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In the Drone to 1K Podcast, we take an inside look at how successful drone business owners got started and scaled their company to making $1,000 per month and beyond. Whether you're just looking to make a little side cash with your drone or you want to turn your passion into a full-time career, we hope that the Drone to 1K Podcast will inspire you to take the plunge and succeed with your own drone business.
Hello everyone. I'm David Young, host of the Drone to 1K podcast. Welcome back to season six, episode five, I'm gonna let you know who we're talking to today. It's going to be. Pedro Silva of Drones by Drone. In this convo, me and Pedro talk about a lot of things that will be helpful to you. If you are interested in starting a drone business, or you have one, you're trying to grow it.
A couple of highlights that I liked from Pedro's conversation that you can look forward to. Number one, he talked about how he went from part time to full time. Actually talked to Pedro on the podcast several years ago. And had him back on as a repeat guest. Now he's doing it full time so we can talk about how he made that shift.
Another thing he talks about is search engine optimization. He talks about what he did to show up high in the search engine rankings, which got him a lot more business. And he breaks down the different services that he offered that sort of helped catapult him to where he is. And now he figured out what was in demand.
So, a very helpful episode if you are looking to grow your client base and hear about how to work through some challenges. He also had a big personal loss. that we'll discuss in the [00:01:00] episode as well. So really, really inspiring and helpful episode from Pedro. A reminder, if you like this podcast and you like free comfortable t shirts and you like Drone Launch Academy, this is your lucky day.
Because if you go to Apple Podcasts and you leave us a review, just an honest review of any rating that you want, screenshot it, send it to me, david at DroneLaunchAcademy. com and we'll send you a free Drone Launch t shirt as a thank you for taking the time. So I wanted to get that out of the way in case.
All right, let's get into the episode with Pedro Silva.
David Young: All right, everyone, welcome back to the drone to one K podcast. I'm joined by a former, drone to one K podcast guest, Pedro Silva. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me, David. so you run the Instagram account drones by Joe, at least that's how I know you mostly, but I know you actually have an actual.
Drone business, that you work with. So we had you on before. We always like bringing guests back, just to kind of see what's happened, you know, since we chatted, since we only put out about, I don't know, one season a year ish, typically there's a pretty good amount of time that elapses in [00:02:00] between seasons, you know, if you were on a previous season.
So, maybe for those who are listening to new episodes, maybe they haven't heard your, last episode before, Why don't we do a real quick, overview of just how you got into drones to begin with, you know, the beginning of your start, just so people have a little bit of background in case they haven't heard your first podcast with us.
Sure. Yeah.
Pedro Silva: and thank you for having me again. it's an honor to be back. so I basically got into drones on a whim. 2017, Walmart shopping with my cousin. we saw this little toy drone. We're like, damn, this looks cool. We should buy it.
It's 50 bucks. So we just bought it, flew it around at the park. Fun times, man. It was eventually I got curious because I was into videography and podcasting around that time. And I kind of paired. My interest in videography podcasting with the drones and eventually I just wanted to see which drones had Stable cameras, which ones were 4k or you know, 1080p or whatever.
I started looking more into it And I was really learning Videography and flying drones at the same time. So I was just out and about, working at, [00:03:00] you know, restaurants, mostly like TGI Fridays, I hopped at the time and, just doing that on the side whenever I had some time. And eventually, we did this podcast, for a couple of years talking sports and whatnot, and that was going well.
So we use the networking from that to kind of start thinking maybe we can do commercial work with the drones and get a license and, see where that goes. And 2019 got the part 107 license. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but That's how I got into drones for the most part.
David Young: Awesome. you have a business that focuses just on drones and or video production, or is it kind of all wrapped under like some of the podcast stuff you do or how do you, how's that broken out?
Pedro Silva: Yeah. So we actually don't do the podcast anymore as of 2022 I've been doing drones full time, really, when I came on your podcast last time. That was when I really started to just only do that. And I had quit my other jobs and was doing that full time. so drone by dro, we offer aerial photo and video.
Mostly right now we're doing a lot of marketing stuff, data [00:04:00] research, of course, here and there, but mostly marketing and content creation at the moment we don't really do the podcast anymore, but that's what drone by dro is
David Young: offering. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. I was just looking back here.
you know, you and I, I think we talked like 18 months ago, really your episode came out a little over a year ago, actually like a year and two months ago. I was looking August 17th, 2022 is last season. so I'm excited to see kind of the updates since then. so since you started your business, you know, you said you're doing like video production and stuff now, Maybe talk about, what was the first job that you ever had in that business?
And I guess what was kind of the timeline of that? I'm assuming, you would have had that already by the time we did the last podcast episode, but maybe just do a quick recap on that.
Pedro Silva: My first commercial job doing the drones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the license in November of 2019. from there I was mostly flying for fun, asking family friends, if I could take pictures of their house, like mock real estate.
So that I can eventually approach somebody that I knew who ended up being one of my co workers at TGI Fridays at the time. selling my mother's house and I would like for you to come and take the drone photos. [00:05:00] I think I got paid probably like 60 bucks, took a couple photos, edit them. This was right after the pandemic started
David Young: so you basically started your, your business during the pandemic?
