Granny for Sale


In 1984, having completed an engineering apprenticeship out of his high school in Nelson, Wyllie discovered fixed-wing flying through a local club. Liking the sky life, he imagined his future as an airline pilot as he earned his initial fixed-wing pilot certificate and instrument rating. But then a friend intervened; he gave Wyllie his first flight in a helicopter and let the fixed-winger have a go at the cyclic. “I caught the bug like it was a virus. As we all know, when you start flying helicopters, you’re very likely to want to continue flying helicopters,” he says. “You choose where to land like a bird and you’re not limited to runways.” He underscores his first “copter crush” with this humorous analogy: “It’s like doing drugs. Once it gets in your blood, you can’t stop yourself; you’ll sell your grandmother to pay for your next flying lesson.”


Wyllie landed (legal) sales jobs to help pay for his rotorcraft lessons until he earned his commercial license in 1992. Of course, as with most life achievements, there were naysayers who tried to discourage his rotor- head ambitions. “If someone said I was wasting my time with helicopters because jobs were hard to come by, I thought that they didn’t want me to really find out just how good things were. They wanted to keep all the riches for themselves,” he chuckles, a little older and wiser. Three years later, he converted his New Zealand license to an FAA license. His first piloting job was a big one, flying an S-64 for Erickson Air- Crane over Malaysian logging sites. Wyllie demurs that he was only a copilot. “I was a glorified office girl,” he jokes.


From Fascination to Flightcell


Growing up, Wyllie was always fascinated with communication equipment such as two-way radios, and after that, cell-phone technology.


a way to connect his cell phone to his headset. After searching the world and failing to find such a connective device, Wyllie employed the service of a friend who worked in electronics to make him a box to connect his two pieces of personal property. “When friends saw my setup, they asked if I could get them one as well,” he says. That was the genesis of Flightcell


In the cockpit, he wanted


in 1995. “The business took off great; We were one of the first companies to offer such a product worldwide as we began selling units through the World Wide Web in the late 1990s.”


Then Flightcell got a big boost when Uncle Sam called from the other side of the world. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) wanted to connect its iridium handheld phones to its cockpits for overseas operations. “The Air Force wound up purchasing several of our products, and that became our first main foray into the U.S. market,” says Wyllie. For several years, up through Hurricane Katrina, Flightcell sold to the U.S. military. That disastrous storm that struck the Louisiana/ Mississippi Gulf Coast and nearly drowned New Orleans also wiped out much of the region’s terrestrial communications infrastructure. The Army used Flightcell’s products to


connect satellite phones


and ground civilian agencies to cockpits in the air. This need eventually birthed Flightcell’s DZM line of satcom products designed with military capability and quality, and helped Wyllie realize that Flightcell could significantly serve military and first responder markets. The company no longer produces its consumer phone-to- headset product, as Bluetooth connectivity has made it obsolete.


Customer Focus First


That shift in his company’s strategy toward the new markets came from Wyllie’s propensity to keep his ears open. “I’ve always believed in listening to our customers to improve what we are doing and to make sure that we’re giving them what they want. That’s been a real key to our success,” he says. In addition to opening his ears, Wyllie keeps his eyes on the prize. “My thinking is to focus on building the quality hardware that customers want and delivering it to them. If you listen to your customers and focus on them, you’ll be successful.” He next makes an important point that applies to many, if not all, consumer-facing businesses: “Don’t focus on the money first; that will come if you provide your customers what they want. A business will succeed if you find the right market, focus on a niche in that market, and do what you do extremely well.” Wyllie refused to be distracted by


Of course, such democracy would be much more difficult for a large corporation, but with less than two dozen team members, Wyllie says it suits his company as well as his personality. “That’s the way I like to do things. I don’t like to be dictatorial with a formal, hard structure; I think of us more as a family.”


what he saw as trends that could divert Flightcell away from its main business. “We stuck to our core activity, which is hardware. Our goal is to always build the best hardware we possibly can at a reasonable price to the customer,” he says. “Most companies in our communications and tracking sector built their hardware to promote or implement their software or service. They are a service provider first and a hardware manufacturer second. I’ve not been lured away by the pots of gold at the end of the software-service rainbow.”


Family-Style Meetings


With his strong, solid, and focused opinions, Wyllie surprisingly maintains a management-by-consensus leadership style. The founding CEO does not dictate decisions to his employees, which he unfailingly calls his “team.” He says, “I’m very much a believer in everyone being part of the team. There’s no need for anyone to be the big boss. I don’t make arbitrary decisions; all our employees, from the newest to the longest serving, are brought into the discussion. Everybody’s thoughts and opinions are sought and considered, but everybody has to understand our core business and that we put the customer first. As long as they understand our foundations, then everybody contributes equally to decisions.”


Flightcell is a proud sponsor of the Nelson Rescue Helicopter Trust. Here are some of the team members at a recent casino themed fundraising event


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