749 – A business that’s taking off: Captain Tom talks Drone Business

Episode 749 – Drone Business
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Screw the commute.com Episode 749. Now here's the thing, folks. From now on, you must address me as Captain Tom. So this is another episode about something I've been harping on for over 25 years, and that's making your hobbies tax deductible. I'll tell you about my new hobby turned business in a minute. I hope you didn't miss Episode 748 and I was sorry that was very late. But that was I was doing a lot of research on only fans and how you can legitimately make money on it and what the warnings to keep you and your family safe from it. So that was episode 748. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. That was 748 for onlyfans and this is 749 for Captain Tom. Okay, make sure you follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:33] All right, let's get to the main event. So many of you know, I'm a big advocate of making your hobbies legitimately tax deductible. I have FatsoTennis.com protectiondogselite.com and brutalselfdefense.com. And I always have to say, I got to say this, I'm not an accountant or a tax attorney, so technically I'm not qualified to give you advice on this topic. But I've had hundreds of those kinds of people in my programs say that what I teach is absolutely right.

[00:02:05] So you take it for what it's worth, but get yourself, you know, some professional advice when you need it. Okay. Now, I want to remind you to address me as Captain Tom. So. So what am I up to now? Well, this past Thursday, I went to the Aviation Maintenance Institute in Norfolk, Virginia, where I took my very strictly proctored unmanned small aircraft written exam, otherwise known as my commercial drone written test. Now, many of you know or don't know how many of you know, but I was a freelance part 135, which is a much higher level charter pilot many years ago for airplanes. And recently, I don't know, I was watching some YouTube video and an ad came up for a drone ground school. And I've always been pretty good at testing and I don't think I've ever gotten below a 90% on any of my pilot certifications. So. So I so I said, I'm going to start studying for my drone certification, right? So I did and I passed with 93%. You only need 70 to pass, which is kind of scary for pilot stuff, right? All right. So now let's talk about making your hobbies tax deductible and doing something totally fun. Now, now that I have my commercial drone pilot's license, I can charge for taking drone footage, which just like all my other hobbies, if I'm legitimately making money with my quote hobby, it makes it tax deductible.

[00:03:51] Now, I don't have any big aspirations of making this a full time, big super, you know, new part of my business, you know, because you've got, you know, I like the digital stuff, just selling, you know, electrons at home. Right? But, you know, I do love flying. So this would be a great side hustle. And you can't really believe how the the drone industry has taken off. I mean, with that license, I could really get started with $100 drone and take aerial photos and video, I mean, let's say for homes for sale. Now, keep in mind, you better get some business insurance in case you crash your drone into something or somebody. Right. But I think the same policy that covers my protection dogs might work for this drone stuff. So I'm going to call my insurance agent on Monday. But definitely if you're going to be flying drones for money, you better get some insurance on it. But but anyway, did you realize you can get from 30 to $400 per hour for shooting this kind of footage? I mean, one job could easily pay for your drone. And guess what? Nobody says you can't use the same drone to shoot your home, your own home, your kids athletic stuff, your vacation, etcetera.

[00:05:11] Just there's rules about flying over people that you need to learn about, but just check with your tax person to come up with a reasonable allocation of tax versus personal use. But see, if you really get into this, some of your drones will only be used for your drone business. And I'm not trying to force you into this. I'm just showing you a real life example. I like to to talk about things that I'm really doing whenever possible. Sometimes I tell you about stuff that's a good opportunity that I'm not actually doing. But most of the time I like to actually do something before I tell you about it. Now, one of the rages now in real estate is called FP v Frank Papa Victor. That stands for First Person View, where you have a very small drone that flies through a home, through the front door, through the windows, under the faucet. I mean, you know, all kinds of stuff. And they use it a lot in homes for sale. So check just Google FP v real estate videos and you'll see what I'm talking about. You you basically hide in the house in a closet with some goggles on where you can see where the drone is going. And it's just really cool to fly through all these things through this house with this little tiny drone.

[00:06:30] Now, if you get more serious about this business, there's plenty of money to be made and some of it is really big money. And this might be something you could get your kids into if they're 16 years or older, But they can actually start the process, I think, at 14 years old to pass the written test. And of course, they can still be flying around your house and things privately to practice because these things do take some practice to fly, even though the newest ones are just so slick, they'll hover automatically and they'll follow you and they'll come back and land in case you get discombobulated, you know? So. So there's all kinds of stuff you can do, but you can get them start started as low as 14 years old to start the written stuff. This one guy, I was watching him online, he was talking about his drone business. He he crashed his first cheap drone on a family vacation. But he but he he decided it was so much fun, he would try to start a little side hustle shooting homes for sale basically real estate. He did 15 houses his first year, 60 houses. His second year, 250 houses, his third year. And now in his fifth year, he's doing 3000 homes. Okay. And even if his average was like $400 per home, that's $1.2 million right there. All right.

