Dear young and hungry Entrepreneur,
What were you doing at 14 years old? Were you flying above your neighbours’ houses, watching rooftops shrink beneath your feet as you framed them through a camera lens? Were you knocking on a hundred doors, quietly calculating whether the person who answered would be a five-euro client or a twenty-euro one? Did you recruit your friends to help you sell, without quite realising that you were building the bones of a company?
If not, then let me tell you about Tom Doloront. He is one of the best paragliders in the world, who did exactly that. His desire to explore the world through wings didn’t just make him an adventurer; it slowly, almost unintentionally, turned him into someone who learned how to make an amazing, livable life from his passion.
When I first met Tom, what struck me wasn’t the stories he could tell, but the state he was in while telling them. He had recently undergone surgery on his leg, and there was a chance he might even struggle to speak because of a nerve issue. Yet there he was, lying on a couch in his family home, calm, focused, fully present and excited to share with me and you about his life, and not for anything but a chance to inspire young entrepreneurs.
He took me back to his childhood, to a time when there was no grand strategy and no ambition to “be an entrepreneur.” He laughed as he explained it, saying that he never chose entrepreneurship, “it chose me.” He had fallen deeply in love with flying, and when you fall in love like that, you don’t ask practical questions at first. You simply pursue it. The problem, of course, was that paragliding was expensive, and love does not pay for equipment, training, or time in the air. So Tom faced a choice much earlier than most of us do: either walk away from the thing he loved, or find a way to make it sustain itself.
He found his first solution at a small paragliding school near his home. There was no conventional salary or tidy employment arrangement waiting for him there. Instead, he worked in exchange for access. “They paid me in flying minutes,” he told me. That detail stayed with me because it captures something essential about the early stages of any journey. When you don’t have money, you trade in proximity. You place yourself where the craft lives, where the knowledge circulates, where opportunity can quietly notice you.
Spending so much time in the air changed the way he saw the world. From above, neighbourhoods stopped feeling ordinary. Houses became patterns, shapes, stories frozen in geometry. Somewhere in that perspective shift, Tom discovered aerial photography. He already loved taking photos, and he loved flying. So he did what made sense to him at the time: he fused the two. The idea was almost embarrassingly simple: he would photograph people’s houses from the sky, walk up to their doors, and sell them the image of their own home as they had never seen it before.
What made it work wasn’t sophistication, but courage. He learned pricing by reading faces, not spreadsheets. He learned sales by having conversations, not by writing pitches. When the demand grew, he did something many passionate people delay for far too long: he formalised it. “I had to build a small company to do everything legal,” he said. That’s the moment when a passion stops being just personal and starts carrying responsibility. That is usually where many people hesitate. Tom stepped forward.
By his early twenties, he had reached a quiet but powerful milestone. He wasn’t wealthy, but he was autonomous. The money he earned from flying and photographing was enough to pay for rent, fuel his travel, and keep him moving. It gave him freedom. It gave him proof. As he put it, it was enough to start believing that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to make a living from what he loved.
What truly accelerated his journey, though, was a realisation that would define everything that followed. Tom understood that adventure alone was not enough. Skill alone was not enough. “If I had a good story to tell, I could sell it,” he explained. That sentence carries more wisdom than it first appears to. He wasn’t talking about exaggeration or performance. He was talking about translation, about taking something meaningful and making it legible to the world.
So he invested deliberately in learning how to communicate. He studied communication and filmmaking, not as a detour from paragliding, but as an extension of it. When he approached sponsors, he didn’t lead with his needs. He led with vision. Crossing Africa was never framed as a personal dream; it became a shared story, one where brands could belong, contribute, and benefit. He wasn’t asking companies to support him, he was inviting them to participate in something larger than both of them. When he spoke about doing this, his eyes quite literally lit up, and his smile widened in a way that made it clear this was one of the moments where everything clicked.
