With a 100-mile-per-hour tailwind, it shaped up to be a quick trip home to Oakland County International Airport in Waterford Township after Jason White and Jason Weiner had enjoyed a fish lunch on Grand Traverse Bay the afternoon of Aug. 31, 2022.
“We’re going to be home in 20 minutes,” pilot White told passenger Weiner.
But trouble developed about 13 minutes after takeoff, as they reached a cruising altitude of 9,800 feet. The six-cylinder engine of JW Aviation’s Beechcraft Bonanza sputtered out and wouldn’t restart.
Within seconds, the airplane began to lose more than 1,000 feet per minute of gliding. The two occupants quickly went through checklists and urgently consulted piloting apps to find a landing place. White banked 90 degrees left — east- ward toward Houghton Lake.
“We hit best glide speed and found what looked like a hard, cracked-soil field,” White says. “After commitment, we noticed that it was actually a flooded swamp, a conservation area for the DNR.”
At the last second, a tree had to be avoided; then, the Bonanza came down tail- first and bounced. “As I’m landing, with one arm I’m reaching over and giving Jason the dad-arm, like you would in a car if you were stopping too quickly,” White recalls. Finally, the plane’s nose bit into the marsh, ripping away the propeller and dead engine, and abruptly rotating the fuselage 180 degrees. White found this preferable to bouncing for another quarter-mile.
Miraculously, White and Weiner, the two top executives of boutique software-development firm KitelyTech Inc. in Waterford Township — each of whom has a wife and three children — were uninjured. Flight-tracking information shows termination at 4:39 p.m. after 22 minutes aloft, including nine minutes of gliding.
“It was a blink of an eye and the longest nine minutes at the same time,” Weiner says.
White looked at the grass waving in the wind and thought, “This is probably the most beautiful field I’ve personally seen in my life.”
After taking victory photos, the pair began a two- hour slog through the marsh before finally coming to a road. (Weiner lost his sandals in the muck.) After the joyful reunions and taking stock of “a whole different appreciation of things,” as White says, it was back to work running the company. A few days later, White was even back in the air.
White and Weiner are recounting the incident in a videoconference; Weiner, KitelyTech’s COO, is speaking from his home in West Bloomfield Township. White, founder and CEO, is sitting behind his desk at Royal Air’s Jet 1 Suites at Oakland County International Airport.
“We run our headquarters out of an aircraft hangar here — a combination hangar-and-office situation,” White explains. Near at hand in the hangar is a basketball game, a ping-pong table, a living room setup with theater, and “a stack” of Ducati motorcycles. (He’s sitting in a red, white, and black Ducati Corse swivel chair with an integrated headrest.)
There’s also a replacement for the Bonanza, a very different plane, in case another Up North bayside luncheon beckons.
Founded by White in 2009, KitelyTech provides a comprehensive suite of digital solutions. It creates data analysis tools for client use and designs customer-service chatbots for websites. It can whip up voice activations, language translation, and tailored content to aid its clients in audience engagement.
There also are services to transition infrastructure and applications to the cloud, while platform development is another capability. Accumulating potency and delivering it far and wide, KitelyTech has done almost no marketing.
If the name isn’t widely recognized in Detroit, it is known across a range of small and mid-size businesses, all the way to Fortune 100 corporations. Other customers include AIG, Bank of America, FedEx, Johnson Controls, Johnson & Johnson, Publicis Media, and Ticketmaster.
“We’ve created a partnership with Microsoft, even building out a lot of their AI components and customizing them,” White says. “They’ve positioned us as an Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG — that type of horsepower knowledge-base at a more efficient pricing. We’re the boutique version of that.”
White, 44, describes KitelyTech as a red-carpet, attainable service that typically becomes more of a collaboration. “For me, there’s a lot of people who do what we do, and I call them noise in the industry. What separates the men from the boys is the last 10 percent of the project.”
Indeed, the company’s claim of being in the top 1 percent among its cohort is supported by a cache of awards: Best Mobile Apps Silver winner, Clutch.com Top 1,000 Companies citations, FortySeven Software Professionals Top IT Consulting Company, UpCity! Excellence medallions, and The Business Fame Most Recommended Technology Consulting & Development Service, to name a few. In 2022, Business Worldwide Magazine named White its Digital Transformation CEO of the Year – USA.
