This is the full transcript for Episode #230 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Rick Boss – Drone Showrunner, Sky Elements Drone Shows. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Rick Boss 0:00
I haven’t seen one person yet not have a significant reaction to a drone show.
Max Branstetter 0:19
Yellow. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode What time is it when you need to go to the dentist? Tooth-hurty and today’s guest is Rick Boss. Rick is the leader and VP of Business Development for Sky Elements Drone Shows and drone shows – You might be wondering, what is that? Is that like a trade show for a drone? No, it is a drone light show like really the evolution of firework shows, and Sky Elements makes the coolest displays you’ll ever see in the sky. I’m talking Star Wars, Halo, MLB teams, all sorts of alcohol brands, stuff that you have to see to believe. In this episode we talked how one even gets into the drone light show industry, how drone shows actually work, how loud they are – all sorts of curious, fascinating questions. I couldn’t stop, this could have gone on for like 17 hours. And what Rick’s dream birthday drone show would look and sound like. It is The Boss, Rick Boss. Enjoyyyyyy the drooooooones!
Aaaaalrightyyyy we are here with Rick Boss, Leader of Sky Elements Drone Shows, one of the coolest drone light show companies you’ll ever come across. And I think growing up just loving firework shows, I’ve always thought that drone light shows are kind of like the next evolution of it. And you look at some of the stuff that Rick and team have put out and it’s just absolutely mind-blowing and fascinating. Rick, thanks so much for joining How you doing today?
Rick Boss 2:23
Doing well, Max, thanks for having me.
Max Branstetter 2:26
Of course of course. And you are the first drone light show guest ever on this podcast. How does it feel?
Rick Boss 2:33
It feels amazing it’s innovative just like our space love being the first through the wall.
Max Branstetter 2:38
Exactly. Well we’re gonna go through the wall on top of the wall, you know giant,
Rick Boss 2:42
We’ll fly over the wall. That’s what we do.
Max Branstetter 2:45
Definitely above soccer stadiums and everything. But before we get into that, So Rick, just curious, in your business journey. What what did your life look like before drones? Like, where were you doing before you discovered this drone fascination?
Rick Boss 2:58
You know, over the years, the way we got into drones is that myself and my business partner, we both owned pyrotechnic companies for about 10-12 years. Several other businesses along the way, and many they’re still active right now. But it’s really the pyrotechnics that brought us into the drone space. A couple of Pyro companies having some fun with that and somebody said hey, this is gonna be the next thing is going to replace fireworks one day. And so we thought that looks like something fun to get into. And that’s how we started into the space.
Max Branstetter 3:28
You have the the quote unquote old school experience with fireworks show which fireworks so of course still awesome, but drones just a little bit of a different spin with it. But how did you enjoy your experience in the firework show space? Yeah, so
Rick Boss 3:41
we’re still performing firework shows this day, so we love pyrotechnics still doing Pyro and you know, when we got into this space, we thought it’d be just a fun addition to pyrotechnics, maybe an upsell for clients. In addition to something like that pretty quickly we learned it was a different medium we learned it was a significantly different investment, significant investment and as we learned it was a little bit of a different audience a different customer that we were selling to we actually spun it out into sky elements and that’s been maybe a little over two years ago that we started suck sky elements separate from the pyro side of things but it’s been it’s been wonderful change of pace something new to do something different so a fun space and but very unique to Pyro as well. A lot of our skills translated from Pyro a lot of our folks on the pyro side of things helped us in the drone space to be sure and every chance we can we like flying Pyro with our drone so we’re always looking to add Pyro our fly alongside other pyrotechnicians too. You’ve probably seen that on some of our YouTube shows that we’ve done. Seattle Mariners, FC Dallas been some of the most memorable Pyro shows that we’ve done with the drones as well. So you
Max Branstetter 4:56
got the best of both worlds there and sometimes the the worlds can collide
Rick Boss 5:00
They don’t collide, we try our best not to fly. They do play together very well.
