The Most Profitable Business Everyone Overlooks

0:00 How did you go from traditional Amish

0:01 horse and buggy to multi-million dollar business owner?

0:04 When I was about 16 and a half, 17 years old,

0:06 I was like, I am not driving a horse and buggy to work.

0:10 I am not like dressing that way.

0:13 But, my mom and dad didn't want me to not be Amish,

0:16 so it was rough on them to know

0:18 that their one child is not going to live that lifestyle.

0:21 Dude, I made $132,000 in 24 days running my spray drone.

0:27 We just did another job that I ended up profiting $65,000 in eight days.

0:34 Oh my gosh.

0:35 Is that a typical ticket price?

0:37 Like tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars?

0:39 Oh, yeah.

0:40 Oh, yeah.

0:40 My first 10 weeks, I made $50,000 in 10 weeks.

0:46 Ooh.

0:45 It's 600X since then.

0:47 Is any of the piloting automated?

0:49 Are you having to do it yourself the whole time?

0:51 It's all automated.

0:53 Oh, damn.

0:54 This just gets better and better.

0:55 I'm telling you, it's all automated.

0:58 Literally, you can spray a whole field.

1:00 You can spray a whole field and never once touch the remote controller sticks.

1:05 I can tell you that I don't care where I would go in this country,

1:09 in any state, I could do it.

1:11 This industry, it's barely even getting started.

1:15 94 to 97% that is still untapped.

1:20 Literally.

1:21 You created an entire industry.

1:22 If somebody has just a little ounce of motivation, you can make this work.

1:29 Don't underestimate I call them testosterone businesses.

1:35 Guys, this is one of the best episodes I've ever recorded.

1:38 One of the best conversations I've ever had, and I'm not just saying that.

1:41 About four years ago,

1:41 I fell in love with this YouTube channel called Drone Deer Recovery,

1:44 where these business owners in Ohio would be paid about 500 bucks

1:48 a pop to go recover deer that hunters shot, but didn't recover.

1:52 I thought, that's incredible.

1:53 I interviewed that guy.

1:54 I found him, and turns out he's making a lot, a lot, a lot more than 500 bucks.

1:59 He's been on over 100 podcast episodes before,

2:01 but he's never revealed his revenue or his profit until today.

2:05 And the thing is, drone deer recovery, that's a cool business, right?

2:09 You can make good money on it,

2:10 but there's something else that you can do

2:12 with drones that I've never talked about before.

2:14 It's not roof inspections, like you will not see this coming,

2:17 that is so freaking profitable and unique and brand new.

2:22 I have not been this hyped about an episode for a very long time.

2:25 Oh, and did I mention he grew up Amish, as in horse and buggy Amish?

2:29 And he only started this business 4 years ago, and today,

2:32 well, you're about to hear how much he's making today.

2:34 You're going to love Mike.

2:35 We became fast friends.

2:36 We swapped phone numbers at the end of this.

2:37 He's got amazing energy,

2:39 and you're going to learn some really cool ways of making a lot of money.

2:41 So, please enjoy.

2:43 When I came up with this business idea, it was part of the the whole thing.

2:47 It was like, "Okay, this is my idea.

2:49 I'm going to do this a service,

2:49 but I also want to create a YouTube channel." And so,

2:51 that was right off the rip.

2:53 Did you think that the channel or the service

2:55 would be bigger or more profitable than the other?

2:58 I saw it, originally my thought was I will make

3:01 more money on YouTube ad revenue than I would on service,

3:05 and I quickly figured out that that's not the case in my content.

3:10 I just don't pull enough views to pay.

3:14 I mean, my first my first 10 weeks uh

3:18 doing deer recovery just here in the state of Ohio, I made $50,000 in 10 weeks.

3:23 Ooh.

3:25 So,

3:24 first like deer season in Ohio?

3:26 First Yeah, correct.

3:28 First deer season.

3:29 First time I ever went public with it.

3:31 You were at break even within a couple weeks,

3:33 and then it was mostly profit after that point.

3:35 Yeah.

3:35 So, basically, the my goal was when I bought the drone,

3:38 I was like, "I just want to make enough to pay the drone off,

3:40 and then I'm good." But I quickly found out,

3:43 I was like, "Holy smokes, I think we got something here."

3:47 Yeah.

3:47 Yeah, we need a bigger boat.

3:49 What So, you just bought that drone for this YouTube channel idea,

3:53 for this business idea?

3:54 You didn't already have it?

3:56 That's correct.

3:56 Yep.

3:57 So, if we back up how it actually started is I bought a cheaper drone.

4:01 It was a called a DJI Jewel.

4:04 DJI Jewel.

4:05 It was and had thermal and a a zoom camera, but it was not good at all.

4:09 I made some video one video about it flying

4:12 over my hunting land and just looking at deer.

4:15 Then I took that video to an outdoor show, a local outdoor show,

4:18 and I just had a table with a cloth over it and an old iMac that I had.

4:23 And then I had this video playing on there

4:25 and my booth was the talk about booth at the show.

4:29 It was No way.

4:30 And it was like the most plain Jane booth ever.

4:33 100%.

4:33 It It had like this this white sign behind me

4:37 and it said like like Yoder Drone Service or something.

4:40 And then you had this screen that was playing this thermal,

4:43 then it would go from thermal so you see this heat

4:45 signature and then you zoom in and it's a deer.

4:47 And the people were like, "What the world?

4:49 Like how did you see that?" And so it just it people just stopped in the aisle.

4:54 It was so bad that the show coordinator said I have to move my booth.

4:58 Like it was cuz people wouldn't stop.

5:00 They just

5:01 You didn't pay for a booth this good.

5:04 Yeah, I'm telling you it was crazy.

5:05 I Dude, I just I'm not kidding.

5:08 I ran out of business card.

5:09 I called my wife.

5:10 I was like, "Run to Staples.

5:11 I'm about out of cards." And I took a picture

5:14 of that when I was running out of cards.

5:15 There was one card left.

5:17 My wife shows up and gave me another box of 250 cards

5:19 cuz you can get them at Staples for like super cheap ones.

5:23 Your like foray into the whole industry was to just

5:26 take a low-stakes video of your own property of some deer.

5:29 That's it.

5:30 Go to a an expo with your target audience right there

5:34 and just show a video of the drone video that you took.

5:36 That's it, right?

5:37 You got it.

5:38 That is That's how you launched.

5:40 That is exactly how I launched.

5:42 And at that at that show, right?

5:44 So that was the at the end of the season.

5:45 So deer hunting season was over and the guys

5:48 are coming up to me and they're like,

5:49 "What are you going to charge for the service?" And I was like, "I don't know.

5:52 I think I'll probably be between 250"

5:55 I was like, "$250 to $350." And they're like,

5:57 "That's not going to be enough." I was like, "Oh, okay.

6:00 Well, thanks for the info." And so,

6:02 I took all that info that they were giving me that I was like,

6:06 "Geez, maybe I start high, right?" I can always come down.

6:09 And so, then when the season kicked off in September,

6:13 so that show was in January,

6:14 and September the season kicked off and I was like, "I'm going 550 bucks." So,

6:20 Yeah.

6:20 $550 if I find your deer.

6:21 If I don't find your deer, it's 450 bucks.

6:24 Now, that's interesting.

6:25 Like, why do you think they said that's not enough?

6:28 Because they were looking at the cost of getting a tracking dog out.

6:33 So, like at that time you could hire in a tracking

6:38 alternative.

6:38 Yeah.

6:38 Yep.

6:38 You could You could get in a tracking dog for like $350,

6:42 and I just thought I would fit in there.

6:44 In the beginning, I didn't realize that my product

6:46 was actually better than a tracking dog because they

6:49 never had to go in and blow out all

6:51 the rest of the deer that are on the property.

6:53 So, they would pay a premium to just come and look, find the deer,

6:58 and then figure out how to go in and take it, you know, get the deer out.

7:02 Okay.

7:02 So, I love getting feedback for businesses, but usually it's bad, right?

7:07 Like, your mom tells you, "Yeah, I'd buy it." Like, okay, what is that worth?

7:11 But this feedback you got is so valuable

7:13 because often when you're asking a prospective customer,

7:16 "What would you pay?" they're super biased cuz they want to pay less.

7:20 But in this case, you had this weird circumstance where statistically speaking,

7:24 the people giving you the feedback are probably

7:27 never going to be your customers because it has

7:29 to be this one-off scenario where they shoot a deer

7:32 but don't kill it and can't find it, right?

7:36 right.

7:36 they're giving you very honest, real feedback.

7:38 They probably know that they probably won't use

7:40 you cuz they could probably count on two

7:42 fingers the amount of times in their entire

7:45 life they've hired a dog service for this, right?

7:48 Exactly.

7:48 Exactly that.

7:49 that pricing feedback is insanely accurate.

7:52 Whereas if it were a service where everyone

7:54 giving you feedback could be a potential customer,

7:56 they might be like, "Oh, I wouldn't pay 350.

7:58 That's 150." You know, so it's like what good feedback that is.

8:03 right?

8:03 Because I was the first guy in Ohio that was doing it,

8:06 once they seen that option, they weren't wanting to get the dog.

8:11 Even though the dog was cheaper,

8:12 they were $350 and I was $550 when I found your deer

8:16 cuz it was like 98% chance I'm going to find your deer,

8:21 they were okay with spending an extra $200

8:23 on top of what it would have cost them

8:25 for a dog just because they don't have to go

8:28 in there and potentially blow out all the other deer.

8:31 And the biggest benefit of using a drone was yes,

8:35 we hope that the deer has expired by the time we find it with the drone,

8:39 but if it's not, right?

8:41 If it's not quite expired and you walk up on it with a tracking dog,

8:46 they get up and they they're gone.

8:47 Like sometimes you don't find them after that.

8:50 Yeah.

8:50 Okay, so did you take like phone numbers,

8:53 email addresses from these people giving feedback or were

8:55 you just kind of passing out business cards?

8:57 Nope.

8:57 Yep, just passing out business cards.

8:59 I did have uh for the show for a little bit because I didn't order nearly

9:03 enough uh those little magnets that you would

9:05 like throw on your refrigerator or something like that.

9:08 I had quite a few of those, but ran out very quickly.

9:11 So yeah, it was a it was strictly business cards and uh the magnets.

9:15 What was the name of the expo again?

9:17 It was called Northeast Ohio Sportsman's Show.

9:20 Okay.

9:20 Now, worst-case scenario, that show does not go well.

9:24 You have no takers, no interest.

9:25 What were you going to do?

9:26 Were you going to try to market a different

9:27 way or were you going to check your return

9:30 I mean I I was marketing in other ways as well.

