We were lucky to catch up with Patrick Harlan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The story behind my mission is simple, I wanted to write the greatest love story I could to someone I truly love and appreciate in my life. I never really thought about marriage and devoting myself to someone until recently. My longest relationship only lasted about 6 months, and my current one is going over 2.5 years now. We have had our share of the good, the bad and the ugly but we’ve stayed together. Even after a disagreement, we have always chosen each other rather than choosing ourselves. We’ve always managed to find our way back to each other. This has not been an easy task due to life, work, bills, and distance. But we have remained steadfast in our belief in one another. We come from 2 completely different backgrounds, 2 completely different parts of the country and 2 completely different set of life experiences as well as races. I am thankful that we have found each other. I am thankful that we have chosen to love, cherish, and understand each other. I started AirReelers as way to generate income so I could simply buy her a ring and ask her to marry me. I had to find something that I was decent enough at just to have the courage to ask her father’s permission to marry his daughter. I had to show that I can provide a future for her and that he doesn’t have to worry. I started my mission over a girl in the quest for a father’s blessing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Well, I will try to summarize the past 4 years as briefly as possible. I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama. I worked at UAB hospital in the Operating Room for 4 years and that was the same time as COVID hit. I would go to work in the OR roughly 4:45 am, I would work in various sectors of surgery including General, Laparoscopic, Oncology, Transplant, Trauma, Endoscopy, Cystoscopy, Plastics, Orthopedics, and Craniomaxillofacial in the 8th largest hospital in the country up until 12 noon. I would then go into the COVID units and collect the various N-95 masks to sterilize so that they could be repurposed for use all the while having chronic asthma. I would roughly work about 2-3 hours a day doing that until the end of my shift. I would earn my master’s in business administration in the evenings. And at night I would play soccer after class and usually get home around midnight. I was supposed to be considered for a promotion, and I didn’t get it. After that I became disillusioned by healthcare. I then decided to lean into soccer (since it was my outlet) and packed everything I could into my sedan and moved to Boise, Idaho. There, I worked for a soccer construction startup and had to drive back and forth across country in a box truck, building, modifying, and manufacturing steel structures. I would also have to meet with CEOs, prominent businessmen, and professional athletes in order set their mind at ease and maintain a positive relationship with the company I was working for with the clients. These were very chaotic times and at one point I myself was working towards becoming a professional athlete simply as a way out. All the uncertainty of working with a startup truly existed in these times from not getting paid regularly, to not having any inventory, to not being certified to using any heavy equipment, and never knowing where I was going to be in 2 weeks’ time. I only found out later that we were supposed to be certified in everything that we were doing, this made me extremely nervous. Because coming from a medical background, I could only imagine the ramifications of our actions. About halfway through this endeavor I met the love of my life. I was trying to do less field work because I was afraid, I was going to get hurt or potentially hurt someone else and that is when I discovered I had a knack for using drones and shooting/editing videos. I saw this as a way out and a potential new career path so that I could grow old with the woman I wanted to marry and have children with. I started AirReelers as a way to protect my work and the videos I was shooting/producing so that I could not be taken advantage of. This all came to a culminating point because I simply could not do everything that was being requested of me. All I knew is that I wanted to have a future with the woman I loved and wanted to have her family’s blessing.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I put together the initial capital by constantly working and trying to pick up odd jobs or any way to make extra cash. I had to buy my own cameras, drones, software, and hardware. I had to constantly take into consideration the type of software that I would be using as well as the cameras and drones. I had to maximize the ROI of each item because I needed to maximize its effectiveness while living in poverty. I would constantly have to make sure that I was paid and try and constantly find the newest trends and ideas so that people would be interested in my work. I had to make sure that I could fit everything into a suitcase because I didn’t know where I would be in a week’s time as well as if I had enough money to continue. The flip side of that was also not knowing the organization I worked for had enough money to continue their operations. So, I had to constantly volunteer for all the grunt work that no one else wanted to do as well as shoot and produce the content that they wanted. If there was no extra work to be done, I had to look outside of work to continue that saving and not solely rely on one source of potential income. I had to constantly be thinking of the next way to earn extra cash and how to maximize my ROI for each piece of equipment in order to maximize my impact.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I’ll never forget the first time I met her. We initially met on Facebook dating and had started exchanging messages back and forth. We decided that on Memorial Day that we’d go on a date since we both didn’t have work. I couldn’t figure out where to take her because we were both new to the Boise, Idaho area. She had only been in town for a week, and I had been living out of a suitcase for over a year’s time. She randomly decided on axe throwing because that is apparently a thing to do in the Pacific Northwest. We met at Base Camp Beer Pong and Axe Throwing in Downtown Boise. She walked in with a nice dress and heels, and I had on one of my soccer jerseys and athletic pants on. Looking back, I told her to “bring her A game” which I meant it from a competitive standpoint, and she thought I meant it as dressing up and looking nice. Well, that first date was something special. She accidently cut my hand with one of the axes, granted in retrospect I was holding it wrong, and immediately she went into nurse mode only after she started seeing blood. At first, she thought I was ‘being a baby’ because it was so sharp that it initially didn’t draw blood. After realizing what had transpired, she bandaged me up and I told her that I cannot lie especially to someone as beautiful as she was. By the end of the evening, I made sure I snuck a kiss, and I think she might have felt a little bad about cutting my left hand.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.airreelers.com
• Instagram: @airreelers
• Facebook: AirReelers
• Linkedin: Patrick Harlan
• Other: TikTok: @patrickharlan5

Image Credits

Patrick Harlan
Angelina Bolaños