Max Branstetter 5:05
Exactly. So they can they can have they can coexist at the same time. But yeah, some of the some of the most exciting videos are when you have like, these amazing, I don’t know, if you call them does designs or exhibitions with the drones, like the actual designs in the sky, and then alongside of it, you have just fireworks blasting, and it is so cool. So you just have a very boring job it seems. These days at the time of this recording how much of your efforts would you say like what’s like a ballpark overall split of like traditional Pyro versus drone focus when you’re with your slideshows.
Rick Boss 5:37
So for me personally, and my business partner, we actually spend most of our time on drones right now. That’s the new space, that Pyro has been one that we’ve just allowed to organically grow, we’re not pushing it hard. And so we continue to take care of our clients take care of the pyro side. But most of the new business efforts are all on the drone space. And that’s primarily because when it’s a faster growing space, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it makes the most sense for us to leverage as much of our intellectual capital into that space. And honestly, it’s just so new and fun and novel that we’re just having a great time flying shows.
Max Branstetter 6:16
Again, you just you just sound miserable. And I’m sorry, you have to talk about
Rick Boss 6:20
terrible daily experience. Absolutely.
Max Branstetter 6:27
So let’s get to Sky Elements. So Sky Elements Drone Shows, super cool company. And you mentioned that you had experience in the pyro space. And there are a couple things, probably probably lots more than a couple things that were very different that you learned pretty quickly about getting into the drone show space. So how was that learning curve? Like? What were the biggest adjustments compared to the traditional fireworks industry?
Rick Boss 6:50
Yeah, one of the biggest adjustments in it was the customers that we were selling to, just as anytime you’re starting a business, you know, we had envisioned that our customers will be very similar to the pyrotechnics base. But we found pretty quickly that we were dealing with a dis different customer, some of that had dealt with pyrotechnics, but we in our business just hadn’t dealt with as much. So we were finding new customers, higher sophistication of buyer, more layers in who was buying it. So yeah, we really spent a good amount of time and I’d say we’re still even now getting our legs underneath of us on adjusting our sales cycle, adjusting how we communicate with those customers and how we keep up with those customers, because they are different from what we’d experienced in the past. The nice thing is that it sends it to new product, it’s easy for us, we’re we’re able to adjust our sales process on the fly. And the customer hasn’t necessarily already seen a process from someone else, because it’s so new to the space. So we’re not falling over ourselves too much in that sales cycle. But nonetheless, with new customers, new buyers, new to us buyers, it’s it’s been an adjustment in there, I’d say that’s probably where we spend most of our time is trying to figure out the best way to find those customers and market to those customers.
Max Branstetter 8:11
What’s the insight or aha moment that you’ve had in terms of actually finding customers that are willing to you know, invest in this new thing?
Rick Boss 8:20
You know, an aha for us maybe not for a lot of folks that have been into the space has been just, there’s a lot of aggregators for event planning that happens that happen for big events, when somebody is happy making a big event happen, it’s often not who you think the end customer is that the actual customer is an event planner is somebody who is pulling it all together for that end customer. And many times, you may never even interact with the end customer for a large scale event that all of it happens through intermediaries, that we’re putting together the experience driving the experience for that particular audience. And then what’s interesting too, is we also have others like when we’re flying for MLB, we’re oftentimes direct with the customer for MLB for Major League Baseball team. So you got quite a variance in there. But that’s probably been one of the biggest aha ones is like, Oh, wow, I shouldn’t be going after the end customer. I need to find who their consultants are, who their different vendors are in the process. So yeah, I’d say that’s probably been one of the biggest aha ‘s and adjustments in our sales cycle.
Max Branstetter 9:27
You mean like marketing agencies or like firms that are putting together kind of like a 360 like, promotional plan for them?
Rick Boss 9:34
Exactly. Yeah. There’s just, you know, there’s a myriad of folks out there that we hadn’t interacted with much. Most of our pyrotechnics have been directly with the end customer. And so finding those intermediaries in the process have been a part of our learning curve with some of the customers I would say, you know, maybe about half of our customer base is going through an intermediary the other half is more direct.
