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.
d1k season 6 brian k edited
===
[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to season six, episode one of the Drone21k podcast. I am your host, David Young, and I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what to expect if you've never been here before. And if you are a listener of the podcast, I can tell you what's coming up for this season. So we typically only release about one season a year.
10 episodes, and we don't release stuff until we have all 10 episodes recorded. That way we don't get behind. So I just finished the 10th episode, right before I left for Christmas break, and now we are going to be releasing them. So, episode one is today, and it is with someone named Brian Koster. I fir first met Brian, in one of our Programs courses actually was the drone one K course back in 2020 and he built a pretty sweet business for himself It started off sort of in real estate and switched over to mapping.
He's done some really cool stuff working for attorneys and architects He's gonna tell you all about it on today's podcast. So I hope you enjoy it I will tell you that my favorite part of the podcast was when he talked about what he's doing for attorneys and how he was able to use some mapping work in the [00:01:00] of how he proves stuff in court a certain way.
So pretty cool. At least check that part of the podcast out if you're just skipping around. but as always. if you want a free shirt, leave us a review on typically an Apple podcasts. just leave an honest review. If you hate this podcast, go leave a one star review. Email me. I'll still give you a shirt.
I'm not trying to bribe you to leave a good review. other people who are looking for shows, like to see what other people think. So if you really like it, leave a, review. If not, no worries. Hope you enjoy the podcast.
All right. Welcome back to the Drone to one K podcast. I have with me today on the podcast, a special friend Brian k here with south Bay, , drone Services. Brian, thanks for coming on the show. why don't you give us a little background on yourself and your business, like this little two second version.
Sure.
Brian Koeten: this is my third career. My first career was in advertising as an art director, so I created. Magazine, TV ads, stuff like that. I did that for about 15 years and they basically kick you out at age 40 if you don't move up in management, there's no 40 or 40 plus year olds in an ad agency.
So right on time at age 40, I of course got kicked out. went on to my [00:02:00] second career, which is, web development building websites. So I started a company doing that and I did that for about 13 or 14 years. I still kind of do it a little bit on the side, but I don't really push it anymore. I still manage websites and I still build them every once in a while.
but I found that business to be, very difficult, hard to get clients to understand the cost of everything. Everybody thinks it's super cheap when it's really not. So I decided I really needed to. I had been flying, radio controlled airplanes for most of my life. And I remember we were on vacation in Washington State at Olympic Park, we were hanging out at this really cool little hotel in the lake, and this guy and his family were sitting on the edge of the lake and all of a sudden he brings this drone in and I really never seen a drone before.
He brings it really close to them. They all get together. He hits a button. The drone just starts slowly pulling back up into the air, and while they're all waving and smiling, I'm like, that is so cool. I totally [00:03:00] want one of those. I eventually, about a year later, I got around to buying one. I bought a Mavic two Pro, so I had this expensive little toy, didn't know what I was gonna do with it, thought a lot about it.
I ended up talking with one of the parents of my son's friends, and she's a real estate agent, and I said, Hey, I think maybe I could do something with this drone that I have. So I talked to her about it and basically her advice to me was, Hey, it's great you got a drone, but really what we all need are photo photographs, you know, interior, exterior photographs, like maybe once in a while.
You'll, need to use a drone, but really if you wanna do it, that's what you gotta do. So I was a little disappointed, but I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go down this route. So I practiced for like all Christmas vacation. did an online tutorial thing, kind of learned how to do it, and I went to her and I said, okay, I'm ready.
She hired me and I did my first job shooting just the interior exterior photos. If I looked at them now, they're completely awful. I was terrible, awful at
David Young: it. But you were willing to, you were willing to suck at first. Oh yeah. [00:04:00] Totally. To get better later, you know what I mean? If you wouldn't have been willing to even do that, you would not even have gotten there.
Brian Koeten: Exactly. And she was super nice and like, these are great, these are awesome. But I hated them. And I'm like, I gotta do better. So I was super committed. But
David Young: you hated them at the time. You hated them like you knew you hated them then.
Brian Koeten: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, I thought hit are pretty good, but they're not like what other people do.
David Young: Sure. So you knew what they could be. Yeah,
Brian Koeten: I knew what they could be, so I, even though she's like, this is great. I wasn't happy. I kept trying to refine, get better and better. Every job I did, I tried to get better and better. I did that for a year. That whole summer season of shooting and then, you know, in the winter it, it calms down a lot.
And I just decided, you know what? I want to be better than this. So I found a different guy on YouTube, a guy named Nathan. Cool. He has a whole bunch of, video tutorials and it was to shoot in a completely different way than I was doing that first year. All learning this new technique. Out and getting ready.
So when I got my first job, I did again, [00:05:00] the new technique and oh my God, it was a thousand times better. And I'm like, Ugh. Okay. Now what was the new
David Young: technique
Brian Koeten: called? Well, or it, the weeds. There's really two ways you shoot in real estate. You either shoot what's called H D R, or you shoot flamm. My first year I was doing H D R, but the second year and from then on I've been shooting flamm and I like flamboyant a lot.
