The drone industry is changing fast, and the drone pilots who don’t adapt will not be here in two years. It’s about strategy. It’s about staying ahead of regulation and making the right decisions. I sat down again with Amy Wiegand, the revenue operations consultant behind Earhart Alden & Associates, to break down what it actually takes to build a successful drone operation in this industry.
If you missed part one of our conversation, go take a look. This time we get into the part most people struggle with: how to handle regulatory obstacles, what actually makes a service provider stand out, and how to build a 30, 60, 90-day plan in order to succeed.
A Circle of What You Control Beats Worrying About the FAA
Amy’s first exercise is a circle. Put everything you can control inside it: pricing, operations, training, service innovation and, above all, your current relationships. Park the rest outside, then build a 90-day plan around what is inside, which takes a lot of the anxiety out of change.
Regulation exists. We know that, and regulation typically gets more restrictive. But we used to not be able to fly at night, and now we can. We could never fly over people, not even with a categorized drone, and then the FAA added categories that allow it. We used to not be able to fly beyond visual line of sight at all, and now there is a pathway. It’s not an easy one, but there’s a pathway. I’m not saying everything is becoming easier, but it seems like the FAA is listening and finding pathways. Part 108, if it comes out the way it should, should help loosen the regulation and make it more achievable. You have to stay on top of that, and it’s pointless to spend time on the things you can’t control.
So go all in on what you can control, and if the drone space is getting tighter, look at what else you can do. The drone is a tool. If tomorrow we couldn’t buy hammers anymore, do you think carpenters would stop building houses? No, they would use a different tool. There are ground robots now that are becoming more and more popular, and there is no regulation on ground robots, at least at the moment.
Diversify. Reinvest some of the money you’re making into making your business more complex, where there is less competition. We said that before the DJI thing and before the FCC thing: a bigger investment and a bigger risk typically lead to more money at the end. Mapping takes investment, learning and more knowledge, but the payouts are higher. NDVI for golf courses or agriculture requires a higher investment, and the payouts are higher too. There are drones available in those niches.
When I started Pilot Institute, I wanted to do drone and airplane training, and that’s it, because that’s what I knew and loved. Now we have helicopter training, and I’m not a helicopter pilot. We figured out how to do it. We added flight attendant training and dispatch training, because other opportunities popped up that are related to what we do, which is aviation in general. And it’s working.
The 30, 60, 90-Day Plan Is One Plan You Keep Repeating
Amy’s 30-day starting point is your operations and your finances, and what you can control in each, so stay focused and don’t hesitate to act. Keep current clients informed, because they are your partners, and use the time to become more of an expert or diversify.
Quite frankly, I don’t know that it’s a different plan going forward. What you learn in the first 30 days, you implement in the next 30, and then in the 30 after that. Don’t niche yourself into just one thing, and when an opportunity knocks, go for it. That means taking a risk, a controlled one, maybe a little money or a lot of extra time. There’s no reward without it. And as Amy said, if you bought a drone, you’ve already taken the risk.
Amy sees a lot of people get intimidated by the words “business plan.” She runs her own consulting company, and her business plans live in a journal, sometimes in pencil, sometimes in pen. As an aviator, she treats them like checklists: here is what I’ll accomplish in the next 30 days. Some items get crossed off, some move to 60 or 90, and some get eliminated altogether.
The business plan doesn’t have to be formal. It needs to make you answer the questions you haven’t thought about. When I taught at the university, students built a business plan for a fictitious business in groups of four or five, and week after week they said, “Oh, I would have never thought of that.” Most people never hand the plan to a bank. It’s for you, so that “I’m going to sell pictures to a client” turns into an answer for how. Then, as Amy says, take micro actions, one step at a time.
Drone Service Providers Doing the Same Thing Will Not Make It
The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Drone service providers who keep doing what isn’t working will not succeed. As our host pointed out, even those that succeeded for years face a year of uncertainty that forces them to change.
If we cannot get these drones, you will either get a drone that does something different, or you will learn different skills. I hate to say it, but it’s almost like AI right now: some people’s jobs may become irrelevant, and they either keep doing the same thing or learn new skills. That’s a very negative way to look at the drone space, but you have to be realistic. If the opportunities aren’t where they are today, you have to go somewhere else.
Amy’s answer to whether it’s time to re-evaluate your niche is that you have to put in the work. Do your market research, understand the market, understand your client’s market and understand their customer. That takes time, especially while you’re building, but it is how you become an authority and a value partner to your client.
