He Made $132K in 24 Days With a Drone⏐Ep. #288

Guys, this is one of the best episodes I've ever recorded, one of the best conversations I've ever had. And I'm not just saying that. About 4 years ago, I fell in love with this YouTube channel called Drone Deer Recovery, where these business owners in Ohio would be paid about $500 a pop to go recover deer that hunters shot but didn't recover. I thought, that's incredible. I interviewed that guy. I found him, and turns out he's making a lot, a lot, a lot more than $500. He's been on over 100 podcast episodes before, but he's never revealed his revenue or his profit until today. And the thing is, drone deer recovery, that's a cool business, right? You can make good money at it, but there's something else that you can do with drones that I've never talked about before. It's not roof inspections. Like, you will not see this coming. That is so freaking profitable and unique and brand new. I have not been this hyped about an episode for a very long time. You're gonna love Mike. We became fast friends. We swapped phone numbers at the end of this. He's got amazing energy and you're gonna learn some really cool ways of making a lot of money. So please enjoy.

When I came up with this business idea, uh, it was part of the, the whole thing. It was like, okay, I'm going to do it as a service, but I also want to create a YouTube channel. And so that was right off the rip.

Did you think that the channel or the service would be bigger or more profitable than the other?

I thought originally, my thought was I will make more money on YouTube ad revenue than I would on service. And I quickly figured out that that's not the case in my content. I don't pull enough. I just don't pull enough views to pay. I mean, my first, what was it? My first 10 weeks doing deer recovery just here in the state of Ohio, I made $50,000 in 10 weeks.

So your first, like, deer season in Ohio?

Yeah, correct. First deer season, first time I ever went public with it.

So, yo, you were at break-even within a couple weeks, and then it was mostly profit after that point.

Yep. So basically, the— my goal was when I bought the drone, I was like, I just want to make enough to pay the drone off, and then I'm good. But I quickly found out, I was like, holy smokes, I think we got something here.

Yeah, yeah, we need a bigger boat.

What?

So you just bought that drone for this YouTube channel idea, for this business idea? You didn't already have it?

That's correct. Yep. So I actually, I actually bought— if we back up how it actually started is I bought a cheaper drone. It was called the DJI Dual. DJI Dual. It was, um, it had thermal and a zoom camera, but it was not good at all. I made some video, one video about it flying over my hunting land and just looking at deer. Then I took that video to an outdoor show, a local outdoor show. And I just had a table with a cloth over it and an old iMac that I had. And then I had this video playing on there and my booth was the talked about booth at the show. Like, it was crazy.

It was like the most plain Jane booth ever.

100%. It, it had like this, this white sign behind me and it said like, like Yoder Drone Service or something. And then you had this screen that was playing this thermal. Then it would go from thermal. So you see this heat signature and then you zoom in and it's a deer. And the people were like, what the world? Like, how'd you see that? And so it just, it, people just stopped in the aisle. It was so bad that the show coordinator said, I have to move my booth. Like it was because the people wouldn't stop. They just, you didn't pay for the booth. I'm telling you, it was crazy. I do it. I just, I'm not kidding. I ran out of business card. I call my wife. I was like, run to Staples. I'm about out of cards. and I took a picture of that when I was running out of cards. There was one card left. My wife shows up and gave me another box of 250 cards because you could get them at Staples for like super cheap ones.

You're like, foray into the whole industry was to just take a low-stakes video of your own property of some deer. That's it. Go to an expo with your target audience right there and just show a video of the drone video that you took. That's it, right?

You got it. That's how you launch. That is exactly how I launched. And at that, at that show, right? So that was the, at the end of the season. So deer hunting season was over and the guys coming up to me and they're like, what are you going to charge for the service? And I was like, I don't know. I think I'll probably be between $250. I was like $250 to $350. And they're like, that's not going to be enough. I was like, oh, okay. Well, thanks for the info. And so I took all that info that they were giving me that I was like, 'Geez, maybe I start high, right? I can always come down.' And so then when the season kicked off in September— so that show was in January— in September the season kicked off and I was like, 'I'm going $550.' So yeah, it's $550 if I find your deer. If I don't find your deer, it's $450.

Now that's interesting. Like, why do you think they said that's not enough?

Because they were looking at the cost of getting a tracking dog out. So like at that time you could hire in a tracking dog. Yeah, yep, you could, you could get in a tracking dog for like $350. And I just thought I would fit in there. In the beginning, I didn't realize that my product was actually better than a tracking dog because they never had to go in and blow out all the rest of the deer that are on their property. So they would pay a premium to just come look find the deer and then figure out how to go in and, you know, get the deer out.

So I love getting feedback for businesses, but usually it's bad, right? Like your mom tells you, yeah, I'd buy it. Like, okay, what is that worth? You know? But this feedback you got is so valuable because often when you're asking a prospective customer, what would you pay? They're super biased because they want to pay less.

Yeah.

But in this case, you had this weird circumstance where statistically speaking, the people giving you the feedback are probably never going to be your customers because it has to be this one-off scenario where they shoot a deer but don't kill it and can't find it, right?

That's exactly right.

And so they're giving you very honest, real feedback. They probably know that they probably won't use you because they could probably count on two fingers how often in their entire life they've hired a dog service for this, right?

Exactly, exactly.

That pricing feedback is insanely accurate, whereas if If it were a service where all— everyone giving you feedback could be a potential customer, they might be like, oh, I wouldn't pay $350.

Yep.

That's $150, you know. So it's like, what good—

yeah. And basically, right, because I was the first guy in Ohio that was doing it, once they seen that option, they weren't wanting to get the dog even though the dog was cheaper. They were $350 and I was $550 when I finally did it here because it was like 98% chance I'm gonna find your deer. Um, they still didn't— it— they were okay with spending an extra $200 on top of what it would have cost them for a dog just because they don't have to go in there and potentially blow out all the other deer. And the biggest benefit of, uh, of using a drone was, yes, we hope that the deer has expired by the time we find it with the drone, But if it's not, right, if it's not quite expired, and you walk up on it with a tracking dog, they get up and they, they're gone. Like sometimes you don't find them after that.