9:33 Like as soon as I got my uh my drone in, I I printed

9:38 off these brochures like a a flyer and I went to the local bow shops,

9:43 local rifle ranges, that type of thing.

9:45 Just asked them if I could hang up a flyer

9:47 and on that flyer I had like a picture of the drone,

9:51 I had a picture of a thermal, and then I had a zoom or or an RGB image of what,

9:58 you know, here's a hotspot and then here is what I'm looking at.

10:01 I just had that I had that on on the flyer.

10:04 Real quick, please subscribe to my channel.

10:06 I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot.

10:08 Thanks.

10:08 I was just sticking some flyers out there, but

10:12 Gotcha.

10:11 But again, this industry, the hunting industry,

10:14 they do a lot of chatting, right?

10:16 And so once you got some people talking about it,

10:19 they were just talking to their next people that they knew because

10:22 Yeah, word of mouth.

10:24 I mean, I'm I'm thankful.

10:25 I was one of the guys that decided I'm going to go for it.

10:28 The biggest thing is like people didn't know, is it legal, is it not?

10:32 And I was like, let's just figure it out.

10:35 Let's go.

10:35 And was it?

10:36 It was not black and white in the state of Ohio that you could do it,

10:40 but I did talk to the the Ohio Department of Natural

10:43 Resources head guy and told him what I planned on doing.

10:47 And no formal, right?

10:50 I wish I would have got a formal email or something.

10:53 It was no formal thing.

10:54 He just said he doesn't see a problem with it as long as you're

10:58 not using it to literally go find the deer and then go shoot the deer.

11:02 And so I was like, well, I'm going to be Gotcha.

11:04 professional on this.

11:05 This is strictly to try to help the hunter recover a dead deer.

11:09 And so I took his word for it.

11:11 When it was at that show,

11:13 the the Ohio Department of Natural Resources also had a booth at that show

11:17 and a couple of the game wardens walked by and they were like,

11:20 they looked at the video and they're like, "Hmm,

11:22 I don't know that that's legal." And I said, "Well,

11:25 I kind of talked to your boss already and he said that he doesn't

11:29 have an issue with it." And so they weren't sure how they feel about it,

11:33 but I said, "Hey guys, I would love to meet you out in the field

11:36 and show you the equipment and show you how

11:38 it works and introduce you who I am and that I'm

11:41 not out here trying to help people cheat." Yeah.

11:43 So, I did.

11:44 I met the game the local game wardens in my area.

11:48 There was three of them, maybe four, and we met them out at the rental property,

11:52 my hunting rental property, and I showed them and they're like,

11:56 "This is cool." But, they said,

11:58 "We just hope people don't use it for bad." And that's how we got going.

12:01 And then and then the state obviously updated their rules

12:06 of what you can and can't do with the drones.

12:08 And now it clearly tells you in the hunting regulations

12:11 that you may use a a drone to recover a carcass.

12:15 For that specific purpose.

12:16 Yes.

12:16 Yep.

12:17 Okay.

12:18 Yep.

12:18 It's funny.

12:18 I'm picturing the game game wardens walk up and he like looks

12:22 at the video and and he like slowly reaches for his gun.

12:27 He doesn't trust you at all.

12:30 They were trying to figure out if that's using an aircraft to hunt.

12:34 Oh, yeah.

12:35 Cuz there's a there's a law that you cannot use an aircraft to hunt.

12:37 Well, in Texas, that's how you shoot pigs is from a helicopter.

12:40 Yeah.

12:40 I actually had a YouTuber reach out to me in Texas

12:43 that they wanted me to come down there and shoot

12:45 some content doing eradication on pigs cuz he helps farmers

12:49 that come in and they destroy their corn and beans.

12:53 Mhm.

12:52 So, yeah.

12:53 He said that you guys are allowed to actually use a thermal drone,

12:56 see where they're at, and go in and Oh, interesting.

12:58 Cuz they're invasive.

13:01 Yep.

13:00 Now, you said you were the first in Ohio to do drone deer recovery.

13:04 Was there anyone else in the world that you knew of at the time doing this?

13:08 Yes.

13:08 Yes.

13:08 So, I bought my drone from a guy in Wisconsin.

13:13 He was doing it, but he was keeping it on the down low.

13:16 So, I was not the very first one to do it.

13:21 Yeah.

13:20 I was the very first one to make it mainstream.

13:23 Yeah, to put it on YouTube.

13:24 If you brought him a bunch of competition,

13:25 you probably brought him a ton of customers, too.

13:28 Cuz you like you blew up the industry.

13:31 Yes, I did do that.

13:33 You raised the tide, right?

13:34 Which raises all ships.

13:36 Yep.

13:36 Yep, I did.

13:38 So, does this work anywhere there's deer hunting?

13:41 Like, what I'm thinking in Texas is A, everything's so far out.

13:44 Like, Ohio has a decently sized population and it's not nearly as big as Texas.

13:49 So, and it's a big hunting state, right?

13:51 It has a pretty long season.

13:52 Is that right?

13:54 Yeah.

13:54 Obviously, in certain states it's going to be better than others.

13:57 How many trophy deer are there that people

13:59 are willing to pay to have recovered in Texas?

14:03 I don't know that specific number for Texas,

14:07 but what I can tell you is the Midwest states like Iowa,

14:10 Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, you know, that main Mecca hub.

14:18 Though, there it produces some big deer and there are a ton of people that pay

14:24 a lot of money to try to find their buck that they, you know, shot.

14:28 Yeah.

14:28 I want to get to the agricultural stuff, but has your has the drone deer

14:31 recovery side of your business shrunk since then?

14:34 Service calls are less than than I had in years

14:39 past because people have more options of calling other people

14:43 and I built a pilot locator map and they just go

14:47 there to try to find their pilot that's closest to them.

14:49 So, you're monetizing a different way.

14:51 Like, you kind of popularized this.

14:53 So, now you're like the lead and source for your own competitors.

14:57 That is correct.

14:58 And what are the unit economics on that?

15:00 Do you sell them those leads?

15:01 We sell them a subscription.

15:03 So, they they buy a subscription to be listed on the website.

15:08 Super cheap, 500 bucks a year they can be listed on the pilot

15:11 locator map and people that search for deer recovery people in their area,

15:16 if they're on the drone deer recovery website,

15:18 they put in their zip code, it sucks them into an area,

15:21 it gives you a drop-down of who's close

15:23 by, and then they just click on contact pilot,

15:26 and then it'll text them the phone number.

15:29 So, we can track exactly how many people go to the website,

15:32 and we drive a ton of traffic to these people.

15:37 I mean, you built the Yelp for drone deer recovery.

15:40 That's right.

15:41 I always say on this podcast, nothing is too niche, and you're proving that.

15:44 You're proving me right here.

15:47 Yeah, it's I I I don't know.

15:49 I I

15:50 Feel blessed.

15:50 You're able to see all the numbers on your competitors, right?

15:53 Like, at least stuff that goes through your website.

15:55 Yeah.

15:56 Yep.

15:56 So, how many leads I

15:58 taught you?

15:58 Yeah.

15:59 What has that taught you about the industry or about your competitors?

16:02 Man, a lot of people can't shoot well.

16:07 There's so many wounded deer.

16:09 There's so many wounded deer.

16:10 So, I feel bad in that way, right?

16:13 And and I do get crap about a little bit online is like,

16:17 Mike, look what you're doing.

16:18 Like, you're There's you know,

16:20 hundreds of thousands of people watching you because

16:24 hunters have put bad shots on these deer.

16:28 And I'm like, yeah, but this has been happening for many, many years.

16:32 It was just never public.

16:34 And so, what it's taught me is, yeah,

16:36 there's definitely a lot of deer that get wounded.

16:38 I think you what you're doing has the opposite effect.

16:40 It educates everyone how like, you need to get a clean shot.

16:45 Like, because there are so many like,

16:47 you need to hunt ethically because Look at these people that aren't.

16:51 Like, that's I don't think people would

16:53 see your content of your videos and think,

16:55 I'm going to shoot worse now because other people You know what I'm saying?

16:57 Like, there's definitely guys there that that say like, okay, well,

17:02 I'm going to take this marginal shot because I know I'll just

17:05 be able to hire in a drone and, you know, find it.

17:08 Oh, okay.

17:08 All right.

17:09 Well,

17:10 And, you know, there's Maybe that's something to it cuz I'm telling you,

17:15 if somebody has a trophy buck in front

17:17 of them and they don't have the exact perfect shot, Mhm.

17:22 Like he can probably do it in a drone.

17:23 Drone will be able to come in and find it.

17:27 Yep.

17:26 I can see that argument side of it.

17:28 What numbers are you willing to share about like traffic

17:30 to your website or leads or revenue or all that?

17:33 Yeah.

17:33 So, I should have had my website guy give me those numbers for the 2025 season.

17:39 But 2024 we were doing about 400,000 people going

17:45 to the website in the busy season a month.

17:48 During the deer season in your area, 400,000?

17:51 Yeah, well, that's that's For 1 month, about 400,000.

17:54 Right, but you have to, you know, we're getting anywhere from 2.5 to 3

17:58 million views on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.

18:01 So, maybe some of those weren't literally looking for a a pilot.

18:05 They were looking to buy a drone.

18:09 like

18:08 But oh, yeah.

18:09 Like we The website clicks I'm just like I

18:13 had no clue like that there's this many people around.

18:16 I just Yeah.

18:17 I never gave social media the respect that that it deserves in business.

18:23 Like I I had a residential tree removal business and that business was

18:29 just as big as I could make it here in the three counties.

18:32 All of a sudden, overnight,

18:34 I have a business that stretches from the West Coast to the East Coast.

18:38 Like huge.

18:40 Mhm.

18:39 And it's slightly international, too.

18:41 Like people in Mexico and Canada uh and even in Europe have

18:46 started watching our content and doing the same thing in those countries.

18:51 Oh my gosh.

18:52 I mean, my thesis for what makes a business strong, like incredibly strong,

18:57 what gives a business a moat, one of those things is uh network effects, right?

19:03 And for those listening or watching, a network effect is is a business where it

19:08 gets stronger the more the people use it, right?

19:11 Every person that creates a new Facebook account

19:13 makes Facebook stronger because of the network effects, right?

19:17 And so you have those network effects.

19:19 Like you have a moat.

19:20 If someone were to go try to launch

19:22 a competitor to your directory website, good luck.

19:26 Like how do you overcome all your backlinks, all your YouTube videos, like

19:29 Yeah, it is so difficult.

19:30 That's beautiful.

