HATTIE: Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. This is the place to learn about how to start, run and grow a business. There are many of us who do just that, 10,000 Americans start a new business every day. The one common quality possessed by small-business owners is courage and people who take courageous action are heroes.

Throughout history, we have celebrated the accomplishments of inventors, explorers, soldiers and statesmen. In this country today, there is a new breed of hero. We call them the new American heroes. These are the small-business owners. These are the men and women who create work and wealth. Out of their imaginations and so often on the journey alone, they find ways to bring new ideas to life, to invigorate and to inspire everyone around them.

Jim Burr is a hero. First, because he's a pioneer; and second, because the company he founded, Rocky Mountain Helicopters, is saving lives every day. When there's a medical emergency, Rocky Mountain Helicopters is there.

(Editor's Note: We acknowledge that may people lost early-stage investment in the earlier bankruptcy. That is why we are doing this story. There is a human side to bankruptcy. Risk is part of business and we believe that although mistakes were made and markets did change, it does not take away from the fact that under the leadership of Russ Spray, the company has been turned around and is providing a very valuable service to the nation today).

The story of Rocky Mountain Helicopters has many twists and turns, just like so many small businesses, and this story starts with the man who looked up in the sky and got an idea. This man is the founder of the company, Jim Burr.

You've been an entrepreneur all of your life.

JIM BURR: All my life.

HATTIE: Have you ever had someone else sign your paycheck?

JIM: Not since I was in high school. And I remember seeing these helicopters flying over and I thought, `Those guys are leaving here and they're flying to places that would take me five, six hours to drive and they'll be there in 10 minutes.'

HATTIE: And how old were you?

JIM: Fourteen, 15-years old. And I was fascinated by that concept, that you could go from point A to B crossing all kinds of physical barriers that I couldn't cross. And they'll do it in minutes. What I did was I got my brother to cash in his savings and hock everything. My wife had some cash value in her life insurance that she cashed in and we bought a helicopter.

HATTIE: How much did a helicopter cost in 1961?

JIM: Thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars. One today is--the same helicopter sells--in equivalent--there's no equivalent, but if you wanted to buy a helicopter that does what that one did you'd pay probably $600,000. We came up with a small contract with the National Park Service, Zion National Park. So we signed this little contract and go. I don't have a pilot.

HATTIE: Oh, you don't have a pilot.

JIM: No. Don't have a pilot.

HATTIE: And you're not a pilot and you've never been in a helicopter till you bought one.

JIM: I'm not a pilot. I'd never ridden in a helicopter. So we finally we found--and back in--that period of time was pre-Vietnam. There are no commercial helicopter pilots available.

HATTIE: This was a little detail you hadn't thought of yet.

JIM: (smiling) Let's not point that out, OK?

And the day of the beginning of the contract arrived and we were there a day early and everything was fine. The next morning -- and I'll never forget this. It was about 10:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. The phone rings. It's my brother. `Jim, you're not going to believe this. But this may be the shortest excursion into the helicopter business in the history of mankind.'

The helicopter crashed as they were trying to fly it off the trailer to unload it.

HATTIE: Did you have insurance?

JIM: The saving grace is we did have insurance, of course.

HATTIE: There you go.

JIM: Picked up the second helicopter, did the same reversal, this time it turned out fine and away we went. That was the beginning of helicopters for Jim Burr. And it was...

HATTIE: Well, do you think...

JIM: ...downhill from there.

HATTIE: It was downhill from there.

JIM: It never occurred to me there was a possibility that it couldn't be done. Just--maybe that's being naive. Maybe that's being inexperienced. Maybe that's being young. Maybe that's being all kinds of things. But it never, ever occurred to me that this wasn't something that could happen.

HATTIE: OK. But isn't that a quality of people who start businesses? Meaning the people who don't start businesses, Jim, are the ones that are doing a check list and they're going down a zillion reasons why it will or won't work and they talk themselves out of it.

JIM: I think so. I agree with that. My attitude, right or wrong, and probably more wrong than right, has always been there'll be 200 reasons why you shouldn't do it. Give me one why I should. There were no other helicopter companies in this area.

HATTIE: Someone listening to this is saying, `Well, gee, it was easy to be--it's easy if you're the only one. You have no competition.' What is the disadvantage of being the only one?

JIM: Nobody knows they need you. How, in being first at any new idea, is an advantage I've got to figure out because you have so many formidable obstacles and barriers ahead. If you're the first one with a computer, as an example, you've got to figure out who wants a computer and why. And what can it do for them that they can't do otherwise cheaper and easier and faster and better? So you have a major challenge in creating a market for your goods or services. There are so many good ideas. There are thousands every day of new, good ideas. But how many of those good ideas actually get placed into production, into operation? You need to work at it persistently until you succeed. Hopefully, you don't run out of money, time, effort and energy before you succeed.

HATTIE: OK. Jim, how long did it take you till you were able to say, `All right. I've got a viable business here'?

JIM: I don't think I ever reached that point. I did reach the point where I said, `Yeah, this is a sustainable business and it has potential,' but I was always afraid, scared to death that for some reason or another, things that--beyond my control would occur and it would go down.

