.” Cause I had been a rat bag. So it was good. He was on board and went from there.

Andrew McCombe:

So what did happen from there? You finished your license. Did you do it on the Gold Coast or did you come back and do it or?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah, no. I came back to Dunedin and did it out at the Taieri Airport and I was working part time for a catering company actually. I had finally got the commercial license and then now I had a job where I could work. But if any flying hours, came up that the local Aero Club needed me to go do, like fly doctors to Alexandra or stuff like that, or do a local scenic, then they’d let me shoot away.

So it was awesome. They were actually really good to me to make sure that I could get ahead with what I was trying to achieve within their business. So I was very grateful to those people.

Andrew McCombe:

So was that part of the training or you’d actually become almost an intern at that point?

Tony McCombe:

No, I was qualified now, but any commercial pilot that gets going out there will tell you it’s all about trying to gain some hours and you can’t gain hours because you haven’t got any experience and because you haven’t got the experience, you can’t get the hours. So it’ a little bit catch 22.

So you do what you can and you go out and you mow the air strip at the airport or you help paint the fence at the Aero Club, that’s what you did. And so eventually I managed to accumulate enough hours, which then got me a proper job in Wanaka flying skydivers. So yeah, perseverance.

Andrew McCombe:

So flying skydivers, how did that look every day?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah, that was all right there. They’re a crazy bunch of people, the skydiving fraternity, but awesome. Yeah. It was a fantastic gig.

Andrew McCombe:

So a great way to build up the hours?

Tony McCombe:

Awesome.

Andrew McCombe:

And immerse in the lifestyle, I guess, too?.

Tony McCombe:

Yeah. In Wanaka, a great place to live and I ended up flying on a certain type of aeroplane that led me into a job on the West Coast at the end of the Hollyford Track which is one of New Zealand’s famous walks. So a mate of mine had been an aircraft engineer and would go and fly out of the Hollyford in the summer season. And he was going to go back to Christchurch and do his engineering. So he said, “Do you want to go jump into this out at Martin’s Bay,” is what it was called.

So I got trained up to do that job.

Andrew McCombe:

I here it’s quite an Outlier destination.

Tony McCombe:

It’s the best job I’ve ever had, to be honest. All the jobs that I’ve had subsequently. You’re your own boss, you sat out there in the lodge, they fed you like a king. You’re in the most beautiful part of probably the world or very close to it. And I would take guided walkers from the Hollyford Lodge, which was the last day of the walk, they’d spend, it was either three or four days and we’d finally take them out on their last day to Milford Sound. Stunning, world-class.

Andrew McCombe:

And what’s the vision at this point? Is it more jut to build up your hours? Do you need a certain amount of hours as a pilot to get certain levels or how does it work?

Tony McCombe:

Until you get to a point it’s all hours. So once you’ve got your private pilot license, which you have to achieve before you can get your commercial pilot license, and then once you’ve got your commercial pilot license, you’ve now got a license to learn. And so then you learn and the next big milestone is probably the thousand hour mark and then while you’re trying to achieve that, you’re then thinking about where am I going to get twin engine time?

Because the airlines won’t look at you unless you’ve got a time in an aeroplane, that’s got two engines. So that then becomes the next big hurdle, trying to find an operator that will allow you to fly their twin engineer aeroplanes, because everybody wants that time. Cause that’s sort of the most vital time that will take you to the next step into the airline industry and on from there. So it’s quite a process.

Andrew McCombe:

So, in New Zealand being quite a small country in itself, there can’t be that many opportunities. Did you have to go abroad?

Tony McCombe:

I did. After working out at the Hollyford Track, I went to Botswana for a year and flew around the wildlife camps out of Maun at the Okavango Delta. There were about 50 pilots over there and it was interesting, of which a pilot population of 50 ish around 25 to 30 of them were Kiwis. So the good old Kiwis were out and about trying to get their hours up. Right next door, South Africa, of which there was only probably 10 of them.

So there was more Kiwis there than South Africans, and then there was an Aussie and a Frenchman and a few other nationalities. But the majority of the pilot population in Maun were Kiwis. So it was good time.

Andrew McCombe:

Well you must have had some great stories out there amongst, was it like the safari type animals?

Tony McCombe:

Yes. So you’ve got your elephants, and your lions, and your cheetahs, and hippos and crocs. A fantastic experience. Maun itself, the majority of the people that live in the town, it was quite large for an African village so to speak, about 30,000 of which most people would live in their mud huts, traditional mud huts with the odd supermarket and a bank. And then our accommodation was slightly better but nothing flash, to be honest.