And by the way, flam is, flash plus ambient. That's the combination of those two words. And basically you're shooting one shot that gets you the real, shadows and sun, and then the second shot gets you. With the flash anyway, combine 'em in Photoshop. And what I liked about it was you had total control over the situation.
Like I knew in the moment that I had the exact pieces I need to make a great shot versus H D R, where you just shoot it, you go home and you hope that everything comes together and the computer puts it together. So you're like, you know, fingers crossed that everything's gonna work out. Yeah. Uh, Flamm, I felt in control.
H d r did not feel in control at all.
David Young: flam would take a [00:06:00] little bit more setup 'cause you gotta bring a flash. Or is it just go on top of your camera or is it like a tripod?
Brian Koeten: like light, I. Yeah. So basically the best way to do it is to have one really large flash that works mm-hmm. In big spaces, like living rooms.
And then if you need it, you, I have a little flash on my belt, loop essentially, and I pop that out and I take a couple pops to like fill in areas. and then when you get into smaller rooms, you don't need the big flash, like bedrooms, bathrooms, so you just walk around with a handheld flash. It goes pretty quick.
I can get in and out in the house in about 30 to 45 minutes. So, okay. The more you do it, definitely the faster you get because, you know, by looking at the histogram, like you really following the histogram, by looking at the histogram, you know, I've got it. So I don't have to think, oh, is this gonna work?
You just know as long that histogram is good. You're good.
David Young: Sweet. Okay, awesome. when, did you see that person flying that drone on the beach? And then when did you get your first drone in the calendar timeline here?
So,
Brian Koeten: yeah, sure. I saw that drone on the lake in August of 2017. I bought a [00:07:00] drone. Sometime between then and 2018, somewhere around there. I did my first real estate shot with no drone for the first year. I didn't do any drone because I didn't have a license and I, I felt like I really needed to learn this photography thing, like I was gonna go nowhere unless I could do that.
Well, and so my, my thought was, yeah, yeah, right. I've gotta do that well before I add more complexity. So I did a year of that. Uh, so my first real estate shot was in February of 2019. that was when Covid hit. So right around before Covid I found you guys online, drone Launch Academy, and I did my, part 1 0 7 testing through you guys.
So thank you very much. good job. And I actually did the test like right after Covid started. So it was really hard to find a testing facility that would take me Oh, were they like all closed? Oh yeah, they were all closed. when things got a little more open, I finally found a time and a place that I could do it.
once I had that, then I started adding drone too. And, and by the way, over [00:08:00] Covid, I just practiced a ton with that drone, like kind of learning how it worked. So that I was ready when I did my first real estate with that.
David Young: Did you find business to be a little slow during covid? I guess you weren't really super ramped up, it didn't sound like yet, maybe, but was that, did you find that period to be more difficult or not really?
Brian Koeten: Yeah. You know, for this interview I decided to go back and look at it and it turns out, oh, thanks. It's really crazy. In July of Covid year, so July, 2020, I suddenly was working a ton. Really, uh, didn't have any jobs before July of that year, but, so that was pretty, pretty early on in the process. I remember that summer things kind of opened up a little bit.
I suddenly just started working constantly.
David Young: Okay. Well, sweet. I do remember you were in a Facebook group with some of our students, I just have like a memory of one clip where you're just like, just booked my first, uh, real estate shoot with a drone and you listed the price or whatever it was.
And I think that was in 2020, right? Or was that in 2019?
Brian Koeten: Yeah, it would've been in 2020, yeah. July. [00:09:00]
David Young: Yeah. Yeah.
Stuff you're doing now. It's just cool to see the whole progression. So 2020 kind of started ramping up. You started using the drone, rocking the flamboyant method on real estate. And then take us from there. Like what happened?
How did it grow? Were you doing enough business for this to be like a full-time thing? how is that working with your, like other business, ventures that you were doing with websites?
Brian Koeten: So the website thing, I just kind of walked away from essentially not marketing it anymore. So it's kind of word of mouth.
Okay. People find me, I still do it. So that was one year of just shooting photos. Then the second year of the, summer season, I added the drone, and then while I added the drone, and by the way, I went through. Group. The first group that you put together. I was in that initial group.
Yeah. Which by
David Young: the way, our beta,
Brian Koeten: our beta launch, I was in the beta group. Oh my God. That course was so amazing because I'm like a guy that needs to understand, like you can kind of tell from my story so far, like I need to understand something to be [00:10:00] confident and tell people that because.
Way outside of just flying a drone and shooting pictures. Like how do you set it up and how do you do this and how do you do that? And so going through that process really helped me establish a lot of things. And one of the things was building website, which of course I built my own website, but sure.
You guys gave me all of the other stuff you need to know. That sort of background stuff that all. So awesome. I had built that idea. I built the website during the course and because I had a website out there, I was getting contacted and I was running the Google Ads campaign that you guys had set up. I Was getting calls for just random droney things, you know, can you do this, can you do that?
