I credit Paul with a couple things.
1) He's built an entire empire based on the "buzz" of drone flying. "Fun flies" and "education" are the crux of his business. Doing some basic math, I assume he's pulling a good 6-figures a year doing this. He found a niche littered with ignorance, exploited that ignorance and profited off of it. He has harnessed the "mystique," if you will, of drone flying. Good on him. A true capitalist. To your average Best Buy weekend warrior, he must appear as a god. I know this sounds snarky, but I truly do admire the fact that he found a niche and profited from it.
Like any good businessman, he surrounds himself with good people. I'll cite Vic Moss of Moss Photography (
Moss Photography Architectural and Aerial Photography) as one of them. Vic is one of the finest architectural photographers I have ever known. Vic mentored me in my early years of aerial photography. Very nice guy. Very generous with his knowledge. His drone photography is pretty amazing. His forte' is in post. Once you have someone like that on staff, it's tough to go wrong.
Next on staff is Jon McBride of RMUS (
RMUS - Drone Experts to help you select the right solution.). Jon has his finger on the pulse of the drone industry. And while Jon has never been a hacker, I have often gone to him for advice, which has always been rock solid. You won't see Jon in the podcasts. He'll be out flying and testing drones and figuring out how to make the latest Crystal Sky work with the M600 Pro. Good guy, that Jon.
Like any good businessman, Paul knows more about delegating than he does about drones...a LOT more. I would take anything Paul says with a grain of salt, but would swear by the advice of Vic or Jon.
2) Paul is responsible for my first film industry job. I'll spare you the details, but in a nutshell, it seems he over-promised and under-delivered for a production in Santa Fe, N.M. Ironically, he had permitting issues for the shoot in Santa Fe, which I believe was in Class D airspace. This was in the 333 days. So my aerial company received a panic call from production on a Friday for a shoot the following Monday. Unfortunately, we were unable to get permits together that quickly, but we DID eventually work on that film, which got our foot in the door to work on many other films.
It's my understanding that Paul's background is in web promotion or something like that. He sells websites and then promotes them or so I'm told. He took that skill and created Drone U.
I've never met Paul, but I know many who have. Albuquerque has a very strong "underground" professional drone community. True professional aerial companies like Flytcam and Volo Pervidi seem to take Paul with a grain of salt. What Paul is selling doesn't compete with our markets in any way, shape or form. Other than the WORD "drone," we have literally nothing else in common with Paul or Drone U. We're delivering product, not selling mystique, community or education. That's Paul's gig. His audience laps it up and pays money to be part of it. Apparently "ignorance" is a fairly robust market.
Again, I know this sounds snarky, but I honestly admire what he has done. But as you have eluded to here, those of us who ACTUALLY fly professionally know better.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man rules.
D