Max Branstetter 9:58
So let’s say I’m gonna take you through the drone gauntlet here, I’m just fascinated by like the different touch points of the drone lightshow journey. So to start off, let’s say you, you know, you just got an exciting new client and you have a drone light show plan with them. I guess that’s the first question is like how far in advance does it typically need to be for you to start your process for an actual show,
Rick Boss 10:22
what we look for in this space or in first time, and what it takes to go through the journey with a client is, you know, if we can engage with somebody six to eight weeks beforehand, that’s phenomenal. And what what we’ve learned in the space is that we really had to bring everything in house. So many times, it’s a lot of other businesses, you could outsource different aspects of it and pull it all together to complete it together. But for us, we found bringing it all into house, for example, I’ll give you the examples, that client comes on board six to eight weeks beforehand, the biggest chunk of time beforehand is spent helping them design the show, helping them bring their vision to life, finding out what is important to them, and then demonstrating how we can do that in the sky, and then making it all come to life. And that’s primarily done through our creative department. So we’ve invested heavily in there, we’ve got 10 full time employees, designers, and our design department, which is the largest in the US, we probably can lump everybody’s designers together. And we’ve got more than everybody has on staff in the US right now. And that’s been a big part of our success is walking them through that process with our in house designers to help bring their vision to life. So six to eight weeks working through that process, going through design board, going through different visualizations with the client, showing them different renders on what this would look like in real time, simultaneously walking through logistics to ensure everything goes smoothly for that client. Flying test shows videoing the test shows to show them what this looks like in real life, doing site visits to ensure that it’s going to perform the way that they would like the audience can see the show. And then when we show up on time, it takes us four to six hours to set up a show beforehand, on site, depending on the venue, you know, when we go to some events, we show up really early just to be out of the logistical way. And then we get all set up ready to go timed up with their music timed up with their run of show, hit play, and watch a wonderful show. But in that leading up to it, you know, there’s about maybe 200 drone show, there’s probably about 40 hours of programming that happened from our programmers 20 hours of interaction with that client just to make sure everything comes to life. And then all of it comes in that one moment, hit the play, make everybody go Wow, it’s so fun just seeing the audience reaction and how excited they are for it. And then once that show lands, it takes us about an hour and a half to bug out of there. And then we’re on to the next show.
Max Branstetter 12:52
It’s almost like a like a headlining DJ or something. It’s like there’s a lot you can prepare ahead of time. And then when it comes to that big moment you hit play. And then of course, there’s still so much to do live, but you hit play, and it’s showtime, you know, it’s on. You mentioned the test shows. So do you do you have like a test lot or a parking lot or something that you do that you test these designs with the new clients?
Rick Boss 13:15
Yeah, 100%. So we have to have test facilities where we’re testing drones. So you’re not only testing shows that are about to fly to make sure everything’s gonna fly perfectly, but also just flying, to train new pilots flying to test drones for servicing and updating. So we’ve got multiple test facilities. So we’ve got locations to where if it needs to be completely secret, we’ve got those out in the middle of nowhere that not many humans will ever see it other than us when it’s one that a client doesn’t even see. And then we’ve got some spots that a lot of people end up seeing it when we run those tests shows. And we never announced our practices, our test shows, but whenever we fly it, obviously, it’s like a bat signal in the sky. And we’ll have just dozens and dozens of people show up before that flight even lands. And our typical show was about 10 minutes, total presentations about 15 minutes. And so in that amount of time, we can still get just dozens of people showing up to see what in the world is going on. And what are these alien aircraft landing?
Max Branstetter 14:15
That’s a nice add on, you know, just to sweeten the deal with these clients is they really, you really start doing guerilla marketing for them before the show even happens if people are seeing some of your test designs? Yeah, absolutely.