Pedro Silva: Yeah, man, I got laid off from my job. I was bored. I had money coming in from the unemployment checks I was doing some little stuff on the side, like reselling clothing, reselling electronics and stuff like that, just to kind of supplement.
the restaurant money. And I just took pretty much not all the money I had probably took 85 percent of the money I had to my name during the pandemic was like, I'm just gonna buy everything I need. I'm going to buy two drones. I'm going to buy a bunch of accessories for I'm going to. pay for some advertisements and stuff like that.
Just full throttle one day just decided it's time.
David Young: when you said laid off, like laid off from your restaurant jobs that you had.
Pedro Silva: Yeah. From like during the pandemic, everybody got the pink slip.
David Young: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you got laid off getting unemployed. You had took all the money that you had essentially and bought drone stuff with it to go and start do drone business.
Exactly. Nice. so you did a little bit of real estate work. Did you pursue that [00:06:00] avenue for a while or was it just kind of like a quick dip in the real estate pond and then back out? What was that? What was that direction like?
Pedro Silva: Yeah. Well, as you know, I mean, real estate is one of the biggest clientele for drone photo and video.
So, for a little while, that was pretty much all I was doing. It was a mix of that and, some music video with a local artists that I knew. A lot of people that I was already knowing from the podcast and just people I've met elsewhere through mutual connections. I pursued real estate for a little while just really wanted to see like how that would benefit an agent having these photos and videos and doing the research and finding out that MLS listings sell, I think 67 percent faster, with aerial photo with some type of aerial photo video on it.
So that's really, I still work with real estate agents to this day, just not as often because, you know, the market's a little bit watered down in that area, unfortunately, but, I've definitely dipped my toes in there plenty of
David Young: times. I was just curious. So, you know, sometimes people have very strong or, and, or different [00:07:00] opinions about, uh, the real estate market.
I know some people who really enjoy it. And do really well with it. And other people, they get kind of discouraged by the nature of that business pretty quickly. So I didn't know kind of what your experience was in it. Yeah,
Pedro Silva: I've heard, I'm not sure if you've said this, but I've heard a lot of people say, you know, for the most part, it.
Ends up being considered more of like a paid practice type of deal when especially when you're working with residential real estate agents that just want a couple photos, you know, like, with the likes of droners. io, like people are going to be paying like 50 and you know, the value of getting a little bit skewed.
David Young: now you're doing just drone stuff. Are you doing like full real estate media? Like. videos, ground photos, all that stuff, or is it just drone?
Pedro Silva: so we're doing mostly drones. I am dabbling a little bit into, interior photography. for commercial and residential real estate and, event photography as well.
But for the most part, I try to stick to doing mostly aerial photo and video for the content, marketing and all that. I've been trying to grow my network [00:08:00] of other people that I know that specialize in certain areas, whether it's a video editor or a cameraman. I know very good videographers that I might outsource the work to and I'll take care of the drone stuff and they take care of the interior.
David Young: Yeah, that's kind of what I've heard. It's like, if you want to do a big focus on that area, you kind of have to learn. I mean, just everybody I've interviewed who's done well on her basically ended up being like, yeah, to do well in it and to do it like with all your time, you got to learn how to do the stuff yourself with shooting interiors, uh, in the ground, you know, maybe some video stuff, all that stuff.
You want to just do the drone. It just becomes a little harder. Cause. You know, I've heard a lot of real estate agents will just kind of want one contact person. So at that point, you sort of have to like link up with other photographers. You don't do the drone stuff themselves. And, interesting here, your experience now real quick, let's fast forward to kind of give people a picture of where you're at now.
you started your business basically during COVID. at this point, are you doing that? Full time with all your time. It sounded like you kind of were doing [00:09:00] that more like the marketing and production stuff. So is that like the only thing you got going on is just the drone and production stuff, and then how's that going for you, I guess, financially, however much you want to share about, you know, the revenue and things like that.
Sure.
Pedro Silva: I'm very blessed and fortunate to say that I am doing this full time, as of January, 2022, really took the leap. You know, that's when I moved into my first apartment around that time. And that was like, a moment for me to kind of decide, am I really trying to pursue this for real and not be able to depend on, you know, anybody else.
And that's when I did that. And ever since then, this was right around the time I had a contract doing, I think I mentioned it on the last podcast, with a company called Doxel. where they had me doing basically construction site scanning, but it wasn't thrown work though. They found me through my drone work, but it wasn't a drone job.
They strapped the camera to my helmet and walk around, scan this, construction site. And that paid me really, really well, well enough that I was able to have all my stuff paid for. So everything else that came [00:10:00] in was just. Supplementary and I was able to reinvest that into, buying better equipment and paying for different types of, ways to market myself, whether that's Google advertisements, or any other way to promote myself, collaborations on social media and growing my social media presence and all that.
That's been really my bread and butter over the last, year or so. as far as the financial aspect of it, the first year, I want to give people an idea because I'll be open and share, you know, how much I've been making with the drone stuff. You can get an idea. The first year that I did, it was 2020.
And I think from September to the end of the year, when I started primate, like 1500 bucks total, maybe 10 different jobs. Maybe less 2021, I think, uh, was about 17, 18, 000 with a really, maybe a few of them in between being high paying ones and the others all being low pain by 2022, when I started going full time, that's when the things really started picking up with the contracts and all that.