HATTIE: Even though you've created thousands of jobs.

JIM: Even though there's hundreds of people that work here, I feel a responsibility for them. I got them their jobs. They work for me. I have a responsibility to look after them. And the first and foremost and most primary thing that I had in my mind was that. The original company, Mountain West Helicopters, evolved into a really--kind of a big deal, always looking for other opportunities to fund and fuel growth because to me growth was everything. But that growth outstripped the capacity to fund it.

We had to take in --I had to take in -- an investor. And this investor who put up enough money to continue the company also felt like the mistakes that I had made in expansion and so forth were not consistent with what his views and goals were and control shifted from me to him. And within that year I found myself starting over. So I go back to some of these friends that are in the leasing business, some of these friends that are in the operating business and I wind up with a helicopter, one, and hire a pilot, put together contracts and I start over.

Within five years I bought for cash the company that had been taken from me. I received a phone call from one of our major customers. A major oil company that said, `It's finished.' `

What do you mean finished?' `Contract is over. It ends Friday. Have all your machines, have all the equipment in the field gathered up and back to the landing zone by noon on Thursday.' And then it occurred to me that perhaps the transport of aeromedical patients might be an opportunity. This concept that was learned in Vietnam that if you can bring a seriously hurt or wounded soldier to a hospital within an hour after his injuries have been incurred, the chances of saving his life is exponentially greater than in the second hour.

HATTIE: In other words, as a piece of advice you would give any entrepreneur is always be ahead, always be...

JIM: Absolutely. Always have two or three arrows in your quiver that can go in a different direction. If you're gonna put all of your ideas, all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, could be a problem. So always have an alternative. My analogy is the lily pad theory. The lily pad theory is that if you're a frog and you're on a lily pad, you don't jump from that lily pad until there's another lily pad, A, and B, that that lily pad is within your reach. So kind of always have another lily pad idea. We were constantly on the...

HATTIE: The edge.

JIM: ...on the edge.

HATTIE: Right.

JIM: Constantly looking for new financing and it became harder and harder to obtain. So I figured that the only way that two things would happen. Only way, one, I was ever gonna get any equity and take anything out of this thing would be to sell some of my equity to the public. And two, in order to obtain financing to help fix the balance sheet we're gonna have to have a public offering. There are some things that people need to consider when they consider that public offering...

HATTIE: OK.

JIM: You need to consider that you're no longer in control. The heart and soul, the builder, the founder, the idea, the dream goes away. That's being replaced now by an active board of directors. That's replaced now by an active group of underwriters; an active federal agency, regulating called the Securities and Exchange Commission, an active group of accountants and lawyers and people that really are not interested in what this company is about. They're only interested in, `What's this company going to do for me?' I read ... that the founders and builders can't be the managers.

HATTIE: Right.

JIM: That was me.

HATTIE: OK.

JIM: I find that the journey is far more challenging than the destination, and we butted heads from the first day. And the old golden rule applied, and I'm out.

HATTIE: What would you do differently?

JIM: I would never, in the wildest emphasis that I can place, have ever considered taking this company public.

HATTIE: OK.

JIM: And I probably would not have ... placed so much emphasis on growth... would have tended more to minding the balance sheet, minding the bottom line, and less on growth volume.

HATTIE: Because the growth is what got you to the point where you needed the public offering. The fast growth.

JIM: It takes a huge amount of capital to grow. It doesn't take very much capital to be profitable. And the old adage Ben Franklin said, `A penny saved is a penny earned.' Learn to save pennies rather than make additional pennies, because if you increase your growth by double and only increase the net bottom line by 1 percent, what have you gained? Well, you've gained a whole huge balance...

HATTIE: Overhead.

JIM: ... overhead, debt, red ink . . .that can choke you later on. So one of the things is concentrate on what is profitable and what is rewarding with what you've already got and not so much emphasis on being bigger, better.

The Lightbulb:

HATTIE: If any business school wanted a specimen of a classic entrepreneur for its students to study, it could easily use Jim Burr. Even after hours of questioning, poking and prodding, they would never be disappointed in what they would find. He is true to his own ideas. A first-to-market, fearless leader who has led the way. A light in the darkness. A bulldozer for the wreckage, a strong-willed some would say tough guy who likes to have things his way. He has created hundreds of jobs, delivered thousands of hours of service to customers and generated millions in cash flow. Today what he created is in the hands of others.

Why?

He says he outgrew his capital. The lesson? Pull back to self-fund or be ready for others to be part of the decision-making. This is not a sad story. It is actually not even unusual.

The entrepreneur who plows a field and plants the seeds often has to leave the future's harvest to others.

RUSS SPRAY: This is an A-Star helicopter that has been retrofitted now with an ambulance kit.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Now, meet Russ Spray, the president of Rocky Mountain Helicopters, which is now owned by a huge conglomerate. He has lessons about growth.

RUSS: The company was reorganized; on the investment side, we recapitalized the company. To make the company very, very strong which we were able to accomplish with two major investors. We then focused on our core business. The components on the aircraft are constantly changing. And because a helicopter has so many moving parts, most of the helicopter is replaced about every 4,000 to 5,000 hours.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Russ took the position of CEO with his eyes wide open. As an executive with the company, he knew it was on the edge.