Rick Boss 14:29
We’ve had a couple of more we fly QR codes and they start scanning those QR codes even before the event happens. So yeah, we can definitely help them get their marketing ramped up and really help them experience something unique. And that’s the great thing about it’s even when I fly 20 drones in the sky. People are just enamored with it. And so certainly when we bring 200, 300, 500 drones to the event, it just makes an amazing impact on the audience. It’s something new, something they haven’t seen before. They’ve always seen it on social Immediate so they just have no idea how big it is and how energetic it is. And it just, I just love the crowd reactions, just nothing but hooting and hollering and people going what in the world was that? And can’t wait to see it again. Yeah, we just did a show, RodeoHouston. We flew. We were contracted to fly one show down there. And they just got crushed on social media when you’re doing this again, what’s it happening again? So we have to we flew two more shows there. We have one more coming up this weekend. And yeah, the following on that is just huge. And the impact for the client and the buzz that they get is tremendous.
Max Branstetter 15:35
What is the typical crowd reaction like?
Rick Boss 15:38
It goes from a reaction of just complete wonder of how in the world is this happening? What are those things? How is that you know, you get folks from? How do they make fireworks look like that? How can you make a firework in a shape of a face or whatever it is that we have up there. So it’s just awesome to see them two people just totally wowed, they can’t believe that it can be that big. That beautiful. It’s an amazing reaction. There’s, I haven’t seen one person yet not have a significant reaction to a drone show. So when that drone shows in the air, you know, it’s 400 feet tall, it’s 400 feet wide, typically. And so it’s just a massive impression on them. And so you get just great wow factor out of everyone. Young, old doesn’t matter. Everybody just loves it.
Max Branstetter 16:28
I think that’s a new challenge. We got to find whoever’s like, the most unimpressed person. Maybe it’s Larry David, I think maybe Larry David, get him to watch the drone show. Yeah, he
Rick Boss 16:37
might, he might show up and be completely unimpressed with it, not for him. But he’s likely not going to be outside enjoying something fun anyhow. So that’s probably the reason we’ve got people that are outside enjoying an awesome outdoor event and they get a really cool end to their night or a cool punctuation to their night.
Max Branstetter 16:56
Absolutely. Exclamation point. Absolutely. What about those, the drones like the choreography, what what goes into the technical side that allows you to do what you do in the sky?
Rick Boss 17:09
Yeah, so the biggest piece of that is really that design that we were talking about earlier. So to get those choreographed just right, our design team pours in our so a typical 200 drone show you’re talking 40 to 50 hours of design time, showing where the drones are going to fly in time and space and what color they’re going to be just to make sure those drones don’t collide, make sure that it looks the way the client would like. And then that extra time in there too, is just to make it look beautiful to bring something more to it than just a slideshow. And that’s what we try and do you know, Houston rodeo show that I was mentioning, you know, you’ve got the bowl bucking in there, you’ve got movement throughout the show, just to make it that much more interesting for folks. But that quite a bit of time from our design team and our creative director, like I mentioned, just hours of time with them, just to make sure that everything looks great interaction with the client, showing them mock up showing them visualizations on what it’s going to look like getting their feedback, to make sure that we’re portraying their logos, their story that they’re looking to tell all of it in the sky, and then coordinating that potentially with music, fireworks, etc. Our team can do all of that, but at least 40 to 50 hours. And we’ve had some projects that go into the hundreds of hours.
Max Branstetter 18:26
And you don’t need to reveal all your your IP or trade secrets or whatever term you you want to use. We won’t dive into the secret of what makes guy elements work. But just to give us like a little hint, is it is it more on like the coding side with the drones? Or is it like actually like mapping out their paths? Like I have no idea how this stuff works.