And we were [00:11:00] making like north of 70, 000 at that point for 2022. And now this year we're on pace to get over 100. Wow,
David Young: that's awesome. Yeah, so it's been
Pedro Silva: coming in and we've really been able to create a lot of relationships in the DMV and, and that's, that's something I tell people all the time is that I prioritize the relationship building and the two way value from people working with me.
I want to make sure that everybody is, benefiting from this equally. And with that, I'm able to build relationships, get consistent work. And like I said, blessed to be able to, take over the house that I grew up in as a, as a kid, I moved back here and now I'll be basically the homeowner.
I'm able to do that kind of stuff now with the drone business
David Young: taking care of us. Man, what a great story, dude. That's awesome. And. You know, I think one of the biggest things I want people to take away from this is like first year, low five figures, right. Or like you said, like 1500, it's like the first full year of doing it which is great to make money off of it, but I think some people look [00:12:00] for.
I'm going to start doing this and then within six weeks, I'm, you know, making full time money. Like, I just don't really know of a business that you're going to start where you're going to go from, I have no experience in this field whatsoever to I'm making a ton of money overnight. Like that just, doesn't really exist.
Like everything requires building relationships, getting good at the craft, sticking with it for a while. And from, again, just all the people that I've seen, they're successful. It's like, They're in years three through five by the time they're actually making like good money that is like stable and they know what they're, you know, they're, so it's like you have to commit to it for a little while.
Um, I mean, even, even this business, right, like doing training stuff, I did that on the side for two years, you know, before I quit my job and like, I couldn't get it to work for a while and it's just everything. Has a learning curve and you got to figure it out and stay with it. So anyways, I'm glad you stuck with it.
And now you're, you know, reaping the benefits of kind of that dedication. So that's cool to see. all right, well, let's, let's do a quick breakdown. Let's see if we can talk through how you got to where you are at this point. [00:13:00] Now that people know kind of. The end of the story, let's come back a little bit.
So 2021, you're doing it still kind of on the side. And I think we covered a lot of that, in our other podcasts, let's maybe pick up in like, you know, 2022. what happened in 2022 to where you're able to make, you know, the 70 ish. And kind of do it full time. You mentioned that you had the contract with the construction scanning, but what other type of work, were you getting during that time?
How did you get it? Let's just talk about, what you were doing with the drone and with the business.
Pedro Silva: I'm glad you said that because, there are some key players in this story that have helped drone by drill get to where it's at. it was really around 2022 with. When doxil came in and I was able to start upgrading everything.
I was able to start catching the attention of more people. mainly first it was Bethesda urban partnership. for those that don't know, a nonprofit in Bethesda, we actually worked on a virtual tour in the city. We got FAA clearance. we got all the necessary parameters set for
David Young: that.
let me just cut in real quick, just so people have some good context, right? [00:14:00] Earlier, you mentioned DMV. I meant to explain DMV is DC, Maryland, Virginia, right? For those not familiar. It's like that kind of like Washington DC area and you're in Maryland. Correct. I'm in,
Pedro Silva: I'm in silver spring, Maryland.
I service all of the DMV and now really other parts of the country as well. I've gone to Colorado. I'm going to go to Hinesville, Georgia next week. We can get into all that in a minute.
David Young: Maryland, barely North of DC. So just to give people kind of an idea of where you are, a tough place, tough place to fly from a regulation standpoint.
So anyways, I just wanted to paint that picture. So go back to your story just so people have good context for where you're at.
Pedro Silva: Like you said, it's a really tough airspace. Um, you know, Washington DC flight restriction zones are pretty much the, strictest rules in the country. maybe there's other ones that are up there, we've been able to navigate that. We learned how to go through the waiver process through TSA We got the clearance. So they actually found us through working with Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. We did some of their marketing stuff for their website and eventually Bethesda Urban Partnership, [00:15:00] they saw the work that we did for Suburban. We created this really neat virtual tour where you can go in there and we took a ton of panoramic images all around the city.
there's interactive, you know, you can click and see, what the name of the spot is and a fun fact about it and scroll and interactive tour, you know, it's really cool. that actually caught the attention of somebody nearby at Marriott. So Marriott HQ, they contacted and, uh, and it was crazy because they called me or they didn't call me. They messaged me on LinkedIn at like four in the morning for whatever reason, I'm still awake trying to, trying to wiggle my way to sleep, you know, turn my brain off.
And I saw this message coming in. So I'm like, Oh snap. You know, I messaged, I responded right away. You know, can you do something like this for us over at a Marriott HQ, Bethesda? Of course I can.
David Young: we only work with big companies, you know, sorry about that. Yeah.
Pedro Silva: Yeah. So, we ended up doing some work, and they had, I think, probably two or three different projects for me in 2022.
with a big one coming at the end of the year. We flew [00:16:00] inside of their hotel, the hip flask rooftop bar, a couple of really neat shots there. And with all that stuff going on, like, you know, you see the theme going on here. One person sees it, another person sees it, another person sees it. And it's been this constant domino effect ever since 2022 rolled into this year.
it's really been been fantastic. And one thing I want to include, too, though, it's really important. You know, we talk about the highs and the successes. There are definitely some roadblocks and in big. unexpected turns that happened in 2022. things are going great, whatever. Unfortunately, you know, I had a loss in the family, you know, my father passed, and that really kind of threw me completely for a loop.