RUSS: I found myself as a newly appointed chief executive officer in a Chapter 11.

HATTIE: Let's just say the word, bankruptcy.

RUSS: Chapter 11 filing simply allows a corporation to forego paying its bills for a short period of time as defined by the court. Going forward from the time of the filing of 11, you make all your ongoing obligations.

HATTIE: OK.

RUSS: The past obligations now have to be worked out and so to come out of a Chapter 11. When you hear of companies coming out, they have developed a viable plan that allows them to finance out those debts agreeable to the creditors. Hopefully the company can then come out and go forward as a very viable company.

It's a very difficult process. Less than 10 percent of the companies under $100 million that go into a filing actually ever survive. Once you make the difficult decision to go into 11 -- and you try everything not to go to an 11 -- not to go to court, because it's a very expensive process. For this company it was $18 million in legal fees between the company and the creditors. And so it's very, very expensive. It takes a lot of money that could have gone to settle debt obligations.

HATTIE: How long did it take to recover?

RUSS: It was about 16 months. The closure point came when within the first year of operation, following the restructure, we reached the point that those customers who were nervous went on and sought other vendors.

Those that understood the process and understood our services continued to renew services with us and our business started to grow. And you know, you've made it through because you're not just maintaining but you're actually growing your business. And we've succeeded to grow. We came out of 11 at a $48 million -- as a $48 million company. We'll close next year at about $65 million. So we've been steadily increasing our revenues each year.

RUSS: (walking within the hangar and pointing to an aircraft) This is actually an old customer that's getting another aircraft.

HATTIE: OK.

RUSS: And so it's being painted to their specifications.

HATTIE: With over 500 employees, 80 in Provo's headquarters and the others located at some 50 customer sites scattered through the US and Puerto Rico, staying in touch continues to become more complicated.

RUSS: Communication is essential in our business because we have to, one, launch our aircraft generally within five minutes of a call. So we have very rapid response for emergency services. We also, because we're spread across the United States, we have to have good communications with our field sites.

ETHAN BORBORKA: We need to integrate all the different business functions into a common data piece.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Ethan Borborka oversees the technology.

ETHAN: We blend telephony. We blend the information systems. We blend manual operations, paper systems and bring them all under the umbrella of information systems. It's kind of interesting.

We've got a huge telecommunication requirement in the company.

With our aircraft that are operational 24 hours a day, it's critical that communications flow smoothly back and forth between the remote crews. We operate in 29 states. We're dispatching aircraft in Northern California from our Arizona offices. We're dispatching aircraft flying in Kentucky out of our Omaha offices.

What this box provides us is a single vendor solution which provides us with communications utilities. It's Web ready, has all the HTTP connectivity that we need, has database management built in, has incredible security. This particular box--because of the technology, because of the architecture, it's virtually impossible for hackers to get in.

Data processing is really the fabric for aviation management. It's really what drives the business underneath. Without the data processor you can't understand your costs. Without data processor you can't track the parts and components. You can't be in compliance with the FAA regulations. It's a critical piece for us. All businesses, including Rocky Mountain, are beginning to focus more on their core competencies.

HATTIE: Right. And let other people do the other.

RUSS: We used to do everything here. We do a lot of subcontracting now.

HATTIE: Mm-hmm. So Rocky Mountain doesn't just provide helicopters and pilots.

RUSS: Our focus is changing. We're moving into a broader spectrum of services. We see our largest growth area in the pre-hospital arena here in the United States.

HATTIE: Pre-hospital.

RUSS: We call it pre-hospital because the helicopter company, which founded us and really gave us our start has now enabled us to grow into other areas. We're now providing the medical services. We are now bidding on contracts to provide ground services--ground ambulance services. So this is all in what we call the pre-hospital. The--from the injury to the emergency room. And every six minutes one of these helicopters--one of our helicopters--is transporting a patient somewhere 24 hours a day on this planet. And about a third of those patients, from recent studies, indicate that they owe their lives to this helicopter.

HATTIE: The life of the average American business is 27 years. You've already beaten those odds. You've beaten the odds of bankruptcy. Give us some advice.

RUSS: Rocky Mountain was founded on its ability to seek out new applications for the helicopter, which air ambulance was one of those applications and it turned out to be a very successful application. There are many companies today in helicopter whose officers cut their teeth here at this company and went on to develop their own companies with their own ideas. So I think for any entrepreneur that's in business you simply have to look up and reach out. And it's very, very difficult because when you're a small-business man, you're doing it all. And it's very easy for anyone at any level in a company, any officer, to be pulled down constantly by the day-to-day tasks. And when that happens, you lose that strategic vision and you constantly have to remember that if you are the president or the chief executive officer you have to be able to continually look out and be able to provide a vision for the company. And you have to be able to network, network with other companies that are providing you insight for greater perception to drive that vision.

HATTIE: So basically it's look up.

RUSS: Look up. It's all you have to do.

HATTIE: Remember, the entrepreneur who plows the field and plants the seeds often has to leave the future's harvest to others.

The Closing of the Show

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