Dallas Drone : Top-Quality Drones

Gretchen Mikulich: Hello, this Gretchen Mikulich.

Thomas Crosson: And this is Thomas Crosson.

Gretchen: We are the owners of Full Package Media.

Thomas: We are a Dallas drone company. We started in July of 2016 doing real estate photography and started off doing– our first shoot ever was a ranch. That was outside of Dallas, doing a drone video and some photography. It’s the first thing that we got started in doing.

Gretchen: We found there’s a ton of interest, that video went viral. A lot of people contact us about it. The realtor had a lot of leads, not even just locally, but all around the country. People are calling in. They saw the video on Youtube, they saw it on his Facebook, and he got a bunch of leads, sold it really fast, and from there, we had a lot of customers branch out from that.

Thomas: That’s interesting. The realtor told me that he had buyers that he would have never been able to contact otherwise, but he was able to reach them through social media and video. They were able to see the video and really get a good idea of the property and what it had to offer, it’s like a 500-acre ranch. Doing the Dallas drone stuff was really beneficial to him, and getting the video out there, really great way to see as a huge bird ranch property thing. It was like 500 acres or so, really hard to see that with any other means other than a drone.

Gretchen: Needless to say, he was a repeat customer.

Thomas: Yes, he’s still around today somehow.

Gretchen: Absolutely. He’s helped us grown our company a lot. That’s one of the big aspects of our company is referrals. We work hard for realtors and provide Dallas drone services and they spread the word for us.

Thomas: Yes, that’s a great thing when people refer us and real state agents are big on getting referrals to sell homes and stuff like that. They understand that referrals are important and it’s important to refer the vendors they use to help sell homes for their clients and stuff like that.

Gretchen: And again, they only refer if you’re good.

Thomas: That’s it. Only if you’re the best Dallas drone operator out there, and do the best work. I think what really sets us apart is not just flying the drones but also the post-production work, and not just another amateur that went bought a drone at Best Buy and started flying it around, and then uploaded a video to Youtube. But we do a lot of post-production and editing and all that kind of stuff.

Gretchen: Absolutely. We offer customized drone shots. We’ll work with you and make a list of all of different shots you want to really show the features and characteristics of the property. Then from there, we can work on the post-production side, and really, really enhance your video. Again, most people are just flying their

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drone around. They might spy some shots together and well, put some music on it and that’s it. We time the music with the shots. We go through the shot list with the realtors and just offer the best Dallas drone experience we possibly can.

Thomas: Yes, I think that’s– especially the music is a good point, that’s not something everyone can do. A lot of people don’t do it well and they use songs that they’re not supposed to use and stuff like that. If you’re a realtor, you potentially could get in trouble for having your person come back and say, “Hey you used my song”, or “You used this music you weren’t supposed to use.” If you’re not using the right kind of either free music or paying for licenses then you could get in trouble. Another kind of differentiator between us and the other Dallas drone operators that are out there, it’s kind of a big thing.

Gretchen: Absolutely. And along with that getting in trouble, if you’re hiring a drone operator who does not have their part 107 with the FAA, that could be a huge liability. All of our pilots have their part 107, and we work to follow the rules and stay in regulation. All those regulations are developing. It’s really a bit of a new technology. Its expanse is unknown right now, but as we continue to explore and offer new products and work with realtors to really hone in on what they need, and how this technology can solve their needs, we got to follow the rules, and we ensure that we do that.

Thomas: Yes, that’s really a good point. A lot of companies, a lot of amateurs that are out there, they don’t have their part 107, or before that, your Section 333 through the FAA, another reason that you’re the realtor, you need to use someone that’s professional and not an amateur. Because if somewhat happened on that shoot and they’re not covered, we also carry insurance and that helps protect us. Not only us, but helps protect you as a realtor and the homeowners that are your clients. So everyone’s under that umbrella of protection that we provide that an amateur pilot or someone like that, a kid, is not going to be able to provide.

Gretchen: Absolutely. Going back to where we started, we wanted to offer customers a full package solution. We didn’t want someone to have to go hire a drone pilot, then go hire their photography company, we wanted to provide top- quality media for our real state agents, no matter what they needed. And that’s what we do. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve had such success, so many referrals because you cannot schedule one shoot and knock out all of your media at one point in time.

