EP5 | Cleaning Up: A $1M+ Drone Opportunity? - The Drone Business Show

Meet Dean and Kev from Drone Clean UK Everybody, it's Matt Williams. Welcome to another episode of the drone business Show. We are joined today today, easy for me to say by two very special guests. We've got Dean and Kev from drone clean. So really fascinating story that I'm really interested in hearing from the guys. We had a little bit of preamble before we before we started to record this and the background that these guys have got and what they are doing and looking to achieve in the industry is is absolutely fascinating and inspirational to be honest, which is exactly what we want on the podcast. So welcome guys. Thank you for joining us. It's all good. So drone cleaning then it's something it's one of those things right for me. I've always looked at seen the drone cleaning piece and if I'm honest, always wondered whether it was actually worth the investment and the time like and I think some of the systems that I've seen in the past haven't necessarily delivered on the promises that they've that they've they've said they're going to. But one of the main reasons I reached out to you guys is because actually I've seen your website and the social media stuff that you do. So obviously the PR is working, which is brilliant, big part of business that we'll talk about I'm sure. But it actually looks as though the systems and the equipment and the processes you've got now are working, which is amazing. So yeah, that's it. So if you wouldn't mind then between you both, if you could just start back like at the very beginning of the journey. You know, how have you ended up now in a place where the two of you are working together and you're flying drones, very special drones, special permissions and and earning a living by doing drone cleaning. From Diverse Backgrounds to Drone Cleaning Innovation Hey, Dean, do you want to go or do you want me to? Speaker 3 Go Yeah. Well, well, we came from different. I mean, I had a totally different background. I had a company that supported printer manufacturers worldwide with all their logistics. So I set up sort of where it was in Malaysia, India, Japan, America, and I did that for 20. I had my own company for 24 years doing that and recently sort of sold it just over a year and a half ago. And Kev, Kev was doing his thing and we sort of came together. We've known each other, We played football together since we were like, I think Kev was about 14 when he turned up at the at the club. And we've known each other for forever. And we both sort of found ourselves in this situation where Kev had seen these drones over in Australia. I'm sure Kev can tell you more about that and what he saw. And we decided, yeah, let's look into this. So we both didn't have great a lot of drone background, but we have a lot of business background. I, I saw messed around with drones a little bit back in about 2010. I think it was a tally 500 if I remember rightly. I had, which is an early sort of because I was quite into sports photography at the time. I used to use it for some of that. But then I sort of carried on with my other industries. And yeah. And then we've, we've come back together, which is about April 2024 and looked at drone cleaning. I then sort of got into it and that's all the different manufacturers knew we thought was good and it was bad. Went through some various massive learning curves over the last year. And so I definitely want to go into that piece yet or whether you want to like Kevin, if you want to just give a big overview. Speaker 2 I mean for me my background was always sales. So it was always, everything was always product sales and specification sales. So I always had a nice client pool of surveyors and architects. So I had that before. So when after I left manufacturing, I went into, I was always in the roofing world. So I went into being a roofing contractor. So I had my own business. Well, come along the business and eventually sold the business and I had to stay at a roofing for a small amount of time as you do when you sell a business. So I went off and done some building consultancy and that's when I went to Australia for a few weeks to look at new products, innovation. And I saw these, I saw the drones and I thought that's pretty cool, but they were painting with the drones at the time and I thought we were quite a way of painting with the drones in the UK, certainly when it comes to spraying anything. So that will happen one day without a doubt. But we're at this time we were quite away from where we needed to be. So I came back and said to Dean, oh, this is a good business idea. You just sold yours. There's not really anybody else that kind of does it. There are some, but the drones are more just based for like perhaps window cleaner web. The drones that we were looking at wants to be more, can they work on cladding and can they work on the commercial side, larger industrial drones. So that's when Dean threw himself into it and became listened to every podcast Matt go in and became a complete. So I just I just let him go off and be a nerd for ages. And then but my my background with the contracts in is really what pulls it all together as well, because I got the the client base previously, but also the fact that we can go and sit with clients and say we can do this job for you. We can do it to a certain level. We never lie about the level you're going to get ever. You know, we're always very honest about the, the quality of the, the finish and you know what we can deliver. And like we said, we'll talk about that in a bit. But there's the fact that we can set up jobs that were safely and we really worked hard with the CAA to to make sure that we could deliver on what we say. And you think every job we go to now, we are the, we're like the pilots. We call all our guys the pilots that they're like, they're like that's filmed everything they do. There's they're famous, you know that there's suddenly the cameras are on them. And that's where we Dean and I have to think, right. All we want is to make sure it's safe, delivering the job properly, make sure that people management is. So that's why you can't just go off and fly these drones on your own. So that's kind of where. So that's the long story of how we got to here. And then kind of a little bit about what we need to talk about, which probably is the industry, I guess. The Business Side of Drone Cleaning Operations Yeah, and and I think this is one of the things that's so fascinating about the journey you guys are on. And and actually, you know, a huge part of what we're trying to teach people at the drone Business Network and and lean into is this whole there's so much more behind the business that you need to understand potentially than just the drone piece. Like you guys have come at this as effectively professional business operators and owners and then looked at finding a pain point for people, whether that's, you know, the the time and the energy that it takes to clean these commercial property. I presume it's mainly commercial that you guys work? Speaker 2 Out we do all sorts of sectors we do we still do window clean, but we do a lot of commercial industrial, large sheds, you know a lot of warehouses retail