ydqa ep 13

[00:00:00] How do you promote your drone business while working a 40 hour job? Devote your best and most energetic and clear hours to yourself, right? Um, and I'm not saying slack off at work, but if you're gonna pick who to prioritize, you know, prioritize you.

Oh, welcome back to another episode of Your Drone. Questions answered. I'm John Dicko here to answer your drone questions, or at the very least, find the person who can. Today's question is, how do you promote your drone business while working a 40 hour job? I've got the right person here to answer that question.

David Young, who's actually done it, he's the founder of Drone Launch Academy. David, thanks for joining me today. John. Thanks for, uh, having me on. So, This is kind of the perfect question for you, cuz obviously you were working your 40 hour job for a couple years while found, uh, starting Drone Launch Academy.

Yeah. But then even since then, you've been [00:01:00] talking to people who've, who've been in the same boots, uh, on your own podcast and you're actually teaching a course, uh, on the subject matter as well. So let's start with your story. How did you. Kind of managed to juggle these two things. Back in 2016 is when we launched, uh, launched Drone Launch Academy.

Uh, when the whole part 1 0 7 exam was coming out, I had bought a drone and got into doing some, um, drone services and that led me to. Looking into my part 1 0 7, and I had an aviation background and I had an instructor license, uh, with the f a I had was an f a advanced ground instructor. And so I thought, hey, you know, if the F AA is coming out with a test to certify people how to make drones, maybe I can help people, uh, and make a course for that to help them study.

So I ended up meeting two people at a conference. One of 'em was an attorney, another one was a meteorologist actually. And I thought, Hey, um, I dunno if people will listen to me on those two topics, but these people would be great to have in my, uh, prep course if I'm gonna teach one. So they were, um, [00:02:00] that's how we got, kinda got started in 2016 and at the time I was still working as a forensic accountant, uh, at the fbi, uh, first in outside of DC and then we moved to Florida and I was working at an office here.

Um, so it was very much. Like a 40 hour a week, you know, government job. It was, you know, if I got in there at nine o'clock in the morning, I could stay until, you know, I'd stay until five. Pretty typical. Nine to five. Mm-hmm. So what I would do is normally, as I was working on Drill Launch Academy, I started like going into work early so I could get off early, and then I found out in the afternoon, like I'm pretty tired.

You're kind of burnt out from work. Um, it's kind of hard to have like another surge of motivation to be like, yeah, I wanna work on my stuff more. It's hard to get the motivation to go reengage in work, like mm-hmm. At night. Mm-hmm. Like that. At least it was for me. So what I ended up doing was I was like, you know, I'm gonna wake up early and I'm gonna work from like six 30 or seven to about nine.

On my own business because that's when I had the most energy, the most mental [00:03:00] clarity, all that stuff. And then I could go on, I could work from nine to five or five 30 or six or whatever I needed to do there. So that was number one. Was. Devote your best and most energetic and clear hours to yourself.

Right? Um, and I'm not saying slack off at work, but if you're gonna pick who to prioritize, you know, prioritize you. Now, when it comes to this question here, which, uh, you know, we'll pull it up. It was actually, uh, from Travis Beard. He emailed us. Earlier in the month and the question said, yeah, how would I go about promoting my drone business if I work a 40 hour week job?

Promoting a drone business is a little bit different than what I was doing a drone service business. So eventually, you know, we were in, got in the business of test prep essentially, and then we moved into other education resources around commercial drone use. Mm-hmm. And in any type of service business, they're very relationship-based, you know, solutions-based, um, people aren't just going online and.

Buying a product. Now they may go online and reach out to you, um, but it's very much relationship driven as far as how successful you are. [00:04:00] Uh, what I would do is you gotta go find people to become friends with that you can do business with. And so if I was Travis and I was in his shoes, the first thing I would have to probably decide is what kind of niche I wanted to focus on.

So, hey, I'm gonna serve construction companies, or I'm gonna serve, you know, landfills. You know, the more. Targeted you can get, the easier it will be to discover your customer's problems. Um, people don't pay for drone stuff just because they like drones. They pay because it can solve some type of problem.

Well, you need to go find out what kind of problems these people have so you can know what kind of solutions to bring to them with your drone. Learning about problems is the best thing you can do as a new business owner or business owner general. So I would look at all these different. Vertical, you know, different layers that are gonna go into this.