A key difference-maker is the provision of concierge-level service. “We’re there, we’re present, (and) we’re available,” White says. “We have other clients, (and) if they see that (large consultant’s) acronym, they throw ’em out of the room. It’s like, ‘Hey, 20 million bucks, we’ll see you in three years.’ That’s what the big consulting companies do.”
To keep the initial investment low for the client, KitelyTech’s top-tier team — there are about 150 staffers, most of whom work remotely — migrates to where they are, to get to know their day-to-day requirements. (Through partnerships and the gig economy, it’s possible to scale up fast for a big job.)
The get-to-know-you sessions aren’t all listening and notetaking. White likes to push back against feeble ideas, based on experience in many verticals. This “catalyst phase” entails workshops to augment thoughts and identify needs. The company has trademarked its Katalyst Quickstart process for clients, to assess AI’s influence on data governance, legal, and human resources compliance.
“We’re coming in with a lot of experience,” White says. “We come in proactively and have these workshops. During the workshops, we flesh out the details. We create prioritizations of certain features, right?”
A trusted practice finds the KitelyTech team leaning on the Pereto Principle, a.k.a. the 80/20 rule, which states that 80 percent of ROI or monetization comes from 20 percent of the functionality.
“Leaving that workshop scenario, we have an idea of what it’s going take to start engineering solutions,” he says. After that, the client gets an estimate of high and low “in terms of where they’re heading for a budget.” The same level of transparency pertains to all of the ensuing steps.
KitelyTech has claimed 100 percent growth year after year since its founding, so the question arises about revenue for the private concern. White’s Ducati chair rocks a bit as he declines to give any figures, but he does say there are no partners or investors. “We continue to thrive. I’ll tell you, a few years ago we made a decision (that) if we didn’t get on the AI-slash-deep learning boat, we were going to get left in the dust. It’s been very lucrative in terms of the opportunities there and continuing to drive additional revenue for the company.”
The AI expertise takes form via cloud certifications and a host of certificates from Microsoft and Google.
Although White jokes he’s earned five MBAs from the School of Hard Knocks, he took a different path to success. After graduating from Ernest W. Seaholm High School in Birmingham, he joined his family’s company, R.D. White in Royal Oak. The electrical contractor is a leader in audio and video systems, electrical-system design and engineering, and home automation. White’s father, Ronald, an ex-Marine, founded the company about 30 years ago.
“He’s now 77 years old, and I’d put him up against most people,” White says. “There was just a different way of doing things, right?” He recalls how sloppy work would be torn out and redone. “There was a mentality of, just because it’s behind a wall, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be perfect. That really transcended into what we do (at KitelyTech). Honor your word, honor your commitment, take an organized approach, and, overall, create (a) partnership with your client.”
While in his 20s, White had a sojourn in Chicago, where he moved into the nicest building he could afford and joined the best gym. Becoming a serial entrepreneur meant launching technology ventures such as a dating app, what he calls a “kid shopping aggregation,” and a “tech-enabled, fast-casual restaurant.”
Not every venture went well, and he soon found himself in dire straits. The origins of KitelyTech arose from doing web and mobile app development for startups and consulting for investors. The name derives from the original, whimsical domain registration, “Fly Kitely.” Finding steady and earnest programming-development support was a key for White. Ultimately, he returned to Oakland County, where he and his wife, Erin, are raising their family.
Having joined KitelyTech in early 2022, eight months before the plane crash, Jason Weiner represents a refinement in the organizational setup. The 40-year-old received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, then earned a law degree from Michigan State University in East Lan- sing. When he practiced law, he specialized in bankruptcy and insolvency cases.
“A majority of the practice was representing receivers over liquidating companies,” Weiner says. That sometimes meant being involved in day-to-day operations, dealing with everything from employees to the emergencies created by equipment failures. “I really enjoyed that aspect of the practice,” he says.
When the COVID-19 era arrived, Weiner and his wife, Rebecca, had a second child on the way, and Weiner found he “wanted to pursue something else other than the law.” There followed a period of advising startups on strategic growth plans and overseeing internal-development teams.
He and White had known each other for about 10 years, and it seemed like a natural fit when he joined KitelyTech. Then, after a year with the company, the decision was made to implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System espoused by author and consultant Gino Wickman, a metro Detroit resident, in his series of books and seminars.
Weiner would become the EOS integrator, who makes sure everybody is “on the same page” and “rowing in the right direction,” to use Wickman’s commonplaces.