stadiums things like that yeah it's but the drones that we'd seen previous in the UK were more you're they were fine with with windows. They didn't really have the power that we needed to clean and do the solution that we can sort of use and be honest. So it had to be something. So it took a while to find what we were, what we were doing really. Speaker 1 OK, yeah, it's really interesting like say it's coming up that that way and and just chatting to you guys from, you know, 5-10 minutes before we started filming the episode. It's fascinating hearing the way you were talking, you know, you can tell there's a sales background, you can tell there's biz OPS and biz dev backgrounds in there for you because it's like, right, what's this? What's the pain that these people might have? What's a solution that we can provide? And then how can we do that rather than get in a drone and going right, what can we do with this to make money now? It's actually a definitive decision to go, no, this is this is the problem. This is a solution that we can do. Dean did the nerd piece, right where he went away and found the the options to deliver on what you wanted to do. And then you're out there selling an actual solution that is valuable to people. And that's the message that we try and get across to people all the time, right? And when you start doing that, all of a sudden you can make the regulations fit, you can make the way that you do business and operate your drones. You can make it safe enough. You can get the permissions that you need to be able to to deliver what your clients need. Speaker 2 Completely agree. And I think people look at this as perhaps a bit of an easy in with our we can we can fly drones and we don't ever want to come across as negative and say, oh, no, you can't do this because everyone of course you can do this job. But it's just having that understanding that there's a lot more to it than just fly in the drone and there's a lot more people. Oh, we have people phone, so we want to get out of doing the heavy lifting and moving things around. So you just want to fly a drone. Well, the drone alone is heavy enough, let alone all the soft wash stuff you need or the OR the the trolleys that you need or the kit in the back. We take two vans to every job because you've got your motors in the one and then you've got all your product delivers in another van. So there's always a there's a lot of heavy lifting that goes on from so people. This isn't just a, you know, you stand there and fly. So I think when people understand that when people come to sight, we have a lot of people come and watch us and they understand. I think after people that want to get into it, we sort of say like, come along, if you want to be that interested, come and see what we do. And we're not. We know, you know, we don't hide anything and we try and be honest with people. So it's give them an idea. We have four or five guys at every job. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's fairly big teams. Speaker 2 It's become. It's from pedestrian management to quality control to Vos. You have somebody obviously be in a video for a pilot because that's where accidents happen when the pilots looking at. Then we change pilots when we change batteries. So we keep it everyone fresh all the times, the understanding that they're the quality as well as looking after the individual that's doing it. Because you know, it's like if you've fired a long time, your mind can just, you can just go off into that journey of flying, can you? Yep. And that's when mistakes will happen. So we change a battery to change individuals. So it's hard to be, we will come across one man bands and yet there'll be more. They'll be cheaper than us, but we have to manage the safety, the level of what we do. And that's why we got our own beds in place. That's what it is. Overcoming Regulatory Challenges with Advanced Drone Technology So we're, you know, we don't want to come at this and be the bottom of the market. Speaker 1 Yeah, interesting. And, and, and I think that's one of the, for me, one of the big things about the kind of professionalisation of the industry that we're starting to see now. There are these different tiers, if you like, of training company. There are different tiers of operational delivery, there's different tiers of manufacturing and and, and equipment. You know, we're starting to see that now and these striations are starting to occur. What's the you know, it's really nice. It's really nice. It's really good to hear from, you know, ex training background that you guys are so focused on safety, which is amazing right that that's that for me is as and when I've always said as and when the accident happens kind of as we saw at the the the times when they've been drone incidents and for those who can't see me on video, I'm doing the speech marks right at airports and places like that. The knee jerk reaction is right stop drones from flying and when, as and when, heaven forbid there is an accident or an incident, the knee jerk reaction is going to be stop drones from flying until we can work everything out. So this safety piece is so good. How have you guys? I mean, how much do the drones weigh and how have you then found that hurdle or that barrier almost although you've got through it of the regulator and kind of enabling or not enabling you to do what you do? Speaker 3 Yeah. So, so we when I, when I started to look at drones, you get there's two type of cleaning drones really you get the the ones that have been built specifically for cleaning. I mean, we use chemical the pellets in the US So they've been going about 3 or 4 years now got a very good record of safety. There's, there's Lucid drones in the US as well that make cleaning drones. And then you would get the smaller drones like a DGI Matrice where people strap a strap a home to it. And so I think, I'm not sure what the payload for that. I think some like 9 kilos for a Matrice in total with the payload. So you've got some like A2 or 3K payload you can put on it, which isn't a lot. But with ours they're about 11 kilos. The actual drones. And The thing is with it, we're limited height wise because the higher they go, they're going to be pulling the hose up. So we chop a, we're allowed to fly for 25 kilos. So that's 60 metres with the lightweight hose. So that's the, that's where you get to is when you get to 860 metres, then you've got, you know, 25 kilos. So that's the highest you can go. We can sometimes use a tethering system on a building where it take the weight of the Osage so far that which would allow us to go a bit further and generally that's what we work to. Mastering Drone Cleaning Techniques and Client Expectations Interesting, I have not even thought about that. Like the the weight of the water in the hose and the hose itself and all that sort of stuff as you drag it up. So about 60 metres then would be the the free kind of flight limit I suppose. Speaker 3 How? Speaker 1 Yeah. So how, how did you go about, right. I presume you guys have got special permissions and and all that sort of stuff from the CAA like is it an operating safety case you're on and, and what does that, you know, what does that look like? Speaker 3 So pretty much we, that's why