The Most Profitable Business Everyone Overlooks⏐Ep. #288

Dude, I made $132,000 in 24 days running my SprayDrop. We just did another job that I ended up profiting $65,000 in eight days. - Oh my gosh. - Is that a typical ticket price, like tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars? - Oh yeah. - Oh yeah. My first 10 weeks, I made $50,000 in 10 weeks. It's 600x since then. - Is any of the piloting automated or you haven't to do it yourself the whole time? - It's all automated. - Oh, there, she's better and better. - I'm telling you, it's all automated. - That's so cool. - Literally, you can spray a whole field. You can spray a whole field and never want touch the remote controller sticks. I can tell you that I don't care where I would go in this country, in any state, I could do it. This industry, it's barely even getting started 94 to 97% that is still on tabbed. - Literally. - You create an entire industry. - If somebody has just a little ounce of motivation, you can make this work. - Don't underestimate, I call them testosterone businesses. (upbeat music) 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 four 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 bucks a pop to go recover deer that Hunter 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 bucks. He's been on over 100 podcasts 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 on 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. Oh, and did I mention he grew up Amish as a horse and buggy Amish, and he only started this business four years ago, and today, well, you're about to hear how much he's making today. You're gonna love Mike, we became fast friends, we stopped 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, it was part of the whole thing. It was like, okay, this is my idea. I'm gonna do it as a service, but I also wanna create a YouTube channel. And so that was right off the rib. - 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 just don't pull enough views to pay. I mean, my first 10 weeks doing Deer Recovery just here in the state of Ohio, I made $50,000 in 10 weeks. - And your first like Deer season in Ohio? - Yeah, correct, first Deer season, first time. I ever went public with him. - You were at break even within a couple of weeks, and then it was mostly profit after that one. - Yeah, so basically, my goal was when I bought the drone, I was like, I just wanna 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. 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 if we back up, how it actually started is I bought it cheaper drone. It was called a DJI dual. DJI dual, it was at a 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 booths was to talk about booths at the show. - It was crazy. - And it was like the most plain Jane booth ever. - 100%. It had like this white sign behind me, and it said like, like, go to 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 did you see that? And so it just, it'd be able to stop in the aisle. It was so bad that the show coordinator said, I have to move my booths, like it was, so the people wouldn't stop. They just, they didn't lose their booths. - It was good. - I'm telling you, it was crazy. I'm not kidding. I ran out of business card. I call my wife. I was like, run the 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, for a 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 get it. - That is exactly how I launch. And at that show, right? So that was the, at the end of the season. So deer hunting season was over. And the guys that come in up to me and they're like, what are you gonna charge for the service? And I was like, I don't know, I think I'll probably be between two. - Would you pay? - I was like, 250 to $350 and they're like, that's not gonna 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, 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. - That was the alternative. - Yeah, 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 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? But this feedback you got is so valuable because often when you're asking a perspective customer what would you pay, they're super biased 'cause they wanna pay less. But in this case, you had this weird circumstance where statistically speaking, the people giving you the feedback are probably never gonna 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 'cause they could probably count on two fingers, the amount of times in their entire life they've hired a dog service for this, right? - Exactly. - Exactly. - So that pricing feedback is insanely accurate whereas if it were a service where everyone giving you feedback could be a potential customer, they might be like, oh, I wouldn't pay 350. - Yep, yep. - That's 150. - So it's like, what good feedback does? - 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 $5.50 when I found you here 'cause it was like 90, 8% chance I'm gonna find your deer. 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 using a drone was, yes, we hope that the deer has expired by the time we find it with a 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'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, just passing out business cards. I did have for the show for a little bit 'cause 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 right now very quickly. So yeah, it was strictly business cards and the magnets. - What was the name of the expo again? - It was called North East Ohio Sportsman Show. - Okay, now worst case scenario, that show does not go well. You have no takers, no interest. What were you gonna do? Were you gonna try to market a different way where you gonna check your hotel? - Oh yeah, so I mean, I was marketing in other ways as well. Like as soon as I got my drone in, I printed off these brochures like a flyer and I went to the local bow shops, local rifle ranges, that type of thing, just asked them if I could hang up a flyer. 