FlyUSA.com
Role
Director of Marketing and later Director of Technology at FlyUSA, a Part 135 charter operator and aircraft management company based out of Clearwater, Florida. This was the most comprehensive engagement of my career — I touched every part of the business from a marketing and technology perspective.
Taking Over Marketing Operations
I took over all marketing operations from an external agency, developed and executed a 90-day turnaround plan that restructured every channel and system. What had been an outsourced, underperforming marketing function became an internally driven operation with clear accountability and measurable results.
Brand Strategy & Sales Enablement
I crafted brand narratives and value propositions tailored to ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) travelers, leveraging lifestyle-focused messaging and curated content across print and digital channels. This wasn't generic aviation marketing — it was designed for the audience that actually buys charter flights and aircraft management programs.
I developed a full suite of sales enablement assets including pitch decks, one-pagers, digital brochures, and reporting tools used by sales advisors and executive leadership. I worked closely with Charter Sales and Aircraft Sales teams to ensure marketing campaigns were aligned with product deliverables and drove qualified leads.
I also created full-stack visual and branding assets including company decks, swag inventory systems, training centers, and brand guidelines — training staff to uphold minimum standards as we elevated messaging and branding across the organization.
Website Rebuild & SEO Architecture
I led the complete rebuild of the company website, optimizing the entire SEO architecture, migrating hosting to an in-house VPS for better control and performance, and implementing RankMath for advanced SEO management. The site was designed to serve as a genuine lead-generation engine rather than an online brochure.
I boosted domain authority through quality content strategy, technical SEO, link-building, and P.R. agency collaboration initiatives. I also initiated long-term AI/GEO optimization to improve visibility in generative search models like ChatGPT and Perplexity — forward-looking work that most aviation companies haven't even considered yet.
The results spoke for themselves. Doug Golan of Private Jet Card Comparisons cited FlyUSA for achieving 10x traffic growth year over year, a benchmark that caught the attention of the broader industry.
PPC & Paid Media
I overhauled the entire PPC strategy: cut agency spend by 100% by bringing everything in-house, reduced cost-per-conversion from $51 to $26, and scaled negative keyword lists from 1,700 to over 15,200+ entries to eliminate wasted spend.
I used GA4, GTM, and custom dashboards to analyze campaign performance and make data-backed optimizations across paid and organic channels — connecting ad spend directly to qualified lead flow rather than vanity metrics.
Organic Lead Generation
I increased organic lead generation from 0.5% to 11% in under 9 months, growing monthly impressions from 8,500 to over 100,000+. This wasn't a gradual climb — it was a fundamental restructuring of how FlyUSA appeared in search results for charter, aircraft sales, and management queries.
Stratosphere Living Magazine
I introduced Stratosphere, FlyUSA's exclusive luxury travel magazine, as an onboard print publication designed to inform, entertain, and upsell UHNW audiences in our jets and FBOs with curated content on events, destinations, travel itineraries, and brand partnerships. Read the full Stratosphere story →
Building the MarTech Team
I assembled a high-performing "MarTech special forces" team of trusted specialists across design, development, analytics, and content — each handpicked from my professional network — to execute targeted initiatives and support the full spectrum of marketing operations.
Transition to Director of Technology
As the marketing infrastructure matured and the results proved themselves, my role naturally expanded. The company recognized that the same systems-thinking approach I brought to marketing could be applied to the operational side of the business. I was promoted to Director of Technology, taking ownership of internal systems, infrastructure, and DevOps alongside the marketing operation.
I leveraged a strong DevOps foundation to architect custom aviation software, creating proprietary data pipelines and turning manual operational costs into automated profit centers.
DevOps & Infrastructure
On the technology side, I took responsibility for the company's web infrastructure, server management, and deployment pipelines. This included the VPS migration, DNS management, SSL configuration, and establishing development workflows that gave the company direct control over its digital assets rather than depending on external vendors.
Internal Operational Portal & Data Warehouse
I built a bespoke internal operating system tailored to the company's exact workflows, bypassing the limitations of off-the-shelf aviation software. This wasn't a plugin or a configuration — it was ground-up custom development designed around how the business actually operated.
- Data Aggregation: Laid the foundation for a central data warehouse, aggregating data streams from disparate systems including JetInsight, Corridor, and other operational platforms. This allowed us to "mix and match" data to build custom operational tools and real-time dashboards that no single vendor product could provide
- SaaS for Owners: Extended the portal to create custom login environments for Part 91 and Part 135 aircraft owners under the fleet management program — giving owners real-time visibility into revenue, expenses, flight logs, and program metrics
Automation & Financial Ops
Some of the highest-impact technology work at FlyUSA was in automating processes that had been eating up executive time and headcount:
- Financial Reporting Automation: Automated a painstaking monthly financial reporting process that previously consumed the CFO and accounting team for days. This eliminated the need for two junior roles in this workflow and transitioned owner reporting from monthly Excel sheets to near real-time custom dashboards
- Revenue Engineering (Fuel Program): Built a custom fuel billing engine that leveraged volume discounts to implement dynamic markup thresholds — transforming a standard operational cost into a net-new profit center for the company
Advanced Data Engineering
The most technically complex work involved overcoming the limitations of aviation platforms that weren't designed for the kind of integration we needed:
- JetInsight Integration: Overcame platform limitations by reverse-engineering internal API endpoints. Successfully ingested 100% of platform data — CRM records, flight logs, positioning data, and cost structures — into our custom data warehouse
- Bi-Directional Sync: Developed browser-mimicking scripts to write data back into JetInsight, and created custom post-hooks for FuelerLinx integration — enabling two-way data flow where the platforms only supported one
- Maintenance Data (Corridor): Analyzed Corridor database schemas to prepare for data extraction and custom maintenance application development. I attended Corridor bootcamp with maintenance managers to gain key insight into the Mx department's operations, data management, and future efficiency system needs
Sales Enablement Technology
I designed technical workflows for the sales team to generate high-end aircraft proposals using Proposify, streamlining a process that had previously been manual and inconsistent. This gave the sales team professional, branded proposal templates with dynamic pricing that could be turned around in minutes instead of hours.
The Impact
FlyUSA represented the most comprehensive engagement of my career. On the marketing side, I took an underperforming digital presence and turned it into a 10x traffic growth engine. On the technology side, I built the internal systems that automated financial workflows, created new revenue streams, and gave aircraft owners real-time visibility into their programs. I reverse-engineered closed platforms, built data warehouses from scratch, and eliminated manual processes that were costing the company real money.
In 2025, FlyUSA was cited as the fastest growing private jet business in the United States by percentage growth, recognized by the Inc. 5000 and featured across various online publications — including being surfaced by ChatGPT as a top-growth operator. The work at FlyUSA set the foundation for everything I've built in aviation since.