I think my brain wasn't really Working the right way for the next couple months that paired with a slowdown in the market, people weren't spending any money for drone work like that, at least in the area, I wasn't getting
David Young: contacted at all. Fall 2022 definitely slowed down just economically.
I think [00:17:00] in general. Oh
Pedro Silva: man, it was, it was rough. Like I went from, you know, making like 10, 000 in a month to somewhere in 2022 to making like. You know, maybe 1500 bucks in the beginning of, uh, of 2023, it was, it was rough. So the first three months was really, really slow. And eventually I saved, the trajectory of where things were going by going back to the drawing board.
I went back to cold calling even more. I went back to updating all the things that I had been procrastinating on. mainly my website. I completely revamped my website. I hired someone to do SEO for me. and once all that stuff kicked in, by the summer of this year, it exploded all over again.
And we've had, multiple five figure months, over the last five months or so. Things have picked up crazy. that really dark period of like, feeling sadness over what happened in my family and the business being slow. I was home alone all the time, you know, mom's working, wife's working. So. [00:18:00] I'm just there trying to figure something out. And that's the part of being an entrepreneur or even a drone pilot or whatever, full time, anything full time like this is really risky and you might go through stuff like this.
And if you're really, really committed, no matter how hard it may be, if you end up pushing through it, you, you could really, look back on when it was rough and be like, damn. I'm glad that I saw it through.
David Young: Jeez, man. I'm sorry to hear that about your dad. I didn't, I didn't
Pedro Silva: know that. I didn't mean to throw that, you know, the, but I thought it was important to add that context.
David Young: Yeah, I'm sure people appreciate you, you know, being vulnerable. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to, going through some hardships. When was that? You said that was like late 2022?
Pedro Silva: September 2000 2022. I talk about it now because it's easier to deal with these days, you know, me and him were really close.
but one thing that that really, really helped me though, and why I'm, I'm able to do my thing is we had a conversation about this. He said, you know, if anything were to ever happen, you know, in [00:19:00] the future. You know, I want you to always know, like, I'm proud of you and like, you keep doing your thing.
So, with me knowing that he would want me to continue doing my thing, like I, it drives me all the time. You know, I got him as a screensaver and, and, you know, it helps me go even harder.
David Young: Yeah, man, that's cool to hear and that's tough to, you know, that coupled with the, the downturn, you know, I know you're like spot on with just anybody who's going to have a business.
That's the thing about business. A lot of times it's, you got to deal with a lot of inconsistencies and you can get your self worth a lot of time from how good your business is doing. And a certain month, you know, you have a lot of customers come to you one time. You think, Oh my gosh, dude, I am a rock star.
Like I'm, I'm on fire, you know? And then like you have a month, like he's like 1500 bucks. You know, I've had months where we were making, we're killing it. You know, we're making tons of money one month. And I'm like, Oh man, this is gravy train. And the next month. You know, you make like, like you said, like 1, 000 in your net profit.
And you're like, how did that happen? And then now you're just like, what's wrong? What's the problem? What did I [00:20:00] do? How can I fix it? You just go into this like spiral mode. it's tough when you're relying on like some inbound stuff to like people coming to you, because if that stops, it's not like you can just ask someone, I mean, maybe if you have a business where you're doing face to face sales presentations, you can see why people are saying no. But sometimes if the traffic just kind of trickles out or the requests stop coming in, you're just like.
Where'd everybody go? frustrating to try to figure out. Sometimes
Pedro Silva: it was spooky, you know, like there's times when, like you said, you know, things can be great. And you might feel like that's the problem though. A lot of times people can feel like it's time to go on cruise control because now we had, you know, a little bit of, success, whatever.
These things happen, you know, sudden left turns, you start second guessing yourself because of something that's completely out of your control with the market. It's important to understand that, you know, if you've done something well in the past, that means, you know, you're on the right track.
And if things slow down, you just have to go back to the drawing board and just. Do whatever you can to [00:21:00] try and figure out what to turn it around.
David Young: Yeah, it's cool. It's a good lesson. It's good story Especially if you're doing this anything business for yourself risky business keep some cash in the bank don't run thin you know because you don't know when you might have a Lean month or something and if you don't have anything there to support you you got no runway to figure it out you know, so you gotta Keep a little there, even if you think that, you know, you're good, maybe don't go out and buy that boat this month, you know, go away and build up some more or something.
All right. So you had Marriott you doing work for them. And then you said the first couple of months of 2023 were pretty, pretty rough. And then things started to take off a bit once you sort of revamped your website and did some SEO and, and all that and out in cold calls, um, of the stuff that you were doing.
Right. You know, you mentioned a few things, website, SEO, cold calls. If you were to pick, do you think had the most impact on things coming back for you?
Pedro Silva: In the long term, I would say there, there's two answers to this in the short term, it's the website SEO.
That's the [00:22:00] ultimate ever since I started doing these SEO services, I want to say maybe in the beginning of September or August, it's been booming, you know, we've had back to back like all time high months. So that's the short term has been fantastic.