19:31 The one thing that I I struggled,

19:33 I don't know if it it fits in for the audience,

19:36 but it's like as I I screwed up when I when I did some of this stuff.

19:40 Um right, I didn't know what I had to start with.

19:44 I had something that is a Kleenex, right?

19:48 So a tissue.

19:49 And somebody says, "Hey,

19:50 could you give me a Kleenex?" It It might be a Puffs or a whatever.

19:54 Um I have Drone Deer Recovery.

19:59 Yeah.

19:58 I did not By the time I figured out that I needed to trademark the three words,

20:03 the attorney said, "Okay, I'll try to file this for you." But by the time I

20:07 got it in, it was just like a normal language at that point.

20:11 And so Generic trademark.

20:12 That's what it is.

20:14 Yeah.

20:14 And so But then it caused market confusion because it was bad for people.

20:19 Okay, so imagine this company started.

20:21 It's called Drone Deer Recovery.

20:22 Drone Deer Recovery is anywhere.

20:23 It doesn't matter.

20:24 You don't have to be in Ohio.

20:26 Um you can be everywhere.

20:27 FYI, if you know anyone in the military,

20:29 please share this episode with them because

20:31 at the end of this you're going to hear Mike

20:32 say that either of these businesses that he's talking

20:35 about are perfect for current or former military members.

20:38 All right, sorry to interrupt.

20:39 But then a guy starts a business

20:41 in Tennessee and calls it Drone Deer Recovery Tennessee.

20:46 And people have been watching this content

20:49 Mhm.

20:49 and watching this guy, "Hey,

20:50 I'm Mike with Drone Deer Recovery." All of a sudden,

20:53 they're finding maybe Drone Deer Recovery Tennessee

20:56 and they think it's Mike, but it's not Mike.

20:58 So it just it caused some market confusion in the beginning

21:02 and a lot of people were doing doing it,

21:04 but then they kind of they kind of quit that because of the SEO that we

21:10 had and it didn't really matter what they were trying to use the name for.

21:14 But yeah, if there's something that I wish I would have

21:15 done sooner was trademark that prior to like blowing it up.

21:21 Mhm, interesting.

21:22 The same thing happened with uh Spikeball.

21:24 You know that game?

21:25 Yeah, yeah.

21:26 Yep.

21:26 They had an issue with the generic trademark where they had

21:29 to like renamed it rename it to Roundnet and actually trademark

21:32 that because they were having so many competitors like basically clone

21:36 their product and call it Spikeball and they couldn't do anything about it.

21:41 Yep.

21:40 That's really interesting.

21:41 Now, how many Do you call them operators?

21:45 Yeah.

21:45 Drone operators?

21:46 Yeah, so they'd be independent operators.

21:48 They name their business whatever they want and they they just list.

21:51 It's I'd like to call it almost like a HomeAdvisor

21:55 before Angie's List bottom and they can list on the website.

21:59 And how many do you have listed?

22:00 Gosh, you should just pull it up at go

22:02 to dronerescue.com and then look at the pilot locator.

22:05 Okay, wow.

22:07 Yeah.

22:07 So hardly any out west.

22:09 No, no.

22:09 Out west has some Yeah, we got to work on the out west laws.

22:14 Okay, so that map will fill up as we get closer to season.

22:17 So we're out of season right now.

22:20 Oh, so people get on there.

22:22 They lapse?

22:23 Yep.

22:23 They'll they'll get on in the busy season.

22:26 But we're anywhere from 200 to 300 pilots on there.

22:32 Wow.

22:33 So Yep.

22:33 little back of the napkin math,

22:35 we're talking six figures a year in in memberships?

22:40 Oh, yeah.

22:41 Oh, yeah.

22:42 Yeah.

22:42 Do you have like affiliate links for these drones that you sell?

22:45 Do you monetize this side of your business in any other ways?

22:48 Oh, gosh.

22:50 I'm a distributor for DJI drones.

22:52 I am now the number two or number three

22:56 largest retailer of thermal drones in the United States.

23:01 What is your total revenue across all product lines and services?

23:04 We have never told anybody that.

23:08 I'm going to guess eight figures.

23:11 That's what I'm guessing.

23:12 So, let's imagine that I made $50,000 my first season like in 10 weeks.

23:18 It's 600 X since then.

23:20 So,

23:22 Oh.

23:22 Yeah, we did Yeah, you're going to figure it out.

23:24 Anyhow, it's Last year we did Gosh, darn.

23:27 Yeah, your business is this.

23:28 So, we did we did Yeah, this is what we do.

23:32 Yeah, we did over 32 million dollars last year.

23:35 Oh my gosh.

23:36 And I I don't I want people to know I'm not saying this to boast whatsoever.

23:40 and you're not saying results are typical.

23:42 Like this is anyone You're not saying that.

23:44 You're just telling your story.

23:46 Uh-huh.

23:46 I just know how it's going to go cuz like in the industry

23:49 that I'm in, like and I'm sure they're they watch your content.

23:53 We're quickly becoming one of the biggest ones.

23:56 Yeah.

23:57 I had a business where we sold products that were cost five

24:00 to twenty thousand dollars and we did ten million our first ninety days.

24:04 And if you do the numbers on that, that's

24:06 like we sold low hundreds of units, you know?

24:08 So, these are high ticket items.

24:10 You don't have to sell millions of them to make millions, right?

24:13 Yeah.

24:13 It just feels like we're just getting started.

24:16 I'm sure.

24:17 I mean, it's so interesting how they all play together.

24:19 Like you don't want to get rid of the the directory side of the business.

24:22 You don't want to get rid of actually doing drone Like it all plays together.

24:26 You don't want to get rid of YouTube.

24:27 They all Even though it cuz like you might look at me like, "Oh, 80/20 rule.

24:31 Like cut out all that other crap.

24:32 Cut it like no.

24:33 Like they all work together." You got it.

24:36 Exactly what you're saying.

24:38 If people could just listen exactly what

24:40 you're saying and build a business like that.

24:42 It's like you just add keep adding things to it.

24:46 Yeah.

24:47 Well, I mean, I have a Yeah,

24:48 like this podcast I talk about a lot of blue collar business

24:51 ideas and I own a tree trimming business and it's not huge.

24:54 It's not super profitable.

24:55 We founded it three years ago.

24:57 but like I want to speak with authority about blue-collar businesses, you know?

25:03 Yeah.

25:02 So, it it plays a role in this content, you know?

25:06 Yeah.

25:05 Yeah, that's that's what we did.

25:07 I just I've literally never shared it.

25:08 I've done I've done probably a hundred I'd say right between

25:13 a hundred and twenty and about a hundred and seventy-five podcasts,

25:17 and I always get asked like how much money are you making?

25:20 It's not a podcast like your podcast.

25:22 It's Yeah.

25:23 It's like deer hunting podcast, and then they want to figure out well,

25:27 if you do this many deer recoveries, you could make this much money,

25:30 but it's never asking me as a business how we went from doing a service,

25:36 making fifty thousand dollars to making tens of millions.

25:39 So, this is different.

25:40 I should have come in into it a little bit differently.

25:43 No, this is great.

25:43 I'm also like I I just I'm I try to not I I'm I want to be humble, right?

25:50 There's not a lot of people that make tens of millions of dollars, and

25:53 Right.

25:54 And that's not profit either, right?

25:55 People don't understand how much go to the IRS and your employees and I mean,

26:01 e-com businesses are hard.

26:02 Like they're very hard.

26:03 Fulfillment businesses are hard.

26:05 You've got like multiple hard businesses in one here.

26:08 Yeah.

26:08 Yeah.

26:09 So, I I recognize that.

26:11 Well, thank you for sharing that.

26:12 That's awesome, and I don't think anyone thinks you're boasting.

26:15 Like you're supporting entrepreneurship.

26:16 You're providing jobs.

26:18 How many employees do you have?

26:20 We have twenty-eight people on payroll.

26:22 That's awesome.

26:25 Yeah.

26:24 What about if if I wanted to do drone deer recovery as an entrepreneur,

26:28 is there anything I can learn by like going

26:30 to your map and like trying to reverse engineer?

26:33 Like there's one in DFW.

26:34 Obviously, local laws play a factor,

26:36 but could some could someone go look and say, "You know what?

26:39 There's there's a hole in the market

26:40 On the website, how to get started in this business.

26:43 We've just put together um like a a small little

26:47 booklet that will help you try to research and you know,

26:50 how many tags might get sold in your area

26:54 to the ratio of how how many calls we get in Ohio.

26:58 So, we usually don't put this on front and center.

27:00 This is like something that we use we run Instagram ads or something.

27:04 So, you're running paid ads to this for the training?

27:07 Oh, yeah.

27:07 Yeah, we we spend a lot and lot a lot in marketing now.

27:11 You know, in the beginning I was just doing all organic stuff.

27:15 Now, we push a lot of dollars into marketing.

27:18 Yeah, lot of dollars.

27:20 I mean, you you created an entire industry.

27:22 People that create an industry usually aren't

27:24 the first to launch a business in that industry.

27:27 It's usually the first person to shed light on it, put eyeballs on it.

27:32 Mhm.

27:32 And and that's what you've done.

27:33 How does that feel?

27:34 I feel lucky.

27:35 I feel blessed.

27:36 I just pinch myself that I get to do what I get to do and make money at it.

27:41 This is

27:43 Yeah.

27:43 I mean, this is how crazy it is.

27:46 I'm a pilot.

27:48 I fly myself.

27:49 I was in Georgia this morning on a multi-million dollar farm

27:53 down there and I flew myself back because of making YouTube content.

27:59 Yeah.

27:59 What were you doing down there?

28:00 I was down there with an onion farmer that bought a new ag rig from us.

28:05 He bought two spray drones and a spray trailer

28:08 and we were filming content of him using this technology

28:12 to spray onions and to show how he's adopting

28:15 that new technology to increase his production of onions.

28:20 His yield?

28:21 His yield, yeah.

28:22 Let's say I'm a 20 to 50-year-old entrepreneur or wantrepreneur

28:26 and I want to do something in this space.

28:28 Do they go drone deer recovery or do they go agricultural?

28:32 Oh my gosh, agricultural.

28:34 Agricultural by a long shot.

28:37 But then they go hand in hand, right?

28:39 Oh, so do both, but but agriculture first.

28:42 Yeah, I would probably do that.

28:44 The industry is just it's a multi-billion dollar industry.

28:48 Like Yeah.

28:50 It's so huge.

28:52 It's not limited to specific states.

28:54 There's agricultural everywhere.

28:57 There's ag from Michigan to Florida to California to Maine.

29:01 There's literally things growing all over the country

29:04 in the United States and they get sprayed.