And I'd be like, all right, who are just all the people that I can meet in this area? Who are all the different events that they'll have? Um, I have a friend, he does, uh, thermal stuff with drones. So he does called moisture, uh, [00:05:00] inspections. So he's gonna see if water is getting inside of buildings, either through the walls, the windows, the roof.

And he just went to like a local roofing contractor association, central Florida Roofing Contractor Association meeting. Um, Just got to know people there. And he ended up landing like a huge, uh, corporate client out of it, like a giant orange juice manufacturer. They had several buildings damaged by some storms, and so he came out there and kinda showed 'em what he could do on one of the buildings, and they're like, sweet.

And so they hired him for a bunch of buildings. So if he had never would've gone to that, he would never would've known. The two guys I mentioned that partnered with me on that, um, test prep course, I met them at a small drone conference in Washington, DC mm-hmm. And I actually took vacation days from my job to go to that conference.

Mm-hmm. Um, so sometimes you have to prioritize that. So if there's a conference that you think, Hey, this is gonna be a great place for me to meet potential customers, partners, what have you, maybe it's worth taking a couple vacation days to go do that. Uh, I know I used to go to, there's like Chamber of Commerce [00:06:00] events that are after hours.

Usually they're like, Little happy hours, or they're called business after hours. They'll have something like that where they'll start at five 30 or six. I used to go to those all the time. Um, and you can kind of just hear from people sometimes. Those are a little, those are a little bit more, you know, mingled.

It's not like everybody's sitting there talking about their business problems per se. When you go to a conference that's targeted on a specific topic, it's a little bit easier to hear, like, The issues that are being dealt with in the industry, and it's a little more focused on that. So, um, so anyways, number one, I would pick a niche.

Number two, I would try to find events, uh, to go to another thing, this, we actually recommend this in our, uh, drone TOK course, and you mentioned the, the course that we have at Drone Launch Academy for building a drone business. Mm-hmm. Um, so we partnered with several people who have, have built. Six figure drone service businesses.

So, um, Cody Redick of Midwest Aerial Productions, he's got a very large drone service business that has done nationwide cell tower inspections. [00:07:00] He's done video work for the Ryder Cup and the golf channel. He's go doing stuff for the Ritz Carlton in Hawaii coming up. So he's pretty, he's he's great. And he, um, is the main teacher in that course from a.

Business development on the drone side and the sales and marketing perspective. So in that, in that course, that drone IK course, one of the things we teach is have some type of platform to get found on, because there's really two ways to find clients, right? Either you're gonna go out to them, You're gonna meet them at a conference.

Another way is having them find you. So people who are actively searching for what you have to offer. You need a way to be findable. So you know, have a website. One of the most important things you could do is have, um, Google Business set up. So you can have that with some reviews and information about your business on there.

And some photos. Um, Don't be hard to be found online. It's so easy to get that stuff set up. So if I was Travis, you know, pick a niche, try to go to those events. But the other stuff where you're being findable online, you can do that on your own time. Right. So do that in those early morning [00:08:00] hours before your job.

Mm-hmm. Or whenever else you can. Whenever else you can sneak it in. Yeah. Um, and then the fourth thing I would do again, you can do this. On your own time is to, to find out more about the industry and make more connections. I would start some type of platform. So I would either start a blog, um, at the very base level, right?

Cuz you don't ever have to show your face. Or if you're, if you're a little more comfortable, start like an audio podcast or even go crazy with a video podcast. And I'll tell you, there's no easier way to meet someone than to have 'em on a podcast. So start a podcast in your industry. Be like, oh, but David, I don't know anything about that industry.

Well, that's perfect. You say, Hey, I'm starting a podcast about this industry. Um, and it's for people who wanna learn more about this industry, your yada yada yada, um, make it to where your guests would kind of wanna come on there and, um, be heard. Almost all of the Drone Launch Academy instructors that we have, I got to know them through a podcast episode and then I was like, oh, you're really talented and [00:09:00] have a lot of deep experience in this field.

You know, would you be interested in teaching on this topic together? Um, and, you know, make some great partnerships that way. Yeah. Um, and it gives you content to put out there in the world and again, making you more findable. So it's just got so many benefits. And if you're scared to get on a podcast and talk, just say, Hey, I'm writing an article on this thing, could I interview you for it?

And, you know, put some stories in the blog post and you guys can use it or try to find some benefit for them. Right. But that's what I did. And if you just do that stuff consistently, I promise you it will snowball. You'll get, you'll start meeting more and more people. Um, you'll get work coming in and, uh, it'll work.