Yeah. Okay. So did you take like phone numbers, email addresses from these people giving feedback? Or were you just kind of passing out business cards?

Nope. Yep, just passing out business cards. I did have for the show for a little bit because I didn't order nearly enough those little magnets that you would like throw on your refrigerator or something like that. I had quite a few of those but ran out very quickly. So yeah, it was, it was strictly business cards and the magnets.

What was the name of the expo again?

That it was called Northeast Ohio Sportsman Show.

Okay. Now, worst case scenario, that show does not go well. You have no takers, no interest. What were you going to do? Were you going to try to market a different way or were you going to check your return.

Oh yeah, so I mean, I, I was marketing in other ways as well. Like, as soon as I got my, uh, my drone in, I printed off these brochures, like a flyer, and I went to the local bow shops, uh, local rifle ranges, that type of thing. Just asked them if I could hang up a flyer, uh, and on that flyer I had like a picture of the drone, I had a picture of a thermal, and then I had a zoom or an RGB image of what, you know, here's a hotspot and then here is what I'm looking at. I just had that on the— I had that on the flyer. I was, I was just sticking some flyers out there. But, but again, this industry, the hunting industry, they do a lot of chatting, right? And so once you got some people talking about it, they were just talking to their next people that they knew because, yeah, word of mouth? I mean, I'm thankful I was one of the guys that decided I'm gonna go for it. The biggest thing is like, people didn't know, is it legal? Is it not? And I was like, let's just figure it out. Let's go.

Was it?

So it, it was not black and white in the state of Ohio that you could do it. But I did talk to the, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources head guy and told him what I planned on doing. And no formal, right? I wish I would have got a formal email or something. It was no formal thing. He just said he doesn't see a problem with it, uh, as long as you're not using it to literally go find the deer and then go shoot the deer. And so I was like, well, I'm gonna be professional in this. This is strictly to try to help the hunter, uh, recover a dead deer. And so I took his word for it. When it was at that show, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources I also had a booth at that show, and a couple of the game wardens walked by, and they were like, they looked at the video, and they're like, hmm, I don't know that that's legal. And I said, well, I kind of talked to your boss already, and he said that he doesn't have an issue with it. And so they weren't sure how they feel about it, but I said, hey guys, I would love to meet you out in the field and show you the equipment and show you how it works and introduce you who I am and that I'm not out here trying to help people cheat. And so I did. I met the local game wardens in my area. It was 3 of them, maybe 4. And we met them out at the rental property, my hunting rental property. And I showed them and they're like, this is cool. But they said, we just hope people don't use it for bad. And that's how we got going. And then, and then the state obviously updated their rules of what you can and can't do with the drones. And now it clearly tells you in the hunting regulations that you may use a drone to recover a carcass for that specific purpose. Yeah.

Okay. It's funny, I'm picturing the game— the game wardens walk up and he like looks at the video and he like slowly reaches for his gun. Like he doesn't trust you at all. I—

yeah, they were definitely like— they were trying to figure out if that's using an aircraft. To hunt. That— that— because there's a— there's a law that you cannot use an aircraft to hunt.

But yeah, well, in Texas, that's how you shoot pigs, is from a helicopter.

Yeah, I actually had a YouTuber reach out to me in Texas that they wanted, um, me to come down there and shoot some content, um, doing an eradication on pigs, because he helps farmers. They come in and they destroy their, um, corn and beans. And so, yeah, he said that you guys are allowed to actually use that— use a thermal drone, see see where they're at and go in and—

oh, interesting.

Yep.

Um, now you said you were the first in Ohio to do drone deer recovery. Was there anyone else in the world that you knew of at the time doing this?

Yes, yes. So I bought my own, uh, from a guy in Wisconsin. He was doing it, but he was keeping it on the down low. Um, so I was not the very first one. To do it. I was the very first one to make it mainstream.

Yeah, to put on YouTube. I— if you brought him a bunch of competition, you probably brought him a ton of customers too, because you blew up the industry, right? You, you raised the tide, right?

Which raises all ships. Yep, yep, I did.

So does this work anywhere there's deer hunting? Like What I'm thinking in Texas is, A, everything's so far out. Like Ohio has a decently sized population and it's not nearly as big as Texas. So, and it's a big hunting state, right? And it has a pretty long season. Is that right?

Yeah. Obviously in certain states it's going to be better than others. How many trophy deer are there that people are willing to pay to have recovered in Texas? I don't know that specific number for Texas, but what I can tell you is the Midwest states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, you know, that main mecca hub though, there's— it produces some big deer and there are a ton of people that pay a lot of money to try to find their buck that they, you know, shot.

I want to get to the agricultural stuff, but has your— has the drone deer recovery side of your business shrunk since then?

Service calls are less than than I had in years past because people have more options of calling other people. And I built a pilot locator map and they just go there to try to find their pilot that's closest to them.

So you're monetizing in a different way, like you kind of popularize this. So now you're like the lead gen source for your own competitors.

That is correct.

And what are the unit economics on that? Do you sell them those leads?

Uh, we sell them a subscription. Uh, so they, they buy a subscription to be listed on the website, super cheap, $500 a year. They can be listed on the Pilot Locator map. Um, and people that search for deer recovery people in their area, if they're on the DroneDeerRecovery website, they put in their zip code, it sucks them into an area, it gives you a dropdown of who's close by, and then they just click on, uh, contact pilot and then it'll text them. The phone number so we can track exactly how many people go to the website. And we drive a ton of traffic to these people.

I mean, you built the, the Yelp for drone deer recovery. That's what—

that's correct.

Nothing. I always say on this podcast, nothing is too niche. And you're proving that. You're proving me right. Yeah.

Yeah, it's— yeah, I don't know. I feel blessed.

Now, what are your— you're able to see all the numbers on your competitors, right? Like at least stuff that goes through your website.

Yeah, yep. So how many leads are you—

taught you?