29:07 They either get sprayed with organic material

29:10 or they get sprayed with pesticides and insecticides.

29:13 Can you finance these machines?

29:15 Yes.

29:15 Yes.

29:15 We have

29:16 What does financing look like?

29:17 And the payments going to range based on your credit score and stuff like

29:21 that, but I do think that most people are probably in the 15% for interest.

29:27 What are the unit economics on this business?

29:29 What does the opportunity look like for an entrepreneur?

29:32 Oh my gosh.

29:33 It is It is unbelievable.

29:35 So, it's outside work and it can get warm,

29:39 long hours, and you got to work for it.

29:42 But, if you work, dude, I made $132,000 in 24 days running my spray drone.

29:49 We just did another job that I ended up profiting Yeah,

29:53 let me roll back because I got these numbers.

29:55 $65,000 in 8 days and I put in the bank, I think it was at $50,000.

30:03 So, like 80, 70% net profit margins?

30:07 Yeah, it it's really good and I told people I was going to make

30:11 this public and then the spray drone industry is like, "Don't do that.

30:15 You're going to piss off the farmers

30:17 and you're They're not going to want to Yeah.

30:20 It's good.

30:21 It's really good.

30:22 Let me ask you something.

30:23 How many leads have you lost because nobody picked up the phone?

30:26 An 8:00 p.m.

30:26 call comes in, you're at dinner, and you let it go to voicemail.

30:29 And by the time you call back the next morning,

30:32 they've already hired someone else.

30:34 And that's reality.

30:35 Leads come in after hours when emergency strike.

30:38 And when you miss the call, you miss the job.

30:40 And it's not about quality, it's about speed.

30:43 High Level built an AI employee to fix just this.

30:47 It answers real phone calls, talks to leads,

30:49 qualifies them, and books appointments directly on your calendar 24/7.

30:55 Also, it'll handle texts, DMs, and web chats.

30:59 So, you can stop missing revenue just because you couldn't grab the phone.

31:03 Oh, and you can also white label the entire

31:06 thing and resell it to your clients as your software.

31:09 Charge them monthly,

31:10 and that is recurring revenue that you didn't have yesterday.

31:13 So, check out gohighlevel.com/tkopod,

31:17 and they will give you a 30-day free trial to see what I mean.

31:21 Oh my gosh.

31:22 So, is that a typical ticket price?

31:24 Like, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars?

31:28 Oh, yeah.

31:29 And that's typical profit margin, 70%?

31:31 Oh, yeah.

31:32 Yeah.

31:32 So, um operating cost is going to be anywhere from $3 to $3.74 an acre.

31:44 Okay.

31:43 And you charge, depending on your acres, right?

31:46 If it's flat acres or rolling acres, you charge, you know, according to that.

31:50 But, it can be $10 to $20 per acre is what you're charging.

31:56 Hence the 70% margin.

31:57 So, profits could be 85, 90% if if it's rolling

32:01 But, again, it it is a it is kind of a short season,

32:05 so that's why you make hay while sun shines.

32:08 Like, you work long hours, uh short season, and you put the money in the bank.

32:15 What are some typical crops that you're spraying for?

32:17 Is it anything?

32:18 Yeah, so in Ohio, we're spraying mostly corn and beans and pastureland.

32:23 But, I sell to people all over the country,

32:26 um spraying, you know, pecan trees, almond trees, blueberries, cranberries.

32:33 You name the crop, it's probably getting sprayed.

32:36 Yeah.

32:36 Literally anything.

32:37 What does customer acquisition look like?

32:39 How can an operator go out there and find a farmer to to buy this from?

32:43 So, the way that I would tell people to get a customer is you you have

32:48 to go to the customer or get the customer come to you to do a demonstration.

32:54 You have to physically fly the drones and like spray,

32:58 you know, be water or something.

33:00 Spray it over his corn or his beans.

33:03 Show him.

33:04 of it.

33:04 Yeah.

33:05 Show him.

33:05 Show up at his farm.

33:08 Like you actually have to show up with his equip

33:10 or with your equip equipment and show it.

33:13 Because just to hand him a business card and say, "Hey,

33:17 I do drone spraying." He might not even know what a drone spray is.

33:22 Yep.

33:24 Yeah.

33:23 So, again, I Dude, I seen guys do this that were just camera men.

33:28 Like that's what they were.

33:29 They were camera entrepreneurs.

33:31 They knew nothing about farming.

33:33 Zero.

33:34 They knew that drones existed.

33:35 They bought a rig.

33:36 They educated themselves.

33:38 Went to the farmers.

33:39 Did exactly what I'm telling you.

33:40 And now they have a successful spray drone business.

33:43 Now, there's other people that are just hoping that a farmer,

33:46 you know, Google spray drone business near me and they don't do anything.

33:52 Yeah.

33:51 And so, it can be a little frustrating cuz I'll see my new

33:55 ag rigs listed on Facebook for cheap because they it didn't work for them.

33:59 But it's like I can tell you that I don't care where I would go in this country.

34:05 If I want to be a professional spray drone business in any state, I could do it.

34:10 And the way I get that customer is I take my rig,

34:13 I go to his farm, I introduce myself, and I say, "Hey,

34:16 can I just show you how this works?" And you spray,

34:19 and you get down um to the crop, and you show them the droplets.

34:23 Like that's what we were literally doing yesterday on the onions.

34:27 Is the farmer has been doing this for 40 some years, and he's like,

34:31 "I never even knew that you get get the product on the plant where

34:35 it's at." And the only way it would have got there is using a drone.

34:38 And so, they have to see it.

34:40 Oh, man.

34:41 I have like my mind is buzzing with questions right now.

34:44 I'm like about to go buy a drone right now and start flying it.

34:47 Let's get it.

34:48 Let's do it.

34:49 What's like an average farm size?

34:51 5,000 acres?

34:52 No, not in my area.

34:54 Yeah, not in my area.

34:55 My area, you know, they're maybe 100 acres.

34:58 I'll give you some data.

35:00 This is DJI's data.

35:02 This is wild.

35:03 So, there's 99 million corn acres in the United States.

35:09 99 million.

35:11 Okay.

35:11 There's 82 There's 82 million soybean acres.

35:16 And most of these acres are going to get sprayed at some point by something,

35:22 either a ground rig, an airplane, or a helicopter.

35:25 There's 46 million wheat acres, 52 million pasture acres,

35:29 there's a lot of million cotton acres.

35:31 This industry, tapped-wise, is barely even getting started.

35:36 Like, we we're at like 2.5% of what we could be doing.

35:41 Market potential is like there's another 94

35:45 to 97% that is still untapped, literally.

35:49 All right, so the alternatives before drones were ground, airplane, helicopter,

35:55 Yeah.

35:56 Yeah.

35:56 If if you go to a farmer and you agree to pay 10 bucks an acre, okay?

36:00 What is he going to pay for any of those three alternatives,

36:03 ground, airplane, and helicopter?

36:05 Yeah, so right now, so let's take the exact same field in Kansas.

36:09 That's what most people think about when they think farming.

36:12 Flat, square, Kansas fields.

36:15 The airplane might charge you $8 to the $8 per acre to spray.

36:23 Okay.

36:22 I can I would I would spray it for $8 with my drone,

36:25 but I have way less overhead than he does.

36:28 Plus, I'm going to do a better

36:30 application for the farmer than the airplane will,

36:33 and I can prove it because the airplane gets to the end

36:35 of the field and there's a power line and he pulls up,

36:37 and his spray is, you know, 100 ft up in the air,

36:40 and he missed the the the, you know, 75 ft

36:43 all this corn's dying in this corner.

36:47 Right?

36:46 It could be.

36:47 It could be.

36:49 Yeah.

36:48 It could be.

36:49 I'm serious.

36:50 So, the drones are going to go right to the power line,

36:52 turn around, and come right back.

36:54 And it's low.

36:55 It's always the same altitude.

36:57 So, some guys, some guys, right?

36:59 They're good salesmen.

37:00 They charge more per acre than an airplane does because they

37:03 can show why it's worth it for the farmer to pay that.

37:07 For me, I get a lot of acres covered.

37:09 I'm pretty efficient with my rig, my setup.

37:12 I still make a good bit of money charging the same as an airplane.

37:16 Um so, I would say for the most part,

37:18 wherever you're at, you're probably going to be

37:21 in the same range as an airplane.

37:25 Okay.

37:24 Now, now there's some acres, there's some acres like here in Ohio.

37:29 Airplane won't show up.

37:30 He can't get in.

37:31 So, those acres, I'm charging anywhere from $20

37:35 to $25 per acre because there's no other option.

37:39 There's trees in the way.

37:41 It's hard to reach.

37:42 It's rugged.

37:43 It's It's just gnarly stuff.

37:45 The farmer's willing to pay for it because the he literally has no other option.

37:50 Yeah.

37:50 Now, what do farmers pay for ground

37:52 or for helicopter if an airplane is eight bucks?

37:55 Yeah.

37:55 So, a ground rig out there is probably in the $6 to $8 range.

37:59 They're all going to kind of be the in the same range.

38:02 Okay.

38:03 Yeah.

38:02 Okay.

38:03 And now the the actual pesticide

38:05 or the fertilizer or whatever that you're spraying, that's not you, right?

38:08 The farmer's paying for that separately?

38:10 Correct.

38:11 Yep, correct.

38:12 Okay.

38:12 So, that's not included in your fee.

38:14 just you applying whatever he wants onto those acres at the volume.

38:19 So, when I throw those numbers out, that's normally doing like 2 gallon work.

38:24 So, he gets 2 gallons of product per acre applied.

38:28 Now, if a farmer says, "I want 5 gallons to the acre." then, you know,

38:33 it might be a buck or 2 bucks more to do 5 gallon work.

38:37 But, for the most part, just to keep it simple,

38:39 talking 2 gallons, you know, per acre.

38:42 Okay.

38:42 And he's buying that product from Monsanto or whatever?

38:46 Yeah.

38:46 Yep, exactly.

38:47 Yeah, so he's getting his chemical,

38:49 whatever he wants to put on his corn or beans, he'll get it in.

38:54 I show up at the farm.

38:55 I mix it up in my tanks, pump it into the drone, spray it onto his crops.

39:00 And he's probably very opinionated about what he sprays.

39:02 You don't want to get involved there at all, right?

39:04 Like Yeah.

39:05 Yeah, so at some point, the more you do this, the more you'll

39:09 see what products work to maybe for this farmer,

39:13 and then maybe you can give a suggestion, but I did not want to be involved

39:16 with that because I didn't want to recommend him a product,

39:21 and then that product not do well, right?