That were outside of shooting real estate. so those things just kept cascading and getting more and more of them. really, if you wanna fast forward like a year, I was really doing maybe half and half, half other things and half real estate. if we fast forward to [00:11:00] today, real estate's, maybe 5% of what I do,
David Young: yeah, I was gonna say, 'cause I mean, You're still part of some of our like, group stuff.
And so, you know, I see what you're working on, things you post, which are always, you're always extremely helpful. You like will put stuff in there like, Hey, here's a job I did, here's how I did it, here's how I went here. Like, you just put like really, really good information in any type. There's like, yeah.
To help groups out, which is super helpful. I appreciate it. I see now you're doing all this of construction things. I don't wanna jump too far there, but I just, yeah. I'm interested to hear the, the shift from real estate into some of the stuff you're doing now.
Like, I know you got into like mapping and photogrammetry and stuff too, right?
Brian Koeten: Yes. That's the bulk of what I do now is actually, photogrammetry, orthomosaic mapping. I got like, a hit from a construction company that had an emergency. They had a site where they were gonna pour concrete the next day, and he is like, I need you to come out today, make an ortho mosaic map so that I can look at all of the.
Rebar and make sure that it's all where it's supposed to be. 'cause Concrete's coming tomorrow and this is a hospital, so it's [00:12:00] a big, huge project.
Can you come today? I just got
this
David Young: job this morning,
Brian Koeten: apparently. No, no. I, I, I don't, yeah, I don't know why he found himself in that bind, but, uh, anyway, the normal people he would go to all couldn't do it for whatever reason. So, so I slide in the door. I went out like within the hour I'm out there flying.
I do it, I get it to him. He's all happy. And then I continued following up with that guy eventually, like, he's like, no, I don't have anything known. Eventually it's like, oh yeah, there's this other site we have that, um, we actually need a drone operator because the current one, um, keeps crashing the drone.
So this is a huge commercial construction company. they actually have in-house drones and they have inspire drones as their in-house drone. And one of the workers, like assistant site supervisor, he was their drone operator.
He crashed two inspires. That's a lot of money. Yeah. Thousands and thousands of dollars. [00:13:00] So they're like, uh, he's like, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't wanna be the guy. Please find somebody else. so the guy that I did the hospital job for, he's like, oh yeah, let me give you the contact info.
They need a guy. So I went out there and met them and that turned into a job that I'm still doing now, and it's been like a year later. I'm still on site there every week. doing construction progress, ortho mosaic mapping videos, photos. that's what I really love doing.
and just to let people know, real estate is very, time intensive. It's very low pay and it's a lot of hard work. you're definitely sweating. You're definitely gonna sweat moving around the house. Doing all that stuff, shooting the video like I was doing versus construction, which pays, I don't know, five times as much.
You know, you sit in a little vehicle, you cruise around the site, you get your drone up in the air. Most of what I'm doing is automated. you sort of weighing the difference. It's kind of easy to say, ah, real estate great, [00:14:00] but construction progress, that's
David Young: better. Now I wanna go back real quick.
I think there's some valuable, maybe nuggets we can uncover for people here. you did that emergency job for that guy for the concrete pour, and then you said, you know, I kept following up with him, following up with him. What did that look like? You know, 'cause somebody else could have just done that and then walked away and never contact him again and forgotten about it.
But I like the fact that you said you were. In contact with him and following up. So from a, just a good business perspective, what did that look like in your follow-ups? Were you just emailing him saying, Hey, just checking in, see if you need any help, or, can you get specific with, if you remember, like, what that looked like?
Yeah,
Brian Koeten: no, I totally remember it was, I emailed him, um, because when I called him, he was super busy or wouldn't take my phone call and you know what, I'm a nobody to him. I mean, this guy is pretty high up in the business over there. I'm just a guy who went out and did an emergency job or whatever, but I didn't continue following up via email just 'cause I figured that's pretty low.
stress engagement for him to just read my email every, and by the way, I didn't send it like [00:15:00] every other day, you know, I'd send it like once a month, you know, just give us some time, let it breathe. Yeah. Reach out to him again. And then it paid off. lucky with timing, you know,
David Young: you say lucky with timing, but that's 'cause of your, you created the luck, you know,
Brian Koeten: because of your Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. That's, that's what, you know, luck is all about how hard you work,
David Young: right? Right. did you just happen to remember like once a month or did you have any system for like, I'm gonna set a reminder for a month from now to hit him up again?
Brian Koeten: How did that work? Um, I did not, I didn't have a formal system.
I knew. Especially going through the drone to one K program and just kind of, because in that program you really emphasize, hey, you know, sort of look around at all the things, all the business models that you can do drones with, and I'm just a construction nerd anyway. so it was a natural fit for me to kind of do it.
So it was really important to me to keep, you know, putting bait in the water in the construction world and just keep hitting it. So I didn't have to remind myself. I just knew that I needed to keep, you were, it was on your mind. I had a foot in the door [00:16:00] and I wasn't gonna pull my foot out if I could help it, so
David Young: that's great.