Rick Boss 18:45
You know, not a huge, not a huge secret in what actually makes it happen. So all of the drones, they’re programmed, completely independent from each other. So when we design a show, each one of those drones have an independent path. And they have no idea there’s another drone out there. That’s one of the interesting things we get. I’ve gotten calls from every branch of the military, from the FBI, everyone saying, hey, we’d really like to understand, you know, are you guys using artificial intelligence, what kind of different software we’re using to control these drones. And I always tell them, it’s really not anything special. It’s not a secret sauce that’s happening in there. Every one of those drones have their own individual path. We synchronize all their clocks, and then we send them on their way. And each drone has no idea there’s another drone up there. They just know I need to be here and I need to be there at this certain time. And they make it happen. Of course, the real trick is having really good safety systems in place. Having a great team on the ground that makes sure that the audience is safe, that make sure those drones returned to home at appropriate time. So that’s really some of the bigger magic in the software that happens to make sure that if there is a problem with the drone, if there’s a problem with WhatsApp Putting on the ground that they can make adjustments and ensure that it’s safe for customers safe for the audience. And we have redundant systems in place, there’s multiple radio systems that are going on with the drones, multiple communications, and our pilots always have constant control of those drones to bring them back. But that’s that’s the tougher part if, if there was a secret sauce, and it’s like so many things in business, is you really have to work hard. That’s the secret sauce is that having great people that put in tremendous amount of time and care about the end result, that’s really what creates what’s happening with Sky Elements, and the type of shows that we’re putting together. And that’s hard to do in so many businesses. Sometimes it looks pretty straightforward, pretty easy to do. But it takes putting together a phenomenal team. And we’ve been really fortunate and blessed to bring on some really great people onto our team to make these things happen.
Max Branstetter 20:57
As you mentioned, working hard. And you can tell from just taking us through this, what I call the drone gauntlet. But this scenario of a new client drone show so much goes into the preparation. And so there’s so much actually working with the client and the design all the aspects how it looks aesthetically. But then there’s also as you mentioned, safety is of course, a huge focus, which has to be. And in addition to that, there’s like what’s the approval process from the FAA? Like, what, how much do you need to go through for them to say, All right, you can do a drone show tonight?
Rick Boss 21:29
when we started in the space, we’re one of the very few folks that even had the FAA licensing to make this happen. So when we went through the process, it was like a six to nine month process of getting the approvals from the FAA ensuring that all the safety systems were in place and documenting all of that to the FAA. And so they give a license, it’s called a waiver essentially, that says, hey, you’re able to fly swarm drone shows there since then, it looks like the FAA is made a little bit easier for folks to get through that, because that truly was a gotten wasn’t for us to go through that process of the documentation. And so yeah, every show that’s performed, you have to have FAA approval for that show, you have to meet all the guidelines for the FAA, because these are treated as aircraft. So we have to make sure we have all the safety distances, everything in place, our pilots are licensed pilots from the FAA, it’s quite a process, quite a bit of detail goes into even just that side of things, making sure that we can fly in that location, ensuring that we have all the appropriate distances from the audience and from any other infrastructure, etc. And getting that approval from the FAA. So our chief pilot and his team, they spent quite a bit of time going through that, because we’re, we’re flying hundreds flown over 500 shows so far. So every week there is just constant communication with the FAA and coordinating all of our shows.
Max Branstetter 22:59
Let’s get to showtime. So I am excited thinking of this theoretical drone show doesn’t even real. But let’s get to showtime. You mentioned you spent hours and you know, several weeks, sometimes several months in prep for a show you got a big show tonight. It gets to the point that all right, you’re on the run, the show is pointed to you. And all right, it’s time to press play. So I’m curious, both sides of this on one end, like what are you in team doing once you press play? And then on the other side of that, like, what can you tell? For somebody who has never experienced a drone show like what it’s actually like, well, these things are flying through the air.
Rick Boss 23:35
So the day of you know, most of the big heavy lift has already happened just like anything else. If you’re setting up a big event, making everything happen, all the heavy lift came from dozens and dozens of hours of prep to get it done out there. So then it’s just a matter of, you know, the logistics team getting everything out there on site, which by the way, that’s an entire lift in and of itself. You can imagine hundreds of drones coming in all over the US and all over the place. I mean, we’ve flown and Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Jamaica, Hawaii, all over the continental United States. So that logistic call is quite a bit.
Max Branstetter 24:12
Can you just fly the drones to the venue and have them dropped off?