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, here's a hotspot and then here is what I'm looking at. I just had that on the flyer. I was just sticking some flyers out there. But in 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 amount. - I mean, I'm thankful. I was one other guy. is 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. - And was it? - It was not black and white in the state of Ohio that you could do it. But I did talk to the Ohio Department and 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. 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 would be professionally on this, this is strictly to try to help the hunter recover a dead deer. And so I took his word for it. When it was at that show, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources 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, 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. So I did, I met the local game wardens in my area. It was three of them, maybe four and we met them out at the rental property, my hunting rental property. And I showed him 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 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. - For that specific purpose. - Yes, yep. - Okay, yep. - It's funny, I'm picturing the game wardens walk up and he looks at the video and he slowly reaches for his gun. (laughing) - He doesn't trust you at all. - They were trying to figure out if that's using an aircraft to hunt. - Oh yeah. - Because there's a law that you cannot use an aircraft to hunt. - Well in Texas, that's how you shoot picks was from a helicopter. - Yeah, I actually had a YouTuber reach out to me in Texas that they wanted me to come down there and shoot some content, doing a eradication on pigs 'cause he helps farmers that come in and they destroy their corn and beans. So yeah, he said that you guys are allowed to actually use a thermal drone, see where they're at and go in and-- - Oh, interesting. Is there a invasive? - Yep. - 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 drone from a guy in Wisconsin. He was doing it, but he was keeping it on the down low. So I was not the very first one to do it. I was the very first one to make a mainstream. - Yeah, to put it on you too. If you brought him a bunch of competition, you probably brought him a ton of customers too. 'Cause you blew up the industry. - Yes, I did do that. - You raised the tide, right? Which raises all ships. - Yep, yep, I did. - So does this work anywhere there's deer hunting? What I'm thinking in Texas is, A, everything's so far out. Ohio has a decently sized population and it's not nearly as big as Texas. So, and it's a big hunting state, right? 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, that main mecca hub, though 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 shine. - Yeah, I want to get to the agricultural stuff, but as the drone deer recovery side of your business shrunk, soon said. - Service calls are less 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 Uniconomics on that? Do you sell them those leads? - We sell them a subscription. So they buy a subscription to be listed on the website. Super cheap, 500 bucks a year, they can be listed on the pilot locator map and people that search for do recovery people in their area, if they're on the drone deer recovery website, they put in their zip code, it sucks them into an area, it gives you a drop down of who's close by and then they just click on contact pilot and then it'll detects 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 Yelp for drone deer recovery. - That's correct. - That's correct. - I always say on this podcast, nothing is too niche and you're proving that, you're proving me right here. (laughing) - Yeah, I don't know. I feel blessed. - You're able to see all the numbers on your competitors, right? Like at least stuff that goes through your website. - Yeah, so how many leads are you? - What has that taught you? Yeah, what has that taught you about the industry or about your competitors? - Man, a lot of people can't shoot well. There's so many wounded deer. So I feel bad in that way, right? And I do get crap about a little bit online is like Mike, look what you're doing. Like there's 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 what it's taught me is yeah, there's definitely a lot of deer that get wounded. I think 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 of your videos and think I'm gonna shoot worse now because other people, you know what I'm saying? - There's definitely guys there 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 you. - 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, it doesn't matter. - Okay. - He can probably put it in a drone. - Drone will be able to come in, fine. - Yeah. - I could see that argument side of it. 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, and you know, I get me those numbers for the 2025 season, but in 2024 we were doing about 400,000 people going to the website in the busy season a month. - During the deer season in your area? - 400,000. - Yeah, well that's 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. So maybe some of those weren't literally looking for a pilot. They were looking for the biodegraded drone. - Those are like, - But, yeah, like we, the website clicks, I'm just like, I had no clue like that there's this many people around. I just, I never gave social media the respect that it deserves in business. Like I had a residential tree removal business, and that business was just as big as I could make it here in the three 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. - Oh my gosh, I mean, my thesis for what makes a business strong, I can credibly 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 a business where it gets stronger the more the people use it, right? Every person that creates a new Facebook account makes Facebook stronger because of the network effects, right? 