Yeah, it has taught me, um, man, a lot of people can't shoot well. There's so many wounded deer. There's so many wounded deer. So I feel bad in that way, right? And, and I do get crap about a little bit online, is like, Mike, look what you're doing. Like, you're there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of people watching you because hunters have put bad shots on these deer. And I'm like, yeah, but this has been happening for many, many years. It was just never public. And so, uh, what it's taught me is, yeah, there's definitely a lot of deer that get wounded.

I think you— what you're doing has the opposite effect. It educates everyone how, like, you need to get a clean shot. Like, because there are so many— like, you need to hunt ethically because look at these people that aren't. Like, that's— I don't think people would see your content or your videos and think, I'm gonna shoot worse now because other people— you know what I'm saying?

Oh, well, there's definitely guys there that, uh, that say like, okay, well, I'm gonna take this marginal shot because I know I'll just be able to hire in a drone and, you know, find it.

Oh, okay.

All right, well And, you know, there's maybe that's something to it. Because I'm telling you, if somebody has a trophy buck in front of them, and they don't have the exact perfect shot, that doesn't matter. He can probably shoot it and a drone will be able to come in and find it. Yep.

I could see that argument side of it. What, what numbers are you willing to share about like traffic to your website or leads or revenue or all that?

Yeah, so I should have had my website guy get me those numbers for the 2025 season, but 2024 we were doing about 400,000, um, people going to the website in the busy season a month during the deer season in your area.

400?

Yes. Yeah, well, that's, that's a month.

Yeah, in that, during this—

well, yeah, for one month about 400,000, right? But you have to You know, we're getting anywhere from 2.5 to 3 million views on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. Those, so maybe some of those weren't literally looking for a pilot. They were looking to buy a drone.

But clicking around.

Oh yeah. Like we, the website clicks, I'm just like, I had no clue like that there's this many people around. I just, yeah. I never gave social media the respect that, that it deserves in business. Like, I, I had a residential tree removal business, and that business was just as big as I could make it here in the 3 counties. All of a sudden, overnight, I have a business that stretches from the West Coast to the East Coast, like huge. And it's slightly international too. Like, people in Mexico and Canada, and even in Europe have started watching our content and doing the same thing in those countries?

Gosh, I mean, my thesis for what makes a business strong, like incredibly strong, what gives a business a moat, one of those things is network effects, right? And for those listening or watching, a network effect is, is a business where it gets stronger the more the people use it, right?

Yeah.

Every person that creates a new Facebook account makes Facebook stronger because of the network effects, Right.

Yeah.

And so you have those network effects like you have a moat. If someone were to go try to launch a competitor to your directory website, good luck. Like, how do you overcome all your backlinks, all your YouTube videos?

Like, yeah, it is so difficult.

Beautiful.

And one thing that I struggle, I don't know if it fits in for the audience, but it's like as I, I screwed up when I, when I did some of this stuff. Um, right. I didn't know what I had to start with. I had something that is a Kleenex, right? So a tissue. Like when somebody says, hey, could you give me a Kleenex? It might be a Puffs or whatever. Um, I have Drone Deer Recovery and I did not, by the time I figured out that I needed to trademark the 3 words, the attorney said, okay, I'll try to file this for you. But by the time I got it in. It was just like a normal language at that point. And so to mark— yep, yep, yep. And so, but then it caused market confusion because it was bad for people. Okay, so imagine this company started, it's called Drone Deer Recovery. Drone Deer Recovery is anywhere. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be in Ohio. You can be everywhere. But then a guy starts a business in Tennessee and calls it Drone Deer Recovery Tennessee. And people have been watching this content and watching this guy, hey, I'm Mike with Drone Deer Recovery. All of a sudden they're finding maybe Drone Deer Recovery Tennessee and they think it's Mike, but it's not Mike. So it just, it caused some market confusion in the beginning and a lot of people were doing, doing it, but then they kind of, they kind of quit that because of the SEO that we had and it didn't really matter what they were trying to use the name for. But yeah, if there's something that I wish I would have done sooner was trademark that prior to like blowing it up.

Hmm. Interesting. The same thing happened with Spikeball. You know that game?

Yeah, yeah. Yep.

They had an issue with the generic trademark where they had to like rename it, rename it to Roundnet and actually trademark that because they were having so many competitors like basically clone their product and call it Spikeball and they couldn't do anything about it.

Yeah.

Yo, that's really interesting. Now, how many, um, do you call them operators?

Yeah, yeah, operators. Yeah, so they'd be independent operators. Uh, they name their business whatever they want and they, they just list. It's— I'd like to call it almost like a HomeAdvisor, um, before Angie's List bought them. Um, and they can list on the website. How many do we have listed? Gosh, you should just pull it up at— go to dronederecovery.com and then look at the pilot.

Okay, wow.

Yeah.

So hardly any out west.

No, no, out west has some. Yeah, we got to work on the out west laws. So that map will fill up as we get closer to season. So we're out of season right now. And so people get on. Yep, they'll get on in the busy season. But we're anywhere from 200 to 300 pilots on there.

Wow.

Yeah.

Um, so a little back of the napkin math, we're talking 6 figures a year in, in memberships.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Do you, do you have like affiliate links for these drones that you sell? Do you monetize this side of your business in any other ways?

Oh gosh. I'm a distributor for DJI drones. I am now the Number 2 or number 3 largest retailer of thermal drones in the United States.

What, what is your total revenue across all product lines and services?

We have never told anybody that.

I'm gonna guess 8 figures. That's what I'm guessing.

So let's imagine that I made $50,000 my first season, like in 10 weeks. It's 600x since then. Oh yeah, we did. Yeah, you're going to figure it out anyhow. It's last year we did.

Gosh darn.

Yeah, your business is this. So we did. We did. Yeah, we did over $32 million last year.

Oh my gosh.

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

No. And you're not saying results are typical like this is anyone. You're not saying that. You're just telling your story. Uh-huh.

I just know how it's going to go because like in the industry that I'm in, like, and I'm sure they watch your content. Uh, yeah.

Yeah.

