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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.
[00:00:00] back to another episode of the Drone to 1K podcast. I'm your host, David Young. We're getting close to the end of Season 6 here. We're on Episode 9.
Today, I'm going to be talking with Guillermo Wenzel. Of drone sky visuals. And actually I spoke to Guillermo on an earlier, season of Drone to 1K. And so he is a repeat guest, but this time he's going to talk about how he actually took his business from part time, which is what he was doing before. And now he is working on it full time.
It is his 100 percent living. So he's going to tell us the story of how he went from that. Part time gig, which he talked about last time and how he's transitioned into doing this for his full time job. I'm making this his a hundred percent income in business. Very, very cool story. Guillermo is a very hardworking guy.
has some great, great examples for us to learn from if you are wanting to take a drone business full time.
Now, Guillermo has worked in the construction industry for a while. So a lot of his work revolves around that and helping out those types of clients. So if that's something you're interested in or want to learn more about, this is going to be a great episode for you.
He also dives into how he used Google ads to increase his leads coming into his business. So you can learn a little bit [00:01:00] about that as well. And as always, before we dive in, if you want a nice fluffy drone launch Academy t shirt, just leave us a review on Apple podcasts, screenshot the review, send it to me, David at drone launch Academy.
com. And I'll shoot you a t shirt as a thank you for taking the time to do that. Again, we always just want honest reviews. So if you're enjoying it, tell people that if you think this podcast sucks, you can say that as well. we'll send you a shirt either way. So appreciate you guys. Thanks for everyone listening.
Let's get into the interview with Guillermo.
David Young: Welcome back to another episode of the Drone to 1K podcast. I'm your host, David Young. Today, I have Guillermo Wenzel on the podcast of Drone Sky Visuals. Thanks for coming on, Guillermo.
Guillermo Wenzel: Thanks, David.
Thanks for having me again.
David Young: Yeah, I was gonna say, you might recognize Guillermo's name. We were looking back when he was last on the podcast, and I initially had you on for season four. episode seven. So if you want to hear, him talk about when he started his business in 2019, I interviewed him then when he's got his business from 2019 to 2021.
And now it's a end of 2023. So we've got another, full two years of growth under the belt and experience. They're going to [00:02:00] be a seasoned veteran, business veteran for this. I think since then you've quit your. Full time you've quit your job and done this gone full time, right? That's
Guillermo Wenzel: right.
That's right. at the moment that we did the first podcast, I was grasping. I think my First K a month, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And now, I went full throttle like three months ago. I quit my job. this was always a side gig until more or less Three to five months, gigs started coming in a lot and I started asking for my vacation days, but then they started asking like, why are you asking for vacation days on a Wednesday or a Tuesday?
Like, dude, take a Friday or a Monday.
David Young: Like mind your own business.
Guillermo Wenzel: Exactly. Exactly. Like, Oh, I have to do my own stuff. at some point it got out, it was going to get out of hand. So I tried to jump. that happened. So I went straight with my boss and I talked to him. I told him like, look, the [00:03:00] drone business grew and this is what I want to do.
I grew it up and this is like a milestone that I wanted and I want to keep on doing. And now here I am.
David Young: What were you doing for your full time job
Guillermo Wenzel: before I worked in a construction company? So we used to do high end stores and condos and I started With them more or less at the same time that I started, drone sky visuals.
That was in 2019 I was growing on both at the same time, but I created, a drone division within the company. they're a Canadian company and they opened office here. And so I became the team leader for the drone division of the company.
Here in the U S so actually they used to, fly me around for, I used to do Matterport scans for them. we bought a couple of drones within the company, a Mavic two pro and, an avatar when it came out because I bought mine on my side and I started, I didn't start flying [00:04:00] the avatar on, in.
outside like everybody else. I started flying it inside because I was at job sites and I had like, I don't know, 20 minutes in my hand and I went like, we have to use this drone for something. So I started flying within the stores and going up and down and that's cool on the trains and the cradles and stuff.
And, they liked it for marketing and more, mostly for their clients. It worked pretty good for them.
David Young: for the construction company, were you like in a marketing role or were you like doing like construction, but just also happens to start doing drone stuff too? No,
Guillermo Wenzel: I was, I was head on with construction.
I was, a project coordinator. per project, you couple up a project manager and the project coordinator, that's the one that basically helps or assists the project manager. And that was my role. So we had three or four projects at a time down here in South Florida. And, they saw what I used to do, what I started doing with the drones.
Actually, I remember one time, one of the directors was looking at posts in [00:05:00] LinkedIn and he stopped in a post for a construction company down here. It's called Coastal, Coastal Construction. it's a pretty big one. And they said like, wow, it's. How cool are these pictures? We, we have to take these ones.
And I saw him and I told him like, wow, that drone pilot must be amazing. that was my picture. That was my picture. And these guys like, nah, you didn't do that. So I showed them the whole construction site progression for a year and a half of that project. And they were like, that's, that's when they said yes.
To buying the drones in the company.
David Young: That's hilarious. And you're like, literally had to do it for another construction company for them to be like, Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll do it too.
