INTERVIEW | Make Money with a Drone Business: How Damon Darnall Turned Emerging Technology into a Six-Figure Opportunity

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Travis Makes Money

Episode: INTERVIEW | Make Money with a Drone Business – How Damon Darnall Turned Emerging Technology into a Six-Figure Opportunity

Host: Travis Chappell
Guest: Damon Darnall ("The Drone Boss", Founder of Skyeye Network)
Date: June 2, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Travis Chappell sits down with drone industry trailblazer Damon Darnall to uncover how drones are creating lucrative business opportunities—no tech background required. Damon, who has empowered tens of thousands to get FAA certified and start their own drone businesses, breaks down his entrepreneurial journey, the evolution of drone tech, and practical steps for anyone aiming to build a six-figure side hustle (or more) using drones. If you've ever wondered how to actually profit from drones, this episode delivers detailed, actionable guidance with an honest look at the mindset and lessons behind success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Damon's Early Drone Entrepreneurship

• First "Aha" Moment (03:00–06:13):
  • Damon recounts his first real money in drones back in 1993—with an ambitious (and nearly disastrous) blimp advertising idea. The initial outdoor plan failed, but a pivot to indoor promotions led to big contracts and the origin of in-arena advertising blimps.
    • Notable quote:

      “It ended up being a big flop … but I went back to the drawing board. I sunk, at that point, pretty much my life savings into this thing and had no way to do anything with it.” – Damon Darnall (05:00)

  • Ultimate success came after 113 rejections, a test run at a Texas sports event, and signing Justin Boots as a sponsor.

The Drone Industry: Past, Present, and Future

• History & Evolution (06:13–08:00):
  • Drones have existed far longer than most realize (first US patent in 1898!). Damon notes the Academy of Model Aeronautics predates the FAA, and how regulations and use cases have evolved, especially with the rise of autonomous tech.
• Vision for the Future (07:00–07:58):
  • Damon predicts fully autonomous drones will soon be as normal as lawn sprinklers for everything from agriculture to infrastructure mapping.
    • Notable quote:

      “These drones ... are still kind of in the infancy stages ... but they're going to pretty much just be autonomous. They'll be like sprinkler systems: fly their mission, capture data, go back to self-charging docks, upload everything, process results by AI.” – Damon Darnall (07:18)

Market Opportunity & Adoption Curve

• Still Early Days (08:00–09:39):
  • Drone business is far from saturated. Even real estate, the most competitive drone sector, is less than 10% penetrated; over 300 vertical markets exist.
    • Notable quote:

      “Most businesses don’t even really know they need drone services... which creates this massive opportunity.” – Damon Darnall (08:15)

• Tech Inflection Point (12:28–12:52):
  • Thanks to smartphone gyros and microprocessors, modern drones are now much simpler and safer to fly, opening up business access.
    • Notable quote:

      “Now I can teach someone in 30 minutes to go start a six-figure business as far as the flying capability goes.” – Damon Darnall (12:48)

How to Start a Profitable Drone Business

• Low-Hanging Fruit & Fast Cash Pathways (15:53–20:17):

  • Damon’s group identifies five top “fastest path to cash” drone niches needing minimal investment and skill—ideal for beginners. Most students earn money immediately after his three-day immersion program.
  • Focus on simple business models (e.g., basic aerial photography for local businesses, real estate, hotels, resorts, or “integral archive inspections” for infrastructure).
  • The biggest competition (real estate) remains hugely underpenetrated and offers nearly automatic reorders once you build relationships.
  • Unique niches already seeing success:
    • Aerial funerals and ash-scattering memorials
    • High-rise power washing (drone instead of scaffolding)
    • Inspections of infrastructure (power lines, dams, solar farms), preventing tragedies and saving labor costs.

