Meet Tyler Christensen of PHX Flights

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Christensen.

Tyler, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Let me briefly talk about the beautiful community that is Phoenix, Arizona. Coming from a guy who’s lived in many different places, from East Coast to West, it really means something when I say there’s something truly special about this place both geographically and spiritually. Maybe it’s the strangely riveting desert foliage, the pastel-like purple and pink sunsets, the 360 sunny days per year, or year-round sports, but there’s a very unique feel to this place.

The beautiful environment has molded the people into a beautiful people. Maybe it was the other way around, but either way, it has made for a spectacular combination. Everyone is so active- doing outdoor activities and going to fun events and just being outside. Whether I’ve been here or away, it was something I knew I always wanted to be a part of in some capacity.

As for myself, I grew up in Idaho with three older brothers. My older brothers have been an inspiration to me. Each one of them, my dad included, were entrepreneurs in their own unique way, but it instilled in me an infatuation with forging my own path and finding something I could be passionate about and have a successful career. Cue the trial and error portion of my life trying to find that passion and uncover my path (which still persists to this day). After graduating high school, I wound up in Phoenix for my first stint- installing home security systems. At age 19, I served as a missionary for my church for two years in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After returning from Argentina, I attended BYU-Idaho and got my degree in Business Management. Throughout my years of college, I did “summer sales” and sold pest control and satellite TV, door to door. This helped me to get through school debt-free, and provided me with the finances to be able to travel (I had set a goal at an early age to visit 30 countries before reaching 30 years old, which I have since achieved). Between my door to door experience and my mission, I had discovered a passion for working with people.

Since graduating from college, I put in a few years selling health and life insurance. While I deeply enjoyed the relationship aspect of it, I sensed the positive energy being sucked out of me each year when I had to deliver the bad news of premiums going up. Insurance was already something that people didn’t enjoy spending their hard-earned money on, and I hated being the bearer of bad news. My biggest take away from my years in insurance is that I didn’t want to be a part of something that people hated spending money on. I wanted to be involved in something that people were excited about.

That desire took me back to door-to-door, but this time selling residential solar in California. The concept was great- helping people save money on electricity while providing a more sustainable source of power. Financially it was an amazing opportunity and helped me be in a field where people were excited to work with me. In the end, experience led me to understand that the whole solar thing wasn’t quite as clear cut and dry as what it seemed to be in the beginning, and I still didn’t have a sense of fulfillment and gratification that my soul begged for.

I had finally narrowed down that I loved working with people and wanted to provide them a service or a product or experience that they were excited about. The last component I was missing was being able to represent myself with something that I OWNED and something that I was passionate about and something I could fully identify with to my core. Thus the birth of PHX Flights. I wanted to bring my family back to the community that I loved and felt so in harmony with. These were the people that I wanted to serve and work with.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been everything but smooth. In fact, it’s still not even close to smooth. Ahead lie many hurdles that we are going to have to figure out how to overcome and move forward, but I feel confident that we’ve finally found ourselves in a space where opportunity is abundant. The hardest part is in the rear-view mirror, which was years of working in different industries to finally find a way to blend together passion and opportunity.

My wife has been so supportive along the way, willingly moving from place to place in search of a way to make things work. She has encouraged me to not lose the faith in trying to find something I was truly passionate about, and wouldn’t allow me to settle for a regular job where she knew that I would be miserable.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about PHX Flights – what should we know?
We are an online-based company that posts about abnormally cheap flight deals and/or mistake fares, catere especially to people that generally fly out of Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Our goal is to help provide people with a relatively cheap way to have amazing life experiences through travel. We have found that traveling has provided us with experiences that couldn’t possibly be substituted by anything else in life, and want to pass that along to the community of Phoenix.

While the concept of our business isn’t unique, it is somewhat rare in the sense that it caters to a specific geographical area. You have platforms like Scott’s Cheap Flights who 99% of the time are posting about flight deals out of Los Angeles or New York, but the reality is that someone who lives in Mesa, Arizona, probably isn’t all that thrilled about a flight out of LA when it’s still going to cost another $200, and precious time, to get to and from LAX.

There is a ton of value in a service that provides curated content based on where you live and what is most convenient for you, and that’s really where we set ourselves apart from “competitors.” We are also in the process of another online based company that’s somewhat parallel to this business model (also specific for people living in the Phoenix area) that we are really excited about rolling out. I can’t get into too many details, but a little snippet of the concept is to inspire people to step outside of their comfort zones (while not having to leave their geographic zone), in order to have unique cultural experiences and to better understand people of different backgrounds. So stay tuned!

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
In the famous words of Kobe Bryant during a post-game conference in 2009 after having won the first two games of the NBA finals- “Job’s not finished. Job finished? I don’t think so.”

But success is just a relative term, right? 😉 I guess the best thing I can say here is just persistence and refusal to give up on a dream. The reality is that everyone has good ideas, many of which are “million dollars” ideas. Few are those that will actually take action on those ideas and go to work.

Contact Info:

• Website: phxflights.com
• Email: phxflights@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/phxflights?igshid=1w6jzlvgwhjz4
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phxflights/

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