Rick Boss 24:16
So we’ve calculated it out and in order for us to get from where we’re based in Dallas, Texas to get it to Florida. We have to make about 3,000 stops to change the batteries out so
Max Branstetter 24:30
Okay, sounds sounds maybe not worth the squeeze. Squeeze is
Rick Boss 24:35
exactly right. But they’ll be there. They’ll be there eventually. Don’t you worry. That day of getting all of it done, you know to be able to push that button. It’s not only the show design is the logistics to get it all out there and to make it happen. And we typically have a pretty good crew that’s on on site. Make sure everything stays safe. Make sure the crowds in the right spot Add, make sure all the drones are in the right spot. And then hit play. You know, one of the questions, we get Mac’s funny, but just think about that is how many pilots do you guys have flying those shows? That you know, sometimes when you see 200 up there, people don’t know they think, Oh, those are 200 pilots up there choreographing it. Nope, it’s just one it’s all flown by computer, one push of a button. And, and so really our pilots, we joke is that they’re not really pilots. And some of our pilots, they can’t even fly a drone very well. What they are, is they’re, they’re fantastic network engineers. And so when you’re networking 300 drones together 500 drones together, their job is to make sure that all the equipment is performing at its highest level that everything is meeting all the right requirements going through their checklist before they hit play. They’re not actually flying a drone, they’re flying a computer. Yeah, the
Max Branstetter 25:52
the tech side seems a little bit important to what you do. So glad you got the right people with you. And then on the like the fan experience or audience experience side of that. So this is maybe my biggest question I imagine so many are. Yeah, I’m sure you get it all the time. But how does the sound come into thing? Like? Is it loud when you have so many of these droids? Drones, drawing droids something that Star Wars? Is it loud? We have so many of these drones flying through the air at the same time? Like how do you treat the like the audio side of that,
Rick Boss 26:22
you know, the drones actually are relatively loud, when you think about 500 drones taking off, if you’re underneath of them, it’s quite loud. But from just you know, most of the time, the audience the best place to be is five 700 feet away from the drones because it’s so large in the sky. So from that distance, you really don’t hear much of the drones. It’s not very, it’s not very loud from an audience perspective. And then for most events, most of the time that you’re experiencing a drone show, perhaps if you’re at the Oakland A’s, you’re at the Dodgers, etc, there’s gonna be music going on, you’re gonna have a great soundtrack that’s backing the drone. So you can’t hear the drones over the music. And it certainly if it were dead silent, even for most of the location, it’s barely a home from a good viewing distance.
Max Branstetter 27:11
Sounds cool. And you know what else sounds cool is your email inbox when you get the notification every Thursday morning that you just got a brand-spanking-new email from Max – that is if you have notification sound on that turned on, sound on whatever. And if you’re signed up for the Podcasting to the Max, that is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship. You get a new email every Thursday morning from me. And there’s plenty of puns and just awful like terrible jokes that don’t even deserve to be written in copy form. But I include it in there because it’s the only way I know how to roll. You can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Now, let’s wrap this up and bring these drones home. All right, well, let’s wrap up with some Drone-Themed Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it?
Rick Boss 28:02
Sounds good. Hit it.
Max Branstetter 28:03
Alright, let’s let’s get well let’s take this up into the sky. What is the largest number of drones in a drone light show that you would ever consider trying out? We have the ability
Rick Boss 28:15
to fly several thousand drones simultaneously the largest show that we’ve flown here in the US as 1,000 drones 1,001 drones in the show. But if we find the right client with the right budget, we’re happy to fly more
Max Branstetter 28:29
on that note who would be a dream client or brand or logo movie character something in that ballpark that you would love to portray through the sky?
Rick Boss 28:38
You know, I think we’ve landed our dream client one of them. So we’re going to be flying several Marvel shows this year. Just a real fun property. We’re having a great time one of those are going to be for the Pittsburgh Pirates. We’re gonna have an awesome drone show for them. And there’s gonna be several other out there going to be flying with us. So yeah, that’s a really fun client. I’ll tell you though, we’ve had so many just super fun. Clients and products like Star Wars is another one we flown 3 Star Wars shows and what a fun What a fun IP to fly. Right and just to fly Star Wars and have the TIE Fighter up in the sky and the Millennium Falcon, everything it’s just been fun. So yeah, you can find several of those on our website. There’ll be a couple more Star Wars shows coming up too. So we have a lot of fun with that.