Guillermo Wenzel: Yeah, exactly. And I was pushing him. Like I was bugging like a little kid with, for, for in Christmas. And these guys went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Until they saw that.
David Young: what do you think their hesitation was to move forward with it or to try it out?
Guillermo Wenzel: usually construction companies are, very old school. So introducing [00:06:00] technology into, construction, it's depending on who makes the decision. So usually, I mean, people are like, if I've been doing this for 40 years and this is the way to do it.
Right.
David Young: They don't want any need to change. Yeah.
Guillermo Wenzel: but actually, they started a BIM department within the construction company that was using, they tested out a spot from Boston dynamics pretty high tech, robotics. So I went like, okay. if they're trying to include this and they trying to include LiDAR and, Matterport and a couple of more stuff, I mean, drones, they go hand to hand in BIM modeling and projects.
So I started like to sweep under, under the table, the drone topic and stuff. I kind of convinced the director of a BIM but he told me, okay, if You're the one who has to push this. I mean, I can't push this because I'm way over my budget. I was basically on my own and when I saw that, thank God he was swiping that and riding my face and, and
David Young: That's [00:07:00] awesome. So real quick luck, for non-construction people. BIM is building information management. Is that right or is it something else? Modeling, modeling, modeling. Building information modeling, is that what it is? Yes, correct. Describe that, describe that to us. Let's pretend, I mean, I've heard of BIM and I've, as far as like AutoCAD and some like, I don't know, Revit or whatever, I don't know what systems they use, I'm not.
Deep into that world. But, if I had no idea what it was, which I'm sure a lot of people do explain it to me real quick. Okay. So
Guillermo Wenzel: I'm going to go very basic. So BIM modeling consists of. capturing all the information, of let's say a specific, site. let's go for something very specific, a square, a store that's a perfect square, right?
They have maybe a couple of columns, something like that. with BIM modeling, There's certain specifics that you can create, you can create a 3D modeling, you can create, elevations reports on the floor, on the ceiling, and there's more advanced uses, for that for, [00:08:00] but for what we were working on at the moment, the 3D modeling was So What we were trying to achieve the show to the clients.
Okay. So it
David Young: was a 3d model of the plans, right? Not the, as built,
Guillermo Wenzel: no, actually of the assets. Oh, okay. Oh, so what we did is the process was like this. So we went in with the lighter camera. So basically the lighter camera, what does it, it shoots like between, 3 million rays of light per each six minutes or something like that in different locations.
Lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's basically physically, it's a bounce of light that goes back and forth. Okay. It's just
David Young: like a lasers everywhere, right? Yeah,
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly. Exactly. you do the scanning of the space. After that, you start processing it and what we did in the process was whatever you saw in the paper plans, okay, the architectural, that's basically where all the millwork and all the walls go, all the drywall, all the ceilings, and the floor with whatever floor they have, wood, tile, whatever, and the roofs, um, [00:09:00] with drywall and walls with, concrete blocks or drywall too, okay?
We showed it. Okay. In one plan afterwards, you have the plumbing, the mechanical that's HVAC and the electrical. so we process that and then we used, augmented reality lenses. So it's basically for construction. There's a company that like specified it for construction that it's a helmet with an AR glass.
So it's a transparent glass, but you see the plans in the glass. Okay.
David Young: on to the structure where it is.
Guillermo Wenzel: Exactly. So if you're standing inside the construction site in the middle of the construction and you put your helmet on, okay. And you have your glasses on the first thing that pops up is, it's windows.
Okay. Windows, I think we were using windows XP, so you have the control in your hand. It's just like a robot. So you had the controls, you had the window, the window sign here, you click it and suddenly a menu pops up in your hand and you start seeing, you go
David Young: project. You see it on top of your hand. [00:10:00] Yeah,
Guillermo Wenzel: you see it in your hand.
You're looking, you're looking at your hand and you see all the options here. Yeah. your finger becomes a digital finger it's just like a touch screen. So you're touching, you're typing, whatever. And then you go into the model when you're in the model.
Okay. You see it from outside, just exactly like in the movies, you stretch it, you zoom in, you zoom it out, you zoom it in suddenly. And there was an option where we usually did was you zoom it up, zoom it. In, so it becomes bigger, you go into the 3D model then you have an option to see, the different traits.
So you have architectural, let's say architectural, plumbing, HVAC, and electrical. And you say, okay, I want to take out from what I'm looking at the floors and you click on it. It's just like when, just like when you're putting in the password and you have the little iron next to it and you click it and the password pops up.
This is the same thing. So you clicked on it and suddenly the floor disappeared. but when you look at the floor, you see all the piping, all the [00:11:00] electrical connections that you have beneath the floor, you do the same thing with the walls or the ceiling. And let's say you take off the ceiling, you see all the HVAC ducts, all going, the grills.
David Young: And this is from the LIDAR scans, or is this from something
Guillermo Wenzel: else? This is processing between the LIDAR scans and, the initial CAD files that we received. basically what they used to do is it's kind of a mix. It's like in simple English, you threw everything in a processor and it came out like that.