Our host’s niche is real estate, so take that one. Say tomorrow you can’t find a consumer drone that does it. People will fly drones not built for the purpose, or buy a very expensive drone that can carry a camera, and the realtor and the client pay for that. A realtor with 30 years in the business will tell you they sold houses without drone photos 10 years ago. The $400,000 and $500,000 houses won’t get them, because it’s not in the marketing budget, and drone photography becomes a high-end service for million-plus listings. Then it’s up to you: serve the $400,000 market from the ground, or invest in a more expensive drone and go after the high-end realtors. I would argue for the high-end.
Our host doesn’t think we’re there yet, and nobody should obsess over it. You plan for it by building your business plan to save money for when it happens. An expensive drone might be $10,000 to $15,000, one you can put your Sony camera on. Put a little of what you make aside, and when that day comes, that’s your out. It’s easier said than done, because it is hard to make a dollar, but that’s the way I would do it.
Sales and Marketing Generate the Revenue, Not the Drone
Amy says hardware and software are tools, while revenue growth comes from sales and marketing, which solopreneurs and larger companies should stop fearing, learn for their niche, and automate. She talks about how solopreneurs can build AI agents, and she sees enterprises scrambling, because that shift has already happened.
Your strategy from six months ago is probably not your strategy today. Amy re-evaluates every six months, like any company: audit the key performance indicators, check whether the campaign, the social post or the blog got engagement, and pivot. Follow-up is huge. Many drone service providers she meets are retired or running a side hustle with little time, so paying a consultant for the initial setup is worth it.
Yes, a consultant costs money. But how much would it cost you to learn all of that yourself? You don’t have to become a marketer either. Pay people who are good at it. The difficulty is that the space has a lot of snake oil salesmen, and I’ll use that term because that’s what it is, selling you the moon when they can’t. Find someone experienced who won’t take advantage of you and who gets results. Amy adds that hiring marketers from outside drones and aviation is a huge mistake: people in the industry speak the language, so you go faster and save money in the long term.
We’re working on marketing campaigns for flight schools right now, and I manage a flight school. When the first draft comes out, I can add what will ring true for flight school owners, because I built this company to solve the problems I was having at a flight school. At conferences I ask owners whether they’re struggling with this and this, and they say yes. When your marketing people know this stuff, it’s a lot easier to sell.
Your Comment on an FAA Rule Gets Read
Advocacy starts with education, Amy says: understand the issue before you comment in a forum or write a letter. She leans on experts like me, Vic Moss and Kyle Nordfors outside her lane. If you’re not the right person to answer, get involved with the associations and people who are.
Once you’re educated, be vocal, because your voice matters. Every time the FAA puts out a new regulation, it goes through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). I know people say the FAA doesn’t listen, but it does. I saw the NPRM for Remote ID, for those of you who have been in the industry long enough, and it was a show. The final Remote ID rule did not come out perfect, but it was not as bad as the proposal, and that is because there were more than 53,000 comments. The Part 108 proposal came out and drew a lot of comments too, not as many, and we have been told that some changes were made based on them. A lot of those comments came from individuals.
When you comment, make it personal. “I’m a solopreneur. This is my bread and butter, and this rule is going to make my company go bankrupt.” That means something, and if 100,000 of you say it, it means a lot more.
The second avenue is your elected officials. I know how we all feel about this, but there is a pathway to tell them when a local regulation is dumb. We’ve done it here in Arizona. Send it on your company letterhead, because they don’t know you’re a solopreneur, they see a company, and tell them politely but directly how it will affect you.
Amy and I have both done this. She led the charge on a letter package to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. They asked for a meeting and didn’t get one, but they got a letter back saying thank you very much. Amy’s view is that they were heard and that these efforts are cumulative.
The other one is data. Before the FCC did what we were expecting it to do, we ran a survey of drone operators on how losing access to the drone they want would affect their business and their hobby. Reporters still call us for the detail, and we use the data in our NPRM comments because it comes from the industry. We will run a follow-up a year after the first, because it’s not a what-if anymore. It happened, and we want to know how you’re dealing with it. The results are eye-opening and not pretty, but we can’t look at them through pink glasses.
For more on building and marketing a successful drone business, Amy recorded three workshops for our premium community on getting clients, pricing services, and marketing and sales. The link is in the video description.
This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Greg Reverdiau. Watch the full video on the Pilot Institute YouTube channel, and find more of Greg’s work on his DroneXL author page.
