Hello. I’m Neil Gagne

2012 – present

In 2012 as a result of my son eldest son was involved in a bad car accident, I chose to make a career change to stay close to family. I started Netting Customers in October of 2012 to help small companies transition and manage their digital footprint and marketing.

Understanding the pressures on a small business owner, my approach has always to consolidate and streamline their digital assets and focus on providing value in making sure that they were contributing and not detracting from their bottom line. I tend to prefer to manage the entire scope of digital assets rather than focusing on one area and ignore how that integrates into the overall strategy.

Some of the tasks that I manage are;

• PPC Ad Management
• Ad and Copy Creation
• Email Newsletters and Email Marketing Campaigns
• Video Production
• Website Development
• Social Media Management
• Platform Management and Integration

While I have outsourced some of this work in the past, I tend to do most of the work myself. I prefer to have the role of an eagle eye overview of the entire digital eco-sphere of a company rather than just pieces. Therefore my tendency is work with companies as in a Digital Manager for hire type of role.

2016 – Current

In the winter of 2016, my wife and I launched Zeek’z Gizmoz and Gadgetz, an importer and  retail company dedicated to bringing in unique gadgets and devices to local markets. We primarily focused on markets and tradeshows initially then opened a retail store in October of 2018.

The store was growing nicely until COVID took the wind out or our sails (sales) in 2020. At the end of December of that year, we closed the storefront to let the COVID winds blow over and wait for some of the uncertainty to be taken out of the marketplace. The company is still in operation focusing on online sales but at a greatly reduced rate to which we were operating.

1992 – 2012

I started my flying career in Hay River, NWT. Having worked my way up through the ranks and flying several different types of aircraft, I eventually started training company pilots then moved into company operation and management. A brief overview of the responsibilities and positions during that time period is as follows;

• May 1992 – Nov. 1992 – Landa Aviation – Hay River, NWT
  

I was hired on as a seasonal pilot for a 4 month period. The owner liked my work  and extended me until November and invited me back the next year however I was offered full time employment at Little Red Air.

• 1993 – 1996 – Little Red Air Service – High Level, AB
  

I started flying here on a small single engine airplanes and worked my way up to flying every aircraft in the fleet. Company operations were mainly to a few of the First Nations reserves in the area including floatplane and MEDEVAC operations. There were many challenging environments which led to understanding how to manage multiple variables to provide for safe flight operations.

• 1996 – 1997 – Northern Air Charter, Peace River, AB

Northern Air Charter was a MEDEVAC and charter company to which I became the Chief Pilot a few months after joining the company. This was during a period of an industry regulatory changeover  and it was my first taste of dealing with government oversight institutions. This was a tumultuous time within the industry but a very rich experience in terms of learning how to get things done when you need government to sign off on it.

• 1997 – 1998 – Starwest Aviation, Vancouver, BC

Starwest proved to be an interesting challenge I was tantalized to take on. The challenge turned out to be bigger than I had made it out to be.

The company was started by someone who became to be at odds with his financial backer. He willfully ran the company into the ground in a vengeful move. I was hired as the Chief Pilot to try and right the company. It was quite the mess with customer relationships dwindling, a relationship with Transport Canada that was in jeopardy and unbeknownst to me, a high debt load that the owner was ignoring. Within three months of arriving, the Operations Manager left and I added his role to my responsibilities. This left me essentially being the guy running flight operations an well as the business side of the company. Two weeks after that, we lost the main contract that was carrying the bulk of the revenues for company. I trimmed, restructured and went looking for more customers. In the end, the debt load was choking the company and as long as the owner was not willing to talk to it’s creditors, I didn’t feel that there was much hope of pulling the company out of the fire.

While not the outcome I had hoped for, there were some valuable takeaways. I learned what it was like to be the guy responsible for an approaching payroll date with not enough money in the bank to cover it. What it was like to have to lay people off two weeks before Christmas (I still twinge at that one a little) and to put your own reputation on the line to repair the actions of someone else. In the end, it looked like an impossible situation so I took a job as a Captain for Central Mountain Air. The company lasted 6 months after I left before ceasing operations. It grew my personal reputation within Transport Canada (they even offered me a job) and I heard from several people that our customers were very concerned and disappointed when they found out that I had left.

• 1998 – 2007 – Central Mountain Air, Smithers, BC

After the tumultuous experience that I had just gotten out of, I was pretty happy to just do some line flying again. It didn’t last that way for too long. The airline had just purchased 10 new Beech 1900 aircraft to do commuter flying with for Air Canada. It became apparent to me that they had these new aircraft which had GPS approach technology but could not use them legally because they didn’t have a training program. I offered to put one together and six months after being hired there I joined their training department. Responsibilities grew quickly becoming a Training Pilot and Company Check Pilot. In 2000 there was a company reorganization and I moved to Calgary from Vancouver and added Calgary Base Manager responsibilities. Eventually this morphed into the Manager of Training & Standards and eventually the Chief Pilot. While it often fluctuated, I have had up to 125 Pilots and around 10 support staff directly reporting to me.

I spent nine years at Central Mountain Air and always felt honored to have had that role. We went from a backwoods charter operator to a well structured commercial airline. We had a good team and there were many accomplishments to be proud of however I did want to fly bigger equipment that CMA would ever have and I wasn’t getting any younger so I made a move to Canadian North Airlines.

• 2007 – 2012 – Canadian North, Calgary Base

I started on the 737 and remained on that airplane until I left the company. At that level of aviation, things are pretty structured and merit has to give way to seniority. I did grow as a Pilot during my time there but eventually the lack of challenge led to boredom. Always the computer geek, I had actually started to get involved with digital marketing before I left aviation. Flying is great but the lifestyle of never being home combined with living out of hotels, short term, inconsistent schedules all while the fate of your life is pinned to a senority number was taking it’s toll. When my son was involved in his accident and it became apparent that there needed to be a choice between airplanes and family, the path for me seemed pretty apparent.

In Conclusion

There was a lot concepts which shaped my thinking that I took from aviation. These principles also work when applied into other environments as well. Aviation is a very system based and structured environment leaving little to chance. By bringing these principals into other workplaces it has helped to bring predictability and organization to their environment.

For example, appropriately structured training tends to bring predictable actions and outcomes especially in times of stress. Although the language is different, it is very much like the principals advanced in Michael Gerber’s “E Myth.”