• Pricing & Sales Cycle Tips (20:17–24:26):

  • Average real estate shoot: ~$299; network members charge $249–$899; with upsells, average ticket ~ $800.
  • Two gigs per day, five days a week, results in a $100k/year income—even at base rates.
  • Top operators do 6–10 shoots per day and build teams to scale further.
    • Notable quote:

      “You work for the man, building someone else’s asset, eight, ten hours a day, ... They won’t do two hours a day for themselves to build their own asset.” – Damon Darnall (33:09)

Scaling & Systemizing

• From Side Hustle to Empire (31:30–35:10):

  • Build up to as many projects per day as desired—full control.
  • Some in Damon’s network now run million-dollar businesses, solely doing real estate drone work.
  • Referrals grow exponentially; marketing need declines as reputation is built. Business is highly scalable.
    • Notable quote:

      “The worst version of it is not a terrible version... you work for yourself... and you can still make six figures in personal take-home income because once you get the equipment, there’s no additional expenses to deliver on the thing you’re charging for.” – Travis Chappell (33:53)

• Practical Startup Costs (27:30–28:38):

  • Entry-level setup (drone + camera + extras): $1,500–$2,200 for real estate; advanced drones and software (e.g., for thermal imaging, agriculture mapping): $10k+.
  • Damon advises starting small—buy only what’s needed, let clients fund future upgrades.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Origin Story Inspiration:

  “It was a big, giant blimp ... The maiden flight, it just gets, it starts blowing down beach ... Luckily, we drove the truck into the water a bit and was able to recover it before it was lost forever.” – Damon Darnall (04:40)

• Vision for Ubiquitous Drones:

  "[Drones will] pretty much just be autonomous. Like sprinkler systems." – Damon Darnall (07:18)

• On Rejection & Sticking With It:

  “So only a measly like 113 rejections before somebody finally was like, all right, we'll give it a shot." – Travis Chappell (06:13)

• On Taking Action:

  "We’re really big on getting people their first wins and getting the cash quickly and easily … Then you can go off and get into the more exotic opportunities.” – Damon Darnall (16:55)

• On Building Your Own Asset:

  “You work for the man ... but you won’t, you only want to work less than what you would get paid to do this... you’re building your own asset.” – Damon Darnall (33:09)

• Travis’s Side Hustle Enthusiasm:

  “This checks off all my boxes for like the perfect side hustle ... And the worst version of it is not a terrible version ... you can still make six figures.” – Travis Chappell (33:53)

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Practical Steps: How to Get Started (with Timestamps)

• [15:53] Identify low-risk, high-opportunity drone use cases (e.g., real estate, local business photography, simple inspections).
• [20:17] Offer basic, repeatable services—sell once, get recurring work.
• [27:30] Start with a basic drone and camera ($1,500–$2,200 investment); add advanced tech as you reinvest earnings.
• [29:28] Real estate shoots at $299–$800/ticket; do two a day for six figures.
• [31:21] Scale by hiring more operators and leveraging inbound referrals.

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Where to Learn More

• Damon Darnall’s Training:
  • Drone Command Live – Damon's flagship three-day course and community for aspiring drone entrepreneurs.

    “That’d be the best thing for them ... Go to dronecommandlive.com and check that out and hopefully get to spend some time together and do a deep dive into the opportunity.” – Damon Darnall (35:14)

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Final Takeaways

• The drone industry is still wide open and full of niches—most target customers don’t even realize they need these services yet.
• Low start-up costs, rapid learning, and scalable, recurring revenue make this one of the most accessible and promising side hustles today.
• The keys: start with simple services, act fast, and reinvest to expand as demand and capability grow.
• Build not just income, but a valuable business asset—with no upper ceiling.

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If you liked this breakdown, check out the full interview at Travis Makes Money or head to Drone Command Live to take your first steps into the drone business world.

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Transcript

[Damon Darnell]

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[Travis]

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[Damon Darnell]

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[Travis]

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[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

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[Travis]

What is going on, everybody?

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money

[Travis]

podcast where it's a mission to help you all make some more damn money. Today on the show, I have a new friend, Damon Darnell. Damon is the drone boss and he's the founder of Skyeye Network and a leading authority on AI in the sky. A two time world record holder, Damon sits on NASA's UTM board, architecting the future of global airspace. He's empowered over 37,000 people to earn their FAA Part 107 licenses and guided 14,000 plus entrepreneurs in launching profitable drone businesses. He excels at demystifying cutting edge tech, making the skies accessible to all within his network. His proven strategies have enabled members to scale their operations into elite six and seven figure ventures. So if you've ever thought about potentially how to make money in the sky, then this is the guy that we're going to talk to about that. Damon. What's up, man? Welcome to the show.