So we would be there to service the camps, which was a seasonal thing. And which was most of the year round, about 10 months of it. And we would fly foreigners from Maun out into the Okavango Delta, which is very popular flood land in Africa for viewing wild animals. So there were probably 30 or 40 different camps out there ranging from a backpacker style camp to, I think it was called an Abu, elephant backed safari camp.

It’s something like 1500 US dollars a night, minimum of five nights or something. So you could go out for a hundred US dollars a night, or you could go right through to the super flash. Yeah. And so the Okavango Delta catered for everybody and anybody and it was just unbelievable. To see wild animals in their environment, which we got to do quite often when we would overnight in the camps and that we would wander out with guides or in the mokoro which were the dugout canoes. We’d go out there with a few beers and go and wind up a few hippos. A pretty cool experience.

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. So starting to stretch your comfort zone from Dunedin, to back and forth to Australia and then out to the West Coast, Wanaka, and then the West Coast and New Zealand, how does it feel when you’re at in another country and obviously it help having 25 Kiwis with you, but how does that start to feel in the growth picture?

Tony McCombe:

It was pretty lonely to be fair. Probably a little bit homesick when I was in Africa, but the problem I had is I’d been spoiled because I’d flown in Fiordland and it just can’t get any better. Africa was beautiful for the experience and the wildlife, et cetera. But it’s a very barren, flat land if you like with just with swamp and rivers and a bit of foliage. So from a pilot point of view, apart from the air strips being quite a hard case at times, especially if a storm’s just been through and they’re quite muddy and slippery, the actual navigating was very boring.

Coming out of Fiordland to go to fly in the flat hot, it wasn’t that good. The flying was okay. But the experience was meeting the friends and the people and the comrades that I made. They’re some of my best friends today, were mates that I made in Botswana.

Andrew McCombe:

Any good stories from while you’re were out there?

Tony McCombe:

Or some of them, I probably shouldn’t say, but it was a great time. Lots of flying, plenty of socializing and good bunch of guys. So can’t ask for more than that.

Surely you got more stories than that?

Andrew McCombe:

More Botswana stories?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah. Well, there is one about Pete.

Old Pete from Auckland.

A mate of mine and I went out one night in the Okavango Delta. We grabbed another friend’s crappy old Land Rover. And the problem with the old Landy was that the starter motor was gone. So we thought, oh, how are we going to get that going? We’ll what we’ll do, is we’ll back it up an anthill when we get out into the Delta, we’ll be alright. So yeah, off we went, grabbed a couple of beers and a piece of steak and a fry pan.

And off, we went to go into the Delta just on dark. Cranked up the fire before sitting around having a few beers, cooking a steak and in the distance, there was quite a distinct cat noise of grrrrr . So old Pete from Auckland, he knew better. He goes, “There’s no worries, that’s just a lion. And they’re all right. What you do is you crank the fire up.” Okay. Well, Pete will know. So we cranked the fire up and another couple of tins in and then we hear this cat again and then it got a whole lot closer and it had gone dark by now and we’re like, oh, that’s a bit sussed, but “Yeah, no, Pete just said just crank that fire up.” So away we went, we had this fire roaring. Any way, another half an hour would have gone by and nothing, no noise or anything, completely dark, sitting there. And we’re just into the steak now, which is probably what a cat likes.

But we hear this grrrrrr and there’s this thing just outside of where we could see, which was probably 15 or 20 metres away. And it was a cheetah. Quite a distinct purr on one of those coming out of the dark. So we scarpered into this Land Rover and hid in there for a couple of hours Anyway, old Pete from Auckland got out his night vision goggles that he’d ordered online.

We’re talking a long time ago now, so they can’t have been that good. But anyway, he reckon it was all clear. So we jumped back up on the roof of the Land Rover. Cause they come with those racks with a ladder that you go up. Anyway, I didn’t last long. I was back inside within about 15 minutes. Then he came back down with all these yarns saying he’d seen baboons and all sort of things.

So anyway, the next morning when we woke up, we went for a bit of a wander around and we bumped into a bunch of locals that brought some people out for a guided mokoro, which is a dug out canoe trip in the river. And we went over and had a yarn and then said to them, “Well, according to Pete, we’re in a part of the Delta where there’s hardly any lions, and what you should do if there are any is crank the fire up.” And they said, “You’re in the most lion infested part of the park, and the last thing you should ever do is light a fire.”

