Family And Fitness
While Schmitz feels at home in the rotorcraft-related business, he remembers his real home and family that grounds him. “I worked a lot in my early years and it affected my personal life. I learned you must have a work/life balance. You have to make time for family and friends,” the now wiser man says. Toward that end, the busy managing director makes time to drive his children to school most mornings (He says, “I want to be involved in their lives.”) and to be back home at 5:30 for family dinner. He occasionally bikes during his lunch hour, as cycling has been a favored and physically fit sport for Schmitz since youthful days spent pedaling through Germany’s mountains. (His longest single ride is 80 kilometers/ approx. 50 miles.)
A less strenuous pastime that Schmitz wants to make more time for is reading. “For leisure, I enjoy historical fiction; I just finished The Girl from Berlin set in 1930s Germany.”
Meeting The Market Challenge
Perhaps one good reason Schmitz doesn’t spare much time to read is because Axnes is operating in a challenging, but rewarding, business environment. “Most public-safety helicopter operators have no more than a very few aircraft and this creates a very dispersed customer
base...In this environment it can become challenging for our team to consistently deliver a high level of customer service. Sometimes it almost becomes cost prohibitive to meet that level of expectation. Each customer rightly has high expectations, as we know what they do to serve and protect our communities on a daily basis.”
Often a challenge creates opportunity. These dispersed public safety operators typically have tight budgets, but strive for efficiencies while maintaining and enhancing safety. Schmitz says, “That’s where we come into play by providing professional equipment that allows the crew to stay interconnected with latency-free communication in high-noise environments so that they can safely complete their critical mission profiles. It can be very intense for the team, but at the end it is very rewarding when you hear stories that our product and service made the difference in flying a mission or rescuing a person.”
For Axnes to provide this advantageous equipment, Schmitz prefers to lead his team “from the back.” He guides team members so they are empowered to take initiative. “I’ll get engaged when necessary, but I try to surround myself with dedicated, smart people who want to drive forward. I’ll take someone with a good attitude who has things to learn over a competent jerk; a bad attitude can become toxic and affect everyone,” he says.
We get a real-time glimpse into how Schmitz looks out for his team. When remarking about how expensive commercial airfare has become, he voices a mental note to himself about traveling to APSCON in July. “In fact, after this interview I better confirm that my team has their airline tickets to Reno,” he says. For Schmitz, it’s an anticipated summer reunion with customers in his helicopter family.
16 May/June 2022 Schmitz family picture during a trip to Mexico
Schmitz working in the field with customers
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