So basically, The architects give us the cat files, and we interlace them with a lighter scanning and we put it into the 3d model.
David Young: Man, dude, that's pretty cool. were you guys integrating drones into any of that stuff?
was all this more like the internal build out?
Guillermo Wenzel: So I was in the process of integrating, lighter drones, but. I left the company, quit exactly, but I was able to integrate, the Matterport scanning to the drone. So basically what I did is before they started buying the drones, I found an attachment in, Alibaba for, my Mavic One.
And what I [00:12:00] did is I screwed the 3D camera for the 3D camera on top of the drone. And I started scanning all around in exteriors and in exterior. So you could walk inside and out and see it's basically a 3D orthomosaic.
David Young: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's cool. All right. So you're bit let's get to your business then. So you were doing that for construction work, which is pretty cool and using drones that way. And I like that you're able to use drones in like your career and also then transition to doing it as a entrepreneur as well. so. Your drone business, give us, you know, we talked, I guess on the last episode about when you first started up to about 2021.
So maybe you can give like just a quick recap of that and then take us from like, you know, 2021 to now.
Guillermo Wenzel: Okay. So drone sky visuals started with, the initial markets, construction, basically because I was there and I had. Kind of the connections. If I didn't know somebody that somebody knew somebody else, real estate, most of us started with real estate.
And at some point you want to get far from real estate because [00:13:00] there's a lot of, I mean, the common opinion is that it's a very saturated market, but after COVID that Florida boomed, I think the saturation went down because it's been going up. that's my understanding of the market right now.
So as most drone pilots that got into the business was trying to get out of real estate and right now, I don't want to say most of my calls, but a significant part of my deals are real estate. So I had that I started with events I did once I did, a gender reveal drop with, a solenoid that I attached to the top of a drone and I that's cool.
That was pretty nice.
David Young: what did you drop
Guillermo Wenzel: from the drone? Like some, organic, pink paper? Like,
David Young: Oh, okay. Okay.
Guillermo Wenzel: the doctor sent me the gender. So I just went pressure. Yeah. Exactly. And it was a friend of mine. So he was looking at me like, you know, but you're not going to say anything.
Right. And he, he stared mute looking at me. Like, do you have anything to say to me?
David Young: You know what, for, so I've got five kids and, uh, we had our fourth [00:14:00] kid with the first four were boys all in a row. It's a lot, but we did, you know, the gender reveal thing for the, fourth one. And what they did was they, I don't know.
They got the person at the store to put either powder or papers. I think it was, might've been like little bits of like confetti or paper in the balloon. And then they blew the balloon up as a black balloon. So you can like see through it. they made it really big. and they flew it up and the way we did it was, I took my, I think it was like a, DJI air, or like a Mavic air two or something.
And I just flew the drone propellers into the balloon so that it would pop. It kept like pushing the balloon away from the drone cause the air was blowing. So I was having a hard time and it would finally get it popped it. Yeah. And, uh, and then all the blue stuff came out, but yeah, I was trying to incorporate drones into the gender reveal, but it was not as cool.
Guillermo Wenzel: Exactly. I
David Young: like your solenoid idea better.
Guillermo Wenzel: I bought the solenoid like for seven bucks in Aliava too. It came like two months later, but it worked until like a month and a half ago that I was trying to test it again and it died, but I'm going to, I'm going to do one on my own. It's [00:15:00] pretty easy.
David Young: That's cool. So you got these rent, like different gigs, like real estate. you said you were doing some construction stuff too.
Guillermo Wenzel: Yeah, I started with that. So as time passed by, I started like popping out. I mean, I started receiving requests from different markets that truth be told, I never imagined that they were going to come out like, how are you
David Young: finding you?
what was your marketing strategy? My,
Guillermo Wenzel: my marketing strategy, my Trojan horse. It's Google ads, Google ads is amazing. Like everybody, I mean, all of us, if we don't know where to look, you go to Google, okay, you go to Google and you search drone, uh, aerial photography, Miami, in my case, or aerial photography, wherever, and basically.
I started learning about Google Ads through this. Okay. So you have to learn how to configure your campaigns, how to do it. And once you do that, It becomes a bidding game. Okay. [00:16:00] So you're bidding against other, people with the same keywords or more or less the same background. So that's more or less how I got my, clients.
That was like my top tier afterwards. And the others were, uh, marketplaces. there's, an English marketplace called Bark and a few others like, DroneBase, Droners, DroneBase, now it's called ZView, I think, those guys and basically referrals and something that I didn't like, was going to networking events.
You didn't like that? it's not that I didn't like it. I wasn't comfortable like approaching people like, hi, Guillermo, I, I fly drones. Nice to meet you. Do you need one? And if you
David Young: don't go into it like that,
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly. No, but I was, at first I was super awkward. It was very awkward.
And people like kept looking at me like, oh, okay. So I started like, okay, I can't do that. I had a friend and it wasn't sales. And he told me like, what are you doing? Are you scaring people
David Young: off? So [00:17:00] at least there's no, question about, you know, what you do.