39:23 So, then he's like, "Well, the drone didn't work, and the product didn't work,

39:27 so I'm not going to get both of it." Then,

39:29 so it's like, "I'll just do what you you want me to spray."

39:34 So, I'm over here thinking like I'm an internet marketer,

39:36 and if I wanted to find customers, I would go find any number of websites

39:40 where you can scrape property data, right?

39:42 I would scrape owner data of farmland over X number of acres,

39:46 maybe under Y number of acres,

39:49 and I would take my rig, I would, you know, at 10:00 a.m.

39:52 or whatever it is, I would drive to that gentleman's house,

39:55 and I don't know if this is legal, I don't know all the regulations,

39:58 but I would literally start flying that thing

40:00 in front of his house, where it's like,

40:02 when I knock on the door, it's behind me,

40:05 and he's just like, "What?" It's like, "What is this?

40:06 Like Men in Black?

40:07 Like, you know, Independence Day?" And say, "Hey, I want to show you my toy.

40:12 It's got water in it.

40:13 Do you mind?" Like, that's my hook.

40:14 What What you think?

40:15 Okay.

40:15 What do you think?

40:16 Everything was good until you got to the point where

40:18 you're flying your drone at his property without his permission.

40:22 So, these these drones are they're heavy lift

40:26 drones and so there's rules and regs that you

40:29 can't just pull it out like you would your little Mavic drone to take a video.

40:33 Yeah, okay.

40:34 You have to have permission from the landowner to be flying over his land.

40:38 But I could put it on his doorstep or behind me, right?

40:40 In his front yard.

40:41 Oh, without flying it?

40:42 Oh, 100%.

40:43 Yeah.

40:44 Okay.

40:44 That's what I'm saying.

40:45 Like, show up with your rig.

40:47 Like, sh- yeah.

40:48 When you have 12-ft drones exposed on a trailer, like you can't help but look.

40:55 Yeah.

40:55 Like, and then it's like it's like, "Oh, okay.

40:58 Yeah, like you really do do spraying." And I'm telling you, it works.

41:02 I went to co-ops, like where the farmers buy their seed and chemical from.

41:07 So, I showed up there with my drones and my trailer doing exactly what you said.

41:12 They're exposed to the elements.

41:14 They're like, "Oh, you really do mean you do spray with drones." I'm like,

41:18 "Yeah." I show them up I show up.

41:21 I'm out here to get work done.

41:23 Like, I'm not showing up in my van.

41:25 I usually say I'm not staying in a van or Nick in a Crown Vic.

41:29 Like, I'm here to get these acres sprayed.

41:35 Yeah.

41:35 I'm telling you.

41:36 Like, and it works it's worked.

41:39 I have to think that like once they it clicks, your close rate is just stupid.

41:44 Oh, yeah.

41:45 Is that true?

41:45 Cuz they're already paying for this.

41:47 You're not convincing them to pay for a new service.

41:49 It's like, "No, give that money to me because

41:51 it's better and it's cooler." And it might be cheaper.

41:55 You got it.

41:56 Yeah, like once they once they see it, they're going to do it.

42:01 Yeah.

42:01 Like, it's just the way it is.

42:02 And sometimes they have no other option.

42:05 Like, right now it's raining a lot in Ohio.

42:08 You are not spraying your fields any other way.

42:13 Yeah.

42:13 You can't take a 5-ton truck or tractor or sprayer in there.

42:20 You can't do it.

42:20 You're stuck.

42:21 But, the stuff is still growing, so it needs sprayed.

42:24 All right.

42:24 Everyone watching this on YouTube, please know I have an audio podcast as well.

42:28 It's called The Corner Office.

42:29 It's the same thing except for a handful of episodes.

42:31 I publish a lot of stuff on Spotify, Apple,

42:33 and any podcast platform that you might not see here on YouTube.

42:36 So, if you're ever driving, mowing the lawn, commuting,

42:39 check out my audio podcast, The Corner Office, same name.

42:42 You're going to love it.

42:43 If somebody has just a little ounce

42:46 of motivation and dedication and go-getter attitude, you can make this work.

42:53 I'm telling you.

42:54 There There's It's just so big.

42:57 Do Don't underestimate, I call them testosterone businesses.

43:01 So, when I'm picking businesses to profile on this podcast,

43:05 it took me a while to learn that.

43:06 But, you know, generally speaking,

43:08 I cover things that are approachable, affordable, yada yada.

43:11 They don't cost a lot of money to start.

43:13 They, you know, high payoff, you know,

43:15 predictability in the first X months or whatever.

43:18 But, there's a testosterone factor that I can't replace.

43:21 And that means the idea just has to be cool to men.

43:24 Period.

43:26 Yeah.

43:25 And so, how that applies to you is like, "You know what?

43:28 My airplane guy is six cuz we went to high school together.

43:31 He's six bucks an acre.

43:33 My ground guy is six bucks an acre.

43:35 You're charging me 11, but this is freaking cool.

43:37 Uh so, we're in." You know what I'm saying?

43:40 Like, I don't I'm not saying they would

43:41 tell you all of their reasoning in their head,

43:43 but they just they want to see a drone flying around their property.

43:47 You've never seen this, and dude, you nailed it on head.

43:50 I am telling you, this happens.

43:52 We are flying at a farmer's field,

43:55 and there's an airplane next to us like ripping over his corn,

43:59 and he walks over, and he's like, "That's cool.

44:02 You're spraying my corn next year." It happens.

44:05 It's it.

44:05 I I was in Kentucky.

44:07 We were down there and we were doing uh doing the acres and then a farmer

44:12 had us come clean up some acres and then his buddy showed up to watch it, right?

44:17 So, he had already had his sprayed by the airplane and so he

44:21 showed up to watch the drones fly his buddy's farm and he's like,

44:24 "I am definitely going to have drones spray my corn next year."

44:28 Because he was watching how the drone went right to the tree edge,

44:32 turned around and came right back and just the it's the the wild factor.

44:37 He's like, "Okay." Is any of the the piloting automated?

44:41 Are you having to do it yourself the whole time?

44:44 It's all automated.

44:45 Oh, dude.

44:46 It just gets better and better.

44:48 I'm telling you.

44:49 It's all automated.

44:51 All you are imagine that you are ATC, air traffic control, right?

44:58 So, you have these drones, they're on auto missions,

45:01 they're out flying in the field and then they're coming back.

45:05 You just have to like know, okay,

45:07 this one is this high, this one's at this altitude,

45:09 you're going to make this one land here and this one land here.

45:12 But literally, you can spray a whole field.

45:15 You can spray a whole field and never

45:17 once touch the like the remote controller sticks.

45:21 You can literally just go swoop and the drone will take off,

45:26 it'll go into the field, it'll lower itself, it'll spray,

45:29 it'll it'll run out of fluid or the battery's dead, it'll come back,

45:33 fill it up, you swap a battery and away it goes.

45:36 So, excuse my ignorance.

45:37 You you led with talking about how hard this business is

45:40 and I'm sure it is and how hard is relative, right?

45:43 But I got a Cybertruck.

45:44 Like I can just picture myself bro-ing down in my Cybertruck,

45:47 64 degrees, watching the screen, you know, drinking drinking my DPZ right here.

45:53 What like on a hot day, like what what am I missing here?

45:57 You have to sit outside?

45:58 Like is that a regulation and you just have to have to sweat?

46:02 Well, yeah, technically it is a regulation.

46:04 You're supposed to watch your drone with your own eyes.

46:07 I watch it in my truck with my air

46:09 conditioning on and maybe YouTube in the background?

46:11 I don't know.

46:12 Yeah.

46:12 Yeah, you could.

46:13 As long as you can see your drone, you can sit in the

46:16 You have to watch the camera and like have

46:18 the actual drone be within eye shot of you.

46:20 Yeah, that's that's what the rules are.

46:22 Yeah, but watch the content and you'll see if people are following it.

46:28 Well, okay, again, here I'm just going to jump

46:30 into it and probably won't go on the podcast,

46:32 but it's like the FAA doesn't fly drones.

46:35 They don't.

46:36 They don't even know how it works.

46:37 They make rules that we have to follow that you don't even know that Okay,

46:44 for they say you have to watch your drone so you don't hit an airplane.

46:48 I'm 12 ft off the ground next to a tree.

46:52 If an airplane's going to hit my drone, he is inside the trees.

46:56 Yeah, that's

46:57 Like for real.

46:58 He's the idiot.

46:59 don't even They're just It's just dumb.

47:02 Yeah, it's the government.

47:02 It's the government.

47:04 Yep.

47:04 Yep.

47:04 Now, we haven't even touched on the recurring aspect of this.

47:07 If If I have a thousand acres of corn

47:09 in Kansas and I'm paying you 10 grand a year,

47:12 let's say 8 grand a year to spray my corn.

47:15 Is it yearly or what?

47:17 Oh, yeah.

47:18 Or Or like quarterly or like Are there different

47:20 types of applications or is it like once a year?

47:23 it all it depends, but um Okay,

47:26 so some farmers might have you come in and spray a herbicide.

47:30 A herbicide kills all the weeds and then he plants the corn.

47:34 So, you've one application there.

47:36 Then the corn starts growing.

47:38 Then he might want you to come in and plant or um spray a fungicide.

47:42 A fungicide helps so there's not fungus growing on the corn.

47:46 So, you might do two, maybe three applications.

47:49 That's rare.

47:50 Most of the time, you will for sure do one every year.

47:55 Almost always, one every year.

47:56 That is in corn specifically.

47:59 Pastureland, like rangeland, you might spray that twice.

48:04 So, in the springtime, and then maybe in the summertime.

48:08 That is probably a three-year program,

48:11 and then it'll go to a two or four-year program.

48:15 So, it's more of a maintenance type thing.

48:17 So, first you have a bunch of invasive, you spray them,

48:20 you get them knocked out, and then it's you just come back,

48:23 you know, maybe every two three years to come

48:25 in and spray it again just so to keep control of it.

48:29 So, different crops, different applications.

48:32 The onion grower that I talked about earlier,

48:34 that guy spraying once a week for the six

48:41 six or eight weeks straight, once a week.

48:44 So, if you would get a client like that, you're going to go

48:48 back to those fields every week and spray something on the on those onions.

48:52 I talked to him, I was like, "Okay, you're a farmer, you're doing it every week.

48:57 But, do all farmers do this?" Like that grow onions.

49:00 He's like, "Yes." I was like, "Is there a business for somebody to come

49:05 spray like if you were a bigger farmer,

49:09 come spray as a custom applicator, right?

49:11 Cuz we're talking about entrepreneurs.