And it paid off. I mean, they got a job. Yeah, absolutely. And were your emails just like, well, gimme an example of like what an email would say if we're gonna get like real specific, you know, like if I'm, if I'm Bill the construction guy that hired you and you're writing an email to me, what, what do you say on your follow up?
Brian Koeten: I would basically say, Hey Bill, it's Brian, um, from South Bay Drone Services. I just wanted to touch base again. I had done this Project X for you and, just let me know if there's any other projects that you need a drone guy for. You know, remember I do ortho Mosaic mapping stockpile.
Progress, all that stuff, just basic, just remind you. I just make it simple. Just say, Hey, remember me, I did this. Job's know if you have
David Young: a need. Sweet. So just kind of to point little p reminder that I exist. Yeah, I like it. Yep. So if you're listening and you're afraid to follow up, just send a nice little email.
Hey, remember that I exist and I did this for you once. Let me know. and
Brian Koeten: by the way, the thing I did for him, like really bailed him out so he's got a little soft spot in this [00:17:00] heart for me.
David Young: So you went from real estate. Shooting real estate now. Were you making decent money doing real estate or were you like, this isn't really paying well for me, when you were back then doing
Brian Koeten: real estate? Well, I'll, I'll give you a, I'll give you the, the number. So I live in Los Angeles. Love it. So it's a, it's a pretty higher end area, you know.
Definitely people get paid here more than more the other places, basically I had a, price point that was between 200 and 300, depending on the size square footage of the house. Mm-hmm. And it was two, let's just say it was two 50 to shoot the photos. It was another two 50 to do the video, which was originally was with a D S L R camera on a gimbal.
and then if they wanted to add a drone, it was $150 add-on, and then that drone would go towards photos and towards the video. So you got a benefit in both from the,
David Young: and then were you like doing. Decent volume with that. Like was that enough to survive on or were you like, it's just not cutting it? That's for with that price point, with the volume you were getting.
Brian Koeten: I'm not the breadwinner in the family, so I didn't have a lot of pressure on me [00:18:00] to deliver.
I was much more interested in building the business. And the time cost benefit analysis over time became clear to me that I didn't want to do two jobs or three jobs a day in real estate. It was just a lot of effort for the amount of money. Yeah. Compared, I mean, if that's all I had, that's all you'd have, but I had other opportunities and other business models that were much more profitable for a lot less effort.
So it was pretty obvious to me that that's where I should focus.
David Young: And I even remember back then when you were doing real estate stuff, I remember talking you talking about, Hey, I would really like to get into construction. I remember you asking a lot of questions about how does it work, what do people want, what are the deliverables you would post?
I just went to this construction site and I just went and videoed a bunch of stuff and what do you guys think about this? Oh, I did. And everybody's, everybody's like, oh, that's so, like, you're pretty good. Like you, you're, you know, you sound humble, but like you're pretty good at it. Even just like cinematography stuff, you got like really cool looking shots and all this stuff of the site.
So you're definitely [00:19:00] someone who like really digs in deep, like you said, and understands things and gets good at it. I even know back then that you were pushing towards the construction, so it's, it's nice to see that you've like stuck with it. It's worked. I think people might wanna know too.
If there's people who are on here that are listening that are totally new, we've been talking about photogrammetry. Would you mind just explaining in layman's terms what you mean when you say you're doing photogrammetry for construction?
Brian Koeten: Sure I have to do this all the time because nobody understands what an ortho mosaic map is or photograph.
Right, right. So yeah, so basically think of it, the simplest terms is it's Google Maps on steroids, like on super high resolution. So basically you're taking maybe thousands, hundreds of photos straight down. and each one has geolocation data in it, and then you upload it to some sort of software, and that software stitches it together, gets rid of all the distortion that's in every single lens, and creates one giant photograph straight down that has no distortion.
[00:20:00] In fact, It's so undistorted that you can get like half an inch to a pixel kind of resolution. And what's really great about it is you can measure from any point inside there to another point, and it's super accurate down to an inch. Like if you really can put those points, you'll know exactly how far it is from one thing relative to another inside that photograph.
And so that's what's really useful to a lot of people.
David Young: That's one of the best. Simplest explanations I've heard. I might just rip that off word for word for some of our, I'll give you credit
I mean, you talked about the concrete pour, but can you think of another example where a construction client might utilize, orthomosaic image with photogrammetry?
Brian Koeten: So like at this big construction site that I go to every week, uh, they don't always ask for an ortho mosaic map. but when they do, they utilized it a lot, especially when, uh, at the early stage, so it's called earthworks when they're moving the dirt around.
when I worked for the Earthworks Group, they used it a lot. They would take a, a, the JPEG [00:21:00] from it because I would send them JPEGs at different resolutions and they would use that in their little PowerPoint or whatever to talk to all the subs and say, Hey, look, this area over here, this is where we want to focus on, or we need to move dirt from here to there.
So it's basically they could go anywhere inside that grab a little. Picture of that area and then use that as a guide to talk to the subs.