We're quickly becoming one of the biggest ones.

Yeah. I had a business where we sold products that were cost $5,000 to $20,000 and we did $10 million our first 90 days. And if you do the numbers on that, that's like we sold low hundreds of units, you know? So these are high-ticket items. You don't have to sell millions of them to make millions, right?

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we're— it just feels like we're just getting started.

I'm sure. I mean, it's so interesting how they all play together. Like, you don't want to get rid of the, the directory side of the business. You don't want to get rid of actually doing drone— like, it all plays together. You don't want to get rid of YouTube. They all—

yeah, even though—

because like, you might look at like, oh, 80/20 rule, like, cut out all that other crap, cut it. It's like, no, like, they all work together.

You got it. Exactly what you're saying. If people could just listen exactly what you're saying and build a business like that, it's like you just add, keep adding things to it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I have a, like this podcast, I talk about a lot of blue collar business ideas and I own a tree trimming business and it's not huge. It's not super profitable. We founded it 3 years ago, but like I want to speak with authority about blue collar businesses. You know, so it plays a role in this content, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I, uh, yeah, that's, that's what we did. I just, I've literally never shared it. I've done, I've done probably 100, I'd say right between 120 and about 175 podcasts. And I always get asked like, how much money are you making? It's not a podcast like your podcast. It's, uh, it's like deer hunting podcasts. And then they want to figure out, well, if you do this many deer recoveries, you could make this much money. But it's never asking me as a business how we went from doing a service, making $50,000 to making tens of millions. Like, it's just— so this is different. I should have come into it a little bit differently. No, but I'm also like, I, I just am— I try to not— I want to be humble, right? There's not a lot of people that make tens of millions of dollars and.

Right. And that's not profit either, right? People don't understand how much goes to the IRS and your employees. And I mean, e-com businesses are hard. Like, they're very hard. Fulfillment businesses are hard. You've got like multiple hard businesses in one here.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I recognize that. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. And I don't think anyone thinks you're boasting. You're like, you're supporting entrepreneurship. You're providing jobs. How many employees do you have?

We have 28 people on payroll.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

What about if, if I wanted to do drone recovery as an entrepreneur, is there anything I can learn by like going to your map and like trying to reverse engineer? Like there's one in DFW. Obviously local laws play a factor, but yeah, could someone go look and say, oh, I—

on the website there's a how to get started in this business. We've just put together, um, like a small little booklet that will help you try to research, you know, how many tags might get sold in your area to the ratio of how, how many calls we get in Ohio. So we usually don't put this on front and center. This is like something that we use, uh, we run Instagram ads or something.

So you're running paid ads to this for the training?

Oh yeah, yeah, we, we spend a lot and a lot in marketing now. You know, in the beginning, I was just doing all organic stuff. But now, now we push a lot of dollars into marketing. Yeah, a lot of dollars.

I mean, you created an entire industry. And people that create an industry usually aren't the first to launch a business in that industry. It's usually the first person to shed light on it, put eyeballs on it. And, and that's what you've done. How does that feel?

I feel lucky. I feel blessed. Um, and I just pinch myself that I get to do what I get to do and make money at it. It's just, yeah, I mean, I, this is how crazy it is. I'm a pilot. I fly myself. I was in Georgia this morning on a multi-million dollar farm down there and I flew myself back because of making YouTube content.

Yeah. What were you doing down there?

Uh, I was down there with an onion farmer that bought a NewAgr rig from us. He bought 2 spray drones and a, a spray trailer, and we were filming content of him using this technology to spray onions and to show how he's adopting that new technology to increase his production of onions.

Is yield. Okay.

Yes. Yield.

Now, is if I'm a, let's say I'm a 20 to 50-year-old entrepreneur or entrepreneur and I want to do something in this space, do they go drone deer recovery or do they go agricultural?

Oh my gosh, agricultural. Agricultural by a long shot. But then they go hand in hand, right?

So, so do both, but, but agriculture first.

Yeah, I would probably do that. The, the industry is just, it's a multi $1 billion industry. Like, it's so huge. It's not limited to specific states. There's agricultural everywhere. There's ag from Michigan to Florida to California to Maine. There's literally things grown all over the country in the United States, and they get sprayed. They either get sprayed with organic material or they get sprayed with pesticides, insecticides.

Can you finance these machines?

Yes. Yes, we have.

What does financing look like?

The payment's going to range based on your credit score and stuff like that. But I do think that most people are probably in the 15% for interest.

What are the unit economics on this business? What does the opportunity look like for an entrepreneur?

Oh my gosh, it is, it is unbelievable. It's outside work. And it can get warm, long hours, and you got to work for it. But if you work, dude, I made $132,000 in 24 days running my spray truck. We just did another job that I ended up profiting. Yeah, let me roll back because I got these numbers. $65,000 in 8 days. And I put in the bank, I think it was at $50,000.

So like 80, 70% net profit margins.

Yeah, it's really good. And I, I told people I was going to make this public. And then the spray drone industry is like, don't do that. You're going to piss off the farmers and you're, they're not going to want to. Yeah, it's good. It's really good.

Oh my gosh. So Is that typical for this? Like, is that a typical ticket price, like tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

And that's typical profit margin, 70%?

Oh yeah, yeah. So, um, operating cost is going to be anywhere from $3 to $3.74 an acre, and you charge depending on your acres, right? If it's flat acres or rolling acres, you, you charge, you know, according to that. But it can be $10 to $20 per acre is what you're charging.

Hence the 70% margin. So profits could be 85, 90%.

Yep. If it's rolling. But again, it is a— it is kind of a short season. So that's why you make hay while the sun shines. Like, you work long hours, short season, and you put the money in the bank.

Yeah. What are some typical crops that you're spraying for? Is it anything?

Yeah. So in Ohio, we're spraying mostly corn and beans and pasture land. But I sell to people all over the country spraying, you know, pecan trees, almond trees, blueberries, cranberries. You name the crop, anything, it's probably getting sprayed.

Yeah.

Now, literally anything.

What does customer acquisition look like? How can an operator go out there and find a farmer to, to buy this from?