So anyway, we went back to the Landy, rolled it down the anthill, dropped the clutch and away we went. No dramas.

Andrew McCombe:

Very good. The power of innocence?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah.

Andrew McCombe:

And so where did you go from Botswana?

Tony McCombe:

Came back and flew in Wanaka again for a while and accumulated some of that twin engine time that I was talking about, flying Britten-Norman Islanders which are a bit of a classical old aeroplane. We’d fly those into Milford around Mount Cook and acquired the time that I needed that then got me up to Wellington to Vincent Aviation which I flew freight and light twin engine aeroplanes and on instruments which was the next time that you need to acquire to really satisfy the airlines with some twin time and instrument flying time, which is flying around in the weather and through the clouds and navigating with your instruments. So that was the next step.

Andrew McCombe:

And then I guess there’s a period of time where you decided to own your own business in the (Aviation) space?.

Tony McCombe:

Yeah, So I flew for Vincent’s for a year, which then led on to Origin Pacific and ended up based in Nelson, flying for the airline there for a few years and was one of the first of a handful of contract pilots to actually get laid off. And eventually the airline failed, unfortunately. So jut after I’d been laid off, an opportunity came up to buy a little air ambulance business called Flight Corporation, which I bought off a friend and jumped into that and gave that a good go actually, and got involved in the air ambulance industry.

Andrew McCombe:

So Flight Corp itself was tourist flights as well as air ambulance?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah, we did scenic flights and trips out to the Awaroa lodge in the Abel Tasman and over to the Heaphy Track to Karamea. And then around that was the air ambulance work for the local hospital, which we had a contract for. So I had that business for about five years and then sold that onto a bigger operator and ended up working for them for nine years thereafter, managing their air ambulance business.

Andrew McCombe:

So after all these years of flying for someone else, selling your own business, and then moving on for nine years with the other company, how did Uplift in Kind come to be?

Tony McCombe:

I had actually been involved in another business called Seats Left Over, which was a software program to assist the airlines in selling their leftover seats. And that same idea had carried through with what I could see was going on in the back of aeroplanes and helicopters, where we could actually make good and not make money like the Seats Leftover idea was for, but actually just give back to people for the resources effectively already going.

And it’ an opportunity for the operators to actually use a resource, costs them nothing to give back. And so I was at that time commuting out of Dunedin to Auckland for the Starship Air Ambulance. And I was going up there week on week off. And I took my idea to five of the child supporting charities, Pillars who take care of children or families who’ve got a parent in prison, that look after kids or all families around kids that have been born effectively with broken hearts.

And then there was The Child Cancer Foundation who look after children right through to teens with cancer and there’s CanTeen who then take care of things at that point for people going through a cancer journey and also Make-a-Wish. So I ended up talking to five major charities and they all loved the concept.

And so I said, if we could bring your children and/or their families, these distractions from what they’re going through, would they be keen? And of course they were. So I then took the idea to the aviation partners, and some volunteer pilots too, who put their time and effort and money to rent aeroplanes, to take these kids and their families up for some fun. And so that system has now grown into a nationwide network of predominantly commercial operators with helicopters, aeroplanes, and even the indoor skydive in Queenstown, for goodness.

Andrew McCombe:

So, well, that’s a really good word, I guess, or value. What was your key inspiration even like, if you look at who you approached in the early days from a charity perspective, was there a reason you approached them, like from a personal perspective?

Tony McCombe:

Yeah. Well, we grew up with a handicapped brother, right? And so dad was a big part of the intellectual handicap society. And so that probably rubbed off on me, as where was my opportunity to give back. Dad had given many years of his life to support our brother and the society behind the handicap kids. So that’s the inspiration for talking to the charities and saying, let’s do some good.

Andrew McCombe:

And so you are doing a lot of good. How does Uplift in Kind work now?

Tony McCombe:

So, yeah, like I mentioned, we’ve got the network of operators or pilots around the country. What’ll happen is the charities will come to me and say, “We’ve got a family doing it a bit tough here. What have you got in the way of something to offer them so we can take them away from some of this hardship and get it out of their mind for half a day?” And so I’ll reach out to whoever is in that location and our operators will always bend over backwards to make this happen. They love it. The companies that have come on board are family owned businesses.

They’ve never ever asked for anything in return. They’ve never made it about our marketing. You must do this. You got to have so many followers, this or that. There’s never ever been any requirement for anything. They jut get a kick out of it. We get a kick out of it. And so do the families that we take for a flight.