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. - That's beautiful. - And one thing that I struggle, I don't know if it fits in for the audience, but it's like, as I screwed up when I did some of this stuff, right? I didn't know what I had to start with. I had something that is a Kleenex, right? So a tissue. And somebody says, hey, could you give me a Kleenex? It might be a puffs or a whatever. I have drone deer recovery. And I did not, by the time I figured out I needed to trademark the three 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. - She's a true trademark. - That's what it is. - 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 the drone deer recovery Tennessee. And people have been watching this content and watching this guy hang on 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 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 trademarks that prior to like blowing it up. - Hmm, interesting. The same thing happened with spike ball, you know that game? - Yeah, yeah, yep. - They had an issue with the generic trademark where they had to like renamed it, rename it to round net and actually trademark that because they were having so many competitors like basically clone their product and call it spike ball. And they can do anything about it. - Yeah, that's really interesting. Now, how many, do you call them operators? - Yeah. - The drone operators. - Yeah, so they be independent operators. They name their business whatever they want and they just list. It's, I'd like to call it almost like a home advisor before Angie's list bottom and they can list on the website. - And how many do you have, listen? - Gosh, you should just pull it up and go to dronedeercury.com and then look at the pilot. - I'm there. - Okay, wow. - Yeah. - So hardly any out west? - No, no, out west has some, yeah, we gotta work on the out west laws. Okay, so that map will fill up as we get closer to season. So we're out of season right now. - So people get on. - So people get on. - The elaps. - Yep, they'll get on in the busy season. But we are anywhere from 200 to 300 pilots on there. - Wow. So a little back to the napkin math. We're talking six figures a year in, in memberships. - Oh yeah, oh yeah. - Yeah. - 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 two or number three largest retailer of thermal drones in the United States. - What is your total revenue across all product lines and services? - We have never told anybody that. - I'm gonna guess eight 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. So. - Oh. - Yeah, we did. - Yeah, you're gonna figure it out. Anyhow, last year we did gosh darn. Yeah, your business is this. So we did, we did. - Yeah, this is what we do. - 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, 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 gonna go. 'Cause like in the industry that I'm in, like, and I'm sure that they watch your content. We're likely becoming one of the biggest ones. - Yeah, I had a business where we sold products that were cost five 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. We don't have to sell millions of them to make millions. - Yep, right. - Yep, yep. And 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 wanna get rid of the, the directories out of the business. You don't wanna get rid of actually doing drone route. Like it all plays together. You don't wanna get rid of YouTube. - Yes. - They all, even though it, 'cause like you might look at it 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 three 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, that's what we did. I just, I've literally never shared it. I've done, I've done probably a hundred. I'd say right between 120 and a pro 175 podcast. And I always get asked, like how much money are you making? It's not a podcast like your podcast. It's like deer hunting podcast. 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. So this is different. I should have come in into it a little bit differently. - No, this is great. - And I'm also like, I just, I tried to not, I wanna be humble, right? There's not a lot of people here. - Totally. - Make tens of millions of dollars. - Right. - And that's not profit either, right? People don't understand how much go to the IRS and your employees and e-commerce businesses are hard. Like they're very hard. Fulfillment businesses are hard. You've got like multiple hard businesses in one here. - Yo, yo. - So I recognize that. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. And I don't think anyone thinks you're boasting, like you're supporting entrepreneurship, you're providing jobs. How many employees do you have? - We have 28 people on payroll. - That's awesome. - What about if I wanted to do drone-deer recovery as an entrepreneur, is there anything I can learn by going to your map and like trying to reverse engineer? Like there's one in DFW. Obviously local laws play a factor, but could someone go look and say, "You know what, there's a whole lot here." - On the website, there's a, how to get started in this business. We've just put together like a small little booklet that will help you try to research, and how many tags might get sold in your area to the ratio of 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. We run Instagram ads or something. - So you're running paid ads to this for the training? - Oh yeah, yeah. We spend a lot in marketing now. In the beginning, I was just doing all organic stuff. Now we push a lot of dollars into marketing. - Yeah. - I mean, you created an entire industry. 