Guillermo Wenzel: Yeah, of course. They go, I mean, they threw me that look of what's wrong with this guy.
I mean, this is a weird nerd. That's hilarious. So, I started going to that and after, I mean, a few years,
David Young: you were going to him for a few
Guillermo Wenzel: years? No, no, I mean, as years passed by, Okay. I got my, I kind of got my networking talk more or less. Now I think if I see back in time and somebody would approach me like that, I would do or I would run or maybe I would punch him in the face.
Maybe.
David Young: But you know what? I just want to give you some kudos. a lot of people wouldn't even bother or wouldn't even push themselves into a situation where they're uncomfortable. You know what I mean? But you, by putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation and doing it over and over again, you kind of figured out, okay, well that creeps people out and that doesn't work.
So maybe I should try something different. You know, like you learned and adapted and figured it out, you know,
Guillermo Wenzel: Exactly. At that time, also, I didn't have the [00:18:00] beard. I had like this weird mustache, so it looked even weirder.
David Young: Story keeps getting
Guillermo Wenzel: better. No, I gotta stop. See, that's what happened at that time.
I started talking and I didn't stop. But I didn't know what I was talking about. Yeah, I was talking about whatever. thank God those times have passed already.
David Young: people love to talk about themselves. So sometimes if you don't know what to say, just what do you do?
Oh, cool. Do you like that? How'd you get started with that? You can keep asking them questions so you don't have to talk. Exactly. So
Guillermo Wenzel: there's that helped me a lot with talking and networking, networking events. There is this author, I don't remember his name, his book and his theory, it's called Jobs Be Done.
the theory that he, he talks about that he implements is that you need to ask your lead or your prospect at that moment. What are their, their pain points? What are they looking for? What do they want to accomplish with this? What do they want to get to with this? It's Anthony Elwick. That's right. Oh, it is Anthony.
Okay, cool. Exactly. So that guy, for me, he helped [00:19:00] me a lot. and if you look him up in YouTube, he talks like very lightly, like he's very easy to talk to. And he talks to in a way. That it's not overwhelming or you're not harassing somebody
David Young: don't put off the desperate vibes,
Guillermo Wenzel: basically, exactly.
He tries to understand, what do you do first and what are the prop, what are the challenges that you're facing? which are the possible solutions, and within these possible solutions, how can my solution benefit your pain point? it's like learn how to walk before you go running.
for me it helps a lot. he has some like very interesting podcasts. There's a lot of people, there's like five or six guys that I've heard in different podcasts that interview him. Every interview, he has like something new to give
and he, this is a guy that knows how to talk and he knows what he's doing about.
David Young: 2021. if you can remember revenue wise, walk us through kind of, I mean, I think you said when I interviewed you last [00:20:00] time, you're kind of just now cracking the, or just then cracking the 1, 000 a month range back in 2021, but now you're doing it full time.
I think you said you've been doing that for a few months now. Right. So, Can you walk us through how the business grew from, you know, 2021 to being able to let you support yourself full time?
Guillermo Wenzel: in 2021, I started, passing the, the one K it was very inconsistent, in between one K sometimes it was a good month.
You could get two, three. Sometimes it came back down. I remember there was a month that I didn't even do the one K. So I was. like, wow, I have to, I have to pay, the marketing and, and I got to take money out of my pocket. So, but, you're running an
David Young: ad still, but nothing was, nothing had converted.
Guillermo Wenzel: So it was like.
you average it all and at the end you have like your year average for what you do and what you save you cover for, for less a lean months. Exactly.
David Young: [00:21:00] Exactly. Now I'm curious, how much were you spending on Google ads every month on average? Do you think during this time?
Guillermo Wenzel: I remember I started.
On google ads with it was 10 bucks a day. It was 10 bucks No, that was 300 bucks. Uh, 300 bucks a month. So I started receiving calls through google ads and the truth is the first time I started paying for ads it paid off in its Second day I got a deal for Almost double of what I was paying that moment, 600 bucks.
And afterwards at that moment, I went like, okay, Google ads is staying I was testing other platforms at the time. Facebook, didn't work as much for me. I don't know if somebody else had different experiences, but in my experience, I never got a deal through Facebook.
David Young: Facebook is a little bit. Tricky. I mean, we use Facebook and Google a lot, and Google's good for people who are actively searching for what you have, you know what I mean? So if I'm like, if I'm typing in drone photographer, Miami, there's a good chance that I'm [00:22:00] looking for someone like that.
Whereas Facebook, it's a little bit more like interest based. So you have, you know, nobody's actively saying, Hey, Facebook, I want this person. I mean, not usually, they're usually scrolling in their feed. And so the ad has to be a little bit different for them to be like, Oh, who is this guy? Oh, what does he do?
It's like a little bit of a longer, Or different type of process to convert someone into a customer.
Guillermo Wenzel: Exactly. It's different. I mean, for Google, you receive, hot leads
I had the same experience that I had with Facebook, I had with Instagram. I use this Instagram as, part of my portfolio, I tested, running ads. In Instagram and in two or three years, I've gotten, I think one, two deals. Oh, really? Yeah. So, I cut it off and it's, I mean, it's still my portfolio.