That is by far the hardest thing to do in this business, by far the hardest thing to do, because the farmers have— are usually older, they are set in their ways, and it is hard to convince them of this technology. So the way that I would tell people to get a customer is you, you have to go to the customer or get the customer come to you to do a demonstration. You have to physically fly the drones and like spray, you know, be water or something, spray it over his corn or his beans.

Show him the magic of it.

Yeah, show him. Show up at his farm. Like, you actually have to show up with his equip— or with your equipment and show it. Because just to hand him a business card and say Hey, I do drone spraying. He might not even know what a drone spray thing is. Yep.

Yeah.

So I don't want to make it sound like this, that, that it's easy to get customers. It is. It's one of the hardest things of this business is to get customers. But again, I— dude, I seen guys do this that were just cameramen. Like, that's what they were. They were camera entrepreneurs. They knew nothing about farming. Zero. They knew that drones existed. They bought a rig, they educated themselves, went to the farmers, did exactly what I'm telling you. And now they have a successful spray drone business. Now there's other people that are just hoping that a farmer, you know, Google spray drone business near me, and they don't do anything.

Yeah.

And so it can be a little frustrating because I'll see my new ag rigs listed on Facebook for cheap because they it didn't work for him. But it's like, I can tell you that I don't care where I would go in this country, if I want to be a professional spray drone business in any state, I could do it. And the way I get that customer is I take my rig, I go to his farm, I introduce myself, and I say, hey, can I just show you how this works? And you spray and you get down to the crop and you show them the droplets, like the And that's what we were literally doing yesterday on the onions is the farmer has been doing this for 40-some years and he's like, I never even knew that you get the product on the plant where it's at. And the only way it would've got there is using a drone. And so they have to see it.

Is, oh man, I have like, my mind is buzzing with questions right now. I'm like about to go buy a drone right now and start flying it.

Let's do it.

What's like an average farm size? 5,000 acres?

No, not in my area. Yeah, not in my area. My area, you know, there may be 100 acres. I can, you know, I'll give you some data. This is DJI's data. There's— here, I'll spit you some numbers. This is wild. So there's 99 million corn acres in the United States. 99 million. Okay, there's 82 million soybean acres. And most of these acres are going to get sprayed at some point by something, either a ground rig, an airplane, a helicopter. There's 46 million wheat acres, 52 million pasture acres, there's 11 million cotton acres. This industry tapped-wise is it's barely even getting started. Like we're at like 2.5% of what we could be doing. Market potential is like there's another 94 to 97% that is still untapped, literally.

All right. So the alternatives before drones were ground, airplane, helicopter, right?

Yeah.

You know, if you go to a farmer and you agree to pay $10 an acre, okay, what, what is he going to pay for any of those 3 alternatives? Ground, airplane, and helicopter?

Yeah. So right now, so let's take the exact same field in Kansas. That's what most people think about when they think farming. Flat, square Kansas fields. The, the airplane might charge you $8 to the $8 per acre to spray. I can— I would, I would spray it for $8 with my drone, but I have way less overhead than he does. Plus, I'm going to do a better application for the farmer than the airplane will. And I can prove it because the airplane gets to the end of the field and there's a power line and he pulls up and his spray is, you know, 100 feet up in the air and he missed the, you know, 75 feet.

That's why all this corn's dying in this corner.

Well, it could be. It could be.

Yeah.

It could be. I'm serious. So the drones are going to go right to the power line, turn around and come right back. And it's low. It's always the same altitude. So what's the— some guys, some guys, right, they're good salesmen, they charge more per acre than an airplane does, because they can show why it's worth it for the farmer to pay that. For me, I get a lot of acres covered. I'm pretty efficient with my rig, my setup. I still make a good bit of money charging the same as an airplane. So I would say for the most part, wherever you're at, you're probably going to be in the same range as an airplane. Now, now there's some acres, there's some acres like here in Ohio, airplane won't show up, he can't get in. So those acres, I'm charging anywhere from $20 to $25 per acre. Because there's no other option. There's trees in the way. It's hard to reach. It's rugged. It's, it's just gnarly stuff. The farmer's willing to pay for it because he literally has no other option.

Yeah. Now, what do farmers pay for ground or for helicopter if an airplane is $8?

Yeah. So a ground rig out there is probably in the $6 to $8 range. They're all going to kind of be in the same range. Yep, same thing.

And now the, the actual pesticide or the fertilizer or whatever that you're spraying, that's not you, right? The farmer's paying for that separately, correct?

Yep, correct.

Okay, so that's not included in your—

this is strictly just you applying whatever he wants onto those acres at the volume. So when I throw those numbers out, that's normally doing like 2-gallon work. So he gets 2 gallons of product per acre applied.

Okay.

Now, if a farmer says I want 5 gallons to the acre, then, you know, it might be a buck or 2 bucks more to do 5-gallon work. But for the most part, just to keep it simple, talking 2 gallons, you know, per acre.

Okay. And he's buying that product from Monsanto or whatever?

Yeah. Yep, exactly. Yeah. So he's getting his chemical, whatever he wants to put on his corn or beans. He'll get it in. I show up at the farm, I mix it up in my tanks, pump it into the drone, spray it onto his crops.

And he's probably very opinionated about what he sprays. You don't want to get involved there at all, right?

Like, yeah, yeah. So at some point, the more you do this, the more you'll see what products worked maybe for this farmer, and then maybe you can give a suggestion. But I did not want to be involved with that because I didn't want to recommend him a product and then that product not do well, right? So then he's like, well, the drone didn't work and the product didn't work, so I'm not going to get both of it. And so it's like, I'll just do what you want me to spray.

So I'm over here thinking like I'm an internet marketer and if I wanted to find customers, I would go find any number of websites where you can scrape property data, right? I would scrape owner data of farmland over X number of acres, maybe under Y number of acres. And I would take my rig. I would, you know, at 10 AM or whatever it is, I would drive to that gentleman's house. And I don't know if this is legal. I don't know all the regulations, but I would literally start flying that thing in front of his house where it's like when I knock on the door, it's behind me. And he's just like, what? It's like, what is this, like Men in Black? Like, you know, Independence Day. And say, hey, I want to show you my toy. It's got water in it. Do you mind? Like, that's my hook. What do you think?

