BORN TO FLY: BREAKING BARRIERS IN AVIATION AND BUSINESS || ROBIN PETGRAVE || EPISODE 076
1/24/202657 min
In this podcast episode, we sit down with Robin Petgrave for a powerful and deeply personal conversation that traces his journey from humble beginnings to becoming one of the most respected helicopter pilots and aviation entrepreneurs in the industry. Robin opens up about his upbringing, being born in Jamaica and raised in the United States, and how early dreams of movement speed and freedom shaped his desire to do something extraordinary with his life. Long before aviation entered the picture, he was driven by competition discipline and the belief that his future could be bigger than his surroundings.
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First 90 secondsRobin Petgrave· Guest0:00
In fifth grade, instead of spending my lunch money on lunch, I would save it. And then after school, I'd get on the buses to see where they went, and I explored the whole Boston transit system. One day I wound up at Logan Airport, and I'm seeing airplanes take off and land, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And then one day I saw a helicopter, and the helicopter came in, hovered above the ground, floated around the airport. So you see this little Black kid running through the airport. Went to college, got out of college, went to New York just to act, and then all the good jobs, all the big parts... I was getting little parts in commercials and TV shows and stuff, but all the big parts were here in, in LA. They were all casted in Hollywood, so I'm like, "I'm in the wrong place." So I moved out here to LA, and then when I was out here, I went on a sightseeing flight, and the pilot was a guy that was about my age. And I was like, "Man, you must have joined the Army when you were young-" [laughs] "... 'cause, like, you, you're my age. I, I thought I'd be old when I could fly it." And the guy's like, "No, you just pay and took lessons." I was like, "You can do that?" He said, "Yeah." I'm like [laughs] "Okay. Well, hell, if you can do it, I can do it." [laughs] And I opened up the phone books, right? Phone books, that was a long time ago, like, you know, phone books.
Speaker 2· Host1:05
Yellow Pages.
Robin Petgrave· Guest1:06
Yeah, that was before, like, cell phones and stuff. And I saw flight schools, and I went there and I was like, "So I could just pay and take lessons?" And they said, "Yeah." And I was like, "Well, let's go." I had $2,000 credit on a credit card. I swiped that thing down like I was in Vegas. I'm like, "Rack 'em up, let's go." A mantra for an entrepreneur, if you got something you love and you wanna do it, you just start taking steps in that direction and things will fall into place. And sure