When Red Bull entered the picture, Tom described it not as a sudden victory, but as a shift in credibility. “It’s not about what you can take,” he told me, adjusting himself slightly to make sure I really heard it. “It’s about what you can give.” He started small, with modest support, but he understood something most people overlook: trust compounds. One strong partnership doesn’t just provide resources; it opens rooms you didn’t even know existed.
And this is where his story becomes truly powerful. Tom didn’t treat Red Bull and Volkswagen as separate logos on a helmet or a car. He treated them as people. He told me how he invited them to his home, cooked for them, sat them at the same table, and let conversations flow beyond boardrooms and contracts. He laughed as he recalled how, after one collaboration, Red Bull had an entire truckload of cans delivered straight to Volkswagen’s offices. Not as a marketing stunt, but as a human gesture, playful, memorable, real. That moment captured his philosophy perfectly: business is built by people, not paperwork.
This is the most entrepreneurial lesson young entrepreneurs cannot afford to ignore. When you genuinely value people, when you create real connections instead of transactional relationships, you stop walking alone. Doors open not because of strategy slides or pitch decks, but because trust has been built around a shared table. In doing so, you become indispensable. “You’re the link,” he said simply. And when you are the link, value flows through you.
Every glamorous adventure has a far less romantic reality, and this is the engine that allows the adventure to take place. Behind every breathtaking shot he took were logistics, visas, permits, planning, and countless details handled quietly by people working behind the scenes so that you can eventually see the final, perfect shot. Over time, Tom learnt to make the engine more efficient and agile. Technology became lighter, crews became smaller, and storytelling became the central focus. “Content is king,” he said, acknowledging that what people remember is not just what you do, but how you help them feel it. Today, he even uses AI to handle writing and logistics, not to replace his vision, but to protect his time. The lesson is clear: leverage matters more than effort.
For many years, every euro he earned went straight back into the journey. Better equipment, better collaborators, new projects, new relationships. He called it a building phase, and he spoke about it with no regret. Sometimes investing meant flying out just to meet someone in person, because, as he said, “the human is at the centre of everything.” At 30 years old, he had built enough to start saving and investing.
Today, Tom balances work that keeps the system running with projects that feed his sense of purpose, like beekeeping. That balance is what makes longevity possible.
And if flying were to end tomorrow, Tom would not disappear. He will still be speaking, mentoring, advising companies, and guiding young athletes since his value extends far beyond the sky. He has built something that outlives performance. That is the quiet mark of true entrepreneurship.
So dear young and hungry entrepreneur reading this and wondering what to carry with you from Tom’s journey, let it be this.
First, don’t just fall in love with your passion, because love will pull you forward, but structure will keep you standing. Learn how to make your passion stand on its own feet, and if it is expensive, don’t see it as a dead end; see it as a problem asking for a solution.
Second, begin where you are and stay close to the source. If money is not available yet, negotiate for access, time, learning, and proximity. Sometimes “flying minutes” matter more than a paycheck.
Third, sell before you perfect. Talk to people. Knock on doors. Let the market shape you before you try to polish yourself for it.
Fourth, never underestimate the power of your story. It is not an extra layer, it is the bridge between what you love and who is willing to support it.
Fifth, build relationships that feel human, not transactional. Ask what you can give before you ask what you can gain, and you will be surprised how rarely you have to walk alone.
Sixth, don’t put all your dreams in one stream. Diversifying your work is not a distraction, it is resilience.
And finally, protect your energy. Build a life that allows you to breathe, step back, and remember why you started, because passion lasts longest when it is cared for, not consumed.
Tom’s favourite line captures it best: “Time flies, but you’re the pilot.”
You don’t need certainty to begin. You need commitment. Sometimes, if you love something fiercely enough, entrepreneurship doesn’t wait for your permission, it finds you. And when it does, the only real choice is whether you are willing to follow it all the way.
Yours Truly,
A hungrier Entrepreneur.
Written by Ivy Bina, EMMIE Scholar from cohort 3