The reason most businesses fail is because usually whoever's starting the business, they just lose steam. You know, they just, they kind of just go, ah, I just don't think it's gonna work. And they, they tuck her out too quickly. I was reading this book the other day, it's called, um, Or I've read most of it.

It's called Three Feet From Gold, and it talks about how most people, you know, if they would just go a little bit further, they're like, you don't know how close you are to hitting some point where things will start [00:10:00] going well in your business, or you'll meet, meet the right person, or usually it's just some little.

Thing that has to happen to where it's like, boom. Oh, now things are clicking and people usually just quit too early. Um, I can even give an example. When I started Journal Launch Academy, I worked for like six months making that prep course. I talked about, um, I just tried to start rolling out some Google ads and some other stuff.

I couldn't get anything to work. I launched, uh, the course to our email list that we had at the time. Think. I got like $200 in revenue and I had spent maybe 15 grand on getting this course made. And I was like, oh no. Um, but one day we finally just got some ads figured out and dialed in just the right way and boom, it, uh, it took off and I was like, oh sweet.

And so we made some revenue and then I did something to screw it up and it tanked again. And then I found a really good ads guy and he figured it out and then we started going up again. Um, so just cuz something's not working at first doesn't mean it won't work in the long run. It's gotta be easy to.

Sometimes lose that motivation. [00:11:00] Feel discouraged. Oh yeah. A bad day at your, at your day job, um, can spill into, you know, your ambitions with, uh, with your own business. And so, uh, stick with it is really what you're saying. Yeah. I think you gotta have a, you can't be in it for like the quick, you can't expect it to come quickly necessarily.

It's like going to the gym or eating a diet or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. It's hard at first with minimal results, and that's why most people quit. Um, and so you have to have. Good long-term outlook and discipline of, of knowing, Hey, if I keep doing this stuff, it will happen. If, if it has worked for other people, it can work for you.

Mm-hmm. So, um, yeah. Another, another piece of advice I was gonna give actually, and this is what Cody Relic said. We did a training on business stuff the other night, and he was talking about when he quit his full-time job. And the same thing. Dominic Wilkerson, he teaches a real estate course for us. He's a very successful real estate photographer in the Seattle area.

Um, you know, they both made calculations. Here's what I'm making at my current job. So if I [00:12:00] can just get X number of drone jobs, gigs, contracts, whatever, at x number of dollars per. Job, then I can replace what I'm making now. So at least it gives you some baseline where you know how much income you need to make to live and then that can be your goal, right?

And then you just work towards that goal. It's easier when you're working a full-time job to get some baseline to know where you need to go number wise. But what about just the business 1 0 1 aspect of it? I mean, just starting your own business in any business? Uh, did you have to figure that out yourself?

Did you have some know-how already? So I had at least like set up an llc. I had some knowledge of accounting and bookkeeping and whatnot. So that's obviously helpful when you're starting a business. Um, but I would say start with books. You know, there's a lot of great information in books. And YouTube, you can go around there.

Um, then when I wanted to like really accelerate stuff, I would take an online course from someone I trusted. So I'd followed a lot of people. Um, and then I wouldn't even one level up and I joined like a mastermind group. So a guy I [00:13:00] followed at the time was Pat Flynn. Great dude. Um, I had listened to him online for a while, so I joined his mastermind group and that helped a lot and I made a lot of great connections through there.

Spending money on education for myself in any of those forms mm-hmm. Has always been extremely, um, G money well spent and time well spent. Great investment. That's great. I know we're running short on time now, but there any final thoughts you wanna share with the audience just in terms of this question, how you're promoting your own business while working this 40 hour job?

Try to set aside designated time. Like if you don't set the time in your calendar, it's probably not gonna happen if you just do things when you feel like it. I'll work on this business when I, you know, have extra time. You know, when are you gonna say you have extra time? Like you make the time for stuff that you really want to do.

So I would say you just have to make the time to do it and be committed to it. So pick the time. I'm gonna work 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM every day on my business. But, but yeah, I would just say, you know, you gotta, you gotta make a planner. It's not gonna happen on its own, you know? Mm-hmm. You gotta be hungry for it.

Yeah. [00:14:00] That's great. Well, David Young, I really appreciate you coming on answering this question. Uh, I wanna thank our audience for listening and watching. You can submit your own question. Uh, anything about drones you want answered, you can submit that@ydqa.io. We'll find the person, answer it for you. But in the meantime, we'll see you in the sky.