[Damon Darnell]

Awesome. Thanks so much. Great to be here, man.

[Travis]

Let's go back in time. First of all, man, tell me the first time you ever made a dollar that you were excited about or surprised by.

[Damon Darnell]

Gosh, I guess probably goes back to 1993 when I made my first, you know, got my first dollar contract with drones. And it was, it's one of those deals. It was always kind of a.

[Travis]

Did you say. You said 1993?

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, 1993.

[Travis]

Oh, shit. All right, let's hear the story.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, the drones have been around a while. A lot of people think that they're just kind of a new thing, but actually the very first patent on a drone is held by Nikola Tesla here in the United states back in 1898. So they've been, they've been around a big, you know, quite a while. In fact, there's the ama, which is the Academy of Modeling, Aeronautics which kind of is the, the, you know, NRA of the drone world. And they were founded 22 years before a division of the government called the FAA was ever even thought or even formed. Wow. And so, so they kind of forged the aviation space for the FAA and then of course quickly realized when there are humans in there versus unmanned drones, it's radically different, rules change and, you know, we adapt and all that stuff. But, but to your question, back in 93 was the first time when I actually made, you know, I would say, you know, real money. I'd been paid a little bit before, I'd been sponsored before, but the big thing in 93 when I was like, holy cow, this is like real, this is like real money. And, and that was, I had this idea of, of getting a, a big giant blimp. So this was a, you know, essentially a autonomously controlled blimp. And I thought I could fly this thing on the beach. And you've seen airplanes towing banners on the beach before, right? And so that, that was my inspiration. I thought, man, I could get like three businesses to pay me at once and I could fly this thing pretty much non stop and I could fly closer to the crowd and you know, it's not as dangerous and blah, blah, blah. Well, anyway, long story short, it ended up being a big flop. This thing only had a top speed of about five miles an hour. I got a couple businesses that were wanting to, to sponsor it and do it and they came out for the maiden flight. And as you know, if you've been out to the beach, there's always like a 15, 20 mile an hour wind out there. So I launched this thing and it just gets, it starts blowing out down, down beach and almost and this thing, and it was huge. It's about the size of probably like two, two and a half Suburbans, you know, so it was pretty good size and, but man, it was just a big parachute and, and luckily we, we illegally, we drove the, the truck into the beach and, and into the water a little bit and was able to recover it before it blew out and was lost forever. And, and anyway, I had to go back to the drawing board and I was like, what can I do with this thing? I sunk at that point pretty much. It seemed like my life savings into this thing and had no way to do anything with it. So I thought, well, okay, what can I do? Maybe I can't fly outside, what can I do indoors? So I went to convention centers and indoor sporting arenas and sporting events and you know, I, I just I talked over. It was 113 different promoters and, and different. And they all just looked at me like I had three heads, like they didn't, they didn't get what I was saying. And finally this one guy, he said, he said, man, I don't think this is going to work, kid, but if it works half as good as you think it's going to work, I'm down. He said, why don't you come out to the game this, this Friday and, and we'll do it and, and see how it goes. And if it works out, then we'll look at doing a contract. So we did. And I, I worked out a deal with. This was actually in Texas. I worked out a deal with a boot manufacturer called Justin Boots, and they had donated 16 pairs of boot 16, six pairs of boots to give away. And so we rigged up a little worm gear in the bottom of this blimp on the canopy part. And a worm gear is kind of like that in the vending machines. You know, that screw thing where the chips usually fall out and it gets stuck on the glass. And I put a little parachute with the coupon and I worked with the announcer and I've got a map of the arena and where the VIP sections were. So we dropped all these pairs of cowboy boots off or the coupons for them over the VIP sections. And so stuff and crowd went crazy. It was a big hit.

[Travis]

And.

[Damon Darnell]

And it turns out that they had the biggest increase in VIP ticket sales from that promotion than anything else they'd ever done to date prior to that. Wow. So big success. Signed a year contract and then we rolled it out nationwide. And if you've ever been to any indoor, you know, event in the last 30 plus years, you've seen some iteration of that. And that's kind of what, what started it all for me. So.