Okay. Um, everything was good until you got to the point where you're flying your drone, uh, at his property without his permission. So these, these drones are, they're heavy lift drones. And so there's rules and regs that you can't just pull it out like you would your little Mavic drone to take a video. So you have to have permission from the landowner to be flying over his land.

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

Right in his front yard without flying it? Oh, 100%. That's why I'm saying, like, show up with your rig. Like, when you have 12-foot drones exposed on a trailer, like, you can't help but look.

Yeah.

And it's like, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like, you really do do spraying. And I'm telling you, it works. I went to co-ops, like, like where the farmers buy their seed and chemical from. So I showed up there with my drones and my trailer doing exactly what you said. They're exposed to the elements. They're like, oh, you really do mean you do spray with drones? I'm like, yeah, I show them up. I show up. I'm here to get work done. Like, I'm not showing up in my van. I usually say I'm not staying in a van or nicking a Crown Vic. Like, I'm here to get these acres sprayed.

Chuck in a truck.

Yeah, I'm telling you. And it worked. It's worked.

I have to think that like the— once they— it clicks, your close rate is just stupid. Is that true? Because they're already paying for this. You're not convincing them to pay for a new service. It's like, no, give that money to me because it's better and it's cooler and it might be cheaper.

You got it. Yeah. Like once they— once they see it, they're gonna do it. Yeah, like, it's just the way it is. And sometimes they have no other option. Like, right now it's raining a lot in Ohio. You are not spraying your fields any other way. Like, yeah, you can't take a 5-ton truck or tractor or sprayer in there. You can't do it. You're stuck. But the stuff is still growing, so it needs sprayed.

Yeah, it's funny.

I'm telling you, if somebody has just a little ounce of motivation and dedication and go-getter attitude, you can make this work. I'm telling you, there's— it's just so big.

Don't underestimate— I call them testosterone businesses. So when I'm picking businesses to profile on this podcast, it took me a while to learn that. But, you know, generally speaking, I cover things that are approachable, affordable, yada, they don't cost a lot of money to start. They, you know, high payoff, you know, predictability in the first X months or whatever. But there's a testosterone factor that I can't replace. And that means the idea just has to be cool to men, period. And so how that applies to you is like, you know what, my airplane guy, 6, because we went to high school together, he's 6 bucks an acre. My ground guy's $6 an acre. You're charging me $11, but this is freaking cool. So we're in, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not saying they would tell you all of their reasoning in their head, but they just, they want to see a drone flying around their property.

I cannot, like, you've never seen this. And dude, you nailed it on the head. I am telling you, this happens. We are flying at a farmer's field and there's an airplane next to us, like ripping over his corn. And he walks over and he's like, that's cool, you're spraying my corn next year. It's that— it happens. I was in Kentucky, we were down there and we were doing, uh, doing the acres. And then a farmer had us come clean up some acres, and then his buddy showed up to watch it, right? So he had already had his sprayed, uh, by the airplane. And so he showed up to watch the drones fly his buddy's farm. And he's like, I am definitely going to have drones spray my corn next year. Because he was watching how the drone went right to the tree edge, turned around and came right back. And just the— it's the wow factor. Yeah, it's like, okay.

Now, is any of the piloting automated? Are you having to do it yourself the whole time?

It's all automated.

Oh, dude, it just gets better and better.

I'm telling you, it's all automated. All you are— imagine that you are ATC, air traffic control, right? So you have these drones, they're on auto missions, they're out flying in the field, and then they're coming back. You just have to like know, okay, this one is this high, this one's at this altitude, you're going to make this one land here and this one land here. But literally you can spray a whole field you can spray a whole field and never once touch the, like, the remote controller sticks. You can literally just go swoop and the drone will take off. It'll go into the field, it'll lower itself, it'll spray, it'll, it'll run out of fluid or the battery's dead. It'll come back, you fill it up, you swap a battery and away it goes.

So excuse my ignorance. You led with talking about how hard this business is, and I'm sure it is. And how hard is relative, right? But I got a Cybertruck, like I could just picture myself broing down in my Cybertruck, 64 degrees, watching the screen, you know, drinking, drinking my DPZ right here. What, like on a hot day, like what, what am I missing here? You have to sit outside? Like, is that a regulation? And you just said you have to sweat?

Uh, well, yeah, technically it is a regulation. You're supposed to watch your drone. Um, with your own eyes.

Can I watch it in my truck with my air conditioning on and maybe YouTube in the background? I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, you could. As long as you can see your drone, you can sit in the— but you could sit on the top of your trailer in a cab.

Okay. You have to watch the camera and like have the actual drone be within eyeshot of you.

That's— yeah, that's, that's what the rules are. Yeah. But watch the content and you'll see if people are following it. Well, okay, again, here, I'm just going to jump into it. It probably won't go on the podcast, but it's like the FAA doesn't fly drones. They don't. They don't even know how it works. They make rules that we have to follow that they don't even know that. Okay.

For—

they say you have to watch your drone so you don't hit an airplane. I'm 12 feet off the ground next to a tree. If an airplane is going to hit my drone, he is inside the trees.

Yeah, that's like, for real. Like, he's the idiot.

They just don't even— they're just— it's just dumb.

It's the government. It's the government.

Yep. Yeah.

We haven't even touched on the recurring aspect of this. If, if I have 1,000 acres of corn in Kansas and I'm paying you $10,000 a year, let's say $8,000 a year to spray my corn. Is it yearly or what?