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 that's what you've done. How does that feel? - I feel lucky, I feel blessed. I just pinch myself that I get to do what I get to do and make money at it. It says, "Yeah." - I mean, 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? - I was down there with an onion farmer that bought a new A-ag rig from us. He bought two spray drones and 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, let's say I'm a 20 to 50 year old entrepreneur or entrepreneur, and I wanna do something in this space. Do they go drone-deer recovery, or do they go agricultural? - Oh my gosh. - Agriculture. - Agriculture. - Agriculture by a long shot. But then they go hand in hand, right? - Oh, so do both, but agriculture first. - Yeah, I would probably do that. - The industry is just, it's a multi-billion dollar 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 and pesticides. Can you finance these machines? - Yes, yes, we have. - What does financing look like? - The payments going to range based on your credit store and stuff like that. But I do think that most people are probably in the 15% for interest. - What are the uniseconomics on this business? What does the opportunity look like for an entrepreneur? - Oh my gosh. It is unbelievable. So it's outside work, and it can get warm, long hours, and you gotta work for it. But if you were, dude, I made $132,000 in 24 days running my straight-up. We just did another job that I ended up profiting. Yeah, let me roll back because I got these numbers. $65,000 in eight 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 told people I was gonna make this public, and then the spread-drawn industry is like, "Don't do that. You're gonna piss off the farmers, and they're not gonna wanna. " - Yeah, it's good. It's really good. - Oh my gosh. So is that a typical ticket price, like tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars? - Oh yeah. - And that's typical profit margin, 70%. - Oh yeah, yeah. So operating cost is going to be anywhere from $3 to $3.74 cents an acre. And you charge, depending on your acres, right? If it's flat acres or rolling acres, 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%. If it's rolling. - And again, it is kind of a short season. So that's why you make hay walls, sun shines. Like you work long hours, short season, and you put the money in the bank. - What are some typical crops that you're spraying for? Is it anything? - Yeah, so you know, high all, we're spraying mostly corn and beans and pasture land. But I sell to people all over the country, spraying, you know, peak on trees, almond trees, blue berries, cranberries. You name the crop? - Anything. - It's probably getting sprayed. - Yeah. - Literally anything. - What does customer acquisition look like? How can an operator go out there and find a farmer to buy this from? - So the way that I would tell people to get a customer is 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 he's being shown. - The magic of it, yeah. - Show them, show up at his farm. Like you actually have to show up with your equipment and show it because just to hand him a business card and say, hey, I do drones, right? He might not even know what a drone spray is. - Yeah. - So again, 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 him, knee and they don't do anything. - Yeah. - And so it can be a little frustrating 'cause I'll see my new ag rigs listed on Facebook for cheap because they 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, 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 have got there is using a drone and so they have to see it. - 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 that? - 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 a hundred acres. I'll give you some data. This is DJI's data. So this is wild. So there's a 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 and airplane and helicopter. There's 46 million weed acres, 52 million pasture acres, there's 11 million cotton acres. This industry tapped wise is barely even getting started. 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 on tapped, literally. - All right, so the alternatives before drones were ground airplane helicopter, right? - If you go to a farmer and you agree to pay 10 bucks an acre, okay, what is he going to pay for any of those three 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 airplane might charge you $8 per acre to spray. 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 100 feet up in the air and he missed the 75 feet. - That's why all this corn's dying in this corner. (laughing) - 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 some guys, some guys write their good salesman. 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 covering. I'm pretty efficient with my rig and my setup. I still make a good bit of money charging the same as an airplane. So I would say for the most part, whatever you're at, you're probably going to be in the same range as an airplane. - Okay. - 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 just gnarly stuff. The farmer's willing to pay for it because he literally has no other option. - Yeah. Now, what if farmers pay for ground or for helicopter? If an airplane is eight bucks? - Yeah. So a ground rig out there is probably in the six to eight dollar range. They're all going to kind of be in the same range. - Okay. - Yeah. - Okay. - And now the actual pesticide or the fertilizer, whatever that you're spraying, that's not you, right? The farmer's paying for that separately? - Correct. - Yep. - Correct. - Okay. - So that's what included in your feed. - 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 two gallon work. So he gets two gallons of product per acre applied. - Okay. - Now if a farmer says I want five gallons to the acre, then it might be a buck or two bucks more to do five gallon work. But for the most part, just to keep it simple, talking two gallons per acre. - Okay. And he's buying that product from Monseno or whatever? - Yeah. Yep. Exactly. He's chemical, whatever he wants to put on his corner 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? - Yeah. So at some point, the more you do this, the more you'll see what products work to 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 gonna 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 a line number of acres, and I would take my rig, I would, you know, at 10 a.m. 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, was this like men in black, like, you know, any penance day? (laughing) 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? What do you think? Everything was good until you got to the point where you're flying your drone at his property without 'cause of permission. So, 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? In his front yard. Without flying it, oh, 100%. Yeah. That's what 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 then 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 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 not 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 big. Like, I'm here to get your spray. Chuck in a truck. Yeah. Okay. I'm done here. Like, and it worked. - It's worked. - I have to think that once they, it clicks, your close rate is just stupid. - Oh yeah. - Is that true? 