I update it every week, but I'm not running ads on it. So that's basically it. I mean, I'm still searching every week. I'm still searching for new, lead generation, generation platforms outside the drone based [00:23:00] ones. Like, yeah. Like droners and.
David Young: Exactly. Correct. Are you still doing like Bark and Thumbtack and those kind of platforms?
Yeah,
Guillermo Wenzel: actually Bark, I've been using Bark for two years now. And It's been consistent. I mean, it's my second in command after, after Google ads. I started with thumbtack, like a bit more than a month ago. And I sent them an email to see, because They have like photography, searches for photography or for wedding photography or event photography.
So I sent them an email to see if they could open, another feature called drone photography. But they haven't gotten back to me because most of the leads that I've received, they just want a usual, a normal, regular photography. Exactly. For us, it's like a ground photographer, so.
David Young: So, because these Bark and Thumbtack, for people who are not familiar, they're sort of like gig marketplaces almost, or like, oh, you need a specific job done, a photographer. [00:24:00] Plumber or whatever, like household things. Sometimes you can find anyone on there. Is it, or I don't know if it's plumbers, but it's stuff kind of like, different types of tasks and gigs, but like drones can be included in that, people will go there to look for that.
Yeah,
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly. It's like that. they have a larger variety of services that they offer. but they have drone services included there, drone aerial photography. They call it aerial photography. it's been working pretty good for me. it doesn't bring as much revenue as Google ads, but it's still there.
David Young: And then with Bark, you have to, isn't it that you like you buy credits and you use up the credits when you like apply to the job? Is that right?
Guillermo Wenzel: Correct. That's how it works. It's, it's very basic. It's very simple. you receive a lead from somebody that's looking for your services near you and they give you a short description of what they're looking for.
And you just contact them via phone or text or email or through the platform. I try to do all four of them at once. So to see, because the clients are [00:25:00] always different. I mean, there's some that answer via text. There's some that pick up the phone. There's some that just. via email.
So I throw all the arrows I have to them,
David Young: And then, do you know what, how much it costs you to get like a client on Bark? how much credits it's going to cost to, I'm assuming you don't win everyone you contact.
Guillermo Wenzel: it's not bit based, like you don't win the lead. So I think if there's three of us that receive, the lead, all three of us are gonna pay with our credits for it. I think it's a matter of who contacts them first and right.
David Young: Right. So they're going to pick one of you, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Guillermo Wenzel: Correct. Exactly. and they have a monthly subscription or you can pay as you go, however you prefer. And the range, price for leads, it's around, 30 and 15 credits more or less. That's like, you can count it like around two bucks a credit more or less.
David Young: Okay. So like 30 to 60 bucks a lead?
Yeah.
Guillermo Wenzel: More or less. Okay.
David Young: what's like an average job like that [00:26:00] you would do how much would you charge? Maybe
Guillermo Wenzel: Okay for my jobs I break it down I usually when I started I used to Offer a package like, okay. all in one, you want, you want drone photography, you want drone videography, everything.
if they wanted photography and video and editing. I charged like a 300 for photography and video and 200 extra for editing. but. I realized that everybody requested a breakdown, like, okay, how much is it for only photography or only video? first I broke it down.
And at some point I started to realize that at least here in the market in Miami, I was too cheap. I was basically low balling. I ramped up a bit my, prices and right now I offer for aerial photography, let's say an hour, my hour for aerial photography, it's 200 for video is 200 if they want a photography and video it's 300 per hour.
If [00:27:00] it's a FPV interiors for, listings for real estate, it's. 500 bucks an hour. The editing is 200 per hour too. if they want extras like voiceovers, I, I charge for 500 words of voiceovers. It's 50 bucks. If you want a extra 200, words, it's. It's 25 bucks. And for interviews with, microphones and settings and production, it depends, on the time.
Also, that's more of a tailor made price.
David Young: Gotcha. everything that you're doing is several hundred dollars and up, no matter what. Yes. There's
Guillermo Wenzel: also the orthomosaics. I'm charging 30 bucks an acre, and if they want thermal or other type of service, that's more tailor made.
I don't have like an established price for that. You have a thermal drone? Yes, I have, Mavic 2 Enterprise?
David Young: Gotcha. So, paying 30 bucks for a lead. If you're going to win it, even if you're going to get them half the time, that's going to be [00:28:00] worth it because it'll lead to, several hundred dollars worth of work.
That's smart. So 2021 goes by. How did you do in 2022 business wise? Do you remember kind of how you were doing revenue or I guess how comfortable you feel sharing detail wise?
Guillermo Wenzel: 2022 is when, money wise, the company started to ramp up and I got some of my best or my biggest clients in 2022.
I started doing productions. I started, people started calling me for films, I remember bigger real estate gigs that what I had at the beginning. Like they started paying for the whole combo for okay. Photography, videography, they started asking for photography, interior photography as well.
So I teamed up with, a friend of mine, she comes in and helps me out. So we team up for that. in construction, I was already getting some yearly contracts, but 2022 got me some bigger ones.
