Transforming Air Travel with Lita Quetnick: A Deep Dive into Private Space

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rockstar podcast. I’m excited for today’s interview. We are talking to the CEO of private space and what she does is she helps people to breathe better, eat better, and sleep better when they fly. So I’m excited to talk about that a little bit later, but first we’re rocking out today with Lita Quetnick.

Hey, Lita, you ready to rock?

Lita Quetnick: I’m ready. I’m ready. Thank you, Tim, for the introduction.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So we always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success in your business that we can be inspired by.

Lita Quetnick: Oh, wow. Well, I was charged with taking all of the employees from Daimler Chrysler across the Atlantic when they merged the companies and created an amazing product, which I thought the public should have. Which is really the genesis of what I’m doing now, because I realized that the public deserves more when you fly.

And so I’ve dedicated the bulk of my life to creating a product that can do that.[00:01:00]

Tim Melanson: Wow. Cool. And so now not everything goes as planned though, right? So there’s some things that don’t necessarily work out well and that’s called the bad note on this show. So I’m wondering, can you share with us something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered?

Lita Quetnick: totally. Well, you know, when I was putting that operation together and I literally put it together, at least to Lennon’s, my client who is the CEO of Dunlap Chrysler Aviation at the time had found these old United first class seats. And the airplane that we were using was an Airbus and it was tracked completely different.

So even though we were on a deadline, we had to take everything out and retract and re engineer the tracks to accommodate these United seats, which were made for Boeing equipment and we were flying Airbus equipment. So that was. A real curveball.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So what happened?

Lita Quetnick: Well, we made it work and we made [00:02:00] it on time. And I guess that the, the aftermath of that is that the day we were starting, it snowed and the airplane had to be de iced and we were on what’s known as a hard stand, which means you don’t have a guaranteed slot at the gate, even though we were operating as an international scheduled flight carrier in Stuttgart.

So, fortunately, because. Daimler Chrysler is a revered company in Germany. We, my station manager at the time, talked to one of the guys at Lua and the, the guy pulled out a deicing truck that hadn’t been out on the field and he brought it over to the airplane. We got di till we made our slot time, so it had a happy ending, but it was squirrelly for a few minutes.

Tim Melanson: Well, and, and in something like that, I don’t know if there’s any way that you can plan for that or like, or is there like, is [00:03:00] there

Lita Quetnick: Well, you can’t. I mean, you know, in this particular case, the whole world’s airlines negotiate for slots, landing rights at certain times, twice a year. And if you don’t get what you want, you do a barter trade system. But we were definitely the new kids on the block with the one airplane operation at the time.

So we had to really be resourceful and now you can’t plan for it. You just have to know. What’s available in the environment that you’re working in so that you can draw upon those resources.

Tim Melanson: Okay, right on. Wow. Okay. So now the next topic we want to talk about is a little bit about the band. So now I’m wondering who do you have around you in your business that help you be successful?

Lita Quetnick: Well, for sure, I have a group of amazing advisors like Anne Rhodes, who did all the HR for JetBlue and has done, helped us [00:04:00] immensely. But I’ve also been taking some classes from Cardone Ventures, Natalie and Brandon Dawson, who are amazing at team leadership and what it takes to grow a company. And. The insight that they give somebody with where you need to be at what point in your growth cycle.

So I’m learning so much to make it successful. And if I didn’t have that input, you know, I probably wouldn’t have the confidence to know this can be a huge success.

Tim Melanson: Isn’t that interesting that like really the input from other people to help you to see that you’re on the right path is so valuable, isn’t it?

Lita Quetnick: Well, it is. And also they open your eyes to things you might not have thought of or seen or knew, but didn’t think it was happening quite so quickly. And, um, it takes. Being able to be open to people that have been there, even if they’re in totally different industries. I mean, in this case, Brandon Dawson was in [00:05:00] audiology, which is a hearing aid company has nothing to do with airlines, but he understands the growth trajectory of companies and what you need to do when during that growth period.

So that’s phenomenal.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So how do you go about finding the right people then?

Lita Quetnick: Well, some of it’s trial and error and some of it is talking to your advisors. I mean, I have been fortunate that I’ve had a knack for hiring even when I was doing these shuttles for Diamond Chrysler and I did a second one for Proctor. and gamble between Cincinnati and Brussels. I’ve been able to draw, find people that want to be involved.