49:12 He's like, "Absolutely." Like cuz there's

49:15 some farmers that won't buy the equipment.

49:18 They don't want to learn the new technology.

49:20 They just want to pay somebody to come and spray it when they want it done.

49:25 They don't want the overhead, buying the equipment,

49:28 running the equipment, servicing it, keeping up on it.

49:31 And so, there's definitely there's those opportunities out there.

49:36 Cotton, for instance, like there's a lot of cotton grown.

49:39 There's like 11 million acres, I told you earlier.

49:42 Cotton gets sprayed once a week till it's ready to harvest.

49:46 Oh my gosh.

49:47 Is it so, is it most farmers don't want

49:50 to own and operate the equipment or some farmers?

49:53 Some farmers.

49:54 Yeah, some farmers.

49:55 So, are most of your customers farmers like buying

49:58 these expensive drones for themselves and flying it themselves?

50:01 Do they have to get trained and all that or what?

50:04 Yeah, so no.

50:05 Right now, the industry,

50:07 how we see it going is it's entrepreneurs that are wanting to do their own

50:12 business because the farmers haven't completely switched

50:18 and believe that the technology does what it does.

50:21 So, they would much rather hire a guy to just spray it.

50:25 What about batteries?

50:26 Like how many gallons do they hold?

50:27 Cuz that's what, 9 lb per gallon just in weight?

50:30 Are you having to swap out batteries every few acres?

50:33 Yep.

50:33 Yep, so you're swapping batteries all the time.

50:35 Right now, the drone that we really like is called a DJI T100.

50:39 That one carries 26 gallons of fluid and um

50:43 it depends how many gallons an acre you're doing, right?

50:45 So, if you're doing two gallon work,

50:46 you're almost getting like 12 or 13 get uh acres covered in um in one load.

50:52 Now, there is a lot of management stuff.

50:56 Once you get trained, you'll learn, "Okay,

50:58 I can't fill the tank completely full if the drone's only doing

51:01 short rows cuz it uses a lot of energy to make turns.

51:05 But, if you're doing long runs,

51:07 like I can get away with putting a full load in." So,

51:09 there is some common sense that's that goes into operating the equipment.

51:14 The equipment will know, "Okay, my battery's getting low.

51:18 I need to go home." It will know that, but just because you can

51:22 carry 26 gallons doesn't mean you're going to put 26 gallons in every time.

51:26 But, it has the capability of doing it.

51:28 Uh you need three batteries usually uh three um three three batteries to fly,

51:34 so it's always rotation.

51:35 Drone goes out, comes back, fills the tank, swap the battery.

51:39 Usually about every 4 to 6 minutes.

51:42 Oh, jeez.

51:43 You're swapping battery every 4 to 6 minutes?

51:45 Yep.

51:45 Yep.

51:46 That's crazy.

51:46 And how long do they take to charge?

51:49 Uh about 8 to 9 minutes.

51:51 Okay, so you're able to keep it going.

51:54 Yep.

51:54 Three.

51:56 Yep.

51:55 Guys, tkowners.com.

51:56 That's my community where people are building businesses.

51:59 I do AMAs, Q&As every week live.

52:02 You can ask me anything you want.

52:03 You can have accountability partners.

52:05 It's about a thousand people in there building, starting, growing businesses.

52:08 Check out TKO as in The Coroner Office, tkowners.com.

52:12 What else is awesome about this business that I

52:16 neglected to ask about that we may have missed?

52:19 For me, it's just like being able to be outside and watch the sunrise and sunset

52:24 on top of a trailer watching super futuristic

52:27 drones spray over corn or wherever you're at.

52:30 It's just so cool.

52:32 I literally and then I I look at my, you know,

52:34 co-pilot or whoever's flying on the trailer and I'm like,

52:37 we get paid to do this.

52:40 Yeah.

52:41 Like I'm not really doing anything other than swapping the battery

52:43 and filling the tank and the drone's doing the rest.

52:46 Like you're saying, it's a it's a wild cool factor.

52:48 Have you been doing this long enough to know like what the churn

52:52 is to an entrepreneur that has a farmer customer that's paying him every year?

52:56 Like a yearly churn, like how often do do farmers quit their you know,

53:00 their sprayer and switch to someone else or something else?

53:04 You know what I'm saying?

53:05 Are you saying adopting this new technology?

53:08 No, like if I get a customer,

53:09 how long am I going to have him before he fires me in this industry?

53:13 I don't think they I I've not done it long enough to get fired.

53:17 You're like, what is churn?

53:19 What is the C?

53:20 What?

53:21 Yeah, no.

53:21 I Fired?

53:22 Quit?

53:23 No, the money just comes forever, Chris.

53:25 Well, it does.

53:26 The only reason that I've lost uh my customers

53:30 is I've sold rigs to entrepreneurs right down the road.

53:34 Like I literally have sold rigs to I I'm showing on So,

53:38 all my fields are on my phone.

53:39 I I tell people or show people what I've sprayed.

53:43 And the guy's looking at the field boundary and he's like,

53:46 "You were spraying behind my house." I was like,

53:48 "Oh, didn't know." And now he has a rig.

53:51 Who do you think is going to spray those fields?

53:53 He is.

53:54 Cuz he's right there.

53:56 So, that's the only reason that I've been like lost acres

53:59 is I also equip entrepreneurs to go do this and it's like,

54:04 could I be a huge custom spray applicator?

54:08 I could totally.

54:09 But that's not my business.

54:11 Could you?

54:12 Could an entrepreneur that wants to go cover, you know, 50,000 acres?

54:17 Absolutely.

54:18 There's guys doing it right now running 10 trailers.

54:22 They manage.

54:23 They send guys out to spray this stuff.

54:26 All they All they do is manage them now.

54:28 All they do is, you know, carry cash to to the bank in Home Depot wheelbarrows.

54:34 It's wild.

54:35 What is a business with 10 trailers doing revenue?

54:38 Give or take.

54:38 I know it can vary, but

54:40 I would just take my numbers, what I've done, because I don't have 10 trailers,

54:44 but I sold drones to a guy that does

54:46 and I've not personally asked him how much he's doing,

54:49 but we can quickly do the number.

54:51 Like, if he's covering, you know,

54:53 60,000 acres and he's doing 10 gal or $10 to the acre, I mean, there you go.

55:01 That's $600,000.

55:04 Oh, man.

55:04 A season.

55:05 Like, not even a year, but a season.

55:07 Yeah, yep.

55:08 Yep.

55:09 So, is 600,000 I know that's an estimated number,

55:12 but would that be a 10 a 10-trailer business

55:15 or a What's like the acreage to trailer kind of ratio?

55:19 you that number because I know that that's what the guy's running in Kansas.

55:22 He has 10 trailers, but he's like he has military buddies.

55:26 So, believe it or not,

55:27 this is a great business for guys coming out

55:30 of the military that they they just want to be,

55:33 you know, out in in farmland by themselves flying drones.

55:38 And so, what this guy did in Kansas is he had military buddies,

55:42 and he has a bunch of acres, and he doesn't want to cover it all himself.

55:47 So, he helped his buddies get into it,

55:49 and so they get to spray those acres for him.

55:51 And I know what he had said, they're going on 60,000 acres.

55:55 I just don't want to tell you exactly what he's making, cuz I don't truly know.

55:59 Yeah.

56:00 Yeah.

56:00 But I can tell you what I'm what I've done.

56:03 So, in the case of this one guy in Kansas,

56:05 it's about 60,000 acres to 10 trailers.

56:08 Yeah, that's kind of the ratio.

56:09 Is the ratio similar for you personally?

56:12 So, if I would have his acres, I would not need 10 trailers.

56:18 Yeah.

56:18 Uh but I work differently.

56:19 So, if I have 60,000 Kansas acres,

56:24 I think I could get that 60,000 Kansas acres covered with four trailers.

56:31 Okay.

56:31 Wow.

56:31 What's the biggest business that you know of doing this today?

56:35 I've sold to guys in Minnesota.

56:38 They're just slowly getting into it,

56:40 so they I think they do a quarter million acres, like 250,000 acres,

56:46 um that they spray, but they didn't do it all with drones,

56:49 because they're they don't think it's capable of it yet.

56:53 They haven't done it like we've done it.

56:55 And so, I don't know who is the largest custom spray drone business as of now,

57:01 but it's probably in the Midwest,

57:03 like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, uh somewhere like that.

57:06 I feel like someone's Someone's going to do this on a smaller scale,

57:09 fall in love with it, be sophisticated, go raise a bunch of money,

57:13 and they're going to be doing tens of millions

57:14 of dollars a year of spraying with drones.

57:17 Like that's an inevitability.

57:18 It is totally possible.

57:20 Yeah, there's so many acres that are going to get sprayed.

57:23 It's it's crazy.

57:24 Like they say that there's like over a billion acre treatments.

57:29 So, meaning not necessarily that there's a billion acres to spray,

57:33 that that if you would spray a field twice or whatever in a season,

57:38 it will add up to a billion acres needing treated.

57:43 But that could be anything, right?

57:44 Corn, beans, blueberries, raspberries, on and on and on and on.

57:48 Totally.

57:49 If somebody has if that's their goal that they

57:53 want to be the largest spray drone you know, operation.

57:58 The acres are there.

57:59 The co-ops are spread across there's there's a reason

58:02 that there's these huge co-ops across the country.

58:06 They have a large customer base.

58:09 Their customers need custom applications done.

58:13 If you can connect with those people that already have the acres,

58:16 you're probably going to have way more acres than you can get done.

58:19 And that the truth is most people are

58:22 like that their first year when they get started.

58:25 So they're like, okay,

58:26 I'm just going to make enough to pay my, you know, equipment.

58:28 Soon there's more farmers coming.

58:31 Hey, I got 300 acres here, 500 acres there and you're like,

58:35 well, I still got 3,000 to do.

58:37 I don't know how I get to there.

58:39 And it's like they only do what they can instead of quickly expanding.

58:44 That's most business.

58:44 Like most business owners don't have any employees, right?

58:47 Yeah.

58:47 Truck and a truck cuz it's hard to scale.

58:50 Yeah.

58:52 Yep.

58:51 So someone those numbers a billion acres per year like someone could own 10%

58:55 of this market and be a billion dollar a year revenue business at $10 an acre.

59:00 I actually think that a big company

59:03 that's already doing like say selling the chemical,

59:06 I cannot understand why they don't have hundreds of trailers right now.

59:12 I don't I do not get it.

59:14 Unless it's just because it's so new, right?

59:17 Yeah, yeah.

59:17 new they're like They have all the customers already.