Andrew McCombe:

What type of children do you have? And is it all children? Or could it be anyone?

Tony McCombe:

No it can be anybody. Yeah, we have young people, we have teenagers, we can have adults. We took last weekend, Seraya and her mum, they were supported by Pillars. And they’ve had a bit of a tough time from what I understand. We don’t really dig into the depth behind that. If the charities will put them forward, then that’s acknowledgement enough.

But the feedback I had is that Seraya and her mum had some awesome quality time flying around Christchurch in a helicopter last weekend, thanks to one of our partners, GCH Aviation, big supporters of our program.

Andrew McCombe:

I guess for the families with sick kids too, it must be a real burden, not a burden having obviously the sick kid, but it must change the way they live and how they’ve got to do things. So getting some time out for them too, must be important.

Tony McCombe:

Huge, huge. And what I see when I’m not at all of the flights, but the ones that I’ve either flown or been part of, you will often find that it’ the families that weep and get upset and it’s the teary stuff. And the kids are usually the ones that are unwell, they’re just happy. Just wrapped.

Andrew McCombe:

So they’re not thinking about it too much. They’re just getting on with it?

Tony McCombe:

No it’s the folks or the family. They get really teary.

Andrew McCombe:

And just on the volunteer side of things with the pilots and that putting their hand in their own pocket, that’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?

Tony McCombe:

It’s huge. And some of those pilots, that are all very experienced pilots, are laid off airline guys, so they’re doing it pretty tough and they’re still happy to persevere. And one of our guys has got his own aeroplane, costs him to take that up, quite happy. Another helicopter guy and a good mate of mine, Rick, he was in Botswana. He’s unemployed, quite happy to go halves in renting an aeroplane up in Taranaki.

I said to Rick, the first time he did it I said “Mate, you’re going to get a kick out of this. You’ll see what I mean.” And he rung me back and he goes, “Man, I get it.” And it wasn’t long after that. He went to another one. A couple of weeks later he took another young fellow up for a fly with his mates. And these kids, some of them might not be around now. That’s the reality. So that’s pretty heavy stuff, but it’s good.

Andrew McCombe:

So what it with humans you think that are willing to give back, even when they’re under duress themselves?

Tony McCombe:

I don’t know, I think it’s probably hardwired, you know?

Andrew McCombe:

Is that one of your planes now?

Tony McCombe:

No. That’s my rain though.

Andrew McCombe:

That’s good New Zealand weather. But look, they’re good people. Everybody’s got a story, right? Everybody’s got a cancer story that they’ve been around it. They’ve seen it. Some may have had it, survived it, not that we’re all always taking flights with cancer, but primarily that comes into the fray and it’s probably worth adding you don’t need to also come from one of those charities.

If you’re doing it tough and yourself or a relative, puts your name forward, we’re going to try and take you up and have have a good time, find you something to go in an aeroplane or a helicopter and go and distract you.

So what are some other stories you’ve had for some of the kids, or some of the teenagers, or the parents?

Tony McCombe:

Well, there’s lot of stories, but I remember personally we took the DC-3 in Ardmore for a fly. We were able to put 25 kids on the DC-3 which is an old airliner, a bit of a classic old tail bragging airplane. And went out to the five charities and said that you can bring five kids each. So we took 25 kids and Santa came along cause it was Christmas time. And then there was a couple of other flight attendant and stuff like that. And I sat next to a couple of young kids and they were fizzing and it tuned out they’d never ever been on an aeroplane.

So one of the ladies from Pillars rung me not long after, we’d just flown three of their young girls. I think one of the girls might’ve been supported by Pillars and she brought a couple of her friends and we took them flying over Auckland for a scenic flight. And she rung me up, she was almost in tears, this support worker going, “For those kids to even go to the beach is a massive ordeal for them and here you are taking them flying over the city?”

That feedback coming back to me, that’s what makes it worth it for me. And that’s what flows through to the operators and the volunteer pilots and everybody involved. The volunteers at the charities and that too. They’re all just good people trying to help.

Andrew McCombe:

So that’ a good point. You’re not doing it for any money at this point in time, are you? It’s not about the money?

Tony McCombe:

It’ not about the money, no. It’s about trying to get that message out there and let people know that there’s an option out there if you want to go out and have some fun. Come for an Uplift in Kind.

