Always Time to Fly: Creativity from 3,000 ft.
Join Kassi Kincaid as she engages in a compelling conversation with Tristan MacLean, a hot air balloon pilot, operations manager, and Airbnb host. Explore Tristan's journey into ballooning, highlighting the common thread of creativity in all his roles and the importance of connecting with people.
Links from Episode:
Book Day Episode: Oh the Places You'll Go
Tristian’s AirBnB: http://Airbnb.com/h/macwoodsuitesTesuque
http://Airbnb.com/h/macwoodsuiteskachina
Transcript:
Kassi Kincaid (00:01):
Welcome back to The Edge of Creativity podcast. I'm your host, Kassi Kincaid. Joined with me today is Tristan MacLean, hot air balloon pilot, operations manager at United Rentals, and Airbnb host. Tristan, thank you so much for being here today.
Tristan MacLean (00:18):
Absolutely, Kassi. It's a pleasure and I'm really excited to be here.
Kassi Kincaid (00:21):
This is so fun. A lot of our listeners don't know that this is not our first rodeo.
Tristan MacLean (00:28):
Absolutely, it is not. It's exciting to be back and it was fun to meet you the first time and continue to see you throughout your success.
Kassi Kincaid (00:36):
It is so great having you here today in a totally different capacity. The first time we met was kind of crazy on the field at the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, or Balloon Fiesta as they call it. You were in your hot air balloon and I came, basically, to find people that knew things about hot air balloons; pilots, crew chiefs, the zebras, all surrounding the book, Oh, the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. Low and behold, a family friend knew you and just introduced us and we did this crazy interview on the fly. You taught me and my YouTube viewers all about your amazing hot air balloon. That was such an incredible experience.
Tristan MacLean (01:23):
Really, it was amazing to have you out there and get to experience it, and also just get to share the experience of the Balloon Fiesta with everybody in the world, to be honest, with the reach that YouTube has. But, we're really glad you were able to make it out.
Kassi Kincaid (01:37):
I'm so excited to have you here today to focus more on you and your story. If any of our viewers want to see the episode, definitely look in the show notes because you won't want to miss seeing Tristan's amazing hot air balloon. But today, we're focusing on your story. Tristan, we better get going because we have a lot to cover. You are a jack of all trades. Oh my goodness. Do you ever sleep?
Tristan MacLean (02:06):
I find time.
Kassi Kincaid (02:09):
All right, well let's jump on in. First, I want to start with you as a hot air balloon pilot. I feel like our viewers, that is just going to be super intriguing to them. I mean honestly, they probably never met a hot air balloon pilot in their life. I know I hadn't until I met you. Can you share with our listeners where your hot air balloon journey began, and how it's progressed to where you are today?
Tristan MacLean (02:36):
Absolutely. I would love to, Kassi. A long time ago, I was able to be a part of the Balloon Fiesta, and funny enough, my parents actually shared a photo with me back from 1998, where I was in my dad's backpack as we were walking through the Balloon Fiesta all bundled up with a hat on and a bunch of coats on. My dad was walking me around the balloons, and so for lots and lots of years, over 20 years at this point, I've been able to go to this Balloon Fiesta. Basically, I have some extended family that was involved in hot air ballooning. Throughout that, I got connected and had my first flight back when I was about eight years old, and just loved it. Thought it was a great thrill, a great opportunity for adventure. Really made me excited about what this new adventure that I had gone on was.
(03:30):
Got to fly again when I was about 10, 12 years old. I'd really started to understand what crewing was, which is where you get to help the balloon and get to set it up, break it down, however it needs and whatever is needed in order for the pilot to be safe as the balloon is operating. I was calling my extended family and asking them if I could help out. As I was calling to help out, I found some other crews that were around the area and they invited me to come out and experience what their crew was like. I got the opportunity to join their crew and they invited me out to Balloon Fiesta. This was back when I was about 13 years old. I think I was actually 14 if we're going to be clear. I got the opportunity to go out and I just fell in love with it.
(04:19):
Got involved with a gentleman by the name of Tyler Young, who helped me start to network and meet people throughout the Balloon Fiesta. For about the next couple of years, two, three years, I was able to just continue to crew at Balloon Fiesta. Finally I got this urge and I said, "I wonder if people fly year round. I see balloons all the time. I wonder if I could continue crewing." I reached out to Ty and he said, "Yeah, absolutely people crew. Let me see if I can get you in touch with somebody." Found somebody by the name of Dick Rice, started crewing for him, met his son, Brad Rice, started crewing for him. Just started to network and explore and grow my knowledge of ballooning.
(04:58):
Come around about 2017, 2018 I was crewing and I had made it to crew chief, which is basically the person that's in charge of the crew as well as they are the one with the most knowledge that would be able to help in any emergency situations. My parents approached me and they said, "Would you ever want to be a hot air balloon pilot?" I said, "Absolutely." Who wouldn't want to be a hot air balloon pilot? This is one of the coolest things in the world. They were like, "Well, what do you need?" I said, "Well, I'd need a balloon, I'd need a pilot to teach me." I'd need all of the things that would be necessary in order to be successful. They asked me a couple questions about finances. At that point in time, my parents actually offered me a loan in order to purchase my first balloon and become a hot air balloon pilot.