David Young: Real quick. So September of August of 2023. Yes. 2023.
Pedro Silva: we've had back to back, months that really would, would have been, Six months, a year ago type of thing. So it's been fantastic in the short term with updating the website, Google business, getting everything up to date, LinkedIn, all that, getting everything nice up to date with the SEO.
And then the longterm is actually something a little bit different. Something I never thought I would have done. I joined a networking group. it's called, Business Networking International, BNI. So basically I go to these meetings and you know, we, we all, it's one person from each different profession.
there's one real estate agent, there's one person who makes glasses, there's a guy who works on signs, there's a construction manager, whatever. It's a group of 30 people. I decided, let me be a member of [00:23:00] this and just see what, what that could do being around business professionals and other people who own businesses and could possibly.
drive traffic towards my company. that's really helped out, you know, just being face to face with all these other business professionals, hearing their experiences, working for themselves and working for big companies and how to secure contracts and even legalities. Like I'm now, I'm starting to work with, one of the guys in the group is a public accountant.
another one, he's, helping me cook up some contracts. that's really helped out and branched out into a bunch of different directions. People seeing my face and people hearing when I do presentations at this, networking group, showing them what I do, how it helps them. kind of adds like another element to what we do as drone photo or drone pilots that, commercial drone pilots is.
You have to be good at what you do, but you also have to know what you're doing and be able to educate people the way you do. You know, with Drone Launch Academy, y'all teach people, you know, what they need to know and you know, all [00:24:00] the intricate details of it. that part of it kind of helps clients see like, okay, this guy knows what he's doing.
He doesn't just have a drone. He's sending it up. These are, there's more layers to it. He can access the airspace. He can do this. And on top of all this, like I said, two way value. People aren't going to contact me if they don't feel like they're going to get something out of
David Young: it. It's the only reason they're going to contact you is because they feel like they're going to get something out of it.
I think that's a great lesson, you know, as far as growing, joining a networking group, it doesn't matter where you get, there's always something else to learn someone else to learn from. I've been doing this since 2016 and I'm always joining coaching groups.
I buy a bunch of online courses myself to learn new stuff. People on my team do it, and so it just, I feel like if you, if you're tired of learning, you're basically doomed to fail at that point. So more people you can connect with, learn from, there's always more to, move on and progress through.
I was going to ask with your, SEO stuff, doing better, maybe can you talk through a little bit? I feel like people would be interested in that. Can you talk through a little bit about either what you did or the person that you hired? What kind of strategies they took [00:25:00] to, to help kind of increase some of that traffic that was coming in for you?
Pedro Silva: Yeah, definitely. His name is Brian Lobig. I think it's low big LLC, name of his company. he's fantastic with SEO. I met him through this networking group, actually. where one of the people that's in the group, he was doing their website and I saw how it was doing for them.
And I'm like, okay, I want to see what's up. It's not cheap, but
David Young: are you cool saying how much
Pedro Silva: it is? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I paid, I think 1, 000 for him to activate it. he has different packages for recurring, services. So the one that I'm going with, I think is like 300 a month. So, I mean, you know, these costs, they seem high, but once you realize what they're doing for you, it's like,
David Young: doesn't sound that, that crazy to me, because especially if you have a service that's already like proven to be good or a product that's going to sell, think about it, you know, 300 bucks a month, what do you got to do?
Sell one more thing every month for that to be worth it to you, you know what I mean? So.
Pedro Silva: basically what he did was I went through the first layer of SEO stuff [00:26:00] myself. I completely designed my own website on Wix. got the drone by dro. com domain, all that. So I did the whole layout, whatever.
I had a little bit of help from a, designer, graphic designer friend of mine, but for the most part, it was all me. And then I went through what needed to be. You know, meta tagged and what needed to be like something that sometimes people don't realize when they're setting up a website. I mean, it takes a lot of time.
You post a picture, right? And if that picture opens, you don't want it to say image dot JPEG, whatever you want it to say, photo of whatever at this place so that the SEO on Google can pick up on that a little more. No one's searching image dot JPEG. they're searching aerial photo in Baltimore, Maryland, in Rockville, Maryland, whatever.
So I called every last little crack and armpit of my website, fixed up everything. And then I said, all right, the rest, I'm going to leave it to the expert, Brian Lobig. And since then he did hit whatever magic he does on it. And like I said, back to back five [00:27:00] figure months, the two of the best months I've ever had in a row.
Which is always a good sign with, with really, there's even bigger things in the works that I can't speak on yet, which, you know, maybe we might need a third, appearance, somewhere down the line. So I can tell you about that.
David Young: I'll just have you come on one episode every season. Yeah. Yeah. that's awesome.
By the way, I just found you on LinkedIn looking sharp. You got the whole, you got your suit on here. Almost, almost didn't even recognize
Pedro Silva: you. You want to take a guess at how I got that professional headshot? The networking group. Oh, really? Nice. Yeah. So the networking group, uh, they, they have these events, right?
And they say, listen, funny story. I don't recommend that people do this, but I just thought it was funny to share. I was in the networking group and they said, Hey, there's this event. There's going to be a ton of people here from this, Washington talent agency, whatever you should come and, you know, shake hands, pass out your business card, whatever.