[Travis]

So only a measly like 113 rejections before somebody finally was like, all right, we'll give it a shot with you.

[Damon Darnell]

Yep, yep.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Travis]

After the initial failure, like, there's that. That's the thing, man, is like, entrepreneurship's never a linear path. You know what I mean? It's always riddled with ups and downs and more downs than ups. Seems to be the nice thing though, is that if you get one good up, then it sort of takes care of all of the downs that you ever experienced. In terms of a financial perspective, did you have any idea, like, were you already looking in the future being like, look, it's only a matter of time before this technology becomes Ubiquitous. And everybody's going to understand what this is. Or were you, or were you kind of still kind of skeptical about what the future looked like?

[Damon Darnell]

No, I knew, I knew what the future was. I didn't know when it was going to come around, if it would come around in my lifetime or if it was, you know, or if it would be sooner or later. But I knew that the, the, the way that things were going. I mean, these drones and, and they, they're still, we're still kind of in the infancy stages of the adoption and the development of these things, but they're going to pretty much just be autonomous. They'll be like sprinkler systems. You know, they'll pop out of the ground and they'll fly their mission on ag, you know, on farms, golf courses, stuff like that. They'll, they'll fly, scan, capture the data, go back on their self, charging dock, go back underground, auto upload all the data, recharge the AI will process all the data, it'll disseminate it to the spot. Spraying drones, the fertilizing drones, the planning drones, the GPS guided tractors and all that stuff is going to just kind of happen automatically. Yeah, like, like a sprinkler system now. I mean, I'm sure when they first were installed, people like, oh my gosh, it's amazing, you know, and now we don't think twice about it.

[Travis]

Take it for granted.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

At what point did you see like, was there ever sort of like a massive spike in attention or organic traffic to the things that you're working on? And when did that come?

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, well, so it's still not even really there. So the, the organic traffic isn't there yet. And most, most businesses don't even really know they need drone services. Like they, it's not even on their radar. It's not. And, and they haven't even really thought about it, which blows my mind. But it's, it's also creates this massive opportunity that we have now because nothing's standardized yet. Nothing's really been being, you know, serviced out there. That being said, like probably real estate, people taking pictures for realtors of homes and stuff. That is probably the most competitive market that's out there. But depending what report you read, it's somewhere between 7 and 11% saturated. So it's still, it's basically 90% wide open in the most crowded space, you know, out there. So you go to any other industry, if it's like 4% wide open, they're like, oh my God, it's just, it's amazing, you know, and to have that much wide open, it's just crazy. And we've, the FAA has identified over 300 vertical markets in the drone space. And so each one of these, think of them as a division in a drone company. And any one of those could easily generate over six figures a year in revenue, in net revenue for, for somebody or for a company. But to your original point was when, when did things change? And it was about 11 years ago when things really shifted and it's really because of the, the advent of these little microprocessors in our, in our cell phones accelerometers.

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[Damon Darnell]

electronic gyros and it brought the technology way down where the drones became easier to fly and harder to crash than ever before because that was the big, it was kind of a self regulating industry, meaning it took literally thousands and thousands of flight hours before you were competent enough to do anything. Now I can teach someone in 30 minutes to go start a six figure business as far as the flying capability goes, but they can do it.

[Travis]

Yeah, I remember that. I, I got this drone back in. I was like, I did a bunch of photography and stuff like that at the time and so it was interesting to me already. And we'd done a couple of like travel things and my, a couple buddies had one, had a couple and I was like, these are awesome. So I, I was going to this mastermind down in Puerto Rico for this guy who's like a big podcaster at the time. And I was trying to think of like, when I go down there, how do I, you know, how do I give a little bit more value, how do I stand out from the other people that are going to be there. And my thought was like, oh, he's got this really cool house, awesome view of, of the ocean, beautiful home. I'll take a bunch of drone footage of the event and just like give it to him for free. Because that was sort of the thing at the time. And I, I was trying to get some practice in but the problem was I lived in this town called Lancaster California, which is a very big aerospace town, like, Edwards Air Force Base is out there, and we lived two miles from Northrop. And so I throw the drone up for the first time in my backyard, and immediately I get all these, like, notifications, like, you know, alerts on my. On my screen. That's basically like you're flying in restricted airspace. Yeah, you, like, you have to land right now type of thing. I was like, holy shit. I didn't realize that that was even a thing, but I suppose it makes sense. Like, you can't just fly a drone over Northrop and see what they're cooking up over there.