(05:41):
I found the first balloon. I had already known which one it was. It was called Perfect Timing, that was the name of the balloon. Opportunity galore, couldn't pass it up, perfect timing. Everything was falling into place. I was graduating high school. Life was great. I bought Perfect Timing and I started training with one of the gentlemen who I'd been crewing for by the name of Brad Rice. He started training me and I just fell in love with it even more. By that time, I took about a year and a half to get my license. You're only required to have 10 hours of flight time and about five hours of ground time in order to get into the sky.
(06:18):
I took a little bit longer. I wanted to be more prepared. I had about 28 hours of flight time and just about 10 hours of ground time with Brad and with some other pilots, because the nice part about hot air ballooning is that when you are training, you can train with other folks. Obviously you have your one trainer that does your curriculum, keeps you in touch, but that one trainer can have you go fly with other folks to get a better understanding of how other people fly. Just like when you're in a teaching mode, for instance, you can learn from other teachers how they may do things differently. Same thing with hot air ballooning.
(06:52):
After I got my private pilot's license, I fell in love with flying, just wanted to bring more people involved. I wanted to give people this experience. Finally, I got an opportunity with a corporate sponsor who wanted me to fly for them. They were trying to understand what I needed to do. I was trying to understand what I needed to do to be legal in order to fly for them.
Kassi Kincaid (07:12):
Yes.
Tristan MacLean (07:13):
I ended up getting my commercial license in 2019 and ended up flying for them in the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in 2019, and have partnered with them ever since and now have been able to explore the opportunity of what the corporate sponsorship world is like and be able to fly for those folks. Now I just get to show the experience to corporate people. I get to show the experience to my crew and anybody else that wants to come out. It really opens the world for hot air ballooning and gets it to other people that may not always get to experience it.
Kassi Kincaid (07:45):
I love that. Especially the part about how you learned from so many different people. I feel like sometimes we're so focused in life about that next step that we don't take the seasons to really learn and to really just focus on growing and learning. I love that, how you just spent several years just gleaning all you could from all kinds of different people. That's really interesting about the 10 hours, you said the 10 hours and then five hours on the ground.
Tristan MacLean (08:15):
Yes ma'am.
Kassi Kincaid (08:16):
Snap. We have to do, I feel like so much more than that in a car when you're learning.
Tristan MacLean (08:24):
I know, yes. It's wild. But, a lot of the training from hot air ballooning, the best way to put it is that when you're flying a hot air balloon, you're flying with the weather and so you have to learn a lot about the weather. Then from there, it's just understanding your elevation, it's understanding your ambient temperature, it's understanding your equilibrium, how fast you're going to go up, how fast you're going to come down. Learning about all of the different equations and different skills that go into flying a hot air balloon really come from a lot of mentality. Once you have the mentality of being safe and having the mentality of understanding what you are flying, it's pretty easy from there, I will admit.
Kassi Kincaid (09:05):
Switching gears just a bit from the hot air balloon pilot topic, as I mentioned before, you have a lot of roles. You're operations manager at United Rentals, you're your own Airbnb host, and you do hot air balloons kind of on the side, really. How would you see creativity played out in each of your roles?
Tristan MacLean (09:30):
Every day I get to be creative. That's the best part about the life that I get to live. Throughout hot air ballooning, throughout United Rentals, throughout the Airbnb, every little bit brings creativity. The best part of what I get to do is I get to help people all day long. Whether it be through hot air ballooning of giving people an experience that they've never had before floating through the sky, giving even return people that want to fly again that same experience but in a different way, because no two balloon flights are the same, to United Rentals getting to help our customers successfully build things, getting to successfully accomplish their projects. The amount of thought that goes into that every single day, it's very rewarding to see the end product of a customer being satisfied when they return the equipment.
(10:16):
In the role that I'm in right now, helping our employees learn how they can better serve our customers, helping our management understand what our employees need in order to be the best that they can be. All the way over to the Airbnb of giving people an experience of feeling like even when they come and visit New Mexico, that they have a home to stay in. That's really important to me because everybody can go stay in a hotel, everybody can go stay at the Motel 6 or the Hilton Garden Inn or wherever they want to stay. But, when they have this home to show up to, it's this feeling of kind of sanity that you're showing up and you get to walk in and you're home. That's really what we do.
(10:58):
The name of the company is MacWood Suites. The reason why I love that is because whenever I think of a getaway, I think of wood, and I started it with Mac because MacLean is the name and I used to be known as Little Mac or T Mac was my nicknames back in the day. I combined Mac and wood, which wood makes you think of nature, cabins, all that type of stuff, and then suites, because I think when you call it a hotel, it gives it a premise of you know what you're expecting. When you talk about a suite, that's a more higher level, it's more of an elite stay that you want to choose to stay at. That's where the name of the Airbnb came.
(11:32):
It's really just getting to give people that experience of responsiveness when they need to talk to their host and when they need something for their Airbnb, they have a response and they have somebody live to talk to that isn't fake or isn't somebody that's being paid to be there, that that host, yes, they're paying to utilize the house, but that host is really invested in it. That's where my passion really lies, is getting to help people.