we went with the pellets. We went into all the different manufacturers. But appellates have got what we think it's the safest drone out there. I mean if a motor goes or anything, you know, it's got 8 motors. So if one goes, it's just land, it's fine. It's not going to during the the latest versions got built in radar which is built especially to take into account the actual water because if you can imagine a radar and there's a lot of water, it it, you know, lots of building, lots of water, but it's built if it be to see the building, not the water. So yeah, we had to go through that operating safety canes, which did take I would say nearly six months to get through. And you know, it's a pretty, pretty thick document there, all the mitigations, all the chat lists we've got to put in place to make sure we're operating safely. But it's kind of so I think where where we sort of all want to look is, is we always take at least four people to a job because that's what you need. You've got a van full of kit that's running. So, so we've literally got got a van that's got the high pressure systems in hot water. It's also got a soft wash system in. So we can put like a cleaning solution on the building then wash it off. So if it's a big green dirty warehouse, I'm not sure you've seen some more before and afters Matt on the website. But I mean, you know, it's a really impressive resource. And for window cleaning within the vans, we've also got what they call deionised water. So that's where the water is, all the minerals taken out of it. So the question we often get asked when we're in London working, you know, like people watching is, well, you're not squidging it and you're going to get that clean. And but TI and is what you don't need to. I mean, all window cleaners use it now. It cleans a window, but it just runs off without leaving any streets. So we've got all that impact. Speaker 2 That's, that's what we did, though, didn't we? We partnered with window cleaners as well because we didn't want to make the assumption as well, we can do this better than they can. So we spent time with them. We, we learned how to clean windows because you think it's still a skill to do that. So we, we made sure we learned how to do that so we could go out and because otherwise you're just going to go up and fire water out a window with no method behind the the whole process. So we wanted to make sure that it was right and understand in the finish of when you're against somebody in an AB sell of a cradle and having two window comparison. We work with people in London so they could show us like what cradle day in here, We'll do this. And that's look at a percentage. So that might be 80% the quality of what we do, but it's 80% better than if it's not accessible. So it's about making sure that you sell the the system and the service to the right people and expectations are managed as well, which is important because you can't go around saying we'll clean everything perfectly. Now cladding is differently. Cladding can look brilliant because you can add solutions and that then breaks down to it. But windows are a tricky thing to clean unless you kind of know what you're at and when you're on a gramme level, if you're face to face in a cradle cleaner windows, you're this far away. But if you're 60 metres away, how can you? With reflections, it's very hard to see what you're doing, even with the best cameras in the world. So you have to really be mindful of how you clean these windows. So again, it's something to bear in mind. If someone's going to go, it's going to go and clean people's. You'll get more complaints than you get repeat business. If you do it that way, they'll understand your window cleaning. Speaker 1 As well see again, A really a, a different way of, of thinking about things I think than than a lot of people might actually have done in, you know, when they're just thinking, Oh yeah, I'm just going to go out and yeah, surely it's just a pressure washer, right, that you put underneath the drone and it there's a lot more to it and a lot of science behind it probably as well that that actually has been learned over the years, but is can be applied to new technology and processes as well. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's not. It's not. Again, we don't go to the window cleaners and say we're better than you. Absolutely not. We want them to embrace us so they realise that actually we could get those guys in and do that hard to reach window that we couldn't do. And then we, you know, that's we partner with a lot of FM companies that do, you know, hard and soft services, but they can't do the bits that we can do. So it is really about partnering with the right people. But we don't say that we do full building cleans. Of course we deal with windows, but it's just managing expectations, making sure you spend a bit longer on these things as well. Like if you use a, a soap you can use in some cities that that takes longer to rinse off than you think it would, you know, and if you're just doing off the grain, you might think that's done well. It's a learning curve because it takes a long time to rinse that off than you think it does. So we've gone through all the pain there for a couple of years of doing what we're doing. So it's, yeah, I think as we said is expectation and also potential people that want to do this, managing their sort of what they think they're going to get ahead of it really. The Significant Investment for a Sustainable Drone Business Yeah, I think that's one of the big pieces, right. So all of this sounds like, you know, it's very specialist equipment, it's specialist training. You've got your specialist permissions, you've got, you know, your two vans, your four people, minimum team, all that sort of stuff. What is the barrier to entry? The main barrier to entry? Like what? How much does it cost roughly if you're able to share that to get up and running in this side of the industry and do do a proper job? Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, well, yeah, we, we, we take two drones for every job as well, just in case there's a problem, because very often the guys could be going 2 1/2, three hours away. Last thing you want to do is get there. It takes quite a lot of setting up with the customer health and safety wise. So you don't want to get there, not there, do the job. So we always take 22 drones. The drones are about $50,000 each, so that's a big LEM to begin. You've then got 2 vans and then you've got all the cleaning equipment in the vans which 830 five, £40,000 at least in in the in the one cleaning van. So All in all, I think you'd be looking at something like £150,000 to start this off properly. And then time wise you're going to be looking to get, obviously it depends whether you've really got your GVC, but after that you then got your, your OSC, which obviously I would say it needs six months to get that through properly. So that's, that's a barrier's time. And then it's learning really once you once you get started, it's learning. You know, we can see buildings now, whether it's pricing, whether it's, you know what we're going to need to clean that building. We've, you know, we've, we've learned that over the last last year's just doing it. So