Thomas: Yes, it’s been crazy how many realtors have told other people about us and getting calls from people that we didn’t have to reach out to, or spend money to reach out to, and just the realtor says, “Hey, I got someone great that does this and does the Dallas drone stuff better than the next guy, better than our main competitors”, and that really helped us a lot. But what do you think, what about our drones do you think sets us apart from other people?

Gretchen: I think the quality of the equipment is one. We own the top-quality drones, we’re working with DJI, which is one of the leading manufacturers of drones,

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staying ahead of the game. We buy the latest and greatest drones. It’s what you need to do.

Thomas: Yes, we do use the latest and greatest and we use the Phantom 4, primarily, a lot of people use lower drones. We have good 4K cameras and can shoot great, higher resolution stills with aerial photography. The best Dallas drones that are out there, there’s not really– there might be some better out there for major multimedia productions, but in terms of doing what we do, we’re really at the higher end. That’s an expensive drone, but it gets the best products, and so we can give the best product to our customers.

Gretchen: In going along those lines, another thing that sets us apart from competitors is our consistency. A lot of your standard photography companies will have hired contractors to do the work, and they’ll provide their own equipment, which causes great discrepancies in the quality of the work. You might have one contractor with a 10-year old camera that’s just lower end, and then you have another contractor who’s got a brand new camera, a 5D Mark III, and uses it for all the high- end stuff. But you’re not going to have any type of consistency between the two contractors on those, no matter what you do in the post-production side.

Thomas: Yes, that’s great point. I think that not only do we use the equipment, we provide equipment to all of our photographers. A lot of people, when we first started out, that was a big complaint that with our competitors, sometimes they got a great shoot, sometimes they got a horrible shoot. Other times they had a shoot that had to be redone, and that’s just a horrible, horrible thing for the realtors and for the homeowners, and especially homeowners that have kids and stuff like that. They have to get their house ready, they have to get it cleaned, they have to get the yard done. If they have to do that twice or three times, that’s just horrible.

But I don’t think we’ve had to do q reshoot yet, other than if the client changes something: they add more furniture or take the furniture out, or something like that, then maybe we’ll have to go back and shoot more photos for them, but nothing due to quality issues. That really is something that sets us apart by using the same equipment all the time and we provide that equipment for our photographers. That also gives us a chance to hire people that maybe are really passionate about photography and Dallas drones stuff, but they don’t have the means to purchase that equipment to go get some of those jobs at the other companies. But they can just come to us with a passion and a willingness to learn, and we can provide them equipment to help them reach their goals and learn a great skill.

Gretchen: Absolutely. We’re a young company. We’re just learning about training and what it really takes to maintain quality and so far, all of our customers have been extremely happy. From the time when Thomas here was doing all the shoots, to the time when we switched over and had a few of our photographers doing the shoots, they said it was seamless. There was no difference in the quality and they were happy. They like talking to our photographers, they have good personalities, they’re happy, they’re ready to work, they’re excited to be there, and they really do a good job.

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Thomas: Yes, Absolutely. In fact, I did a shoot the other day, to fill in for one of our photographers that wasn’t available. The realtor was like, “Man, your photographer that came out, the new guy, he’s new, but it’s like doing a shoot with him versus doing a shoot with you is basically the same experience. You do the same things, you shoot the same shots, you get the home ready in the same way. That’s something that’s totally different from the other companies.” He was saying that before we were in business, the company that he used, he’d have to try to request a certain photographer that they like, and sometimes they weren’t able to get it. So they’d have to get someone else, and that’s just a headache for them to have try to schedule that.

If they can’t get that photographer, they have to go to call someone else, then they don’t get the result that they want versus with us. They’re always going to get that consistent result, regardless of who the photographer is.

Gretchen: Yes, consistency is our goal and consistency is what we do, providing you with the best Dallas drone experience.

Thomas: Yes, that’s it’s we really want to be the best in Dallas and– yes.

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File name: Episode 1 Full Package Media 1.28.17 Dallas Drone_mixdown.mp3

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