I got like, they were, expanding, a big mall here in Miami ball [00:29:00] Harbor shops. I got that one.
David Young: Now, where these people find all these new deals, like construction thing, are they finding you through Google ads or word of mouth or what? A
Guillermo Wenzel: construction was more where I'm word of mouth because of my background.
But the other ones were mostly, Google ads, Google ads. some of them were bark, but most were Google ads All of the clients that are not U. S. based, that I got a few that year, were all through Google Ads. I got clients from Australia, from the Netherlands, from Really?
Yeah, from Haiti. I remember they called me once for something that we didn't end up doing. It was like surveillance for a VIPs in Haiti, it was to go to Haiti to do that. wanted to do the consultant side of it because he wanted to set up the company there basically what he wanted to do is as soon as a VIP arrived to the airport.
He wanted drones following the convoy to wherever they were going. but it had like a lot of details. Like I needed a drone that flew more than an hour [00:30:00] without the battery running out. That was the first one that popped up in my head. Then the other one. what if a raider catches it.
And, I've heard of EMPs or stuff like that in this, these types of countries. and I'm not there, I wanted to get there. But at some point this guy didn't want to pay anymore. So I went like, no worries. It's okay. It would have been an amazing, a very cool gig, but it didn't go through.
Interesting. a big portion of my international clients came that year, that year I did. I liked the most it's their client is a documentary channel. I can't say it out loud, but.
It's involving animals and earth and all this type of stuff. but the producer is in Australia. So the first time I did a production for them was here in Miami. they called me like. Three weeks after that, they flew me to Laredo, Texas to the border. that was a handful because I had to contact like three different, agencies, one federal and two locals for police and, flight permits.
It's a [00:31:00] beyond Lance and it was, a lot of back and forth with emails. it was pretty cool. you were doing all this while you were working full time. Yeah, of course. I was chopping up my vacation days like crazy.
David Young: my goodness. It sounds so busy. were you banking percentage wise of like your full time income? Like how much was the drone stuff bringing in on the side? Was it like starting to approach what you were doing at your full time job? or did you have to take a pretty big drop when you switched over?
Guillermo Wenzel: It was very inconsistent at let's say the first Q and a half of 2022. Like I wasn't expecting what was going to happen, but suddenly I remember in July, I doubled my salary.
David Young: Oh, so for the month of July, you made more than, you doubled what you would normally make. in my nine to five.
Yeah. Like you equaled it, so that basically you're getting double the pay or it was twice as much as yours? It
Guillermo Wenzel: was twice as much. So whatever I received, whatever I received in my, main job. Yeah. I had three times that in July. I went like, wow, what's happening here?
David Young: Okay. Sweet. That
Guillermo Wenzel: was cool.
Like [00:32:00] August went down. I remember like half of what I made. The previous month. So I'm like, okay, maybe that's only a spike, I came again in September and in November and I went like, okay, this is getting serious. so another pain. Came into play.
That was time management. I started like pushing all of my gigs after five or after four or weekends. So I remember like from more or less from October until July of this year, most surely I had, if without exaggerating more or less three or four weekends. I remember that I didn't have anything one of the days.
David Young: Wow. So was it a little bit of a breath of fresh air when you, I'm sure it's somewhat nerve wracking, but you quit your job, at least you get a lot of that time back to be able to budget yourself a little bit more spread out.
Guillermo Wenzel: At first, yes, like the first day it was, it was weird.
Like, okay, what am I going to do again? What am I going to do now? So I started thinking and I [00:33:00] started writing down. I have to get back on the horse with marketing. Okay. With my financials, I have to ramp up set sales because it's not like, okay, I cover my expenses and that that's it.
What happens if next, next month I go pretty lean on, my sales. So how much do I have to save? How much do I need in, my savings or the company account for something like that. Like for example, right now I'm in that point where I have, all my data collected with intervals of how did I do every.
Every month of each year since I started, and usually November's and January's are the worst, have been regularly the worst, I mean, the worst months of each year for me.
David Young: I have to Service businesses, I think, slow down. It makes you feel better. I've heard from a few other buddies who have drone service companies, and they're like, dude, November is slow, like, pulling teeth.
Guillermo Wenzel: It is, it is, it is. So, I have to account for that. So I, at [00:34:00] that time I had two people in my editing team. I had to fire one. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't performance based. it was in the financial state of my company.
David Young: Just couldn't keep them on. Yeah,
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly.
David Young: Correct. I started, I think we, I think we phrased it as I had to let them go instead of I had to, yes, I went down
Guillermo Wenzel: there.
To their face. No, she was very good at her work. She was super, super nice person, but I couldn't afford her at that time. Yeah. If in the future I have, rehire somebody for that position, I'd call her directly instantly without a blink.
David Young: So are those like staff members you had, like they're working for you full time or they're just kind of, you paid them as you went, or I guess how did that work?