[Damon Darnell]

You know what I mean?

[Travis]

So I couldn't really practice at all. So I get down to Puerto Rico, I throw this drone up in the air again, trying to get a little bit of practice. It's like sunset. And I was like, we're gonna get some cool footage of sunset and everything. And I was on a rooftop of a condo, and I go to land the drone on the rooftop, and I thought that it was, like, much more autonomous of a landing than I realized that it was. So I'm landing this thing, man, and there's, like, a plant in the corner of this rooftop. And I was like. I was trying to make sure that it landed on the rooftop, but it looked like it was going to crash, like, before the roof, you know, and, like, hit the side of the building. So I was, like, freaking out, and I was trying to get it there. One of the propellers catches a leaf on the. On this plant, throws the drone into the wall, it crashes. And two. I only got one propeller replacement with the drone. Two of the propellers broke. I was like, well, I guess. I guess there goes that whole idea. Luckily, I. Luckily I ended up taking the drone back, and they took it back because I got another propeller replacement. And I. And I actually never flew a drone again after that. But it was. It was. It was just hilarious because it was like I went through this huge, you know, effort to try to create some additional value here and ended up almost literally crashing and burning in front of my eyes, I'm hoping. But that was my experience flying a drone. I'm curious, though, for the. You've helped over 15,000 entrepreneurs now launching profitable drone businesses. If you were starting once a day or you're working with somebody who's totally green to this space, what would you recommend to them? Is it the real estate space? Is it a different space? Are there. Is there a bluer ocean that you would recommend? Something that you're seeing that People aren't even thinking about what would you recommend is like a 1, 2, 3, here's how to start a drone business and make your first six figures.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, I think that we kind of have identified like you know, five what we call low hanging fruit or fastest path to cash opportunities that require very little skill to get into it, very little investment. Meaning you can get into it with a pretty inexpensive drone and get into it and you don't need a lot of, there's not a lot of backend that's required additional software or anything like that. So your ramp up time's pretty quick before you start earning, earning cash. And like we, we do a three day immersion training program and we, we basically have a challenge that you know, the, the day after the event you can go out and make money. And we walk them through, you know, it's about a three hour process of kind of step by step, exactly what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, but essentially working with local businesses. So I think I would recommend one of those kind of low hanging fruit opportunities because as you know, with entrepreneurship that one of the biggest challenges, as you mentioned, is all the hurdles and the failures and the crashing and burning and all the stuff like what you experienced just with flying the drone. I mean that's just one little aspect of it. And then you get in the whole business side and, and then trying to sell it to customers if you're, if the customer doesn't know they need it, man, it's a much harder sale, great opportunity and more upside. But it also, the sales cycle could be 8, 6, 12, 16 months as you're going through it. And most people, especially starting out, don't have the tenacity to be able to do that. So we're really big on getting people their first wins and getting the cash quickly and easily. And then once you start generating, you know, once you, you're making 150, 200, $250,000 kind of on autopilot. You build up your systems and your infrastructure and you've got it, you've got it kind of dialed in, then you can go off and get into the more exotic or lucrative opportunities. Some of the mapping or photogrammetry type of things or even like we have one guy that's doing aerial funerals now where they're doing, he's, he's basically filming and creating a whole legacy video of spreading the ashes over a mountaintop or a river or ocean or wherever and doing phenomenal with that. And he's really, he's really, really blown up with that. But I mean there's everything from doing that to nuclear power plant inspections to doing power washing. We have, we have a couple of guys in our network that are doing high rise power washing. Instead of sending guys up in the scaffoldings and having them basically hand spray them or hand clean it. And it's pretty cool because now you're eliminating any potential risk of human, you know, human injury or loss of life. We can replace basically cameras with LiDAR equipped drones. So there's no visual there. So no one has to worry about peeping Toms or, you know, someone going on, you know, having some guy on a scaffolding looking through the windows and stuff. And they're pretty, most of these, these condo buildings, they're anywhere from, you know, 180,000, upwards of $350,000 annual contracts for these to have their windows clean and stuff. And now we can do it with a drone. So I mean there's, there's all kinds of stuff that you can get into. But the low hanging fruit, which I would say is real estate aerial imagery, which is basically local businesses, hotels and resorts, and doing what we call integral archive inspections, which are basically basic inspections for highways, bridges, dams, power lines, cell towers, solar farms, wind farm. I mean there's so much stuff that can be done there. And the fact that these guys aren't using drones for that blows my mind. You know, they had, last year they had 300, a little over 300 fatalities in doing these inspections across the board in the US and, and 82% of those were just doing a routine inspection a drone could easily do. And we're not doing it yet. And again, it's just, it's a disruptive industry and I get it, it, it brings in new data. They have to retrain their team, you know, they have to, Everything changes and it creates a little disruption. But the real driver is none of their competitors are doing it yet, so they don't have to do it. And, and the few that are starting to look and explore, they just recently had a fatality or a couple, or a paralyzation or an amputation or, you know, something happened and, and they're a little more motivated. But it's, you know, those are some incredible opportunities that are out there.