I'm like, all right, cool. They're doing free headshots. Oh, free headshots. I could update my LinkedIn. So you know what I did? I went to banana Republic. I bought a suit, took the picture. And then I returned it the next day. I [00:28:00] knew it. Free head shot with the suit.
I don't even own it anymore.
David Young: Do it at your own risk. But listen, you only wear it once. Do it at your own risk. You only wear it once. that's awesome. so you have the SEO. You hired a guy. It's going well. when people come to your website, what's the flow, is there like a, a way for them to book you or like when, you know, when people find you online, what's the process for turning them into a customer?
Do they just email you? What does it look like?
Pedro Silva: So as of right now, when people book me directly, I have on my website, you know, contact forms. so really my, it's the Google ad or, maybe people just looking up drone photography near me and they'll come across the website, go through the contact form or they'll call me directly.
They'll email me. If it's a referral, you know, it's a lot of, you know, email introductions. Hey Pedro, you know, I would just want to introduce you to my friend, this person, that person, and then we just go through setting up times to chat discussing what they need, when they need it, get through all the details, figure out numbers.
Get a service agreement in place, [00:29:00] date, deposit. And then, you know, from there, if it's raw footage, they get it the same day, if it's a post production, you know, it's varies on what's needed. that's pretty much the process we go through going through looking if we need to get, waivers looking at, what extra safety parameters we need to, keep in mind, pretty much all of that stuff.
David Young: you mentioned deposit. people always want to know like the, what, you know, do I get a contract? Do I need to get pot? Like what's your typical payment terms and, and set up agreement wise with the customers? So
Pedro Silva: usually the way I like to do it is this. I like to, as of late, you know, it took me a long time to come up with something that, worked consistently.
This is what I've been going with I asked for 25 percent upfront to secure the booking non refundable. after that. You are charged the rest once the service is complete and you have the footage. So usually what I'll do is I'll send everything out. You know, if they're under contract, I'm just going to send them the footage, let them take a look.
if changes are needed, you know, we make the changes or whatever. They'll get the final version and then they pay the rest
David Young: after. Gotcha. [00:30:00] Okay, cool. And man, I just Googled you real quick on your, Google business profile. You got 55 reviews, five stars, man. That's awesome. do you have like a method for getting reviews on your Google business profile?
Or is that just happened from working?
Pedro Silva: Shamelessly asking people that I work with, I would just be like, Hey, it might've be the day after we worked. It might be six months after we worked. I might just text people and be like, Hey, can you leave a review on my Google would mean a lot to me.
You know, if you could just highlight how it was working with me or whatever. So really like that, that's, that's how probably half of those reviews got there.
David Young: honestly, that helps you out a ton SEO since they're on Google, since you got more, like, I'm just going to Google real quick, drone photography, Maryland.
Let's see what happens. It's always you. And, Olson that pop up.
Pedro Silva: Shout out to Kevin. Shout out to Maryland.
David Young: Yeah, dude, it's both of you guys here. So when I look, drone by drone 55 reviews, five stars, Maryland drone guy. You guys are the two that pop up on my screen and then I [00:31:00] can click more businesses if I want.
But other than that, you guys are the first ones to, pop up. That's
Pedro Silva: beautiful. And I want to give a shout out to Kevin too. He's actually referred business to me. and the guy that he referred to me, he's actually become, Somewhat of a friend, even, you know, he's in my fantasy football league.
So, me and Kevin, we, talk every now and then in, DMs and I see his work. He's really, really good. especially he's all over the place
David Young: taking photos and videos late. Well, he came, I don't know if you know, he came to Lakeland. We had like a live event and he taught a little bit at that and kind of helped out.
So it was cool to see. So if people come to your website, I'm just checking that out. your stuff looks great for those who are just listening to the audio. Some of that Maryland fly through, stuff you were talking about earlier is on here. It was like one of your first.
Videos that pops up. So that's really cool. Are you doing FPV stuff for that or, what kind of gear you use? And do you fly the FPV or do you hire that out?
Pedro Silva: Yeah. So we have arrived to the part that I was waiting for the whole time. We've actually been really doing a ton of projects with the FPV hotel fly throughs.
That's like. Not even just hotels, a lot of just [00:32:00] commercial real estate period, you know, with the hotels, basically being a commercial real estate fly through. that's been our forte. I do probably 80 percent of it and, you know, with the other 20 percent being another FPV part 107 pilot that I know.
we've been doing lately. We did Marriott, like I said, last year, this year, we've done a ton of, Commercial real estate and residential real estate, you know, we flew inside of some guy's mansion, you know, just a personal video He wanted to show to his friends. So, we went out there Recently been doing big commercial warehouses out in Baltimore and then as of late the university of Maryland hotel.
We just did a fly through for them
David Young: Cool. That's awesome, man. Yeah. I was looking on here. It looks like some pretty smooth, FPV videos. it's worth just Googling drone by dro DRO, whenever you get a chance. And honestly, your website's really good because I pops up I'll give you a quick breakdown of what I think, what I see here pops up.
First thing you see is. Some really nice looking. It's like a video kind of looping in the background with you flying for like big name clients are like Marriott. You can see their [00:33:00] headquarters. It looks really good. Your phone number's in the top, right? Super easy to call you. And there's a button right there.