And I think one of the hallmarks of my success is making sure that those individuals have authorship of the company. So it’s not like, Oh, my idea, my operation, my, my, my it’s no, it’s, it’s a we thing. And it’s, [00:06:00] When you select people, making sure that they know that it becomes theirs and that their authorship has a major role in the production of whatever it is you’re doing

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Okay. And so what do you do to find those people then?

Lita Quetnick: well, you look at companies that are succeeding. And for example, in maintenance, I ended up. Asking some maintenance people, you know, who was a great leader. And I interviewed a number of executives from different large scale airlines and I cold called and I got lucky. I mean, but then also now through Ann Rhodes, I’ve been able to source.

Some other executives that I’ve met, I mean, the challenge is we didn’t get funded soon enough. And so I lost some of the great people that I had been introduced to. [00:07:00] But generally, at the end of the day, the final thing is talking 1 on 1 with them. And now what I do. If I have a hole in the team, or I need to get something in, I make sure that after I think they’re the right person, and we’ve gone through, you know, a series of conversations, I always want them to talk to other team members without me so that the team members and the individual in question can formulate their own.

Input as to whether they want to be with these kind of people or not, because at the end of the day, it’s a team effort. And if you have individuals that don’t get along, that’s the death knell of your operation. So, I don’t want to micromanage that I don’t consider myself a micromanager anyway, but it’s really important when you bring people on, if you’re excited about them.

That you allow them to be excited about the other senior team members that are in place and let them make their own decisions [00:08:00] so that they feel they’re a little bit in control of their destiny.

Tim Melanson: Right. Um, so now you’ve been in business for quite a while now, right? At least a decade, right?

Lita Quetnick: Well, then working on it, we’ve had a several false starts with the financing. I mean, our total capital raises 180 million and we are very close to putting the first 55 million. In the bank, and that will start everything going. So, while I’ve been working on it for a really long time. We hadn’t really been funded other than with seed capital at various points in the road.

I have actually been self funding since coven because it wasn’t a good time. It’s been a real challenge. As far as that goes, um, but now what’s happened, sometimes delays are a huge benefit because in this case, the technology to be able to breathe better, sleep better, and eat better [00:09:00] wasn’t really around.

And actually it was my former client and colleague from Daimler Chrysler that has the certification for Something called aviation, clean air, and that removes 80 percent of the toxicity in the air that passengers breathe. So that we’re putting that on and humidification, which only is standard on a 787 or an Airbus 350, it’s not on any narrow bodies.

And then we’re also putting a low cabin altitude. So those 3 elements combined create an environment. where passengers literally will breathe better. Eat better and sleep better and the pressure, for example, on somebody’s body at flying at altitude at 6000 feet is totally different than flying at 8500 feet.

And then the technology to. Remove the [00:10:00] toxicity didn’t exist 10 years ago, and so it exists today. So, in that sense, even though we’ll be flying top 10 US to London markets with. 46 seats and 160 seat airplane and a beautiful service and amazing food seats where you don’t have to step over anybody and the ability to talk to your traveling companion or have privacy even aside from all that the overarching thing that we’re doing is removing toxicity.

From the air passengers breeze, and that is huge. And that will be something that will be the hallmark of what we’re doing. It’s not having a beautiful service. That’s competitive with other airlines and maybe priced at, or just below all of that’s fantastic in a market. That’s really rich that for decades has done 80 percent load factors.

So the market risk is really low, but the big thing we’re doing is to give [00:11:00] people. An alternative way to fly that can be applicable to narrow bodies and it doesn’t exist on narrow bodies today.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So speaking of technology and how things change, like, what about the marketing side of it? Like, are there any major differences in how you get fans nowadays versus maybe back when?

Lita Quetnick: Well, there absolutely is. I mean, we do have a chief commercial officer that was the senior VP of sales at United and knows everybody and knows the market and knows all the traditional channels, which include, of course, um, customer relationship management systems and, you know, booking through. Whether it’s not really the expedious, but, you know, the normal booking tools, but now, today, through the hub spots and through relationships with some of the mentors [00:12:00] that I’ve had, we probably will be implementing a marketing program where we can have an outreach to passengers globally so that they can learn about us.