David Young: That's So using it kind of like for site planning with their whole team? Yeah,
Brian Koeten: because I took it yesterday so it's super recent. It's very high resolution and it's very accurate.
so it's a great way to visually communicate to everybody. 'cause on these sites, there's like hundreds of people. Tons of different subs. And so you need to make sure everybody's on the right page. Everybody's doing what they're supposed to do. And so this became a visual aid that helps them do that communication.
David Young: The communication tool. Yeah. I know it's photogrammetry's a little bit less accurate. This is on the Z scale, like up and down as opposed to left and right, but it still can be pretty accurate from like an [00:22:00] elevation perspective too. So I don't know if earthworks, if they're ever using that to figure out how much they need
Brian Koeten: sometimes they would drive me around the site and they say, tell me how much dirt is there.
I need how much dirt is over there. I need how much dirt. They would point out the piles and then I would those missions do the stock analysis. Oh, awesome. And they loved that. That was super helpful. Now, the Earthworks people, the people they've subcontracted to, they're also doing that stuff. so it's not like I'm the sole provider of Stockpile, but there were instances where they needed the information and for whatever reason, the Earthworks people couldn't provide it.
And so I would go out and fly those missions for 'em.
David Young: Gotcha. Now, what software are you using typically to do these kind of jobs for the measurements and orthos?
Brian Koeten: So I use DroneDeploy. I decided to go on that route, versus PS four D because at the time Pix four D was, local processing of the map, and I didn't want to burden my computer with all that processing, so I, I thought better to cloud, outsource it to DroneDeploy.
and then plus, [00:23:00] DroneDeploy was super nice to me in the beginning 'cause they give you the sort of, I think it was 14 day trial period or something, and then I would go out and fly practicing. So I'd go fly something, I'd screw it up, I'd do something wrong. I'd call the guy up and I'd say, Hey, look at my map.
It's, why does it look like that? And he'd say, oh, because of this or that. I'm like, okay, I can, I go out and fly it next week. He's like, all right, I'll extend it again. Oh, that's nice. It's extending the trial period. I'm not kidding. They extended me about three to four months off the 14 day trial because I would go out, I'd say, Hey, I, I'm gonna go out going.
Plugging away until I, I know I can do this correctly. And he was super nice and just kept extending. Eventually I bought the, the service. well paid off for them. Yeah. So it
David Young: worked off for them. Paid off for them. Yeah. that's very cool. That's awesome. Yeah, I was, you're not kidding with the computer thing.
So I'm, Doing some master's schooling here coming up soon, and we're gonna be using some, I'm, I'm gonna [00:24:00] use Pix four D, the local stuff. And I had to buy a completely new desktop, with whatever extra graphics card and processor stuff you need just to. Do any of those maps, uh, locally. So it's, it's nice when you have it, in the cloud to do as well, um, where you don't suck up all your Yeah.
Certainly wanna
Brian Koeten: store all those things to store those ortho mosaic maps either. So it's, it's a great service. I mean, I, I really like DroneDeploy. They've been great to me. They've, um, been super responsive and whenever I have an issue, um, awesome.
David Young: so DroneDeploy stockpiles construction sites, Today, you said most of your, or like real estate, is a very small percentage of your business.
Mapping is a larger percentage of your business. Do you do mapping outside of the construction world or is it almost all contained to construction using photogram issue for construction?
Brian Koeten: I'm so glad you asked me that, David, because that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. you serious? Oh yeah, totally.
We couldn't have teed that one up. Better
David Young: not planned. We didn't even, I haven't [00:25:00] spoken to Brian in person. At least months, two years maybe. I dunno. Maybe longer. Yeah. Yeah,
Brian Koeten: yeah, yeah. Serious. It's been a while. so there's really three main focuses of my business now, and I wanted to share this because I think they are the, obviously construction, everybody knows about it.
But the other two that I do a lot of, I, I don't think people ever talk about it. So one is architects, and what I do is I go out and make a three D model. Of an area of a re, like a residential property and then maybe a block all around it, and I send what's called an object file, which is the three D version of that file.
I send that to the architect and you're like, well, what's the benefit to the architect? The benefit to the architect is I can go shoot it, send them that three D model, say the next day or a day later, he now has all the elevation data for that site. Down, plus or minus, let's say five inches, right? Which is plenty accurate enough for him to start working on the project, say, versus waiting for the survey company, [00:26:00] which is so backlogged out here.
It may be four months until they can. Get out there. So that's four months of time. He doesn't have to sit and wait 'cause he can't start until he knows what the ground looks like. Right. It, it's not useful time spent. But with the elevation data from the object file, he can start working on it right away.
That's his number one benefit. That's what he tells. 'cause I've talked to him about this a lot. That's his big benefit. The secondary benefit is when he actually makes the three D model for the property that he's redesigning. Typically, when you show that to the client, it'll be in like a CAD program where you'll see the house, but all around it will just be blank space, blank land or
David Young: nothing there.
Like fake person in a car or
Brian Koeten: something, you know, whatever. Yeah. Or fake tree or whatever. Yeah. What do is he could take and edit out the existing house in that three D model and stick his house into that model. And now when he shows the client that sort of cool, you know, camera zooming around the property.