Guillermo Wenzel: I subcontracts right now. Yeah, right now I subcontract. at some point I'm going to have to hire because right now, I have to cut myself in seven pieces. the sales guy, the drone guy, the editing guy, thank God, no. Uh, [00:35:00] but depends, I mean, because the girl that's editing for me, she doesn't know how to work.
for example, drone deploy stuff or that type of data information. So that's something that I have to do like data stuff, that side of the pie. I rebranded. So I, contracted, website designer and I updated my website. I started getting into new markets.
So I had another slice of the pie that was called expand. I started bidding for drone light shows, for government contracting. So I started the government contracting. If you don't like paperwork, I mean, they have, a federal or state or what all of them, all of them. I wanted to go at that moment.
I started like investigating because I didn't know too much about it, but when I got into it, it's a whole new world. They have an amazing and huge budget, but the gateway is paperwork. it's files, and files, and files, and files, and files, and files, and it's never ending.
if [00:36:00] you pass that gate, they help you, I was, Going to these sessions for small businesses, so they give you a Coaching mentoring if you for example government contractors request that you have two years of government Contracting experience.
So I went like, I'm new. It's just like when you go outta college and this, new job tells you like, okay, you need five years of experience. Like, I'm outta college. How am I gonna do that? ?
David Young: Yeah. How do you, the qualification to become a get federal con or government contractors have contracting experience?
It's like . Yeah, exactly. How that work.
Guillermo Wenzel: they have a program so you can collaborate with, another company it's basically the same as the mentoring program, but they basically take you under their wing. it's a partner in the business.
It's I was starting with the FPVs, so I was super excited. all I wanted to do was fly the FPV but. Paperwork came it never stopped working on it. every time I have a gig, I go out, I do the normal flights that I have to do, and then I take out the, the FPV [00:37:00] and started like flying around and they started asking like, wow, what does that do?
And. I gave him like a short explanation of them. I show them a video and they go like, wow, this is super cool. Yeah. But the thing I think it's FPV is not for everyone. I mean, Some people have told me that FPV.
Videos are too aggressive. Like they're too fast. you're not concentrated in what the video is showing. You're concentrating in the pilot, not crashing.
David Young: it depends. I mean, you can fly if PVS slow too, you know, like, Yes.
Guillermo Wenzel: But I mean, what's a fun one? .
David Young: Yeah. Well, I'm just saying like if you're doing it for like cinematography type, like one take shots, you know?
For that. Yes. For production. Yeah.
Guillermo Wenzel: You like it? Yeah.
David Young: I wanted to do FPGA. I haven't done a much of it, but, they busted some out at our live event that we did Dusty led a group doing that it looks awesome. Dusty had his custom built ones there. A few people had their Avada.
it's cool.
Guillermo Wenzel: It's very cool.
David Young: I was gonna say going into 2023 you've been working for yourself for a few months. what's the. best thing about, full time working for [00:38:00] yourself and what's been the most challenging thing working for yourself full time.
Guillermo Wenzel: Okay, the best thing about working for myself before I say this, for whoever's listening, you have to understand that the work hours don't go down, okay? Here, what you do is you manage your time, there's nights It's that I'm working until 2 a. m. in the morning or something like that, I can be working long hours, sending emails, paperwork, doing whatever, but I can manage my time. That's the best thing about running your business. if you're very passionate about it and you like it a lot, It's like adrenaline, you want more and more and more and more and more and more and I remember when I was in my previous job that my boss used to tell me like, okay, you need to call all this bunch of people to find quotes to do whatever, blah, blah, blah.
And for me, it was like, God, why I'm just looking at my watch to see waiting for 5 p. m. now, whatever phone number or name or card I find, I call, I don't want to say [00:39:00] harass, but yes. you sweet talk them, you find their pain points.
You try to help them, at some point you start getting not as a salesman, I think that the best sale is. a consultant sale. So you give them options. So these are the options that you can have to solve your problem or to ease a bit what you're struggling with. that's been the best pitch that, I've had in, this period or this year actually.
David Young: I think your point about, well, number one, I remember like managing your time, right? you probably work more, but you enjoy it more sometimes I think. like all of your activity. if I work harder, I have more opportunity for myself Whereas in some jobs, especially, you know, I used to have a government job.
It's like I could kill myself working like, and just do like as much as I could. Right. And I would make the same amount as the other guy who's just slacking off, you know, doing arts and crafts at his desk. the only incentive to do a really good job is just to have self respect and make your boss happy, I guess, or maybe get.
Promoted to something else, but there was no real financial [00:40:00] incentive to work harder. Right. And it's like, Oh, cool. Like you said, like if I call all these companies and do all this stuff, you don't really have a, Dog in the fight one way or another if you do get those or don't get those customers.
Cause like, unless you're getting a piece of it or something. but when you work for yourself, it's like every time you land a new thing or you grow, it's like directly impacts you and your life. And you're like, Oh heck yeah, I won't, you know, let me do this more and let me get more of this. So, I think you're right.
So what was the most challenging thing? What was the most challenging part of working for yourself?
Guillermo Wenzel: The most challenging part is the first one, I'm horrible at taxes, but I want to learn, I have an accountant, but I want to learn. He's a tax guy.