Contact drone by drone that I can click. And then there's another one that says DC flight restriction waivers to show like, Hey, we're actually like legit doing this, you know, not just random people. and then you got info about your reviews and stuff on there. So, that's just really a good credibility up front.
You know, like you can visit your website and be like, Oh, this dude's legit. Right. And not just some random person on the internet. No, it looks really good. so 2023 main thing that's been bringing in revenue has been these fly through videos, I guess, what's the kind of breakdown for you kind of to get to that on track for six figures number?
maybe not break down by numbers, but just kind of in general, what types of services are, you know, make up your business?
Pedro Silva: So, I mean, a lot of it right now is, either event coverage, With multiple different clients that I've been able to hook up with over the years, or, these, marketing videos for like doing fly throughs, whether it's for social media, that's something I actually want to talk about in a little bit.
We can get it to the [00:34:00] social media in just a second, so like a lot of content creation for people's websites for, you know, social media, like I said, Interior fly throughs mixed with, you know, exterior traditional shots and sometimes even including, you know, ground footage, you know, we got lavalier mics clip up, you know, real estate agents for them to talk about their listing or, it's somebody speaking at an event or whatever.
we've done some work with the Baltimore Waterfront Partnership. they'll call me for events that'll be like three, four hours long, and they have a ton of different events. So it's stuff like that. You know, it'll be these, different, clients that I have will bring me on to these events, or, you know, it'll be these fly throughs with the traditional, drone shots mixed in them.
That's really what's Bringing in a lot of the revenue at the
David Young: moment. That's awesome. So tell me about social media. You wanted to talk about that. Like, what do you do, for social media? What's your, your strategy
Pedro Silva: there? So basically what I've been doing lately is, I've always, ever since the beginning, tried to build a social presence while working at the same time.
I'll be on a job. And I'll look around either where exactly where I'm at [00:35:00] or nearby in the city. If there's anything else that I might want to revisit later and go get some content for social media because I'm all over the place now. Now I go to Stevensville, Maryland. I'll go to, Lorton, Virginia.
I'll be all over the place. So I'm making sure I want to document these places that I'm going and put it on social media and see if it might catch the attention a lot of these tourism pages like, you know, the visit whatever's of the world, visit Maryland, visit Pennsylvania, Virginia, whatever. just posting a lot and seeing what works on social media and seeing like how reels work and I've been growing my social media presence, which has led to a lot of traffic as of late doing, you know, a ton of hyperlapse content.
just showing off all these different areas, especially in the DMV. If you guys see on my Instagram drone by dro, I've been doing collaborations lately with, the MoCo show DMV daily. So they've allowed me to collaborate with them in their platform. basically I'm providing them a ton of content and I'm not making any money from it.[00:36:00]
But it's bringing me a ton of exposure and people contacting yo, I saw you on this person's page on that person's page. Yo, hey, can you do this for us? Can you like somebody contacting me recently, a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers that had never happened before, until I started really posting on social media.
So that was open my eyes to the power of. how many people's attention can be grabbed through, you know, social
David Young: media. Yeah, man, attention is important I'm glad you've been able to get some kind of system for being able to create content like that all the time. And, you know, it's probably it's your work anyways, what you do.
So it's nice. The power of just showing your work is like people like, Oh, well, I want that. You know what I mean? getting more attention. So as smart, collaborating with other people, because building an audience is. A long, tedious process. So if you can get yourself in front of somebody else's audience that they've taken time to build, find those good partnerships, you know, we've done that, that too, and it works, you know, if you can find the right, people to partner with, then, you know, it's a really much faster way to, build your network, build your audience.
So that's
Pedro Silva: smart. [00:37:00] Something too, that I wanted to add to that was, um, as of late, you know, a lot of stuff in the DMV, but. I've been able to get jobs in other states, just by looking at there's a site. I'm sure you know about droners IO, right?
Yeah. I know there's like a lot of mixed reviews on that, you know for the most part It's it completely waters down Pricing but every now and then There's a gem on there, I'm just searching through over the years. I did a lot of my paid practice jobs on droners. Like I was taking, you know, 150 real estate jobs or whatever on there to the point where I had built up a nice enough portfolio where I had somebody say.
I have a budget 1, 000 for like, a one hour job type of thing. Every now and then you come across these kinds of things where it's like, you wouldn't expect that to be on droners. You know, the, the stigma of is, is that everything is low paying. And I found one that was paying enough money that I was able to go out to Colorado, and I was using my, connections as well because I have, my wife [00:38:00] works at a hotel.
My mom works at an airport. So I have all these discounts that I can go out of the state and go work in other places. Right? while I'm out there, I'm doing the work. And then I'm also going to Denver to get content out there for social media and to add to my website and finding out what local pages out there are, have big audiences and would be down to collaborate with me.
I got my content rotating in Denver and there's real estate agents in Denver that have contacted me like, Hey, you know, if you're ever here, you know, so it's things like that, you know, I'm going to go to Georgia in a week. Actually no, on Sunday, I'm going to Georgia. So I'm going to try and replicate that again
David Young: there too.
Dude, that's smart. That's smart maybe just go there like once every bit, you know, every once a year, twice a year or whatever, and batch some projects while you're there or something. Exactly. Where in Georgia are you going? I'm going to go to
Pedro Silva: Hinesville, Georgia. It's right next to Fort Stewart.