59:20 Already trusting them enough to buy product from them.

59:22 Yep.

59:23 Yeah, it might be that.

59:24 It's just like you literally could add to your business doing the application.

59:30 They're selling the product.

59:32 They're selling the product.

59:33 They could literally just spray it.

59:34 And that's the hard part, the customer acquisition.

59:36 They've already checked that box.

59:38 Yep.

59:38 Yep.

59:39 Oh my gosh.

59:40 Mike, I have a headache.

59:41 This has been so good.

59:43 This has been very stimulating for me.

59:45 Anything I missed that I should have covered?

59:48 I know this is pretty exhaustive, but Oh, no.

59:51 No, this was good.

59:52 I feel like I should have come with like specific numbers.

59:55 No, this is great.

59:56 This is great.

59:57 This is great.

59:58 How much like licensing or training does one need

1:00:01 to have to to do this for agricultural purposes?

1:00:04 There's two main licenses that they have to get

1:00:07 on their own that we can't really help them with.

1:00:09 One is called a remote pilot's license or part 107 pilot's license.

1:00:14 Not that difficult.

1:00:15 I say, if you study hard for 3 days,

1:00:18 go take it on day four, you're going to pass it, okay?

1:00:20 That's one to allow you to fly a remote drones.

1:00:25 Two is get your commercial pesticide applicators license in your state.

1:00:30 Not that difficult, either.

1:00:31 If you're in Kentucky, you can do it online.

1:00:34 Uh you can study the course and in 3 hours you can take your test.

1:00:38 It's not that difficult.

1:00:40 Those are the two two main things you need to get started.

1:00:43 Then my team will help you with everything else.

1:00:46 A lot of paperwork after that.

1:00:48 So, in order for you to fly a drone over 55 lb as a remote pilot's license,

1:00:54 you have to petition the FAA and be granted an exemption to fly over 55 lb.

1:01:01 It's difficult to do.

1:01:02 I tried it on my own, hired an attorney,

1:01:05 didn't know how the process works, and it's a pain in the neck,

1:01:09 So, just avoid that.

1:01:11 Yeah, just avoid it.

1:01:12 Have Yeah, have have us do it.

1:01:14 It's It's just easier.

1:01:16 55 is the way to go.

1:01:17 Under 55 is is easy.

1:01:20 But, don't No, no.

1:01:21 You can't do that in agricultural because they're all over 55.

1:01:25 Oh, okay.

1:01:26 What I'm saying is is get your remote

1:01:28 pilot's license and get your commercial applicator's license.

1:01:32 And then, call my team.

1:01:34 Once you have that, then we know, okay, you have those?

1:01:38 No problem.

1:01:39 We will help you get the rest of your paperwork.

1:01:41 And it's just paperwork.

1:01:43 It literally is just paperwork.

1:01:44 And then, you can fly heavy-lift drones.

1:01:48 Okay.

1:01:48 How long does this whole process take?

1:01:50 Let say today, I want to get paid money to spray crops with drones.

1:01:56 How soon can I get my first dollar in the bank if I just work my butt off?

1:02:01 Well, that's where we made another program.

1:02:03 So, we started a program that's called a It's called 137 Fast Pass.

1:02:09 So, you need what's called a 137 certificate

1:02:11 from the FAA to dispense poisons from the air.

1:02:14 The FAA is ferociously slow.

1:02:17 It's the US government.

1:02:19 They don't do anything fast.

1:02:21 And so, we start your paperwork for you, all right?

1:02:24 So, we start your paperwork for you on day one when you buy your equipment.

1:02:29 It's going to take to get your own paperwork,

1:02:32 it's going to take you anywhere from three

1:02:35 to maybe four months to receive yours back.

1:02:38 But, while you wait, we now have a program that usually in 10 days,

1:02:43 you can be flying your drones that you

1:02:45 bought from us because we're going to allow you

1:02:48 to operate under our licensing so you can

1:02:52 get out there and get your equipment paid off.

1:02:54 Oh, okay.

1:02:57 Yep.

1:02:57 So, operate under your licensing while they wait for the FAA stuff.

1:03:00 Yep.

1:03:01 Yep.

1:03:01 All right, I've never done this before, but after I hit record, we kept talking.

1:03:05 He came from the Amish community, and I found that fascinating.

1:03:08 So, I hit record again.

1:03:10 We talked for a little bit,

1:03:11 some about business, some about personal life, church stuff.

1:03:14 So, this is kind of a behind-the-scenes.

1:03:15 If you're interested in that, his Amish background and upbringing

1:03:18 and how that shaped who he is today, keep listening.

1:03:21 Otherwise, we're mostly done with the business stuff,

1:03:23 but he does talk about how much profit he makes in there.

1:03:25 So, enjoy.

1:03:26 I got to hit record again.

1:03:27 How did you go from traditional Amish

1:03:29 horse and buggy to multi-million dollar business owner?

1:03:32 Did you have to like leave the community?

1:03:34 Not really, but my mom and dad didn't want me to not be Amish.

1:03:37 So, it was rough on them to to know

1:03:39 that their one child is not going to live that lifestyle.

1:03:43 So, my parents they they Amish that they are,

1:03:46 they don't shun you like some of the TV shows.

1:03:50 Yeah.

1:03:50 But, it was still hard on them.

1:03:53 Sure.

1:03:52 I now live on the home farm that my dad had.

1:03:55 And so we're cool, but It's different.

1:03:59 Was there like a triggering moment or event that made

1:04:03 you decide to kind of forge your own path?

1:04:06 Hmm.

1:04:07 Yeah.

1:04:07 When I uh started dating my now wife,

1:04:10 she was not Amish and I learned that I don't have to be Amish to get to heaven.

1:04:20 Yeah.

1:04:18 that if I leave the Amish,

1:04:20 then I'm not obeying my parents and I'm going to hell.

1:04:26 Yeah.

1:04:25 And so, I figured out that that's not

1:04:28 the case and I decided not to live that lifestyle.

1:04:32 Yeah.

1:04:32 Well, I mean, I'm I'm a member

1:04:33 of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS,

1:04:37 and there's there's a lot of similarities there

1:04:38 and like I just I get it, you know?

1:04:41 It's not like binary, it's not clear, it's not simple, there's complexities,

1:04:45 nuances, family dynamics, cultural dynamics,

1:04:49 like and also, I can stop recording.

1:04:50 I don't need to record this.

1:04:51 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, record it.

1:04:55 Okay.

1:04:55 it like I'm doing a podcast where it's like I'm talking about this.

1:04:58 Like people, exactly what you said,

1:05:00 like going from a Amish guy to making millions,

1:05:04 it's like oh my gosh, like why is this?

1:05:08 It's because I chose to not live that lifestyle

1:05:10 and then and they're still cool with it.

1:05:13 And it's been 4 years since you started drone deer recovery?

1:05:16 Yes.

1:05:17 Yeah.

1:05:17 That's a lot of change in 4 years.

1:05:20 is when we would have started the first brand of drone deer recovery.

1:05:23 What were you doing before drone deer recovery?

1:05:25 I had a tree care business.

1:05:26 It was called Any Tree Care.

1:05:28 And I was climbing trees, rigging them down, using big cranes to get them down.

1:05:34 Yeah.

1:05:35 Were you still in your community when you had that business,

1:05:37 or you'd already left by then?

1:05:39 No, I'd already left.

1:05:40 So, when I was about 16 and 1/2, 17 years old,

1:05:43 something like that, I I was like, I am not driving a horse and buggy to work.

1:05:48 I am not like dressing that way so I'm in right standing with the Lord.

1:05:55 I read an article years ago about a you

1:05:58 probably know about this, but it was a an Amish

1:06:00 family on a horse and buggy that got rear-ended

1:06:03 by a car going like 80 miles per hour.

1:06:05 And everyone died.

1:06:07 And the community just like completely forgave the driver.

1:06:11 Oh, yeah.

1:06:12 Like immediately.

1:06:13 Yeah.

1:06:13 That's pretty common.

1:06:15 I remember being very touched by that story.

1:06:18 Yeah.

1:06:18 It's interesting cuz like I've in my church like

1:06:20 I'm the I'm kind of the reverse in a sense.

1:06:22 Like LDS is not like Amish.

1:06:24 Like we you know, we use all the technology and everything.

1:06:27 But I'm the reverse of you in that my whole

1:06:29 family has left the faith, and I haven't.

1:06:31 You know?

1:06:32 So, it's a similar kind of feeling, but on the other side of it.

1:06:36 So, anytime like I see I've never even watched those dumb TV shows,

1:06:40 but I've seen like the trailers and the previews,

1:06:42 and like I just have a lot of empathy for people on both sides of that equation.

1:06:46 People that left, that you know,

1:06:48 they feel like everyone feels like they're going to hell,

1:06:51 and then people that haven't left.

1:06:52 Like I have I just have empathy for both parties cuz it's it's not simple.

1:06:57 Life is complex, you know?

1:06:58 No.

1:06:58 Yeah.

1:06:59 It It definitely is not simple.

1:07:01 It's you bring up that that story about Amish forgiving that driver.

1:07:07 My wife's uncle was just hit by a truck on a bicycle.

1:07:13 He was Amish.

1:07:14 Their whole family's Amish.

1:07:16 And the the guy that hit him was at the funeral.

1:07:21 Like they were not they were not upset.

1:07:24 Oh my gosh.

1:07:26 That's crazy.

1:07:28 Yeah, I just wish like if everybody would just show more love.

1:07:32 It doesn't matter where you come from.

1:07:34 right.

1:07:34 100% is like as as cliche as it is like it is the answer.

1:07:38 Like love is the answer.

1:07:40 All the cliches are true.

1:07:43 That's why you hear them all the time.

1:07:47 And why is it so hard?

1:07:49 I don't get it.

1:07:50 I don't get it.

1:07:52 Yeah.

1:07:52 So what what's your family think of everything you've built?

1:07:55 They're awesome.

1:07:56 Like I'm cool with them.

1:07:57 You know, it's just different.

1:07:59 I served a mission for my church for 2 years in Hungary

1:08:02 and my family members they were kind of like on the edge of the church.

1:08:05 Some were in, some were out.

1:08:07 But when I came home and I met them at the airport, they were basically all out.

1:08:12 And often times you hear like

1:08:13 motivational stories of the opposite happening, right?

1:08:16 Where like I was blessed for serving my mission and so

1:08:19 these members of my family who left the church they came back.

1:08:23 And people have their agency and I don't think that's like a sign

1:08:26 of I don't think that that sends a negative signal or anything,

1:08:29 but like I had the opposite experience and it was pretty depressing,

1:08:33 you know, coming back to that.

