Deviation Approved: Ep. 006 Abingdon Mullin
Abingdon Mullin, ferry pilot and business owner, has a lot of great stories to share on this episode of Deviation Approved. Mullin tells her first attempted pacific solo trip to Hawaii, going into a loose formation, and getting everything ‘wing tip tail to wing tip ready’ for her first over water flight. About an hour in, her pilot in the adjacent plane asks her altitude, to discover he was having an issue and decided to turn around. Upon inspection he found a pitot static leak. As regular maintenance was happening Mullin discovered the nose of her plane was covered in oil and had a serious leak. Thankful that her co-pilot had found the issue mid trip, her plane was saved. Had they not turned around her plane would not have made the trip.
Bribed by free food at 14, Mullin’s career center held free lunches when career specialists would come in and present their careers each Wednesday. Two pilots from Burbank Flight School happened to be there one Wednesday, and piqued her interest. She learned two things that day; you don’t need to join the military to be a pilot, and you don’t have to work for airlines to be able to fly as a career. There are of course many other flight avenues for one to take as a career.
When Mullin went to get her pilot’s license, she asked prospective schools three questions:
Can you teach me how to fly quickly?
Do you have any jobs available?
Will you pay for my flight training?
Successfully getting her three questions answered at American Flyers, she got her private pilot rating in one month and started her paid internship the following day. Saving her money to achieve her license she worked as a door to door sales person and gained quite a bit of sales and marketing experience.
To commemorate her successful private pilot rating, Mullin decided to get herself an aviation watch. She noticed that nothing was made for women, and she decided to make the first pilot’s watch for women, called The Abingdon Co. Her watches are not only feminine, but extremely unique. You can perform unit conversions, multiplication, division, calculate unit knots, and even convert currency! In taking the first steps to go about this venture, Mullin had to figure out ‘what to Google first’ as she was unfamiliar with the watch industry. Asking herself where the best watches are made was the first step. From there she looked for watch suppliers, manufacturers, and packaging in the top countries. Mullin now sells her pieces to over 5000 women in the aviation and scuba diving industries.
Having been on Shark Tank in 2010 after four years of trying, Mullin was on season 6 and took about 6 months to prepare and work with the producers of the show to establish every single detail of her segment. Although she did not get a deal that day, she is extremely grateful for the opportunity and still owns 100% of her business to this day.
As Mullin grew her company, she also began the Abingdon Co Foundation, on the 10 year anniversary of her company. Her goal was to bring more women into the arts and STEM industries, called STEAM for short. Her mission is to increase, and motivate the female pursuit of non traditional industries through scholarships and sending women to leading industry conferences.
Learn more about Abingdon Mullin’s story and some of her favorite flying experiences this week on Deviation Approved!
Quotes:
“I would encourage anybody, if they have the capacity or the means to, to go as quickly as you can and just get [your pilot license] done. Because every time you take a day off from flying, you lose one little nugget of information either a muscle memory or a skill.” (13:46-14:14)
“I love having an analog watch that is really there for one purpose when I am doing these activities. Whether it be how I am going to buy my dinner in France in euros or keep my tank time on track under the water, or just have a third time zone.” (43:36-44:05)
“Ferrying was kind of addicting. That is when I got the little bug with ferrying and delivering airplanes...you are like Santa Clause bringinem their new toy.”
“As we all know and the number gets touted everywhere, women are only six percent of the aviation industry. So it's 50,000 women have their pilot certificate in the United States and that's a small market. Anybody who's starting a business looks at that market research and says yeah, that ain't that's a business, it's not going to work. So I knew going into the Shark Tank, that, that was going to be a sticking point. So my story was, yeah, we started with 50,000. As a market, but I'm expanding that to 5 million and then 10 million and then 50 million with all these other industries that I want to go into and that was kind of my pitch.” (51:18-51:55)
Links:
https://www.theabingdonco.com/
https://abingdonfoundation.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/AbingdonCo
https://www.deviationapproved.com
