Drone to 1K Podcast by Drone Launch Academy

Jeremiah Oschwald owns and operates Beardhouse Media, a real estate marketing business, and Overland Pioneers, an outdoor lifestyle marketing business.

David : “Why don't you tell us who you are and what your company is? How did you get into real estate marketing? When did you first mess around with drones?”

Jeremiah has been in the real estate marketing business for 4 1⁄2 years, drones for about 3 1⁄2 yrs. There was a big boom in drone popularity but there weren't a lot of people licensed. Jeremiah took the DLA Part 107 class, saying it was great for him because he’s a visual learner. He began Overland Pioneers out of a desire to do more with his life than 5-7real estate listings a day 7 days a week. He wanted to see and film things and get paid to travel. He started with wanting to help small businesses and began going to restaurants and shooting seven small short social media videos that they could post on Facebook. Then, he shot the parents’ house of a friend—Josh Shepherd with the Kentucky Life Real Estate Property Management (see link below)—who later introduced him to team leaders of a large Keller Williams office in Lexington.

Jeremiah was invited to talk in front of their monthly sales meeting of 65 or 70 agents. He was terrified but went in having done some research on real estate videos and knowing he needed to build a case. 15 or 20 people came up to let him know they had a listing coming up and would like to use him so he instantly got a lot of clients. Jeremiah feels he lucked out because Lexington was an underserved population in central Kentucky with 3000 agents in one MLS area. He started packaging the videos and, last year, he did over a hundred videos for agents, auctioneers and car dealers.

In order to figure out what to charge for real estate walkthrough videos, Jeremiah felt that what people described was too complex—even after hearing a long explanation, he still didn't know what they were charging. They’d say they charged $3,000 to $4,000 per listing but were only getting listings 2-3 times/month—with drones being a very small portion of that. So Jeremiah decided to go to a flat rate system...he says agents use him on every listing.

“I don't care if it’s an 1100 square foot house or 6,000 square foot house--it's $125 for just the walkthrough video, if I add the drone, it’s $200.”

These are homes that are going to be sold within 24 to 48 hours, and the videos are 50% of their selling package. Jeremiah says that by doing professional photography AND video, they will definitely hire him because he’s a better marketing and listing presentation tool for them.

David: “Can you talk about managing client's expectations? How many jobs are you doing per week during your slow and busy seasons?”

Here is the past week’s schedule, as an example: Monday: one re-shoot for a new agent. Tuesday: five cabins about 40 miles from Lexington. Wednesday: three local shoots. Thursday: it was raining outside so the job was cancelled. Friday: one auction video. He’s averaging three per day / 12-15 per week--weather permitting in the busy season. Even though that's a typical day, many times, it’s very dependent on weather; there are always reschedules.

David: “Would you be comfortable giving us a range of business income for 2019?”

Beardhouse Media made over six figures, 40% of that was drone work.

“Even when I discount work, I make more money because beforehand they wouldn't have used drones at all. I have relationships with people I actually WANT to work with; one of the biggest rewards for me is when someone calls and I can say I don't have time.”

David: “Tell me about Overland Pioneers—what it is and how it came about.”

Overland Pioneers is vehicle-based adventure travel. Overlanding is when the travel is the goal, the destination is getting there, i.e. cruising through trails and camping. They got a trailer from Xventure Trailers and went to Prince Edward Island, driving all over Nova Scotia for three weeks. Then they put a series on YouTube showing all the beautiful places.

David: “Are you doing Overland Pioneer to work with certain brands and travel for free? Do you end up taking home money on top of that or is it just a side fun hobby?”

For Jeremiah, the goal was to replace income that would be made if he were at home, but then also being able to see the world during the warmer months. Last year was close to 70 days of travel; the Overland community is awesome for networking and jobs.

David: “Are you starting to shift away from real estate and doing more commercial video work for content marketing with different companies?”

Jeremiah says he’ll always keep the real estate because he enjoys the work and his regular clients, but if he can pick up one or two fun, big-paying jobs... he absolutely will.

This week, Kevin Olson of Maryland Drone Guy joins us to talk about his aerial photography and videographer business, which he’s successfully grown over the past year.

Kevin first started flying drones at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and got his Part 107 license last July.