[Travis]

Yeah. So if you are, let's say you're going to do one of these sort of long, low hanging fruit things, you're looking to get your first 150, 200,000 in revenue coming in. What does the offer look like what, what have you, what have you seen as like, hey, this is a reasonable amount to charge for this. This is the deliverables that you're going to be providing to the end user. What's the overall packaging that you recommend for most people?

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah. So depending again on what it is. But like real estate, one of the things I love about real estate is you really only have to sell it once. You know, you sell it once to the realtor and then that realtor is going to get additional listings. You have some realtors that do one listing a year. You get some that do 30amonth. But you know, the one that, the one that does one a year, when they start doing aerial imagery and they start offering that as one of their packages, we often see them go from one to somewhere between six and eight. And historically, over the last 10 years, realtors that are using aerial imagery as part of their marketing plan, like if they go to a listing appointment, which is where they're going, someone's selling their house and that person is interviewing the realtor essentially to see if they want to hire them to sell the house. Well, the, according to the national association of realtors, that 22% of those listing appointments convert. So basically two out of 10 people that they see are going to list their house with them when they incorporate Ariel. And we have a, we have a package we've created and tested and split, tested and painlessly, you know, developed. When they, when the realtors offer that to the client, that number goes up to 84%. So they see the same 10 people, but now instead of getting two, they get eight and essentially their income goes up 400%. So it's, it's, it's neat to see these success stories. You know, we have one guy in our network that started a while ago with us and he was working with these realtors and they were driving Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. There were two, two, two guys that are business partners and they've, you know, they, they use drones exclusively. They're listings went up, they started selling faster and more houses for more money and moving up the ranks to higher quality homes. Then they moved up to BMWs and, and Mercedes and now they're driving Rolls Royces and Bentley's to show their clients around and they pay him. An exclusive.

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[Travis]

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[Travis]

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[Travis]

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[Damon Darnell]

power survey published October 20, 2025. For more information on APY rates, MyPay, Spot Me and travel perks go to Chime.com disclosures to not work with any other realtor in a one and a half mile radius. This geographical area where they farm because they feel like it's their secret weapon. Right? You know, but no kidding, it's, it's pretty cool that the impact that it has and the other thing with real estate is that it's not just, you're not just delivering one package, just photos. You can do videos, you can offer Twilight, you can do shorts, you know, kind of vertical shorts for, for YouTube. You can do promo videos for the, for the Realtor themselves. We have something called Scenescape360 where it basically is an aerial 360 tour, like a virtual tour of, of the area from the air and then also of the ground all incorporated together. We do these things called X rays where we can go in and, and actually do progression if it's a home being built or a new construction of the actual building going up. And then we go in on the inside before the Sheetrock goes up. And we do an X ray essentially of everything where every pipe and wire and plumbing, you know, every electrical wire is. And it's because it's all lidar based, it's centimeter grade accuracy. So then the Sheetrock goes up, we do the same thing. And so not only does the builder save somewhere around three to $5,000 and having to pay for finishing work when they go in and the low voltage guys go in and tear everything up and now they have to pay to fix that. They know exactly where everything is because it's. If you've ever built a home or dealt with construction stuff, the plans say this, but the reality is their stuff is different. You know, there's a drain pipe here, a fire block there. The wires will run on this side instead of that side. There's a, you know, a plumbing over here, a gas line where it shouldn't be. You know, all that stuff is different. So, and then they're offering that as a bonus to the homeowner when they do buy it and they get this cool thing. I wish I had that for my place.