Andrew McCombe:

And so for the young Outliers out there, or potential Outliers or people who are in your scenario when you first started, directionless or feeling lost, or haven’t got a purpose. To me there’s a lot of hope in your story with this. But what advice would you have for them. Cause it’s not always about the money, right? But because money becomes a barrier for a lot of people before they even start, what would you say to those people?

Tony McCombe:

You mean the money is a barrier because, in the example, it’s expensive, the option I chose, and how did I get around that?

Andrew McCombe:

Yeah. Well, that’s another one. You haven’t chosen exactly a cheap option to learn and grow and become who you are. But a lot of people use money as an excuse before they even start and go, “That’s going to be too expensive, I’m not going to do that.” So what would your advice be to those people who, still want to be that Outlier, that part of themselves, what would you suggest for them?

Tony McCombe:

Well I was up for thousands and thousands of dollars, but the money, I don’t even remember how the money was an issue. It’s that commitment. It’s that “Right I’ve got a vision. I want it.” I was passionate about it. I was passionate about aviating and the rest just falls into place. You’ve just got to get that mindset, get yourself to the place. It’s not a challenge anymore. It’s actually enjoyable. It’s just steps. So, just take the leap. Yeah.

Andrew McCombe:

And again, I know that’s every Outlier I interview. That’s exactly what we all do, right? We sort of jump off the cliff and then look for the roadmap. But I still know that stops those people because they’re looking for the sign before they jump. They’re looking for the trampoline to push them back up or the safety harness or whatever. And it’s a really interesting concept to grasp until you do it. But how do you put their mind at rest before they jump off that cliff?

Tony McCombe:

I don’t know. I see it everywhere though. It’s really annoying a people’s idea or dream will get hot down by other people who make the assumption that you can’t, or you’re not good enough, or you can’t afford, don’t listen to it. If you want to do something anything’s possible. It’s that old cliche, isn’t it? But just put your mind to it. It’ll happen. You’ll look back and go, “Wow. It’s done. What’s next?” You can do anything if you put your mind to it.

Andrew McCombe:

If we look at Uplift in Kind, it’s not a revenue generator at this point in time. So Tony McCombe has to survive, take after that basic human need. Are you living on savings. How does it work for you?

Tony McCombe:

Savings do come into it. The Lindsay Foundation have come on board with us and given us come sponsorship, it’s not for wages or anything. It’s for our messaging, for video production and our social media and stuff like that. I’m very very grateful to the Lindsay Foundation and the family behind that for supporting us. But it’s all passion driven basically. It takes up an awful lot of my time.

Also behind the scenes. I source aircraft for clients. So it works in quite nicely with what I do for a living, sourcing aircraft, for the higher end folk though. Private jets and helicopters, but it’s almost doing good, the way I see it, it’s doing good behind the scenes. It does good for my business because it just wraps up really nicely around it and I’ve already had comments from clients that it’s because of the fact that what you’re doing for the children and the families is why we look at you as someone that we would come to, to source our aircraft. It has a positive spin back, but that’s not how I saw it, but that’s just what’s happened. If you’re going to do good. Good things happen back.

Andrew McCombe:

Just a processional effect? So what do you say to those people that say, “That’s not a business, you’re not an entrepreneur, that’s not a cause, you’ve got to make money. How can you make money from this?” What do you say to those people?

Tony McCombe:

I don’t care about the money and I don’t care what they say. I’m very passionate about the program. I see what it’s doing for the families. Happy days. I don’t care what they say.

Andrew McCombe:

And so, again, back to the Outliers that are out there, who are going, “How am I going to make the money? Where’s the money going come from? How would you summarize it again?” I know we keep saying the same thing, but it’s highly important to me to articulate this message, to those who are standing on that cliff face, looking to jump off into their dreams going, “How’s that going to make money?” And they’ve got their parent on their back. They’ve got society on their back, all wanting to have the dream of a house and a picket fence and two cars and 2.2 kids. What do you say to them?

Tony McCombe:

The money will come, right? If you find your passion, money sort of becomes irrelevant because, if you’re living your dream, you’re happy and people think money makes you happy, but it’s not. You’ll be super wealthy, if you’re happy. And so actually dollars in the bank aren’t what make you happy, but they will come if you do what you’re passionate about. If that make sense?

Andrew McCombe:

So what I’m hearing is wealth is actually not about money. It’s actually about an internal thing, probably a value or value set that you have, and that the more you express that, then money’s a by-product of that.