Now you see it in context, like you can see, oh, that's what it's gonna look like. [00:27:00] That's how close the other house is. That's how tall the other house is and it's really trippy. If you go in that, in his model and look out the window, you will see what's actually outside that window as you pass by.
David Young: Oh wow.
You can go inside the house in these models and go buy 'em. Yes.
Brian Koeten: That's cool. And look out out the window's and you'll see my three D model of the house next door. So
David Young: they can see from this bedroom, here's what the view is gonna be. Out this window, basically. Yeah,
Brian Koeten: exactly. Wow. So if you think about what the architect's trying to do, he's trying to sell his design and say this is the right design.
And the client can go, oh, okay. I'm gonna actually see whatever, or I'm gonna see that tree. Or whatever. yeah, so those are the two big benefits So I do a lot of architects. The third, business model that I'm really this next year, so if you talk to me in the year, hopefully this will be up and rolling.
Super big. Let's do a follow up. Yeah. Is lawyers. I've been getting a lot of legal work. I really work for two [00:28:00] lawyers now a lot. and this is where I wanna expand. So one of them is a personal injury attorney. And basically what I'm doing is, somebody gets injured, killed, whatever, in a location.
He gets wind of it. He calls me up and says, Hey Brian. Go here and do this, right? I go to the site, I make an ortho mosaic map, and then I shoot photos. So I've essentially documented the crime scene or whatever the scene of whatever happened instant. I've documented instant, instant, yeah, instantly. Now we have it, locked in.
Plus he can then use that information if it goes to trial. like you can put together a video that says, here's the location. Here's what happened or whatever. It just helps the jury understand mm-hmm. The location. So I do a lot for him and he's super excited. Every time I talk to him, he's like, oh, I'm gonna give you more work.
I'm give you more work. The other attorney I do work for, is an environmental lawyer. so I'm, I've really been working on this one case with him for a long time. Like I'm constantly, giving him [00:29:00] more information and basically I made an ortho mosaic map. in this case, he got into the deposition, so he's starting to hear what the opposing attorney Saying or or whatever. And then he would call me up and they go, Brian, okay, now he says this well is here and that this happened. But I don't think that's, we're disagreeing with that. And I'd pull up the orthomosaic map and then I would draw a little line. I would say, oh, that's actually uphill from there to there.
There's no way somethings gonna roll uphill because I have elevation. You can draw a line anywhere in space and it'll tell you elevation between the two points. or I would say, oh, that's not where he says it is. Look, The background, you know, the mountain back there, that's that crevice. I can tell you that location is there and not where this photo is from 1925.
Yeah. And, and that's all we have. Right? But the land hasn't changed since 1925, so you can still kind of figure out where things are based on that. I'm constantly giving him more data, like, okay, here's, and using that same orthomosaic [00:30:00] map, but just pulling different kinds of data outta it.
I originally did that for him because he wanted a jury. He wanted like a little minute, this is how I got the job. He wanted a minute and a half video that just kind of introduced the property because it's kind of a property inside a canyon area and it's it's big property and he just wanted to. Have the jurors be, uh, sort of get of their bearings of where things were.
So as he's talking about different buildings in different locations, they have that visual picture in their head of, okay, that was there. That was there. And it was during that call, initial call, I said, Hey, just so you know, if I make this ortho because you just wanted a video, I said, if I make this ortho mosaic map for you, let me tell you all the benefits you can get out of it.
I can take photos at different locations. And those photos would show up on the map like geo-located. Imagine you're in a trial and you're looking at this long property, you could say, oh, let's look at this photo. You could click on it in the map. So the, the jury goes, oh, that's there. And then boom, it shows that photo.
Everybody has, again, spatially where things are in relation to other things. So when you're just [00:31:00] looking at a photo, you already kind of know where is it on this property? And he's like, that's orthomosaic. Hey, Brian, can you help me with this problem? Now that, and I'm, oh,
David Young: I totally can now you he'll turn it on like that.
What it can do. You know
Brian Koeten: what I mean? What it, and absolutely. Now he's just like, oh, he's constantly having like, oh, can we do this? Can we do that? And the longer I work with him, the more he kind of is, again, like you're saying, his brain is going, oh, we figure that this, that's awesome, man. So that's love.
Third, Idea that I would tell people, and all three of these, by the way, are all people that have a lot of money. I mean, lawyers, we're talking about big amounts of money. Architects, we're talking about million plus home remodel. Profit size are huge. Yeah. Yeah. And commercial construction, I mean, these are massive projects.
Millions and millions of dollars. What you can charge is a lot more than what the real estate agent, who's really concerned about how many [00:32:00] sandwiches she's gonna pay for, for the opening. Right. And then you, oh, I, you charge me for a.