[00:07:59] And the entire market is growing. This is something I got from, let's see, spherical insights and consulting, did a market size research for the global drone market. And in 2021, it was valued at 28.5 billion. It's expected to reach $260 Million almost ten times by the year 2030. That was just a thing. March of this year. This study and look at some of the industries and and. And they pay way more than just the basic home sale market unless it's a real fancy home. And this guy that I told you is doing 3000 homes, he charges by the square foot. So it's only if it's a tiny little house, he might do it for $150. But if it's a 6000 foot square house, it could be 400 or $700. You know, So and, you know, there's all kinds of things on how much you can make depending on your market. But anyway, other industries that are paying big, big money are construction. So you can see the whole construction site and what's going wrong and what's going right. As on some of these billion dollar projects, we have a multi billion dollar project going right here in Norfolk right now at the at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. They're making a whole new tunnel under the water. All right. But the stuff leading up to it and everything, I don't think they can fly underwater yet.

[00:09:34] I don't know. Maybe they can. I don't know. So construction, mapping and surveying, you know, that used to be so much trouble to tromp through the woods to get to where you want and plant stakes and everything. Now they're using drones for that big money agriculture. They got this down so much that they can pick out a certain part out of thousands of acres. They can fly over it with certain kind of imaging cameras and find some sick plants and then go right to that area and spray them with stuff from that from that drone, just those sick ones, not not having to spray the whole place, you know, So just amazing things. Infrastructure inspecting so they can look under bridges and all over the place and roads and inspection of power lines and stuff and cable lines. I saw one drone that could hold two cameras that had a thermal camera that would see any heat spots that showed that a wire was going bad or a transformer was going bad and the other camera was shooting. Just a regular mechanics of the thing to make sure nothing was broken all on one drone. And they did this whole mile thing in ten minutes, you know, which would have cost the power company thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to get trucks in there with booms and people on the ground and people up, up in the top and all this stuff.

[00:11:04] So amazing savings to them. But they're willing to pay a lot of money for you to do it. And see not everybody can do it because you have to pass the test and have and you should have insurance. They'll probably check that. But if you pass that test, you knocked out all the little hobbyists that aren't ever going to do this. They can't collect money for this. So it's not a flooded market yet. Even parking lots. These giant parking lots in real estate complexes. There's shooting them and saying, okay, what's going to need paved? How long is it going to take before we need to pave it? And they're just flying a drone over it and then one person is flying the drone, sending it back to the home office and a roof inspections also the same thing. So you don't have to hire a local crew to go up there. You can get the parking lot and the roof and everything. And again, roof inspections are another thing for roofing companies. And and then there's this thing I hardly even understand called photogrammetry. And it's like 3D modeling and distance measuring and all kinds of stuff that's above my pay grade. But when one guy made $45,000 in a couple days doing this, so he took all the pictures with this fancy camera on his drone, took it back to his computer, manipulated it and send it in and got $45,000 for the job.

[00:12:26] So very, very big money in this in some of these things, if you really want to get into this, like I said, I like to report on things I'm actually doing. But but now I kind of be remiss if I didn't mention the not so glamorous side of this, which is making money and having fun and flying a drone around. I mean, you have weather to deal with. You have to learn about where and when you can and cannot fly. Remember, there's FAA. People don't don't play. You do have to have equipment and insurance costs. You got trees to deal with. Oh, my God. That's what I have here at my house. Also to improve the quality of your aerial photos. A little Photoshop skill wouldn't hurt or having somebody that you can send the photos to to doctor them up a little bit. You know, I saw one guy, he said, Oh, the photo is really nice, but I'd like to make the yard a little bit more green. And it really popped out beautifully in the photo. So and sometimes they put different skies in behind big commercial buildings, you know, all Photoshopped. But it's helping to sell the things. But you know, I wouldn't worry about this because even the cheap drones the cameras on these things are just out of sight great even on cheap ones.

[00:13:41] So so you don't have to worry about that too much. But you do really have to learn the rules because the FAA doesn't mess around. And now if you take the test and pass the test, you'll you're exposed to all the rules. That's what it's basically about, safety and rules. And I think in September, you're going to have to have a thing called remote ID on your you can either add it to an existing drone, a little tiny module, or the new drones will have them where if you're screwing up and doing crazy things with your drone, it's all being reported to a database that law enforcement can access and then come get you. All right. So I'm all about safety and following the rules for everybody's good. So anyway, that's a little possible side hustle or full time business or something you can get your kids into. That's really a lot of fun and very lucrative and a growing business. And it's an industry that's growing, as they say. They estimate ten times in the next 6 or 7 years. I mean, there's enormous money being thrown around to this business. And it's it's saving businesses tons of money, like I said, with inspecting the power lines and places they'd have to get tractors and bulldozers in to inspect some of these lines.

[00:15:00] You can walk in there and have a drone as long as you can see it, you have to keep it line of sight. You can do this and save them enormous amounts of money. That's why you can charge so much. Okay, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So check out. Great Internet marketing Training.com. If you want help on this and every other thing, you got to be successful with an online business. I'm not giving up my online business, folks just for this drone thing. I tell you that it's where the big money comes in without with the least amount of hassle. And also have a new program called How to be a great podcast guest at screwthecommute.com/greatpodcastguest. I think we have five slots left at the introductory price so check that out right away and we'll show you how to be in front of tens of thousands of people and get invited back like crazy. It's not just what you do on the interview, it's all the other stuff around it that impresses the heck out of the host. Okay, so before I leave, here's some pilot talk for you. All right? I'll pretend like I'm talking to the tower. Tower this is drone 57AP taxiing to the ramp. Good day from Captain Tom. All right, Captain. Tom is out. See you later.