Kassi Kincaid (11:59):
I love that. Even bringing the creativity into your name, I mean, that's really cool and I honestly didn't even ask you about that in our previous conversations. Tristan, you talked about being commercially sponsored. How did you create your own hot air balloon company?
Tristan MacLean (12:18):
That's a great story, Kassi, and I really enjoy talking about this because it's a fun time that I had in college when I was able to submit a company in a contest called Hawk Tank at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. It's a great opportunity for students that are entrepreneurs or business students that have an idea that they want to see if it could get some funding and investment from folks that are actually in the real world investing in companies. I worked with a partner and we came up with a company that was actually a hot air balloon dining service, believe it or not.
Kassi Kincaid (12:50):
Wow.
Tristan MacLean (12:51):
We had a whole great idea of the hot air balloon would cook the food inside of the hot air balloon, and it would be you'd have a chef and you'd have all of this champagne. We had this whole elaborate deal put out to it. We actually ended up winning the competition, believe it or not. We had a tremendous amount of help from our friends in writing the business plan and the presentation, and we knocked it out of the park. It was amazing and it was so much fun. I learned a lot. We won $5,000 as the ultimate prize, and I had to start a company in order to receive the money. That was part of the deal was, you couldn't just take the money and put it towards college funds. You actually had to have a company and receive it as a fundraising investment into the company.
(13:33):
I had to come up with a name. I kind of put it out to my Facebook and kind of put it out to some of my friends and I said, "Throw some names at me." One of my friends said Always Time to Fly, because you're always flying. I was like, wow, I love that because it encompasses so many different things about my life that there's always time to do things and there's always time to go out and experience and explore and be adventurous in your life.
Kassi Kincaid (14:00):
Yeah.
Tristan MacLean (14:01):
I stuck with that. I am very proud to call my company today Always Time to Fly. The folks that volunteer and work with me, we all are very proud of it. It's got a little abbreviation now that is ATTF, and it is so much fun that we get to explore and have this name above us that really means something to people.
Kassi Kincaid (14:22):
I love that name. I think it really encompasses you as a pilot and your whole team that I got to meet at the Balloon Fiesta, and how passionate you guys are. Just, man, you're out there at, how early was that? Like, 5:00, 6:00 AM getting the balloon out.
Tristan MacLean (14:40):
We show up about 3:00 AM, 4:00 AM most mornings.
Kassi Kincaid (14:48):
Oh snap, I thought I was meeting y'all, but apparently y'all were already there on the field.
Tristan MacLean (14:48):
Well, we'd already had our coffee and burritos by the time you got there. But no, we usually have to get there pretty early to beat the crowds because we don't want to be unsafe in getting out there. Yeah, we usually show up about 3:00, 4:00 o'clock. During normal week. We'll usually show up about 6:00, 7:00 sunrise time. But, during that time it's very early to beat the traffic and make sure that we're safe so we're not trying to move through people.
Kassi Kincaid (15:10):
That does make sense. I didn't think about that. Wrapping up, how has the use of creativity in the ways you just described made an impact?
Tristan MacLean (15:22):
Wow. That is a great question, Kassi. Creativity has brought so many different people into my life. That's something that I'm very proud of, because the people that are in my life are valuable. I really see the opportunity that presents itself every single day with my friends. Not only my friends, but the people I work with, the people that I work for, the people that I work around. All of these people mean something and I get to help them in some way, shape, or form. Truthfully, I believe that I'm on this earth to help people and to give people experiences and to really be there and be present in helping people continue to live their life however they may want to. The creativity really brings me closer to people. It allows people to feel that I am approachable. It allows people to feel like they can ask me any questions, just like you did when we were out on the balloon field, nice and cold. It really allows me to be the person that I want to be. That's what I can tell about people that are looking to get creative.
Kassi Kincaid (16:21):
I love, Tristan, that everything that you've talked about today, it revolves around people. That with your job at United Rentals, you're passionate about giving people the equipment that they need to do their dreams and their projects. Airbnb, you're passionate about being a part of people's adventures and experiences. Then ultimately with the hot air balloons, as was the highlight today, you're passionate about giving folks experiences that they'll never forget. I love the quote that you told me last week, to leave people with a feeling that they will never forget. I think that's a great way to end this podcast. That's straight from you Tristan, that's your quote.
Tristan MacLean (17:05):
Yes ma'am. "Leave people with a feeling they will never forget."
Kassi Kincaid (17:09):
If you listeners can remember nothing today, it's to leave people with a feeling that they will never forget, because a life based around people is truly a rich life indeed. Thank you so much, Tristan, for being here today. It has been such a joy and such a pleasure to interview you once again.
Tristan MacLean (17:27):
Thank you for having me, Kassi. I really appreciate it. Congratulations on the successes with Book Days and all of the other adventures that are out there, and we really hope you the best.
Kassi Kincaid (17:36):
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode on the Edge of Creativity podcast. Be sure to follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming conversations. We'll see you next time.