'Cause 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, once they see it, they're gonna do it. - Yeah. - It's just the way it is. And sometimes they have no other option. Like right now, it's brainin' a lot in Ohio. You are not spraying your fields any other way. - Yeah. - You can't take a five 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 sprayer. If somebody has just a little ounce of motivation and dedication and go get her attitude, you can make this work. I'm telling you, it's just so big. So when I'm picking businesses to profile on this podcast, it took me a while to learn that. But generally speaking, I cover things that are approachable, affordable. Yeah, they don't cost a lot of money to start. They high pay off, 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 is six 'cause we went to high school together. He's six bucks a nacre, my ground guy is six bucks a nacre. 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 the reason in their head, but they just, they wanna see a drone flying around their property. - You've never seen this and dude, you nailed it on 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 happens. I was in Kentucky. We were down there and we were 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 by the airplane and so he showed up to watch the drone fly his buddy's farm and he's like, I am definitely going to have drone 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. - Oh, there, it's just getting better and better. - I'm telling you, it's 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 outflying in the field and then they're coming back. You just have to like, no, okay, this one is this high, this one's at desaltude, 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 want touch the remote controller sticks. You can just go swoop and the drone will take off, it'll go into the field, it'll lower itself, it'll spray, it'll run out of fluid or the battery's dead, it'll come back, 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 cyber truck, like I could just picture myself growing down on my cyber truck, 64 degrees, watching the screen, you know, drinking my DPC right here. What like, on a hot day, like what, what am I missing here? You have to stay outside, like is that a regulation and you just have to sweat? - Well, yeah, technically it is a regulation, you're supposed to watch your drone with own eyes. - Can I watch it in my truck with my air conditioning on and maybe you tube in the background? I don't know. - Yeah, you could, as long as you can see your drone, you can sit in the-- - You have to watch the camera and like have the actual drone be within eye shot of you. - Yeah, that's what the rules are, but watch the content. - You'll see if people are following it. (laughing) - Well, okay, again, here I'm just gonna jump into 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 we don't even know that, okay, 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's gonna hit my drone, he is inside the trees. - Yeah, that's real. - Yeah, like, he's the idiot. - It's just point. - They're just, it's just dumb. - Yeah, it's the government, it's the government. - Yep, yep. - Now, we haven't even touched on the recurring aspect of this. If I have 1,000 acres of corn in Kansas, and I'm paying you 10 grand a year, let's say 8 grand 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 like a one-to-year? - Yeah, so it depends, but, 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, right, a fungicide. A fungicide helps, so there's not fungicide growing on the corn. So you might do two, maybe three applications, that's rare. Most of the time, you will for sure do one every year, almost always, one every year. That is in corn, specifically, pasture land, like, range land. You might spray that twice, so in the springtime, and then maybe in the summertime, that is probably a three-year program, and then it'll go to a two or four-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 two, three 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 the six, six or eight weeks straight once a week. So if you would get a client like that, you're gonna go back to those fields every week and spray something 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. Like, is there a business for somebody to come spray? Like, if you were a bigger farmer, just come spray as a custom applicator, right? 'Cause we're talking about entrepreneurs. And he's like, absolutely. Like, 'cause 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 the 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, all I've been million acres I told you earlier. Cotton gets sprayed once a week till it's ready to harvest. - Oh my gosh. - 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? 'Cause that's what, nine pounds per gallon, just in wait. Are you having to swap out batteries every few acres? - Yep, yep. So you're swapping batteries all the time. Right now, the drone that we really like is called a GGIT100. That one carries 26 gallons of fluid and it depends how many gallons an acre you're doing, right? So if you're doing two gallon work, you're almost getting like 12 or 13 acres covered in one load. Now, there's 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, 'cause it uses a lot of energy to make turns, what if you're doing long runs? Like, I can get away with putting it 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 gonna put 20, 60 gallons in every time. But it has the capability of doing it. You need three batteries, usually three batteries to fly. So it's always rotation. Drone goes out, comes back, fills the tank, swap the battery. Usually about every four to six minutes. - Oh geez, you're swapping battery every four to six minutes? - Yep. - Yep. - That's