“EOS is an operating system for the business,” Weiner explains. “It helps make sure that everyone who works for the company aligns with the core values and the mission.”
EOS principles encourage the identification of three to seven core values that will guide all activity. KitelyTech’s core values are integrity, passion, genuineness, work ethic, accountability, and professionalism.
Additionally, EOS outlines procedures for efficient 90-minute staff meetings in a regular cadence. It recommends the top organizational leaders take a broad view of results by relying on a regular data scorecard. Short- and longer-term goals are pursued, and the leadership delegates a solution of issues to capable team members through standardized structural processes.
When it all comes together and “traction” is achieved, the overall simplification results in greater internal harmonies and an enhanced feeling of freedom for the bosses. In his manual, “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business,” Wickman claims, “On average, my clients’ businesses grow revenue by 18 percent per year.”
The EOS pattern for staff meetings has made a believer of Weiner, who says, “It fosters really great communication — transparency across the board. As a leader- ship team, you’re going through most of a week without missing anything.”
To achieve full EOS integration, KitelyTech works with business coach Stu Wolff, head of Wolff Leadership. The Birmingham resident formerly owned Wolff Group, a food brokerage company. He adopted EOS in those days, and it led him to face up to the lack of trust he felt about his then-partner.
After resolving the issue with a buy- out and refreshed partnership, he took Wolff Group to new heights before selling it to industry giant Acosta.
“Basically, for the last six years I’ve been working with clients like KitelyTech, (and) small to mid-size entrepreneurial organizations, to help them get all their people rowing in the same direction,” Wolff says, echoing Wickman’s workaday phrasing.
Wolff went through a two-day training program to become a professional EOS implementer. He says he expected to surpass 500 client sessions by September and advance to expert implementer.
After quarterly meetings with KitelyTech and an annual planning session over two days, Wolff sees the company “still in the beginning- to mid-phase of incorporating EOS into their organization.” Another year or so may be needed before “they’re really humming at a level they want to be at.”
It’s clear to him, in an almost formulaic way, that Weiner is the needed complement in the company’s leadership. Company founders are often visionaries with great ideas, deep industry knowledge, and a picture in mind of a mature company — but they may fumble the management football.
“They like to be at the 30K foot level,” Wolff says. “They like to work with the big customers and the big relationships and networking and connecting, but they’re not great at running the day-to-day of the business.” He introduces the analogy of Walt and Roy Disney, wherein Walt was the creative force and his older brother, Roy, handled business matters.
“The reason Jason White needs a Jason Weiner is because Jason Weiner is the one that’s executing the plan day-to-day. He’s the one that’s connecting marketing with sales with operations. The two Jasons together, the visionary and the integrator, that’s what makes magic. When you bring those two types of unique personalities together, that’s what makes rocket fuel.” (“Rocket Fuel” is the title of another of Wickman’s books.)
It’s indicative that Wolff refers to the entrepreneur’s preference to operate at the 30,000-foot level. After losing the Bonanza plane, Jason White pondered how to improve his prospects in the sky. Studies showed higher accident ratings for piston-powered airplanes compared to turbine-powered ones.
In keeping with his general emphasis on continuous improvement, the replacement aircraft is a Piper Meridian with turboprop-power that’s more reliable, enables much higher flying with a pressurized cabin, and achieves a top airspeed of 300 miles per hour.
As for Weiner, he was undeterred by the crash, and had no qualms about flying with White to Houston last January to watch the Michigan Wolverines foot- ball team win the CFP National Championship Game. When he attended U-M, Weiner majored in philosophy, and it shows in his expression of continued trust in White, which far exceeds the tenuous bond between Stu Wolff and his former partner.
“Jason and I similarly felt that crash wasn’t going to define him as a pilot, nor me as a passenger,” Weiner says. “We both felt very strongly about that, (yet) Jason was worried about my wife allowing me to ever fly with him again.”
At the time of the crash, Rebecca Weiner was pregnant with the couple’s third child. After a frank discussion, she told her husband there would be no more flying until she had the baby.
“I told Jason that, and he said, ‘There’s a chance!’ Look, is my wife thrilled about it? Probably not necessarily, but she also knows me, trusts Jason, and I’ve flown with him multiple times. It’s a privilege. There’s always a safety component in any situation. You can’t predict what’s going to happen, but not allowing it to control how you live your life — that’s living.”