Yeah. but besides that, the most challenging thing is. It's not landing clients. It's diversifying and find in open in, in my case that I'm opening new markets, starting to open these markets. in my case, I have like three types of markets.
The first ones, the ones that come regularly. the construction real estate, events. the second part of my business are the markets that I didn't expect. large [00:41:00] productions, landscaping, lawsuits, that type of stuff. And the third one is the ones that I want to open, like the drone light shows or government contracting that basically government contracting is the same, but through another route.
David Young: Well, it gets tough too. When you start trying to tackle all those on your own at the same time, you spread out, try to spread out in too many different areas or too many different courses or too many different, you know, things at once, it's hard to be successful.
So I think, you know, tackling them one at a time slowly or slow enough to where you're doing them well, you know, so
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly. And I think after that, something that I haven't gotten yet. But it's going to the point that you just said, I'm going to grow to a point that I can't handle everything for myself.
And I think this goes not for our industry, but for every person on earth that opens a business is growth. you have to have like a. plan to what happens if I get to this point or I get, I mean, you get too many gigs what are you going to do? Are you going to [00:42:00] say, no, I'm busy or yes.
And I'm, I'm, I'm going to expand my team and you're going to get a handful of people that you trust and you know, they have the capability and the abilities to perform the work and to deliver the same quality that you've been working on from day one. I choose growth, but I'm anxious I mean, I'm trying to have my plan for it, but I know that, a plan is a plan, a plan is not reality.
David Young: Yeah, it's better to have a plan that you're working towards versus, Making it all up as you go along, you know, exactly. Yeah. You're not winging it. I've done a lot of winging it. I was actually just talking about this today. I'm like, Hey, maybe we should get like a plan and budget for 2024 and like have some month by month what we're going to try to accomplish.
Cause I'm more like a, Oh yeah, let's just go. Let's try this. Let's try this. And it's sometimes good to have a little bit more structure in place, you know,
Guillermo Wenzel: well, you know, what helped me a lot. I have, I made like a little list. of objectives that I do every, every December or starting January.
So in month by month by month, how [00:43:00] many gross sales do I want to do? how many transactions do I want to get? How many leads do I want? How many prospects am I going to reach? How many clients am I going to close? So I do it month by month, by quarter, by semester. And it's that data.
you have a use for it, of course, but I think. Something that people don't tell you that I learned when I started doing it is that you have something to look for when you see that objective. Like for example, Every first of every month, I open my objectives list and I go, okay, you have to make this amount of money and this amount of transactions.
I have to contact this amount of prospects and get this amount of leads and close this amount of clients. you have a goal and you start, the game on that month. To get to where you want. So it's like, it gives you a push. It's more adrenaline to the show.
David Young: Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. And you're, and you're breaking it down enough to be like, not just, all right, I'm going to do this much in sales, but you're like, all right, how do I get to that number? I have to do this and do this. And they're breaking into the [00:44:00] individual actions that you have to take that are going to lead up that hopefully, right.
You know, you can't predict it exactly, but you know, at least, okay, cool. So now I feel like, Oh, I've only made two calls today, but I'm going to need to contact 200 people. You know, this month or whatever it is, you know, you're like, all right, well, I need to get on the phone or go out and meet some people or whatever.
if you're behind
Guillermo Wenzel: exactly and you can break it way more, you can break, break it in strategies what are you going to do to use that strategy? it's pretty complex, but you can do it, if you start with it, it gives you an extra push for it.
David Young: No, that's great, man. Well, Guillermo, we've been talking for like an hour now, so I love getting all the details of your story. if people want to reach out to you and say, Hey, or whatever, what's the best way that they can check out your work? It sounded like you were on Instagram.
Guillermo Wenzel: So I have, my Instagram account is at droneskyvisuals. com. my website is. droneskyvisuals. com and there you can see part of our work and even landing pages and everything. And if you want to shoot me an email, if you need, before I found you guys, I was all [00:45:00] alone in this, in forums and finding stuff.
And this could be a very lonely market. Until you start reaching out. So if you can reach me out directly to my email, it's G Wenzel at drone sky visuals. com. even give me a call if you want. My phone is seven, eight, six, five, five, three, three, six, six, five. Oh man,
David Young: throwing the phone number on here, all
Guillermo Wenzel: right.
Of course, definitely. I mean, if, I would have had, help from day one, I would have loved it. And if I can give that for future drone pilots or business owners in this market. I'd love to help.
David Young: Oh dude, that's awesome. Well, careful what you wish for. Cause I feel like you're going to get some calls, but, that's, that's fantastic.
So Guillermo, thanks so much. It was great hearing your story. I hope you can keep pace with your growth. It's a good problem to have though, growing, you know, having so much work to do that you're trying to keep up with it.
So, man, maybe we'll have to have back on in two years and here are all those sick government contracts that you've, got landed in the bag and, see how we're doing then. we'll see in
Guillermo Wenzel: two years. I hope so. I really hope so. And I really hope that the [00:46:00] good problems start coming, keep coming in, not the bad ones.
Yeah, that's right. Thanks so much. No, thank you very much for having me.