it's the actual drone flying I think would be five, 5% of the job, 10% of the job, even though it's a drug company. The rest is in organisation, the setting up the paperwork. Obviously, you know, we were drone deaths quite a lot on on, you know, the paper. It's been very good with us on that to keep up with all the CIA regulations and keeping all the information they need. But yeah, so yeah, money. Speaker 2 I guess Matt would know about when it comes to filming, you don't just fly there and film. Do you, you know, you you you have to understand what you're picked on a film and you you look at the path that you're doing. I guess you have to be a lot of prep into before you just actually fly out from film. It's the same price as a lot of prep from you know, we get sent jobs on Google Earth. Can you price this? Well, that doesn't exactly show that potentially isn't tree there or there's, you know, a taxi rank there or something. We, you know, we have to go to pretty much every job, but we've got surveyors now that go rain for us, but we never had that lecture and we started, we had to go off and look at every single job ourselves. So you've got to be willing to put the miles in as well. And contracting at the beginning is a is a slow process. Your, your value of your business is based on repeat business. So you have to start with an order book of nothing to then making sure you're keeping up, which is only done on service and safety and cost, obviously, but the cost should be suited to their budget as well as your needs. So it takes the repeat business where it becomes sort of a profitable business. So after like a year or so, you can go on up and fill next year's book with this van and we might need another van. So it's that's where it becomes, you're not going to get rich quick overnight. But if you've got the repeat biz and the client base, then yeah, it's a good business. But that's where the where that's all the value of it lies really. Scaling a Drone Business: Operations, Admin, and Regulations Yeah, and I think that's one of the big problems that a lot of people coming into the drone industry perhaps without a, a huge amount of business experience potentially. I think a lot of people see it and they go, you know, for a relatively low investment actually, you know, you can get a 4K drone and you can go off and do some filming. And yeah, I'm going to be doing film and TV and it's going to be amazing. I'm going to get paid a fortune. Well, First off, those jobs don't actually pay as much money as you'd you'd hope or expect. But for the, and I used to, I used to kind of explain to people, you know, for for 10 minutes of flying on a on set, it'd be 10 minutes, sorry. It'd be 10 days of, you know, 20 hour days worth of working for 10 minutes of sheer terror whilst you're airborne in case you get something wrong or, you know, you don't get the shot that they've spent 10 days along with you planning for. So it's it, it's one of those things that I think we just need to kind of just get into this mindset shift of it's a slower burn than a lot of people think. That's why I think a lot of people come into the industry and then unfortunately flow out of the industry quite quickly because they don't get that immediate feedback. And you know, in a way you're lucky because if you spent £1000, a couple of $1000, whatever it might be and, and you've got that tool, you might be able to actually make a fairly quick return on investment on that. But actually, if you want to do business properly, you know, you guys invest in 150 grand per setup, it's a hell of a lot of money. And but you, you've looked at it as an investment rather than a cost and gone, right. We're going to put the time in, we're going to build up this client base, we're going to get this repeat work. We're going to build our ARR, our annual recurring revenue, because that builds intrinsic value in the business, might allow you to exit in a few years, right, If you can do that, who knows. And that actually is the way to look at it sustainably, I'd say, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, because it's you don't get, you do get some nice big jobs. Don't get me wrong, you'll get some. But for example, I would have been done roofing projects anything to a million pair of value. So you don't get a million pairs of a cleaning. So you have to go and find lots of 10,000 paying jobs and they add it and it's but that Dean was right. There was one job we went to previously, I can't remember which one it was. The the flying was about 25 minutes of this job. It was a. Speaker 3 Such a small. Speaker 2 Job as PV panels probably 25 minutes and we have to set setups an hour. You have to move the van around the building three or four times the time you move the van to pull the hose in and you have to pull the other hose because it goes to another trolley. So there's a lot of manual stuff still have been like 4 people there. And the flying sheet, because if you do it properly, you know, you log the flights every flight that you do, you log the time you log the batteries, everything is done professionally and and correctly all of this. But it was 25 minute flight and the rest was you know the rest was the the whole morning a setup and safety. So it's not just turn up and pop your drone here and fly, which I think is the worry that and it's probably why Dean and I have started to pass out a little bit more and take a few more calls and speak to people because if so many boys in a pellets which or never drone at what I was out there, which people can do, It's the fear this someone has an accident because everyone that stands and watches our pilots feel like watching Formula One after a while. They just want to see an accident, right. So everyone in the street is filming us because they're bored. Then hopefully something happens. So it's it's safe. Something happens with your drone. You will you'll go violent in seconds. You know, we've had it, we've had it before we've been died on by seagulls. We've got to land because I don't want to obliterate one of those and go viral. So it's as you know, there's a it's there's so many risks to it. But and that's why we're like everything is about because we'll get people are, you know, they're not as good at flying drones. That's actually the pilots we got there were very skilled pilots that used to use nailed using the commercial drones. And if they're fantastic. But I think people are going to understand the contraction side of it as well as the sales as well as the business. But the contracting safety setup is going to be huge for anyone that wants to ever develop and move on. Because you might have a business set it up and then someone goes out there and just doesn't have an OSC, doesn't have ACA, Some people don't even have the GVC and they still buy a drunk because there's nobody regulates. Nobody said oh you've got a GVC for you, buy this drunk. Speaker 1 Yeah, which is one that comes in. Speaker 2 But yeah, yeah. So we, you know, we're not trying to police it. We're just trying to make sure everyone's well informed because when we started, we weren't well informed, right. So you know. Why Sales and Marketing Drive Drone Business Success Learn as you go, right? Which is, again, it's why