crazy. And how long do they take to charge? - About eight to nine minutes. - Okay, so you're able to keep it going. - Yep. - Three. - Yep. - What else [BLANK_AUDIO] is awesome about this business that I neglected to ask about that we may have missed. - 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 whatever you're at, it's just so. - That's pretty cool. - Literally, and then I look at my co-pilot or whoever's flying on the trailer and I'm like, we get paid to do this. - Yeah. - I'm not really doing anything other than swapping a battery and filling a tank and the drones doing the rest. Like you're saying, it's a wild cool factor. - 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? Like a yearly churn, like how often do farmers quit their sprayer and switch to someone else or something else? - Are you saying adopting this new technology? - No, like if I get a customer, how long am I gonna have him before he fires me in this industry? - I don't think they, I've not done it long enough to make it fired. - You're like, what is churn? What is the seed? What? - No, I fired? Quit? No, the money just comes forever, Chris. - Well, it does. The only reason that I've lost 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 were spraying behind my house. I was like, oh, didn't know. And now he has a rig. Who do you think comes to spray those fields? He is. 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, 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 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 do is manage them now. - All they do is carry cash to the bank in Home Depot, Burles. - It's why. - What is a business with 10 trailers due in revenue? - Give or take, I know it can vary, but. - 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. - Oh man. 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 kind of ratio? - 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 has - 10 trailers to the military. - 60,000 acres. - So this is a great business for guys coming out on a military that they just want to be, you know, out 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 as 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've done. So in the case of this one guy in Kansas, it's about 60,000 acres to 10 trailers. - Yeah. - That's kind of the ratio. 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 four trailers. - Okay, wow. What's the biggest business that you know of doing this today? - I sold to guys in Minnesota. They're just slowly getting into it. So they, I think they do a quarter million acres, like 250,000 acres that they spray, but they didn't do it all with drones because they don't think it's capable of it yet. They haven't done it like we've done it. And so I don't know who is the largest custom spray drone business has a now, but it's probably in the Midwest like Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, somewhere like that. - I feel like someone's, someone's gonna do this on a smaller scale, fall in love with it, be sophisticated, go raise a bunch of money, and they're gonna be doing tens of millions of dollars a year of spraying the drones. Like that's an inevitability. - It is totally possible. Yeah, there's so many acres that are gonna 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 if you would spray a field twice or whatever in the season, it will add up to a billion acres needing treated. But that could be anything, right? Corn, beans, blueberries, raspberries, on and on and on. Totally. If somebody has, if that's their goal, that they wanna be the largest spray drone operation, the acres are there. The co-ops are spread across. 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, well, I still got 3000 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 owners don't have any employees, right? - Yeah. - It's a shock and a truck, 'cause it's hard to scale. - Nope. - 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 a year. - I actually think that a big company that's already doing like, say selling the chemical cannot understand why they don't have hundreds of trailers right now. I do not get it. Unless it's just because it's so new, right? - Yeah, yeah. - It's so new they're like, "Oh, 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 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. This is great. How much licensing or training does one need to have 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 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 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 three hours, you can take your tests. It's not that difficult. Those are the 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 and be granted an exemption to fly over 55 pounds. It's difficult to do. I tried it on my own, higher in attorney, didn't know how the process works. And it's a pain in the neck. - So just to avoid that. - Yeah, just avoid it. Have us do it. - So under 55 is the way to go. Under 55 is easy. But no, 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 roads. - Okay. How long does this whole process take? Like, let's say today, I want to get paid money 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 FastPass. So you need what's called a 137 certificate from the FAA to dispense. poisons from the air. The FAA is faruciously 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 three to maybe four 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. Okay. So operate under your licensing while they wait for the FAA stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Where can people find you or your businesses if they want to learn? All on social platforms. So Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. So. H on Lee drones. No, no, the names that people can search are drone deer recovery. That's the obviously the thermal side of it. And then the other one is new way AG spelled NUWAYG. So new way AG and drone deer recovery on all social platforms. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Would you think please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the the corner office.