Shawn Ryan

My mom's family, like, so her dad was like a carpenter when, and then he like, they moved from Cuba.

And then on my dad's side, his, his father was a bit in trouble with the things.

At some point, that's why he became a public defender.

And so to them, they'd made it and then, you know, they want to invest in their kid.

Yeah, I mean.

But the thing is.

Yeah, and it comes from the fact that, like, I mean, like, people do this, right?

So what's the way that this stuff works out?

So you're a nine-year-old flying, and then your dad's like, oh, look, my kid's so cool flying.

Like, who are these people that they can meet?

You go to a lot of, like, air shows.

Like, because he was a lawyer, so he has some sense of regs.

um like there was this kind of fun thing of looking for like how can you get around um the fact that you'd have to be like 16 to fly alone in the U.S.

but in Canada you can only you can do this at 14 and so I had found out that like Jamal Larkins was this aerobatic pilot who had gone up to Canada to flight train to get through this kind of legal loophole of how old he could be to fly alone uh wrote an essay about it and then I started getting these like mentors in the FAA and then my dad was

super encouraging of going out and networking.

And it's very easy to network when you're a cute little kid.

You don't have to be good at public speaking.

You're just a kid with some pictures of you flying or with a big parachute behind you.

It's overpowering.

And, like, you can walk your way into things.