David Young: Where's
Pedro Silva: Fort Stewart? It's like 30 minutes away from, Savannah, George.
David Young: It's the middle of nowhere. Oh, okay. All right. All right. No, I just was asking. Cause I just drove from. Florida to North [00:39:00] Carolina a few weeks ago, we drove through Savannah and I was curious now, what are you doing down there in Georgia?
You're in Orlando, right? right between Tampa and Orlando, probably a little closer to Tampa, but yeah.
Pedro Silva: Okay, I got you. I'm actually flying into Jacksonville and driving two hours up to Hinesville. What's in
David Young: Hinesville?
Pedro Silva: Yeah. So what I'm going to be doing there is this. I came across a really cool client, where basically they create websites for schools in areas that are basically in the middle of nowhere.
They were the ones that gave me the work in Colorado. I found them through droners. And then after that, I told them, Hey, don't contact me on droners again. Now you got my phone and my email contact me for this stuff. And then they contact me for this. So what they do is. They have a bunch of different locations that they asked me to go to take aerial photo and video and a couple of interior photos, and then I send them all the raw imagery.
And they create websites for each of these schools, free of charge. How do they
David Young: get paid?
Pedro Silva: that's a question maybe for them. You know, I don't know how they, I don't know exactly how [00:40:00] they do their work. But they contact me to do that
David Young: and Maybe they have grants
Pedro Silva: or something. Probably, yeah.
Because they do, a ton of websites.
I was in a city called Lamar, Colorado, a two and a half hour drive from Denver.
Like I'm going, I'm traveling, I'm covering a lot of distance.
David Young: are you taking footage of the school or like the area or
Pedro Silva: what? The schools individually, I'll go to in Colorado with seven different schools that I went to in the Lamar County district. Then now it's going to be the Liberty County district in Hinesville, Georgia.
I think it's 15 different schools. So there, and these are huge projects. Like they're paying well enough. I'm taking a week outta my time and I'm buying the flight myself. I'm renting the car, buying the hotel myself. You know, obviously with the discounts that I have, but, It's enough that I'm able to do this out of pocket and go
David Young: there and take care of it.
These, the projects pay as well. Wow, that's awesome, man. Very cool. Well, we've been going for a while longer than our normal podcast, but that's good. 'cause I mean, we've got so much cool stuff to cover, [00:41:00] for people who want to say hey to you or.
Find out more. I mean, I know you're pretty active on Instagram, right? So is that the best spot to define you drones Byre on Instagram?
Pedro Silva: I would say right now that's probably the best place to find me is Drone Byre. if you want to get a little more personal, Pedro Silva on LinkedIn,
David Young: and just a heads up everyone, he's wearing a suit, a black suit on LinkedIn looking sharp.
Yes,
Pedro Silva: sir. Appreciate that. Hey, and I, you know what I wanna tell you, David, I wanna tell you personally, I appreciate you having me on your platform because. I've gotten some beautiful messages ever since I've been on your podcast, like people, people talking about, yo, you've inspired me, man, like you're, you know, oh man, your story is great.
Oh man, I heard your podcast. It's like every other week for, you know, for like months after I was on there, people were messaging me and I was like, I was like, damn, you know, a lot of people
David Young: listen to y'all. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm glad to hear that. I know people really appreciate. these podcasts and, if you're just starting off and you want to know, like, how does this even work and where [00:42:00] do I even start?
Right. it's cool to hear people who've had success in what they did and, you know, struggles that they had, right. Doesn't makes them feel like, all right, this is possible for me if I want it to, to go do that. So, you know, I'm glad you're willing to come on here and share your story, inspire other people and let them know.
what they can do if they want to
Pedro Silva: so I want to close it out with this though, you know before we go our separate ways. it's not easy, nothing that's easy is worth and nothing that's worth it is easy. I am a 27 year old Brazilian American, first generation in my family to live in this country.
I come from a family where, pretty much everybody, you know, mom, dad, my brother, they all graduated college. They all, you know, did their thing, went on to, you know, my mom owned her own business. Brother and dad work full time jobs. I didn't graduate college. You know, I have a high school diploma.
did a little bit of community college and wanted to try and find out my way. I wanted to see, what I was passionate about and And I was really focusing on passion until I figure out, I could also make money with my passion. And I want people to know out there, you know, not saying that, having a degree is bad.
Having a degree is [00:43:00] fantastic. If you're in school, stay in school and salute to everybody who's a graduate. It's not easy. My brother went through that. I saw what it's like. whatever you got going on in your background or, something that's going on in your life, personal stuff, family.
If you really love this and you want to make it work, push through, it's worth, I think anybody that really, this is the cliche, like if you try hard enough, it'll work out, you do have to get a little bit lucky, but just keep pushing.
David Young: Best way to get lucky is to keep,
Pedro Silva: keep trying, you know, Got to stay, got to stay ready.
So you don't have to get ready.
David Young: I like that. Thanks so much for coming on, man. it was great having you on this and I'll have to have you back for another season, maybe in another year or two and get the latest update on what you're doing now.
Pedro Silva: Definitely. Thank you, David. I appreciate it, man.