Tony McCombe:

I think so, if I’m totally honest, when I was young, I wanted to have the flash this, and I wanted to, I’m really interested in real estate. And I wanted to have heaps of rental properties and this’ll be me and I don’t care for that anymore. It’s too high a risk. I did go about that. And I was quite successful at times, but my risk appetite has gotten lower and lower as I’ve got older. I’ve had a couple of business things that haven’t worked out so well, but I don’t care for that anymore. I love what I do. That’s the reality, and so I think my passion and enthusiasm for what I do is potentially infectious because as far as Uplift in Kind is concerned, everybody loves it and it’s doing good. So what’s wrong that?

Andrew McCombe:

Well it’s a great indirect marketing tool isn’t it? And what I’m feeling is it’s genuine. There’s no false agendas or fakeness about it. It is what it is.

Tony McCombe:

It just is what it is. It’s just this beautiful cycle of using something that’s already going to do some good, which makes people happy, which make everybody involved happy. That’s cool. It’s a win for everyone. It’s awesome. I’ve always liked win, win wins, and it is, it’s a win-win win.

Andrew McCombe:

So speaking of wins, the kids win, their families win, the charities win, they get some experiences for the kids, et cetera, that the support is winning, but what other support do you need from a bigger picture? So what’s the bigger picture for one. And then what support do you need to make that happen?

Tony McCombe:

So for now it is pretty much myself with a little bit of support in the background. We’ve got the Lindsay Foundation supporting us with the social media and the video production but this thing is getting bigger than Ben Hur, cause it is so cool and everybody loves it.

So the next steps for me is probably add some administration, support, being able to employ someone to do that. I would like to get a full-time videographer because our content is gold and just showing people the fun is just where it’s at. It’s only been around for 18 month.

We started out in a little four-seater in Dunedin and took the Stocker family for a fly. And now we’ve taken nearly a hundred children flying 18 months in,. We’ve gone on a DC-3 a couple of times, we’ve had Jonty in a private jet looking for his star one night over Christchurch in collaboration with GCH Aviation and Make-A-Wish, the Storm Troopers turned up to see him off.

We’ve got Jacob going on the 787 Dreamliner Charter to see the Southern Lights coming up in September, which was kindly donated by Viva Expeditions. This is how it goes. I ring them up and I wanted to know what it would cost for us to get a couple of seats. And these seats started about two and a half or $3,000 and make their way up. And Rachel, from Viva, she doesn’t know me from a bar of soap, goes, “Have four on us.” You’re joking, that’s the love. That’s it. That’s coming up shortly. So just coming back to a little four seat Cesna, Dreamliners and we’re talking to other operators about some really cool stuff for the kids.

Andrew McCombe:

Well, again, it’s another win there with the operators, they are getting to make a difference through you making a difference. And what I love knowing that your wealth profile, you’re very much about connecting people. How important is that in the process for the Outliers that are out there, maybe getting more awareness on how they like to operate and then using that talent in relation to their passion to maybe make a difference in some form in their life, how’s that important to you?

Tony McCombe:

For me, that’s my skillset. That’s what I do. I love connecting people. So I don’t know if you’re talking about all Outliers, whether or not that’s their natural ability, but for me, that that’s why this whole thing has formed, because I love getting out and chatting to those that I know and getting amongst it and organizing stuff. Let’s make some stuff happen and do good for the kids and the families.

Andrew McCombe:

So clearly an incredibly passionate, profound cause that’s making a huge difference to a lot of kids. When you look back at that, when I look back or I see that memory of your feet leaving that window as you’re running away from home, because you’re not feeling like you’re fitting into the school system, maybe not even into society, a bit of a misfit. What advice do you have to those feet leaving that window?

Tony McCombe:

Do it again. You’ve got to go find what you want to do. Go find that passion. Yeah. And there is the road you should take and then there’s the road that you do take. And I think people, if they’re unsure, chill out. It’ll come, don’t force it because if you go to force it’s a lot further down the track. You’ve jut got to let it turn up. There’ll be a light bulb moment. Some people have their light bulb moment at 20 and some don’t have it until they’re 50. It’ll come. Just enjoy the journey in the meantime.

Andrew McCombe:

Fantastic. Well, Tony, you’re officially an Outlier. Your mother would be proud of you.

Tony McCombe:

Thank, Andy.

Andrew McCombe:

Well, there it is guys. I hope you enjoyed this inspiring Outlier episode with Tony McCombe for more videos, resources, and information, visit www.Outlier.tv or connect with us on our social media pages below. I’m Andrew McCombe and here’s to living the Outlier life, outside of the comfort zone. I’ll see you soon.


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