David Young: Whereas on the construction or other stuff, you're just kind of like a rounding hair on their, just on their budget. Yeah. and when you get in corporate stuff like that, maybe it's different with the attorneys, but you know, it's not like you are taking money out of this construction project manager's pocket.
real estate agent, you're kind of. Cutting straight into their commission. Yeah. Versus I guess an attorney maybe, or maybe they would bill that back to their client. I'm not sure. But um, but at least the amounts are much bigger for them.
Brian Koeten: I'll tell you with attorneys, what I've learned is you can charge for the phone call. Yeah. They're used to that. That's part of their business model.
David Young: Well, you're, kind of a consultant for them, for their clients, right? So you're, getting paid for what you're bringing, not just collecting that data, but helping them kind of piece it together.
man, I would never have thought of attorneys.
Brian Koeten: that is smart. Is that, is my focus for the year
David Young: is attorneys. What is it, what made you think of that? Was that attorney contacted you and that got [00:33:00] your idea wheels going? Or did you just randomly think that up and reach out?
Brian Koeten: So the environmental attorney was the first attorney that reached out to me. And again, he just wanted a video. So I video, right? So the the understand like, oh, I get it. A drone. We need a drone 'cause we need an a w it's in a canyon, it, it'll help me with what I need. Um, that was my foot in the door. Um yep.
With the personal attorney, personal injury attorney. God, what was that job? I'm gonna assume it was the same kind of thing. It was, I just need this site documented and I need it from the air. Oh, by the way, the personal injury attorney, you can't step foot on the property of where the accident happened.
He told me it'll take sometimes 90 days to get that permission to actually physically step on the property. So like, I did this one site, is it private property? Is that why? Yeah. Oh yes. It's private property. So there's one guy, unfortunately passed away in a distribution warehouses, which is where they load all the big trucks.[00:34:00]
So they have a ton of these trucks parked, right? And they were parked too close together based on their own guidelines. So the fact that I could document, look at how close every one of these trailers are parked next to each other, and I remember in the middle of flying it, the guys who work in the building at the front gate, they saw me and I actually had two private eyes who were with me representing the lawyer.
Okay? They went over and talked to him and said, uh, it's, there's nothing you can do about this. We're totally a hundred percent legal. They called the police. he came back and said, oh, they're gonna call the police. I said, great. Call the police. So the police showed up like two minutes later.
three cars rolled up like two minutes later. the lead guy, goes, come here. and the first thing I said, I go, Hey look, I'm a part, I'm A f a a licensed, drone pilot. I actually have to have f a a permission to fly in this location based on that airspace regulations. And I have that permission from the F A a.
just so you know. And he's like, so explain to me the rules. What, what's going on here? I said, oh, we can't set [00:35:00] foot on their property, but they don't control the space, the air above their property that's controlled by the f a a and they've given me permission. He's like, okay, how much longer you gonna be here?
I said, I'm, I'm like, another 15 minutes and then I'll be done. He pulls away, goes over to the gate guy, and of course gives them the really bad news that, uh, there's nothing you could do to stop them from flying over your
David Young: business. Yeah, I mean, it's nothing different than if, uh, somebody hired a helicopter pilot and a photographer to go fly over it with a helicopter and snap photos.
The police aren't gonna go chase that helicopter down and be like, wait a minute, gimme these pictures.
Brian Koeten: so the benefits of the lawyer is he could get all kinds of detailed photos. 'cause I could get all kinds of great detail about how everything is within a day or two of the accident when they've not had time to reconfigure the whole site.
So they're all in compliance. and I talked to a lawyer recently and I said, Hey, what happened to that job? He's like, oh, we showed him all the documentation we had, they settled.
David Young: Dang. That's awesome. [00:36:00] So that's a huge benefit. Yeah. So you're almost like an extension of their private investigator team at that point.
being able to get more evidence. Yeah, man, that's so cool. I love it. well we've been talking for a while. All incredibly good stuff. Is there, if you were talking to someone, 'cause you've done everything from, again, real estate all the way to the photogrammetry stuff, even in different industries with photogrammetry than other people might think.
If someone was just kind of starting off. They're like looking at the different business models. They like drones, they wanna make money. There's a lot of people out there like that. What guidance would you give them? And I see you giving guidance often in our groups and stuff,
What are your pet peeves and what guidance would you give people?
Brian Koeten: All right, so this is the guidance. I've given a lot of people, and so I'll share it with you. So the first one is, listen to your client's needs.
It's really easy to go into a meeting or whatever with somebody and kind of know what your talking points are, but really what you should be doing is listening. Reacting to what they're saying and you'll work in your, the points you wanna get across, but do it in a way that addresses whatever their needs are.
So like my great example of the environmental [00:37:00] lawyer who's like, I just need a video. I'm listening to that conversation. I'm like, he probably could really use an ortho mosaic map. Let me talk to about it. Or you're talking to a client, has no idea. What they exactly need, but they kind of know a drone is the solution, but they don't understand how.
So you just gotta listen to 'em and address their needs. So that would be my tip number one. tip number two is always think about creating relationships. So when you're out talking to somebody, You gotta do the small talk, you gotta do the, Hey, how's it going? Oh, it's really hot today. Jesus Christ.