And I think that’s really important. I’m convinced that that awareness, I mean, if people don’t know you, they don’t flow you. So now I’m really starting to work on. You know, my social media, which I was not working on for a very long time, but more so being able to use these tools to get passengers. I mean, ideally, we’d like to have all our seats sold before we even start flying.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, of course. That’s the ideal scenario, right? Yeah. And isn’t it cool that now, like there is a more direct line to your customers too, than there used to be, I think 30 years ago, right? You can, you can really have a relationship with your customers directly, right? Without having to go through a billboard or a TV station or something like that, right?

Lita Quetnick: Well, right, because I mean, [00:13:00] social media is such a big bang and they hear about your I’ll do little, you know, minute clips and, you know, I’ve had a lot of responses from people. I don’t even know saying, yeah, we would love that and just, you know, getting the word out. Now. I’m starting to select. You know, 4 or 5 of the little clips that I’ve done that are good, because some of them are not good, but you got to get it all out.

You can’t just it’s never perfect. Um, but then recycling those every couple of weeks, so that people, because new people come on new people see it. Although I can’t really say that I have 100, 000 followers. I have 3500 followers. So I’m working on that list.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Well, 3, 500 followers is still pretty big. Right, And especially considering back in the day, you’d have to pay for that kind of traction, right.

Mind you, I guess the main difference now is that anybody like the playing field is pretty level now, anybody can get that kind of following. [00:14:00] So, you know, how would you think you would stick, you know, would stand out, you know, against all your competition?

Lita Quetnick: Well, I think I have to do more videos. I mean, if the name of the game is videos, videos, videos, and they don’t have to be long. I mean, Sabrina Cardone just turned 15 last week. She’s Grant Cardone’s daughter. Grant is like a real estate guru and now has about a million subscribers. 4 billion worth of real estate that he has amassed only in the last five or six years, even though he’s been in real estate for 30 years, she has a hundred thousand followers because she’s just doing reels after reels after reels and getting herself out there and giving a message.

Uh, and I think the more natural and, um, intentional that we can be about. Being transparent, the more people want to know what you’re doing, it’s when you’re not transparent and [00:15:00] you’re not intentional that, you know, people might think you’re aloof or it’s not something they might, but if you are just really natural, in addition to believing in your product, I think people want that.

There’s been so much bad stuff and lies out there. I mean, from product marketing to politicians, you know, there’s been a lot of mistruths.

Tim Melanson: yeah, yeah, exactly. And this is our opportunity to show people who we are. Right.

Lita Quetnick: Right,

Tim Melanson: Yeah. And, and I think that the other thing too, is that when you even just think about your own, your own patterns on social media, I mean, they’re probably, I know for me, there’s lots of videos that I watch are sort of pointless, but I still watch them. Right,

And when it comes down to it, I think that we put a little too much thought into like this video has to be perfect. It has to say exactly what I wanted to say. And oftentimes that’s not really the case. It just has to be you. Right. And people are going to [00:16:00] like, go, okay, I like this person, you know, this person’s got some cool content.

And then, like you said, every once in a while, you’ll probably will hit on something that’s like really good. And you’re like, okay, well, I’m going to take this one. I’m going to recycle this one and use this one. Uh, but, but really you’re never going to get there if you’re always trying to find that perfect one, right,

Lita Quetnick: right, right. Well, I know. I mean, that was a transition and a hot moment for me to recognize that it’s okay to be authentic. It’s okay. Not to be perfect. It’s okay. That. You know, the ideas are really sound and good and people want what I’m talking about because I want what I’m talking about because travel is horrible today.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Travel is, is, has gotten a little bit weird over the last, like since, since, uh, lockdowns. Right. Yeah. It’s been different. Um, but on the other hand, like you say, there’s been some good technology advances and people like you out there trying to make things a little bit [00:17:00] easier.

Lita Quetnick: Yeah, healthier, healthier and better, you know. Really? It’s really important.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, for sure. So now what, I mean, we mentioned a couple of times, you’ve mentioned some mentors and some courses that you’ve been taking and stuff like that. What do you think about, like, have you always been open to getting coaching and mentorship from other people?