I think it's one of the reasons getting the message out there like this is so important, right, to people who are looking to start up. But that's my audience. That's our audience here. You know, they'll be listening to this and yeah, that message is so important. It's it's interesting, right, because you guys again have come, you've said a number of Times Now that the drone flying is maybe 5 or 10% for you. Now it's probably not not even that, right, Because you guys are constantly doing the business. Yeah, that's it. Other people out there doing the work for you, which is kind of amazing and frustrating at the same time. Like I think a lot of drone pilots get to that point. I got into it because I was like, yeah, I'm going to get out there and do loads of flying. And I did, I did loads of flying. And you know, anyone who's been following me for a little while, I used to charge two and a half, £1000 a day to go out and film with my large drones. And that was without expenses, without travel, without, without me turning up with a drone that was just for me to be on set. You know, we got up to the stage where that was what I could charge. We made a lot of money doing that. But actually at the same time, actually it meant that you become a commodity because you're selling your time for money. And, and that's good if you're earning a lot of money and, you know, 100 flying days a year, 120 flying days a year, you know, the maths is pretty easy on that at 2 1/2 grand a day. But at the same time, there's a cap on that. And it also means that for those 120 flying days, it's a full year worth of work, right? Like you are very, very busy and you've got to make that switch at some point. And this is something that it seems though you guys have managed to seem to have managed fairly well, right, Is that you're in that business side of things? Speaker 2 We never want it to be a Kevin Dean business ever. We never set it into it. Oh, you're going to buy access, Dean's doing it and we like Dean's. We're going to buy from him. Yeah, you've got to be liked and you've got to have the client base. But this, the offer has to be the same if we're doing it in Doncaster, if we're doing it in London. So the offer has to be the same as to be the vans have to be set up the same. The guys have to be the same. They have to be, they have to look the same on site, they have to be professional. Everything has to be this. So it's just, you know, you order a Domino's somewhere, you get the same Domino's, right? And that's what it was important for us to be the same. So that's why really now we don't fly much. We tend to go and see teams or we go and see clients and talk about the bigger picture. But at that time, you know, of course we started, we were, we were flying. And that's probably scarier for us than it was what we do now. I think. I think it's probably scarier for me flying than it would have been the younger guys and girls that fly for us now, it's second nature to them. They're mate, they're amazing. You know, it's just part of them and they fly up into in busy places. And but, yeah, for, for me, it's not, you know, that's, that was the scarier part, I think. Yeah. Speaker 3 And we do, I mean, you know, it's, we do have some problems like Kevin mentioned earlier, the seagull situation, you know, we paid for a team of four people to go off to do these windows. I think it's Liverpool. Someone at the time, of course, we had to like bought a job because there was obviously a nest somewhere nearby. And I think we went back another day and the weather got got a bit bad. So we aborted that day, didn't we? So there's it's a lot of, you know, days where you know, bad things can happen as well that you need to like work to the safety side and you need to say we're gonna have to call it today, you know, but you've still got four goals you got to pay. You've still got, you know, all the vans to get there and, and everything so. Speaker 2 We, we've had some tough days, as you can imagine. We've had some really, we've had some real tough days where you have drones that don't work or a banner doesn't work or you know, you have things on site or you have weather. You hit the nail on the head. You can only probably fly Realistically, you're probably going to lose a month, a year because of weather, right? We maybe more than that. We were lucky this year, But you know, you can fly in the cold, but if it's absolute torrential rain, you don't really want to be flying in that because you've still got to do a, a quality job that you're doing anyway. So it's yeah, there are lots of and we've had some days, but luckily we're, we're close anyway. So we kind of just worked through it and thought ever if you had a damn day, I'd say, oh, you know, finger the bigger picture and the same for both ways. I wouldn't want to be doing this on my own, that's for sure. Because the admin side as well is phenomenal. The admin on you've got you've got drone desk obviously, but there's things like just to fly in London, for example, you've got to get the CAA approval, you've got to speak to Metropolitan Police, you've got to phone them. The minute you take off, you've got a phone and the minute you land, if you forget to phone them, they're on the phone to you. You can only do that a few times before they start saying you're not doing this again. Why are we chasing you? So it's not just again for Bay or fly the drone. It's like there's so much admin involved and you know you've got to be ready for an audit at any minute. Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 That's where you're ready for. Speaker 1 A big part of it, right, is, is for me, always act as though the CEA or the regulator, wherever you are around the world listening to this, act as though the regulator are there watching you and assessing you and you'll never go wrong, right? And a lot of people I think are willing to flex that a little bit. But actually, this is where that crossover happens, where actually we're committing aviation here, even though it's a drone, even, you know, in your case, potentially tethered in a way tethered to the ground, but there's still a lot of energy involved. There's still a lot of potential risk there. So you have to manage that appropriately and, and, and conduct yourselves appropriately, particularly when you've got the logos on, right? And like you say, everyone's filming because it's novel. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 We are very popular when it comes to as soon as we get the drone out, we are very popular. I think, I think some of the I think some of the young guys and girls absolutely love that, by the way. I think they love the pot, they love that, they love that. And but yeah, I don't, we don't want that. Building Client Trust by Proving Drone Cleaning Effectiveness No, that's it. How have you Speaking of kind of PR and stuff, How have you guys done that? How have you got the word out there? How, what have you found in terms of the challenges and the the ways you overcome those barriers or the objections, if you like? And I'm trying to use a little bit of sales terminology so that the listeners who may not have been exposed that before can, can start to to learn that language that we use within business and sales of that sort of things. How have you found overcoming those objections and starting to build a list and and getting people to convert from maybe a lead to a client and then delivering for them? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think there's sort of two sides here really. If you, we don't over promise on anything that we do. And that's just saying this is like a real cheesy thing though. We never over promise, but we don't because we're just not going to get paid. If you over promise on these jobs when you're cleaning the building, it's quite obvious that if it's not cleaned right. So you've got to be honest in the manage expectations regards to clients of what we've done. We we've spent a lot of time. The best, the best PR you can ever have is to get the drone out there. That is it without a doubt. We know that you can go off and knock on doors. I was lucky because of 20 years I worked in with surveyors and architects, so I'd already had access to these people that survey and surveyors and artists are very interested in it because it's the innovation. But you need to take that another level to actually get it done. So it's like, you know, it's surveyor and architects show they'll happily come and play with your drone all day, but will they use it on a job? So you've got to talk to people and say to them that what are the benefits of using this drone? You're not the biggest risk in industry is working at heights and building his death working at heights. That's the biggest factor. So if we can reduce that then and if we can reduce paperwork for clients and if we can work on the speed and sell on that side, that's how we tend to get in. But we know if we're against somebody that would have like a reach of wash, for example of Kapole, they're going to be more cost effective than this course they are because it could be one guy in a van. So we pitch ourselves to a certain level. We got our overheads. We say this is what you're getting for that value of the day. These are the people that you'll get and we upsell the brand, the product that we got. That is it. We don't, we don't, we don't understand our side. We don't go and do it for cheap. Yeah, we've got, we've still got the overheads to do. Now we understand that you might do a job and it takes a couple of hours. So, but we make sure we got a lot of those infill jobs that were built nationally. We make sure that, you know, if we got a larger job near there that we then drop off and do the little one. And you've got to make sure you manage your diary correctly. So. But if you want to add to that, Dean. Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it's because it's a new technology as well. People like to see it, you know, you know, we did quite a lot of trials to begin and we if it was a big company that you know, yeah, give it away. That's. Speaker 2 What we did, we did give a lot of a lot of stuff away. We gave a lot of away. Speaker 3 Once they've seen it working, once you've done a job with them, then they, you know, they give us different, different buildings to do then etcetera because big FM companies, so they've seen it working. So it's like just having the proof that it can do what it says, you know, that we say it can do. That's, that was a big part of the first sort of set up first few years was sort of letting people see it work because there is this, this, this thing is, it can actually clean it, which, you know, we all think that even when we start, it says don't like cleaning it. And, but as Kev said, you've managed people's expectations. You know, it would never be as good as someone with a, you know, actually rubbing it physically, but it will be almost there, you know, enough to, to save you a lot of money. And it's, it can be up to five times quicker than doing it by AB sailing or by, you know, we, we did a, we did a job that they were quoted 2 weeks to do. And we did it in a day on a big clean, you know, saved them so much money. And they then come back and say, can you do the Oval warehouse, which is another 10 days, if you know what I mean. So, so it's, it's, it's good like that. And the other thing we've found is, as Kevin mentioned there on the safety side, that was originally why it was brought out in the US was working at ice. There's so much paperwork involved for, for people who've got anyone working on their people and at heights. This is a God sent to them. So, and a lot of a lot of city centres, the AB sailing hooks, there's lots of things have changed with them recently with the health and safety that they've been sort of made redundant. So there's no other ways of cleaning the buildings from some buildings, you know. So we we've, we've had quite a bit of that as well. I'm really careful. There's been. Speaker 2 I guess like a lot of your list is somebody you want to hear just a bit clean them I guess, but they probably want to hear about the drones as well. I mean the drone that that we use it is fantastic. So if anyone did want information about the pellets, we'd happily help people if they wanted to reach out to us to talk about our, you know, our experience with it and how we can get the best day of it. I mean, it's we're happy to do that. The Advanced Piloting Skills and Meticulous Planning Required So I mean, it's like, but you're obviously gonna have a lot of pilots to listen to this. And yeah, they are, they are different to fly. You know that the bigger ones you fly, they seem to have a bit more control, but you can do a lot more damage, right? Speaker 1 Yeah. So that's it. It's amazing that, you know, you talk about the kind of risk, risk credit, I've always called it, where you're reducing that risk of someone, you know, a pink body being on a rope or in a bucket or whatever it might be or in a seat. And but actually there is still some risk involved as you increase the the mass of the aircraft and, you know, the the distance it could potentially go, you know, the arc of the arc of destruction it could cause. Yeah. Speaker 2 As as a pilot, you know better than any of us when it comes to, you know, wind turbulence and around buildings and angles and overhangs of buildings. You're flying in a drone underneath overhang of a building. You're going to get a vortex pulling you and swirling you around. So there's a lot to learn as the pilots as well. Then you know, it's not, it's very rare that you just do a, a vertical surf. It's it's nice and flat. It's as always tricky manoeuvres to do and you have to have a skill to do that. And you've got a hose attached as well, which is a different piloting skill. You know, it's not, you're not going around in circus. You just you have to be mindful that you've got this. So you need a hose man, which is, you know, some a video as well. They're there with the hose because when you go up over lips of buildings, you have to make sure there's enough fed through so you're always having to work and they can they can catch on the edge of buildings. You have to do a lot of a lot of communication. All our guys are hooked up with like earpieces. They're all communicating with each other. So you've got, you know, that's any point. There's five guys all talking to each other, making sure everything's safe and it runs smoothly. It looks like it runs smoothly. God knows what it actually is when it like. Speaker 1 We think it does. Speaker 2 It's that plastic duck in the water, isn't it? On a serene and underneath it's like padding. Like shit. It's probably what we're doing, but the rest of it looks like it. Speaker 1 Same for all of us, isn't it? I think it's. Speaker 2 That's the art of it, isn't it? Making it look easy and making it, making it seamless and making sure that we're it's looking. So it's like a slick operation and the two years we may have set up to a site and it doesn't even phase us. Next, we've done so much planning before we get to that site and we have a, we'll have a job come in and we'll sit with, we'll allocate a job site manager to that. We'll allocate the best angle, the West where to pub. We let people know we arrive and we know exactly what we're doing. But you know, that's all the planning, isn't it? It goes back to that. You spend another day on that before you even get the droning. Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's the same for, excuse me, it's the same for everything, isn't it? I think it's about that planning piece and the the work that you put in in the background. You know, anyone who's getting into the drone game or starting a drone business, you know, it's not just about having the drone and being able to even go out and and take a photograph or a video. If that's the side that you're going into or collecting the data, it's for me. You know, you need to learn how to edit. You need to learn a bit about composition and and golden hour and blue hour and things like this. Like those are the fundamentals that allow you to then go out with a drone and capture something that stands out from everybody else who doesn't understand that. And it doesn't actually take that much doing necessarily, but you are going to have to sit down on a Saturday morning, on a Sunday morning. And instead of sitting there and watching the football results or whatever it might be, you're going to have to sit there, watch, watch some tutorials on YouTube and learn how to do something different and then go out and practise it for an hour. Like you've got to do that if you want the results, you know. And you know, 2025 years worth of business experience is sat behind what you guys are doing. So people that look at it and go, gosh, they only started two years ago. The revenue now is getting good. They're able to invest in all this equipment and and build these processes, but it's years and years and years of understanding that actually underpins everything that you're going to go out and do and makes it look easier than it is potentially. Essential Learnings and Strategic Team Building for Success Yeah. And I think sometimes we we have this pinch ourselves think well, we've learned so much in this because you've not you think of all the things you've had to learn from the drone side to the ban side, to the cleaning side, to everything that we and to all the legislation side. And that's why, you know, we, we do help a lot of people when it comes to the, the questions that we get every day because, I mean, we wasted probably a lot of time having to do or find all the answers out ourselves. So we know we've had, I've had people phone me up the other day from a guy from Norway, phone me up. And so now I've got to sign an NDA for someone to tell me this stuff. I just don't know, phone me, which I'll talk to you about it, you know, give you an idea. I mean, that guy's going to be a lot colder than I ever have been, so I feel for him. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 He just needs a decent hat, right? But we, we're pretty good. So we're happy to help. And like you said, if you ever wanted to do a specialist cleaning with drones, we'll, we'll help you. We'll sit and do a podcast about that. Not a problem. Speaker 1 That's amazing. Thank you, guys. Well, so just before we wrap up then, if there's one thing that you wishing you before you got into the drone industry that you know now, what would it be putting you on the spot now? Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. Speaker 1 What's the biggest challenge that you've come across, would you say? Speaker 3 I thought that me personally, I think it's the old cleaning side because it, you know, to us, you know, I'd, I'd flown Jones before I knew Jones, but this is a all different industry really that we were working in. So it's, it's been, it's been the learning. So it's been the, the van setups, the cleaning processes. I was OK with the business side and you know, setting all that up and I've been OK with the admin as in like working the CAA, I've been OK with that. I've picked that up and it's more the old process of cleaning I think is what we've had to learn a lot because we both went from that, that background. Speaker 2 Yeah, that that gives you the acceptance once you've got in with these guys and they and you're willing to, I mean, we've gone and spent time with window cleaners and they must have thought we were right idiots to start with. But now they've become good friends of ours because we've we've spent time with them to learn their their craft and their art because people dumb it down and they aren't going to be a window cleaner. But actually these guys are cleaning the Shard, they're cleaning the Gerkin, OK, these are these guys know their hearts and they got a million million paying customers. So we need to learn all that. So yeah, I, I agree with that. There's lots of things. I mean, yeah, with the with the drone, no, when I when we first bought the drone, we didn't even know what an OSC was. OK, So, you know, and I we didn't realise then how much legal aviation specialist we had to get in and say help us with this. And there was things that we've had to do and jump through. You think, Oh my God, I didn't know that. I mean, I tell people all the time they're going to say they're going to buy a drone. You better offer the money in your bank to start with, get your GV. So, you know, get, you get, you get because you if you bought a drone today and we added it to our fleet, we couldn't fly it. You know, we couldn't fly it. We have to register it to through the OSC again and that takes months. So people, you're better off having the money in your bank getting all this up together before the drone arrives from wherever the states or Australia, whatever, just, you know, don't go out and lose all your capital straight away on a drone that sat there. I mean, we had we got sat there and we had like drones galore in Dean's house where we started, you know, from little Dgis to big appellexes. We had them everywhere. We took over his home. So you know, we just, we did exactly the mistakes that people want to do. We'd be on and go and bought all these drones and come back and thought this would be easy. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, it would have been. It would have been good. Speaker 3 Six or seven months before you can even start working, at least. Speaker 1 And that's, that's a big issue. A big part of the messaging, right is, is for me is that it's like, look, if you want to get into this, that's brilliant. Start doing the research now. Start coming up with looking for your clients and where they, your potential clients and where they might hang out. Look at what their problems are. Join the Facebook groups that those people are in. Join the forums that those people are in. Just Just lurk for a while. Look at the problems, look at the things that people are talking about that are causing them pain and see if there's a way that you can produce a solution for that. And then it's actually for me then about building relationships with other people. And actually, if I'm honest nowadays for for a lot of applications of drone technology, you almost don't need the drones or the tech yourself. For me, it becomes a marketing and a sales problem. Work out what that solution is that you want to deliver to people. Find someone else who's able and willing and already has the the knowledge to be able to deliver that and you be the person in the middle. That's the piece that's missing in a lot of the drone sector now is that sales and marketing piece in the middle that connects the problem with the solution. And that's to be honest, I think where the where a lot of the money is, right? You almost don't need to like you guys, you're not out flying drones every day. You are doing the business OPS, the sales, the marketing, the business development in the middle that connects the people you're paying to go out and deliver the solution with the clients who've got problems. And I think there's a there's a gap there that could be exploited where people could lean into that without. Speaker 2 Spending money on drones? If someone's going to go and build a team, I'd suggest first thing they would do if they were looking just at a van and their gang. Yeah, get two people that compile it brilliantly, but then get someone that understands cleaning, Get someone that understands solutions and mixing. You know what can go into into the van and how to run it. Get someone understands health and safety because that don't just go for I've got 4 pilots and off we go because those 4 pilots might not have the ability to be lumping things around and pulling hoses through and managing things and talking to clients. Because a lot of thing is communication and a lot of the guys, younger guys and girls, because this job can be for younger people, but their communication skills aren't set up to, you know, somebody perhaps a little bit older that understands managing an angry member of the public or managing you know, it's it takes a lot. So careful when you build your team. So we were, we've gone through that. I mean, we've got teams done all over, but they've all become we've, we've, as you do when you work with people, you've got guys in their 50s that and they have friends with 19 year olds. You know, it's nice that they're all, they're all like that, but it took a while to find the right people. Final Thoughts and How to Connect with Drone Clean UK Interesting. Now that's amazing guys. It's absolutely fascinating. Like the area that you're moving into. It's been amazing to connect with you over this and, and to see if I'm honest, the application of this, this technology in particular actually now starting to deliver a solution that works for people. And that that is doing what what it was promised it would do when I first saw it. And, and it was a hose spraying out of the drone. And it's come a long way from that. So yeah, great work. Speaker 2 I know. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Speaker 1 Thanks for your time. Speaker 2 Appreciate that and we're happy to said to to do this again and jump in and talk about things and. Speaker 1 Other that's it so if anyone's got any questions, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening to the podcast on Spotify, go into the comments and let us know or drop us an e-mail and we can send the question out to guys we can get them back on again. If the specific things that that people want to know about this side of the industry, in particular all the challenges that they face, guys, where if people wanted to reach out to you directly, where's the best place for people to get hold of you? Where's what's the website? Speaker 2 You go through the website is just drone clean UK. You'll find it straight away on top of Google when you put it in. We're both I'm on LinkedIn. I share a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. I don't share as much as I should I get, but the guys is we've got some good stuff coming actually near where the guys which will be of interest certainly for your guys are wearing a meta glasses. Speaker 1 Nice. Speaker 2 So you'll have POV of pilots. Speaker 1 Interesting SO. Speaker 2 I because we were everyone does the view of our we fly a little drone above the top or we fly a drone next to it or you can see from the camera while it drones. We thought, well, let's actually do like this what the pilots see. So we got that coming as well, but we're letting somebody younger much pickier than us when you say hit with a much more current than us, right share that step, but I'm starting to share it as well. So it'd be good for people to see that as well because you get a different when you're seeing them fly, you'll get a completely different view of what you're looking at and how to clean. So we're just working on some things at the moment. But yeah, on our website, come and find us on LinkedIn because I'm Kev Robinson. Dean's rubbish on LinkedIn. Come. Speaker 1 On Dean, get on it. Despite the client acquisition process, let's go actually. Speaker 2 If you could start following him on LinkedIn, I'll help and everyone can. Speaker 1 Yeah, give him some pressure. That's it. But what I'll do guys, that's very kind of you to offer to help. I will drop your links to the website drain so UK down below. I'll drop links to your your LinkedIn down below and in the yeah, the show notes in Spotify, the the show description, the video description in in YouTube. Speaker 2 Yeah, and like I said, we're both very approachable, mate. And if there's, if someone's got someone they really wanted a question to just ask, you know, we're, we don't mind going through it all again. Speaker 1 Amazing. But if they get inundated, you know. Speaker 3 People do it safely and do it correctly. You know, think yes, you reach out to us. Speaker 2 That is that is the thing. It is about the safety thing, isn't it? Because what we don't want to do is like I said earlier on, this is say people, oh, you can't do this because we've done it. That's not what it's about. We want people to do it, but do it safely so we can all continue to do it, right? Yeah, that's that is it. So and. Speaker 1 That's the big message. Amazing. Well, guys, thank you ever so much for joining us. Thank you for your time. Look forward to getting you on again to see how the business has changed and evolved over the next kind of 12 months or so. That'd be really interesting. But so, yeah, that's it. Speaker 2 Just be. Just be an empty seat where Dean is. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's it. No worries. Speaker 2 Mate, nice to see you man all. Speaker 1 Right guys, thank you ever so much. That's it. That's the pod I've been Matt Williams. That's Dean and Kev from Drone Clean UK and we'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, fly safe please guys.