1:08:34 But like I just felt like the black sheep,

1:08:37 like the reverse black sheep of my family and I I felt like you know,

1:08:41 almost like they weren't judging me,

1:08:43 but it kind of felt like they were for not leaving, you know?

1:08:46 Um but like I love them, they love me, we're cool.

1:08:49 That's awesome.

1:08:51 Yeah.

1:08:50 Yeah, that's where we're at with my family.

1:08:52 Um it was definitely hard for many years

1:08:56 and uh but they just they're cool with it now.

1:09:00 Uh I mean dad sold me half of the farm for pennies.

1:09:05 Yeah.

1:09:05 And the other half is to his other son that isn't or that is Amish.

1:09:08 I'm not and the other one is.

1:09:10 And so, yeah, they don't they don't look at us, treat us any differently.

1:09:14 I have just like a mental model that I I run everything through,

1:09:18 whether it's like it sounds like probably ignorant silly,

1:09:21 but like sunscreen and like foods and like I just kind

1:09:25 of think like however people were doing it 200 years ago,

1:09:28 we should probably get back to that.

1:09:29 You know, like my wife is like,

1:09:31 "You need to put lotion on it, moisturizer." And I'm like, "No." Yeah.

1:09:35 Like no one was doing that 200 years ago.

1:09:37 Like like Exactly.

1:09:39 Exactly.

1:09:40 With food and like behaviors, like I just kind of like were we doing it then?

1:09:45 I don't know.

1:09:47 Yeah.

1:09:46 That's a big lifestyle change in 2 years.

1:09:48 What were you making per year like before Drone Deer Recovery?

1:09:52 Uh, I think I took home maybe with my business a hundred grand,

1:09:59 probably around that with anywhere tree care.

1:10:03 Nope.

1:10:03 That's a big change in 4 years.

1:10:05 Mhm.

1:10:06 I've never It's just crazy.

1:10:08 It almost feel like you you won the lottery.

1:10:11 I mean Yeah.

1:10:12 I don't have the millions, but I mean,

1:10:14 we have we could if we wanted to, but we just reinvest, reinvest, reinvest.

1:10:20 Yeah.

1:10:20 So, it's tied up in the business.

1:10:22 Mhm.

1:10:22 Yeah, and then having like we we've literally had What is that called?

1:10:27 Uh, when companies with millions reach out.

1:10:32 Private equity?

1:10:33 Private equity Yeah.

1:10:34 Yep.

1:10:36 Yeah.

1:10:35 I was like, I didn't even know that this is a thing.

1:10:38 Yeah.

1:10:38 Like we're not You're going to sell this for hundreds of millions one day.

1:10:42 Like for sure.

1:10:42 Yeah, we we talk about it, but then it's like what would we do?

1:10:47 Something that you start something else.

1:10:49 I mean, I I'm not saying you should sell.

1:10:51 That's not what I'm like hinting at.

1:10:53 Like there's there's strong arguments for doing

1:10:56 this forever or for selling cuz if

1:10:58 you sell like another thing I truly believe is like we need to work.

1:11:02 Like humans need to be building.

1:11:04 We got to build something even if it's software.

1:11:07 We have to create with our hands or we

1:11:09 will not be happy or fulfilled or content, right?

1:11:11 You know, so sell your business you're super rich cool.

1:11:13 You're still going to build something.

1:11:15 You know, you might as well keep building this.

1:11:17 Yeah.

1:11:17 You know.

1:11:18 Yeah.

1:11:18 Yeah.

1:11:18 We've talked about it, right?

1:11:20 There's always when you're an entrepreneur there's times when things suck.

1:11:23 Then there's times when things are great.

1:11:26 Then we're like when it's bad we're like oh gosh,

1:11:29 wonder if we should just sell this.

1:11:31 But then next we're like up here it was like I'd never sell.

1:11:35 Yeah.

1:11:35 Yeah.

1:11:35 No, I know.

1:11:36 Who knows?

1:11:37 I we talk about it.

1:11:39 Would we?

1:11:40 I don't know.

1:11:42 Maybe.

1:11:42 Depends on the number.

1:11:43 Yeah, but right now it's doing pretty well.

1:11:46 Yeah.

1:11:46 Man, that's incredible.

1:11:47 It's inspiring.

1:11:48 So you've all these businesses.

1:11:50 The biggest thing that I have an issue with right

1:11:52 now is having enough time and like being around my family.

1:11:58 It's like I'm always gone.

1:12:00 Yeah.

1:12:00 I mean it's like the you familiar with the analogy

1:12:04 of like the rocks and the pebbles and the sand?

1:12:06 Not sure.

1:12:07 So it's like if you if you take a jar,

1:12:09 picture a glass jar and then you've got like rocks,

1:12:11 you got pebbles, you got sand and they all fit in the jar.

1:12:14 You have to put them in the right way.

1:12:16 You got to put the rocks in first then the pebbles then the sand

1:12:19 and then you kind of shake it and they'll all kind of settle in.

1:12:22 If you do it the opposite way, the sand in first it won't it won't work.

1:12:25 So like you just have to make non-negotiables.

1:12:28 Like it's you should read the book Profit First.

1:12:31 Have you heard of that book?

1:12:33 Mhm.

1:12:33 You should you should read that book.

1:12:34 It's really good and it just basically talks

1:12:36 about like screw the mindset that like you know,

1:12:39 all you know, I'll take home money after

1:12:40 the business get like no like pay yourself first.

1:12:44 Pull out the profit first and then

1:12:46 everything else has to fall into place, right?

1:12:49 So that's kind of how I look at family.

1:12:50 Like I just have some non-negotiables.

1:12:53 And there are exceptions.

1:12:54 Like, I guess non-negotiable and exception, those are contradictory,

1:12:57 but like I don't work during dinner hours,

1:13:01 like during the evening, like I'm with my family.

1:13:03 Like, I will travel, but like it needs to be pretty necessary travel.

1:13:07 Um Wow.

1:13:09 Sundays, I'm just with the family.

1:13:11 Saturdays, I'm mostly like working outside with the family.

1:13:14 I'll get on the computer for a couple hours

1:13:16 sometimes to do things here or there, but like

1:13:18 But could you do that like you've now established

1:13:21 your businesses and you you've got your, you know, your income streams.

1:13:26 I feel like I'm still working to get that.

1:13:29 Yes, we do 10 to millions,

1:13:31 so it's like I don't actually have a million in the bank, like me personally.

1:13:35 Yeah.

1:13:35 Business does.

1:13:37 Right.

1:13:36 So like I I I feel like if I'm not at my phone and somebody

1:13:39 texts or they have an issue with a drone or they want this, it's like yes,

1:13:43 I have a team, but I also feel bad that I I see it come in and I'm like,

1:13:47 "Yeah, just wait on that guy." Yeah.

1:13:50 I mean, I have my phone on do not disturb 24/7.

1:13:54 24/7.

1:13:55 Like, no one's going to die.

1:13:57 You know, they're just not.

1:13:59 Like, will your net worth be 3% different otherwise?

1:14:02 Like, maybe, but like what difference does that make

1:14:05 in the grand scheme of things, you know?

1:14:08 Wow.

1:14:08 But I'll also say, let me say offset

1:14:10 it is like there are seasons for everything.

1:14:12 I have not done this for the 18 years that I've been self-employed.

1:14:16 I had busy seasons.

1:14:17 I went to China myself, you know,

1:14:19 10 days in a row to source suppliers for my iPhone parts business,

1:14:23 like that, you know, I was away from my family, two young toddlers for 10 days.

1:14:28 Like, there are seasons for everything,

1:14:30 but you just have to know you have to put an expiration date on it.

1:14:33 Like, this is my season and I'm going to have We're going to take

1:14:36 a month off and go travel as a family for that season, you know?

1:14:39 Mhm.

1:14:40 That's good.

1:14:40 That's how I look at it.

1:14:42 I definitely haven't been doing that.

1:14:43 My my my business partner, like he does really good.

1:14:46 I feel like he does really good.

1:14:48 Like I tried to text him, he won't text back.

1:14:50 Not that it's an issue, but like he'll get to it tomorrow morning.

1:14:55 It's like I wish I'd do that a little bit more.

1:14:59 Okay.

1:15:00 You should try.

1:15:03 Mhm.

1:15:02 You should try it.

1:15:05 It took me a long time.

1:15:06 I'm still like don't get me wrong, dude.

1:15:07 Like I'm not looking at Instagram, my kids are around.

1:15:10 Like it's a work in progress, you know?

1:15:13 I'm not trying to act like I'm perfect, but I've gotten a lot better.

1:15:16 And my phone is in do not disturb.

1:15:17 Like I just answer emails and texts in batches.

1:15:21 I have no unread emails or texts or I have a bunch.

1:15:25 But I like relentlessly unsubscribe from everything, any spam,

1:15:29 any I just get all that out of my head and I'll just I'll clear out all my texts

1:15:33 in 30 minutes and all my emails in 2 hours

1:15:36 and I'll do that like a few times a week.

1:15:38 Yeah, I got to figure out how to do that cuz I'm just always busy.

1:15:42 But I got to do what you're saying.

1:15:44 I hear you.

1:15:45 Yeah, often times in in a business like you you get

1:15:48 to the point where it's like you can afford to outsource and delegate more.

1:15:52 All I'm saying is like business owners usually late to do that.

1:15:55 They just look at their final like, "Oh my gosh,

1:15:56 I could hire a producer that could do all that, you know,

1:15:59 creative stuff for me." Of course you like it depends on how

1:16:02 much quality you want to stay there cuz there's always a trade-off.

1:16:07 There are no solutions, only trade-offs.

1:16:09 So sure you could free up your time,

1:16:10 but then the quality's probably going to drop.

1:16:12 Are you okay with that?

1:16:13 Maybe yes, maybe no.

1:16:15 You know, that's just a trade-off.

1:16:17 Yeah, huh.

1:16:18 Gosh, this has been good.

1:16:19 I appreciate your time, Chris.

1:16:22 This was awesome.

1:16:23 Where can people find you or your businesses if they want to learn more?

1:16:26 social platforms.

1:16:27 So Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, uh YouTube.

1:16:30 So H L E Drones?

1:16:33 No, no.

1:16:33 The names that people can search are Drone Deer Recovery.

1:16:37 That's the obviously the thermal side of it.

1:16:38 And then the other one is Nuway Ag n u w a y a g.

1:16:45 So, NuWay Ag and Drone Recovery on all social platforms.

1:16:49 All right, thank you.

1:16:50 Thank you.

1:16:51 All right, what you think?

1:16:52 Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on The Corner Office.