Thank God you're in air conditioning or whatever. Just the dumb little conversation. It, it's so important to have that kind of human contact and not just be the guy like, Hey, okay, what do you need? I'm here. I'll go fly. What do you, what do you want? Build relationships with just dumb little small talk.
Super important. And then the third thing I would say is do quality work? You will separate yourself and if anybody wants to look at what I do, I try to do. [00:38:00] The highest quality thing I could, which is essentially my mind. I wanna overdeliver on what their expectations are. And I hear about it all the time from when I get random conversations here and there from people say downstream from the person who hired me.
they'll say, oh my God, we love what you give us every week, or whatever. And, and it's because I believe because I'm o I'm giving them much better work than their expectations. Yeah, so I love it. Along those lines of do better work there's a couple simple little rules of thumb that I, I have that I tell people, and number one is don't be jerky with your drone.
And if you are jerky, cut out all the jerks.
David Young: Jerky isn't just the movement of the lens in the camera, movement
Brian Koeten: of the camera. I see so much footage of other drone people where they're doing something and then they'll jerk the camera down and then continue doing something. I'm like, don't do that. Cut that part out.
Edit that jerk out if if you can't redo the shot, cut it out. Think what you watch on tv. When you watch [00:39:00] on tv. Everything is smooth. movies, everything is smooth. Our, we're pre-programmed to like that. When you have jerky movements, it's jarring. It, it says, Hey, that's a drone, that's a camera in the air.
Instead of, you kind of separate yourself from what you were engaged with and start thinking about what's going on with the drone. So don't be jerky. when you're out there shooting, always be thinking, I need three kinds of shots. I need a closeup shot, I need a medium shot, and I need a. Wide angle shot and always be thinking about capturing those three kinds of shots, whatever you're doing.
Because what happens when people watch it, if you introduce them to something in a wide shot and they maybe have a medium shot, they get an interest. Like if you're shooting really cool footage, they're like, oh, that's really cool, uh, that, that light tower's really cool, and then you pay it off. At the minute they're thinking that thing's really cool.
You give them a nice tight shot in the light, tower, whatever. they're gonna go, oh, that's so cool. You literally paid off their curiosity at the moment. They were having it by [00:40:00] giving them the detail. If you deprive them of the detail, they're just sitting there going, I wanna see that thing you're, you're showing me.
That looks so cool. And the sun's so perfect and ever. The lighting is great, but I can't, I want to get in, I want see it up close. So pay it off. Always be shooting those. And my last, piece of advice is not advice I've actually come up with. It's, uh, this photographer that I, watch all the time who has like this YouTube thing where he goes out and shoots every single day.
And there's one thing he keeps talking about all the time is when you're shooting with a camera, you are shooting light. You are not shooting the object, you are shooting how the light is reacting to the object. So always be thinking about what I'm really shooting is light, not the tower, not the building, not as cool as all those things are.
If you shoot it with the wrong light, it's not nearly as interesting. So always be thinking about I'm shooting light and how light is. Reflecting or reacting or playing off of objects. And if you start really [00:41:00] looking at photos that you think, oh, that's a really cool photo, if you start realizing, oh, it's really cool, because the way the light is hitting that object
David Young: Making some shadows or something. Yeah. Or whatever
Brian Koeten: it, it's hard to distill it down to one thing. Yeah. And you'll notice that images shot with a drone or a camera, any, any kind of camera really, that are appealing to you. They're appealing because the way the light. Is, you know, sort of reflecting off of everything.
David Young: Yeah. I feel like you, you have been one of our most prepared podcast guests that we've ever had. I love it. You're like, yes, my tips. Here they are. Boom, boom, boom. 1, 2, 3. I think this is super helpful for people, and I know these, because you're successful at it, and then b, you know, you're, you help people out in our community often, and so, I really appreciate you giving those.
Those thoughts and, and advice. so for people who are wanting to go check you out, your work or say hey to you, contact you, what's the best, what's the best way to look at your stuff Or say, Hey, are you on active on any particular social media platform?
Brian Koeten: I'm trying to be better at it. I'm certainly, there's other people that are much better at social media, but it's one of [00:42:00] the things I really need to focus more on.
And so I do periodically update my Instagram Okay. With like a flood of content. And then my, my kid's like, dad, calm down. Don't upload 30 things in one day,
David Young: what's your Instagram? Is it South Bay? South Bay Drone Services?
Brian Koeten: Um, south Bay Drone Services. Yeah. Pretty sure. I'm sure you'll fix that in the notes
David Young: below. would you rather people look there or your website if they're checking out your stuff?
Brian Koeten: I'd look at my website, yeah, it's south bay drone services.com. because that is the place that I make sure is as current as I humanly can make it. All the different things. And by the way, I just redid it, so this is version 2.0. so it's says current and reflects me as a drone operator, uh, better than version 1.0.
Did
David Young: Well, Brian Coster, thanks so much. giving me these 50 minutes of your time and, and everybody else out there to share your story with. it was great catching up with you man. All right. Thanks everyone.