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah, or like quarterly, or are there different types of applications, or is it—

yeah, so it all, it depends. But, um, okay, so some farmers might have you come in and spray a herbicide. A herbicide kills all the weeds, and then he plants the corn. So you've one application there, then the corn starts growing, then he might want you to come in and plant, or, um, spray a fungicide. A fungicide helps so there's not fungus growing on the corn. So you might do 2, maybe 3 applications. That's rare. Most of the time you will for sure do 1 every year, almost always 1 every year. That is, that is in corn specifically. Pasture land, like rangeland, you might spray that twice. So in the springtime and then maybe in the summertime. That is probably a 3-year program, and then it'll go to a 2 or 4-year program. So it's more of a maintenance type thing. So first you have a bunch of invasive, you spray them, you get them knocked out, and then it's— you just come back, you know, maybe every 2, 3 years to come in and spray it again just so to keep control of it. So different crops, different applications. The onion grower that I talked about earlier that guy spraying once a week for 6, 6 or 8 weeks straight, once a week. So if you would get a client like that, you're going to go back to those fields every week and spray something on the, on those onions. I talked to him. I was like, okay, you're a farmer, you're doing it every week. But do all farmers do this? Like that grow onions? He's like, yes. I was like, is there a business for somebody to come spray? Like, if you were a bigger farmer, come spray as a custom applicator, right? Because we're talking about entrepreneurs. And he's like, absolutely. Like, because there's some farmers that won't buy the equipment. They don't want to learn the new technology. They just want to pay somebody to come and spray it when they want it done. They don't want the overhead buying the equipment, running equipment, servicing it, keeping up on it. And so there's definitely, there's those opportunities out there. Cotton, for instance, like there's a lot of cotton grown. There's like 11 million acres. I told you earlier, cotton gets sprayed once a week till it's ready to harvest.

Is that so? Is it most farmers don't want to own and operate the equipment or some farmers?

Some farmers. Yeah, some farmers.

So are most of your customers farmers, like buying these expensive drones for themselves and flying it themselves? Do they have to get trained in all that or what?

Yeah, so no, right now the industry, how we see it going, is it's entrepreneurs that are wanting to do their own business because the farmers haven't completely switched and believe that the technology does what it does. So they would much rather hire a guy to just spray it.

What about batteries? Like, how many gallons do they hold? Because that's what, 9 pounds per gallon just in weight. And then are you having to swap out batteries every few acres?

Oh, oh yeah. Yep, yep. So you're swapping batteries all the time. Right now, the drone that we really like is called a DJI T100. That one carries 26 gallons of fluid. And it depends how many gallons an acre you're doing, right? So if you're doing 2-gallon work, you're almost getting like 12 or 13 acres covered in, in one load. Now there is a lot of management stuff. Once you get trained, you'll learn, okay, I can't fill the tank completely full if the drone's only doing short rows because it uses a lot of energy to make turns. But if you're doing long runs, like I can get away with putting a full load in. So there is some common sense that goes into operating the equipment. The equipment will know, okay, my battery's getting low, I need to go home. It will know that. But just because you can carry 26 gallons doesn't mean you're going to put 26 gallons in every time. So, but it has the capability of doing it. You need 3 batteries, usually 3. 3, 3 batteries to fly. So it's always rotation. Drone goes out, comes back, fills the tank, swap the battery, uh, every— usually about every 4 to 6 minutes. Okay.

Oh geez, you're swapping batteries every 4 to 6 minutes?

Yep. Yep.

That's crazy. And how long do they take to charge?

Uh, about 8 to 9 minutes.

Okay, so you're able to keep it going?

Yep.

What, what else is awesome about this business that I neglected to ask about that we may have missed?

Um, I mean, for me, it's just like being able to be outside and watch the sunrise and sunset on top of a trailer, watching super futuristic drones spray over corn or wherever you're at. It's just so cool. I literally— and then I, I look at my, you know, copilot or whoever's flying on the trailer, and I'm like, We get paid to do this. Yeah, like I'm not really doing anything other than swapping the battery and filling the tank and the drone's doing the rest. Yeah, it's just like you're saying, it's a, it's a wow, cool factor.

What have you been doing this long enough to know, like what the churn is to an entrepreneur that has a farmer customer that's paying him every year? How often do farmers dig in? So like, like a yearly churn, like how often do, do farmers quit their, you know, their sprayer and switch to someone else or something else? You know what I'm saying?

Are you saying adopting this new technology? No.

Like if I get a customer, how long am I going to have them before he fires me in this industry?

I don't think they— I've not done it long enough to get fired.

You're like, what is churn? What is this? What?

Yeah, no, I fired, quit.

No, the money just comes forever, Chris.

Well, it does. The only reason that I've lost, uh, my customers is I've sold rigs to entrepreneurs right down the road. Like, I literally have sold rigs to— I'm showing on— so all my fields are on my phone. I can tell people or show people what I've sprayed, and the guy's looking at the field boundary and he's like, you You were spraying behind my house. I was like, oh, didn't know. And now he has a rig. Who do you think is going to spray those fields? He is, because he's right there. So that's the only reason that I've been like lost acres is I also equipped entrepreneurs to go do this. And it's like, yeah, could I be a huge custom spray applicator? I could totally, but that's not my business. Could you— could an entrepreneur that wants to go cover, you know, 50,000 acres? Absolutely. There's guys doing it right now running 10 trailers. They manage, they send guys out to spray this stuff. All they, all they do is manage them now.

All they do is, you know, carry cash to, to the bank in Home Depot barrels. It's wild. What is a business with 10 trailers do in revenue? Give or take? I know it can vary, but I—

well, I would just take my numbers, what I've done, because I don't have 10 trailers, but I sold drones to a guy that does, and I've not personally asked him how much he's doing, but we can quickly do the number. Like if he's covering, you know, 60,000 acres and he's doing $10 to the acre, I mean, there you go. That's $600,000.

A season, like not even a year, but a season.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

So is $600,000— I know that's an estimated number, but would that be a 10-trailer business or what's like the acreage to trailer?

I'm giving you that number because I know that that's what the guy's running in Kansas. He has 10 trailers, but he's like, he has military buddies. So believe it or not, this is a great business for guys coming out of the military. That they, they just want to be, you know, out in, in farmland by themselves, flying drones. And so what this guy did in Kansas is he had military buddies, and he has a bunch of acres, and he doesn't want to cover it all himself. So he helped his buddies get into it. And so they get to spray those acres for him. And I know he said they're going on 60,000 acres. I just don't want to tell you exactly what he's making because I don't truly know.