[Travis]

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it's cool, it's cool to hear the different applications in the space because like, my mind immediately just goes to like, you take pictures. So thinking about all the other, are there different like pieces of equipment that you need in order to be able to do that? Like if, like if you're, if somebody's just getting started, how much should they expect to spend to like, spin up the business?

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, that's a great thing about it. Like you, you can, the drones are tools essentially. Right. And you can get different types of tools, but you want to get the right tool for the right job. So there's kind of a, some inexpensive drones that you can get for about a thousand dollars, but really figure 1500 by the time you get the extra props, extra batteries, you know, the stuff that you're going to need. Right. So, but for 1500 bucks, you can get started. Real estate takes a little bit more because you also have to have a ground camera. So add another 700 bucks to that for a good DSLR camera to get, to get going and you're off to the races with that. And then everything else, you know, goes up from there. You can get it like if you wanted to do golf courses and you wanted to do thermal imagery or NDVI imagery, where we can tell where they're watering too much or not watering enough or over fertilizing or under fertilizing. And then you have a little bit more expensive and comprehensive backend software that analyzes all the data that's that we're processing and putting in. You know, then, then you're looking at closer to a $10,000 drone and you know, an 8 to $12,000 subscription annually for the software to process it and stuff.

[Travis]

Okay.

[Damon Darnell]

But again, I don't recommend anyone start with that stuff. You start with the low hanging fruit and then you have your customers pay for your other equipment and software and stuff as you go as you build out. And that's what we teach people to do.

[Travis]

Yeah, reinvest into the business as you start making a little bit of money. But start with the low hanging fruit, get the money coming in and then you can sort of expand out from there. So let's take the real estate example just so we can get some like, math here, some numbers. Let's, let's call it six figures. Okay. So you want to, you want to go from 0 to $100,000 in top line revenue from starting this drone business for real estate agents. How many do you need? Like what, what's the average, you know, ticket? I know this is going to, you know, be a very wide range depending on skill set and how long people have done it and how good they are and things like that and what, you know, the realtor is willing to pay, things like that. But what can we expect as sort of an average here?

[Damon Darnell]

So, so an average photo shoot which is just going to be photos which are super easy to do with the drone and with the ground camera. You're looking at around 299 bucks. And we have people in our network that are charging as little as 249 and as much as 899. But we'll just take the low end, you know, at 299 and then it just really depends. And that's with no additional upsells, no twilight pictures, no video, no, you know, no full size images, none of the other upsells that are typically there. Our average ticket price for real estate for most of the people in our network is around $800 is kind of what they average across the board. But we'll just take 299 bucks. And guys in our network, we're are doing probably an average of between 6 and 10 of these a day. We have some guys that are doing well peak days. Like I think a record is 26 for one single person. There are people that have teams of like 17 people and they're knocking out, you know, they're doing 60 or 70 a day. But, but just for one person, 26. The most I've ever done is 22. There's been a lot of guys in the network that have blown by my number, you know, 24, 26. And you know, in that, but you know, a good, you know, an average day. And it just depends on what you want to do. So if you, and, and, and your own work ethic. Because this is the other thing that blows my mind when we're teaching people to start their businesses and everyone's like, you know, we'll go through this exercise. How many, how many of these would you want to do a day? Each one takes about, probably takes about an hour and a half when you first get started. Once you get good, It'll take about 20 or 30 minutes. But so based on that, you know, let's just even say if it takes two hours, how many of these would you want to do in a day? You know, and, and most people, if I Think if we do the math, if you do two a day, five days a week, take two weeks off to go on an Alaskan cruise or whatever. And, and you're just working five days a week, I think that comes out to right, right around 100 grand a year. If you just do two.