Lita Quetnick: Well, yes, but it’s been sporadic and hasn’t been consistent. I think consistency is an element that’s really, really important. And I’ve come to learn that along the way. You know, we get out of whether you’re go to college or trade school or whatever your profession is as a musician or whatever, we get into this mode where we think we know it.

And we’re okay with knowing it. And then all of a sudden we come to a point in our lives where we realize there’s just so much more out there. And maybe I could approach this person and learn from them. And so, as you start doing that, [00:18:00] it starts being easier and easier to take in input and you start learning about things you never.

Would have known if you hadn’t started reaching out. I mean, I could spend my whole life just taking self improvement courses or business courses or all that. And I wouldn’t have any time to start an airline or do anything else. So that’s not good either. You can get into that red.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Well then, so how do you decide which courses are valuable to take and which ones are just a waste of time?

Lita Quetnick: Um, well, I think it’s important to see what somebody has done. I’ve had a great opportunity to see 2 or 3 individuals grow over the last 3 to 5 years. And the growth has been so phenomenal and. The way they’re growing is the way I want to grow both as a person and with the company. So, when you see something that, you know, you can do, and it [00:19:00] can make you better than that, you know, you’ve got like a little voice that says, yeah, you know, you need that.

I think

Tim Melanson: The little voice.

Lita Quetnick: to follow your intuition also.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that that’s, it’s so underrated, you know, we, we talk about like, oftentimes in the bad note, when we’re talking about that, there’s a lot of people that will say, I, I had a feeling, you know, and then something really bad happened. And then also in the good note, I had a feeling, you know, it’s just something that really can’t be explained.

It’s just, we’ve got this kind of like thing inside of us that tells us which direction to go. And we tend to know. It’s just that we talk ourselves out of it, I guess, maybe on paper, it doesn’t look Right.

or something like that, but we, we, we know, and I think a lot of it is, you know, uh, especially when we’re dealing with other people, I think a lot of communication is nonverbal.

It’s, it’s, it’s, we’re picking up on these vibes that this person is or isn’t real. And, uh, maybe that even comes back to the videos. Maybe that’s [00:20:00] why the videos work so well, because you’re picking up on the vibe that this person’s real, Right, Yeah. Yeah.

Lita Quetnick: right. right. Yeah, it’s so much better than a phone call.

Tim Melanson: Exactly. And, Oh, it’s so much better than a phone call. Mind you, a phone call is also better than an email. It’s

Lita Quetnick: Oh, yeah, totally. Totally. You know, I can’t build a relationship on email alone. That doesn’t and it’s so easy to be misinterpreted in an email, especially if you have a wit or your sense of humor, throw in a little joke, and somebody doesn’t read it the right way.

Tim Melanson: Uh huh.

Lita Quetnick: then you can create. Uh, either anxiety or dissatisfaction or something negative without that being the other person’s intention and you haven’t seen their body language.

You haven’t really had the tonality of hearing their voice or anything. So it’s, I mean, email can be actually a dangerous form of communication.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I think that’s one of the really big pluses [00:21:00] that came out of the, all the lockdowns that happened is that the tools like zoom just improved so drastically. And now I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of my meetings on zoom.

Lita Quetnick: Oh, yeah.

Tim Melanson: I just find it so much better than number one phone, but it’s also even better than in person sometimes because you, you had out all that, all that commute time and then the distractions and the coffee shops and all that kind of stuff, unless you can go meet them at a conference room, of course, at your office, that’s different.

But, uh, but if you’re, if you’re meeting a lot of people and you have got to do a lot of outreach, zoom is super useful for that. Right.

Lita Quetnick: Right. Right. It is. It is.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now it’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s exciting your business right now.

Lita Quetnick: Oh, I’m so excited to tell you what we’re doing. Well, you know, the platform is top 10 US to London markets like a first markets are New York, London, and Miami, London, Miami has been exponential. But what’s really [00:22:00] exciting is, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve flown in the upper classes across the Atlantic, but almost all the seats, Delta’s new seats and United seats.

They’re all like jungle gyms and you’re claustrophobic and Virgin Atlantic. You have these walls and they’re really high and the cabin is cluttered. You walk in and it’s cluttered. We’re not having any of that. You’re going to walk into our plane. It’s going to be calm, warm, warm, Beautiful. There’s no step over in flight.