Since then, Kevin has had the opportunity to work with many local businesses, including wineries and breweries, restaurants, gyms, a drive-in movie theater, an engineering company, and more.

Kevin has used Instagram to grow his business quickly – without even buying paid ads!

How has Kevin been able to build a profitable drone business, while also working a full-time job?

Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

Be sure to play this week’s 2 truths and a lie game for a chance to win an awesome prize: https://dronelaunchacademy.typeform.com/to/cwbo6KDT

Connect with Kevin:

• Facebook: @marylanddroneguy
• Instagram: @marylanddroneguy
• Twitter: @MD_Drone_Guy
• YouTube: Maryland Drone Guy
• Website: marylanddroneguy.com

Fred owns and operates Nashua Video Tours, a real estate video and photography company.

David: ”Tell us about your company.”

Fred has been doing this for 15 years, starting with putting video online. Because the internet didn't support video very well, realtors didn't have computers, or didn't know what the internet was—it didn’t work out too well. When he was just about to quit, the real estate market tanked and people needed ways to sell properties. At that point, flash became the de facto way of delivering video but there were three or four different types of platforms and none of them were compatible with each other. When broadband came into play and the internet became predominant, Fred realized he could do it.

Fred had started doing realtor websites. He jokes, “I've never wanted to be in this world, I just fell into it and I haven't been able to climb out yet.” He says back then, you’d buy a template so websites all looked exactly the same—nothing stood out. What became popular were 360-degree tours that were not well put together; that was when Fred thought that a video walk-through of the house made sense because then you could see the layout and the flow.

“I just had this bright idea that it would be a way to do something different—but nobody was doing it because they couldn't. I really got started out of frustration trying to differentiate these people.”

David: “Let’s start from when the internet was working, you could put video on the internet, and you had a drone. How did using a drone change things for you— if it did?”

Fred says he’d been in the video real estate video space by himself for years but as more people got into it, he needed to differentiate himself again. Back then, you could fly drone for commercial purposes with no licensing, and everything was still very fuzzy.

For Fred, the real estate market has been an odd place to be. Some realtors think they can get their nephew to buy a drone and let him take pictures, or they don't see that you need to have a license. We know there’s a difference between having a drone and pushing a button to take a picture or video—and being a photographer with a drone.

“If you don't know how to use your camera, you're not a photographer, you don't have the right eye or the right equipment and you don't know how to do it, so it's not going to look very good. The drone is the least important part of the equation.”

Fred says it’s nice to show how a property sits on a big piece of land, but flying around, looking at the roof and gutters, then left and right and up and down for three minutes isn’t all it’s about. A simple top down picture of the roof of a ranch with an ugly front yard and an ugly backyard with dead grass is horrible; it’s more of a detriment than a help. If you're trying to promote a real property, you don't want to show the crap in the neighbor's yard or graffiti on the driveway or bad shingles. Fred advises that you should be truthful, but also show people the highlights. They'll realize that the roof needs replacing or that there's a highway back there, but you don't want to promote that right up front.

When Fred shoots a house he does the video, interior, exterior stills, floor plans, all of it—he has about five different cameras for different things, including a camera he can stick out of the top of his car to show the neighborhood—and, of courses, he has a drone. He doesn’t use all of those for every property but chooses what he thinks makes sense. Driving through the neighborhood, for example, his goal is to show whether it’s an older or newer neighborhood, if houses are setback from the street or are right on the street with the trees. His goal is to present the property in the best light.

“I treat the drone as just another tool. When I get to a property, I either choose to use it or I don't. It's my choice. I don't want someone saying I need to.”

Also, Fred sees a lot of video from new drone pilots that’s too high because the pilot is thinking about max altitude when it’s more important to think about what they’re looking at. Sometimes, Fred doesn’t even know what he’s looking at.

David : “The thing people struggle a lot with is wanting to get into this—whether it's real estate marketing, promo videos or photography—but don't really have good methods or know how to get a first client. What advice would you give someone? How would you go about starting fresh?”

Fred teamed up with a friend who is a realtor and did all of his first stuff for free. He was able to practice, but also able to get stuff out there for other people to see.

“What I did then, I still do now. I make it very easy for someone to find me. It's not a secret. I put my name, phone number, and website at the end of every video. I've done a lot of these and I've never had anybody tel...