[Travis]

Yeah, I was gonna say one. One. If you worked every single day and did one a day, 30 days at 300 bucks is nine grand, which is over six figures.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

At one a day every day, which obviously, like you said, you're going to take some time off. Not every day is a working day. Maybe you're doing 20 to 25 days, but you got one to two projects per day for 20 to 25 days. That's a six figure business right there.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't take much and a lot of people and you know, they'll, there's all these different opportunities, but we have guys that have been doing six, seven, eight years just doing real estate. We have guys that built million dollar businesses that are only doing real estate. And. Yeah, and I think part of it is it's, it's kind of easy once you get going because like they have their client base and they don't do any more marketing. I mean, they get, in fact, we just were featured one of our, one of our, we call them superstars of the month. Someone that's reaching out and contributing to the network and stuff. And this guy, he's like, I get, for the last year, I've gotten at least two referrals every single week. You know, he said, I haven't marketed in over five years. And then all of his existing clients, they just keep, you know, as they get a listing, they just call him up, hey, I got three, I got two, I got five, I got, you know, two, you know, whatever it is, and you just fit it in when you can. And he's got a little team of photographers and pilots that, you know, when he's, when he overflow, when he doesn't want to do it. He loves doing it though, which is, which is cool. But, but it just really depends on, on how many you want to do. But I think realistically, starting out, it's, it's pretty easy to do two or three a day. That's a pretty light load to be able to get going. But the funny part is like, we'll ask people how many they want to do a day, and most people say, oh, I want to do one or two or three. Some will say like five. And just from a time Investment standpoint, I'm like, but you work for the man.

[Travis]

Yeah, right, right.

[Damon Darnell]

Building someone else. And, and you're working eight, ten hours a day, six days a week, but

[Travis]

you only want to work less than what you would get paid to do this.

[Damon Darnell]

Yeah. And you're not building, you're building your own asset. I mean, you, you build up a, you build up a company that's generating half a million, a million, two, three, five million dollars worth of revenue. You have an asset you can sell, you can leverage. It's a legacy piece. I mean, there's real power in that. Instead of making someone else, you know, building up their company and you get nothing, you gotta watch, you know, at the end of it. Right. But it blows my mind. They'll put in 40, 60, 80 hours a week for, for their, for their boss, but they won't, they're talking, I'll do, I'll do two and a half hours a day for me to build my.

[Travis]

I love everything about this man. Like this is this, this checks off all of my boxes for like the perfect side hustle. Because it's pretty quick to get, pretty quick and easy to get started. Doesn't require a ton of technical expertise or, or super specialized knowledge. You can do it on the weekends or nights or whatever. When you're first getting started, you don't have to, you know, pull out a hundred thousand dollar loan to be able to jump in, start making some money. And then if it starts doing decently well, you have some inbound referrals. The agent that you sold starts over producing and now you've got 15 projects a month from this one person. It's like then at that point you have a decision making and you could potentially scale it all the way up to a million dollar business or $5 million business and start, start hiring a bunch of other operators to come in and have a network of operators where you just control the inbound. And then you pay people to do the contracted work. Like it can scale up as much or as little as you want it to. And the worst version of it is not a terrible version. Like you said, you work for yourself. You work, you know, five, six hours a day if you, if you don't want to put in crazy hours. And you can still make six figures in personal take home income because once you get the equipment there, there's no additional expenses to deliver on the thing that you're charging for. So man, I, I love everything about this dude. I appreciate you coming on and sharing

[Damon Darnell]

a little bit more.

[Travis]

Appreciate the work that you're doing in the world. Where, if people want to get started, where, where should people go to to

[Damon Darnell]

learn more from you? Drone Command Live, we do a three day training. That'd be the best thing for them to come and check out. Go to dronecommandlive.com and, and check that out and hopefully get to spend some time together and do a deep dive into the opportunity. See if it's a fit for you or not.

[Travis]

And Drone Command Live is the website. Go check out the stuff that Damian's putting out there. And like I said, guys, this is one of one of the better side hustles that I've heard of in a really long time. So go check this one out and let me know how it goes for you. Damon, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I do not take that for granted at all. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.