So all of these seats, if you’re sitting next to somebody with two and two, you step over their feet to get to the galley. No step over. Everybody has their own entrance, but it’s a low profile. So even though there’s a privacy screen, which you can pull up to have privacy, you can have it down. So you can actually talk to your seatmate, your traveling companion or anybody else.

You can’t do that on the business seats that are in all the airlines today. And even though, for example, [00:23:00] Emirates, which I haven’t been on, by the way, but I’ve had huge reports of how gorgeous and lovely their services. But, you know, if you’re way up front, you’re in a compartment and you’re totally isolated.

And if you’re in the other business seats, they’re still like compartments. So, so is, for example, Qatar, Qatar, you know, they’re all individual. And as I said, United and Delta, it’s like a jungle gym. You have these, you know, very high walls and you’re, to me, that’s somewhat claustrophobic. You’re already in a small space and you’re going to be in a small space for a long time.

So why exacerbate and emphasize the negative in an airplane? You don’t need to do that. And so we’re not. And so I’m excited about that. Then on top of that, we’re going to be removing toxicity. And so what we’re doing is implementing a special ionization system. What happens is all of these [00:24:00] toxic molecules, They glob together and then they fall out of the breathing zone.

So the passengers don’t breathe the toxicity and it’s phenomenal. Now, on top of that, if you add humidification, which gives you better hydration, yes, you should drink water on the airplane when you’re flying long distance, a lot of people don’t drink a lot of water and it would be nice if the air wasn’t so dry, which is the way it is on almost every airplane because of their Air conditioning system, so the humidification adds humidity to the air you breathe into your skin and allows you to cook better and all of it.

And lastly, we’re adding a low cabin altitude, which, by the way, the new 787s have that. And I think the new Airbus 350s, those are wide bodies put out by the 2 largest competitors, but none of the narrow bodies. And it probably is unlikely that [00:25:00] in the foreseeable future, i. e. the next 5 or 10 years, that aircraft manufacturers will be developing a narrow body that has these elements as standard.

So I’m excited about that.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Yeah, absolutely. So how do we find out more?

Lita Quetnick: Well. You can go to private space air dot com, which is our website. We’ll have a landing page on that. You can also fill out your information there and we will give you updates on a regular basis. Um, but that is the primary way of communicating with me and us.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So what was that website again?

Lita Quetnick: Private space air dot com

Tim Melanson: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, that’s really cool. It sounds really awesome actually. And, uh, I think, I think it’s going to work out quite well for you.

Lita Quetnick: Oh, thank you. Well, hopefully you’ll be 1 of our customers and you’ll love it.

Tim Melanson: Yay. Yeah. So that’s the, those are the long flights, Right? [00:26:00]

Lita Quetnick: Right? It’s a well, I mean, actually, New York to London’s only about 6 and a half hours. It’s about 7 and a half on the way back, but we’ll ultimately be flying out of the West coast as well. I cut San Francisco and LA out because I don’t want to put our. Our labor force at risk living in L. A. or San Francisco, because it’s pretty dangerous.

I mean, I’ve lived in San Francisco my whole life. And what’s going on in those 2 cities in California is really destructive and terrible. A lot of crime, a lot of looting, a lot of. Rapes, a lot of people defecating on the street. I mean, what city do you know, or have you ever heard of, that publishes a poop map?

People that come to the city so they know where not to go. It’s really, really sad. So, once all that clears up, and it’ll be probably at least five years, we’ll be flying out of San Francisco and L. A., but for right now, we’re not.[00:27:00]

Tim Melanson: Okay. Wow. I was unaware of that. That’s crazy.

Lita Quetnick: It is crazy.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. The world’s a weird place, isn’t It

Lita Quetnick: It is. It is.

Tim Melanson: That’s why we need more entrepreneurs to like solve some

Lita Quetnick: I

Tim Melanson: make it a better

Lita Quetnick: totally agree.

Tim Melanson: Right. And well, thank you so much leader for rocking out with me today. This has been a lot of fun.

Lita Quetnick: Tim, thank you so much. I love what you do. Keep doing it.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And to the listeners, make sure you subscribe, write, and comment, and we’ll see you next time on the work at home Rockstar podcast.