!['Aviation Start' Episode 6 with host (left) Jamail Larkins and guest Ethan O'Rourke [Credit: FLYING]](https://www.flyingmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-29-at-12.15.35-PM.png)
The sixth episode of Aviation Start, FLYING’s career-focused video podcast hosted by Jamail Larkins, looks at a path into the industry that doesn’t run through a flight department or an airline: starting your own aviation business.
Guest Ethan O’Rourke is the founder of DZZY Films, a Wisconsin-based production company that specializes in aviation work, including shoots such as mounting guns on a P-40 Warhawk and flying across the Atlantic in a Douglas A-26 Invader. He is also a CFI, and he built the business before he had graduated.
O’Rourke started flying during his first year of college in the spring of 2020, when campus shut down and he needed something to do. His father and grandfather had both flown recreationally, so he worked nights at Amazon to pay for lessons, flew during the day, and took his classes online.
He was studying film and marketing, not aviation, and the flight training left him with debt to pay off. So around his sophomore and junior years he started filming weddings, building up his camera gear and treating the work as a part-time job while he finished school.
His senior year, before graduating in 2023, he landed the client that pulled him into aviation. Million Air’s chief of marketing sent him a random email after seeing the videos he and his friends were posting of their flying, edited in the style of the hype videos popular in the car world.
“There wasn’t a ton of people doing that at the time. She saw this, she reached out, asked if we did other stuff,” O’Rourke said. “Sent her my portfolio, started working, did a little project, then that turned into a bigger project, and then we built a relationship from there.”
O’Rourke had shot commercial real estate and plenty of other subjects, but none of it was a passion. Aviation was, and since then the company has focused on that community alone.
Trust Comes Before Clients
For anyone set on working for themselves rather than taking a job, O’Rourke said the hard part isn’t finding clients. It’s earning them.
“You’ve got to find your own clients, but you have to build trust with people,” he said. “As you guys probably all know, aviation is more about the people you know than what you know, and what impression you leave on people.”
That means shadowing someone, finding a mentor who will take you under their wing, and showing up with a good attitude and a willingness to work. Industry events are where that happens. O’Rourke credits NBAA-BACE, Sun ‘n Fun, and AirVenture with booking most of his projects, and he said it shows when people in the industry have never attended one.
“You come to one of these shows and you’ll meet a plethora of people that will help you book your next project,” he said.
At AirVenture, where the episode was recorded, O’Rourke had two people filming for his clients while he spent his time walking the booths, checking in with sponsors, and finding out who was working where and whose name he should know. Networking, he said, is keeping up with your people, whether that is sending a Christmas card or showing up to the events they host.
The A-26 project is the payoff of that approach. He had been working the aviation side for two years before an opportunity like it came along, and he was quick to say that luck and timing played a part.
“It doesn’t come overnight,” he said. “A relationship is built over time.”
Social media is the other half of the equation. O’Rourke and Larkins first became friends online, and O’Rourke said a public portfolio is essential for anyone starting out.
“For brand credibility, you need to have a portfolio and it needs to be public, and the easiest way to do that is having a social media profile,” he said. Which platform depends on the corner of aviation you are in: Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for media, LinkedIn for a more professional audience.
Learn the Craft First
O’Rourke’s biggest piece of advice for aspiring aviation professionals may sound counterintuitive: learn your trade outside of aviation, or alongside it, before you start networking with aviation professionals.
The reason is that the industry is small and reputations travel. Do a bad job on a few early projects and word spreads fast.
“Start figuring out what you’re doing, research it, practice it, and then start booking out,” he said.
That is also why DZZY Films gets selected for shoots around warbirds and running propellers. O’Rourke said production companies unfamiliar with the aviation environment carry more liability because they don’t understand what a pilot takes for granted about who is moving where on a ramp. His portfolio shows that his crew will do the job right the first time and, in his words, “not go get chopped up at a prop.”
The hardest part of starting the business, he said, was the business itself. Film was the passion and marketing was tolerable, but forming an LLC, protecting his assets, allocating money across SEO, post-production, and branding, and learning industry-standard pricing so he didn’t undercut established companies all had to be learned on the fly. He tried to teach himself and wishes he hadn’t.
“I would have saved so much time and money if I just brought in someone to help set it up, teach me the little bit I need to know, and then I focus on what I’m good at, which is the filmmaking and producing,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to bring in partners or mentors or investors. If you want to grow a business, you need investors.”
O’Rourke still instructs, flying 10 to 15 hours a month with students during the summer production season and 30 to 40 hours a month in the off-season. About 80 percent of his work is out of state, which makes being 20 minutes from Milwaukee and 50 minutes from Chicago O’Hare a practical advantage.
The flying has its own rewards. After the A-26 trip to Normandy, he stayed on to film air-to-air intercept missions with a MiG-15 and MiG-17 over Poland. He has ridden in a PBY Catalina on a shoot and logged two hours in the P-40, loops and rolls included.
“It was 100 percent worth it,” he said of the business. “It’s so much more work than I thought it was.”
Episode 6 of Aviation Start is available now on FLYING’s YouTube channel and all major podcast platforms. Aspiring aviation professionals can get matched with eligible scholarships from a database of more than $20 million at aviationstart.org.