Yeah, yeah.

But I can tell you what I'm— what I've done.

Yeah. So in the case of this one guy in Kansas, it's about 60,000 acres to 10 trailers. That's kind of the ratio.

Is that—

is the ratio similar for you personally?

So if I would have his acres, I would not need 10 trailers.

Yeah.

But I work differently. So if I have 60,000 Kansas acres, I think I could get that 60,000 Kansas acres covered with 4 trailers.

Okay. Wow.

Yeah.

What, what's the biggest business that you know of doing this today?

I mean, I've sold, I've sold to guys in Minnesota. They're just slowly getting into it. So they, they I think they do a quarter million acres, like 250,000 acres, um, that they spray, but they didn't do it all with drones because they're, they don't think it's capable of it yet because they just haven't, they haven't done it like we've done it. And so I don't know who is the largest custom spray drone business as of now. Um, yeah, but it's probably in the Midwest, like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, somewhere like that.

I feel like someone's, someone's going to do this on a smaller scale, fall in love with it, be sophisticated, go raise a bunch of money, and they're going to be doing tens of millions of dollars a year of spraying with drones. It's like, that's entirely possible.

It is totally possible. Like, yeah, there's so many acres that are going to get sprayed. It's crazy. Like, they say that there's like over a billion acre treatments. So meaning not necessarily that there's a billion acres to spray, that, that if you would spray a field twice or whatever in a season, it will add up to a billion acres needing treated. That, but that could be anything, right? Corn, beans, blueberries, raspberries, on and on and on and on. Totally. If somebody has that, if that's their goal, that they want to be the largest spray drone operation. The acres are there. The co-ops are spread across. There's, there's a reason that there's these huge co-ops across the country. They have a large customer base. Their customers need custom applications done. If you can connect with those people that already have the acres, you're probably going to have way more acres than you can get done. And that the truth is most people are like that their first year when they get started. So they're like, okay, I'm just going to make enough to pay my equipment. Soon there's more farmers coming. Hey, I got 300 acres here, 500 acres there. And you're like, yeah, well, I still got 3,000 to do. I don't know how I get to there. And it's like they only do what they can instead of quickly expanding.

That's most business. Like most business owners don't have any employees. Right.

Yeah.

Chuck in a truck because it's hard to scale, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, so someone at those numbers, a billion acres per year, like someone could own 10% of this market and be a billion-dollar-a-year revenue business at $10.

Oh yeah. I actually think that that is a big company that's already doing like, say, selling the chemical. I cannot understand why they don't have hundreds of trailers right now. I don't— I do not get it unless it's just because it's so new, right? Yeah, it's so new.

They're like, they have all the customers already, already trusting them enough to buy product from them.

Yep. Yeah, it might be that. It's just like you literally could add to your business doing the application. They're selling the product. They're selling the product. They could literally just spray it.

And that's the hard part, the customer acquisition. They've already checked that box.

Yep. Yep.

Oh my gosh, Mike, I have a headache. This has been so good. This has been very stimulating for me. Anything I missed that I should have covered? I know this was pretty exhaustive, but—

Oh no, no, this was good. I feel like I should have come with like specific numbers.

No, this is great. This is great. How much like licensing or training does one need to have to, to do this for agricultural purposes?

There's two main licenses that they have to get on their own that we can't really help them with. One is called a remote pilot's license, uh, or Part 107 pilot's license. Not that difficult. I say if you study hard for three days, go take it on day four, you're gonna pass it. Okay. That's one to allow you to fly, uh, remote drones. Two is get your commercial pesticide applicator's license in your state. Not that difficult either. If you're in Kentucky, you can do it online. You can study the course and in 3 hours you can take your test. It's not that difficult. Those are the two, two main things you need to get started. Then my team will help you with everything else. A lot of paperwork after that. So in order for you to fly a drone over 55 pounds as a remote pilot's license, You have to petition the FAA, uh, to, and be granted a, uh, an exemption to fly over 55 pounds. It's difficult to do. I tried it on my own, had to hire an attorney, didn't know how the process works, and it's a pain in the neck, but we help. Yeah. Just avoid it. Have, yeah. Have, have us do it.

It's just, so under 55 is the way to go.

Under 55 is, is easy, but don't— no, no, you can't do that in agricultural because they're all over 55.

Oh, okay.

What I'm saying is, is get your remote pilot's license and get your commercial applicator's license and then call my team. Once you have that, then we know, okay, you have those, no problem. We will help you get the rest of your paperwork. And it's just paperwork. It literally is just paperwork. and then you can fly heavy lift drones. Okay.

How long does this whole process take? Like, let's say today I want to get paid money to, to, to spray crops with drones. How soon can I get my first dollar in the bank if I just work my butt off?

Well, that's where we made another program. So we started a program that's called a, it's called 137 Fast Pass. So you need what's called the 137 certificate from the FAA to dispense poisons from the air. The FAA is ferociously slow. It's the US government. They don't do anything fast. And so we start your paperwork for you. All right. So we start your paperwork for you on day one when you buy your equipment. It's going to take to get your own paperwork. It's going to take you anywhere from 3 to maybe 4 months to receive yours back. But while you wait, we now have a program that usually in 10 days you can be flying your drones that you bought from us because we're going to allow you to operate under our licensing so you can get out there and get your equipment paid off.

Oh, okay, okay.

Yep.

So operate under your licensing while they wait for the FAA stuff.

Yep. Yep.

Where, where can people find you or your businesses?

Uh, all on, uh, social platforms. So Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. So the one— no, no. Uh, so the, the, the names that people can search are Drone Deer Recovery. Um, that's the obviously the thermal side of it. And then the other one is NuWay Ag, spelled N-U-W-A-Y. W-A-Y-A-G. So New Way Ag and Drone Dude Recovery on all social platforms.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.