Max Branstetter 29:27
I’ve seen the the highlight reel of the Star Wars stuff and it’s so cool. I mean you did so many characters and like iconic figures from Star Wars franchise and even just seeing that the name Star Wars all in its logo floating up into the sky is like the coolest thing ever. So I’m with it felt like it’s fun another planet so if it’s a brand, exactly. Besides the throne you’re gonna get besides your one of your specific drone light shows what is the coolest thing that you’ve ever seen in the sky?
Rick Boss 29:55
There’s a couple of I haven’t done it yet. But there’s a couple of drone shows that have been done. with fireworks on the drones. So that’s one of the coolest things that I’ve seen. And I can’t wait to do it. It’s hard to do in the United States, but we’re working on it. We have some really tough regulations here in the US, which are wonderful and makes us all safe. But there’s other parts of the world where they don’t have those kinds of regulations. And so they can do some of those crazy things. So yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s on my bucket list here for us to do a really cool show with fireworks off the drones.
Max Branstetter 30:28
If you were throwing a drone show for your birthday. What would be the music that was queued up alongside?
Rick Boss 30:38
It’s gonna be a mixed Pyro drone show, I think would be for my birthday. It’s almost happened a couple of times. But well, I don’t know what the soundtrack behind it would actually be. But it’d be something very Americana, very rock centric, for sure.
Max Branstetter 30:56
So what would the actual what would the visual side of that look like?
Rick Boss 31:01
The visual set, you know what I enjoy in our shows, some of my favorite shows, or some of our Americana shows, we’ve got this awesome show. It’s on our site to where you’ve got 500 drones, making the bald eagle flying in the skies, just really epic. I love that. I also love abstract type art with the drones. I think it looks wonderful. One of my favorite shows we’ve done this past year last year, was one called Blink in Cincinnati. And we had a really cool kind of different show. And I enjoyed that. So I probably have a mix of both of that it’d be a kind of an eclectic show for sure.
Max Branstetter 31:36
And then out of all the brands and movie characters and just general designs that you and team have put together. Which one would you say was the trick – I mean, I know it turned out awesome, but was the trickiest or most challenging to tackle?
Rick Boss 31:52
Now we’ve had a couple that I won’t say which one but we’ve had some brands that they’ve got some serious standards. And so they really own their IP closely. So we’ve spent a lot of time making sure that it’s right that it represents their brand. And so kudos to them for protecting their IP, I’d say those were there’s been some ones Yeah, we spent quite a bit of time on the IP, but nobody really stands out. None of them really difficult. But I I know of a couple that we spent extra time on to make sure it was right to be sure.
Max Branstetter 32:23
Well, on that note on your website. You know, it’s so common for companies to have a list of some of the clients they partner with. And if you go check, go check out your website, you have the coolest client section ever because it has the names of the clients like in drone array form. So I’ve never seen that before. That was always I literally was was checking it out on my phone and just said, Wow, this is amazing. So Rick, thank you so much for for joining for joining for droning, for joining and for all you and team do to light up the skies and beyond. Where is the best place for people to learn more about sky elements and as well. So if they want to connect with you, yeah, best
Rick Boss 33:02
place is to jump out to our website, SkyElementsDrones.com links out there to connect with all of us drop us a note love to connect out there also has a link to any of our public shows. And most of our shows are private shows, they don’t get listed on there. But there’s quite a few that are public shows. So if you haven’t seen a drone show, pop on there, find a show in your area where where we are and hopefully we connect up and show you some drones in the sky.
Max Branstetter 33:29
Definitely. And last thing here, Final Thoughts. It could be a quote, words of advice for you know, pioneering an industry like you are, whatever you want just some words of wisdom, send us home here
Rick Boss 33:41
in every business. And this is no different. It’s all about relationships, taking care of people doing what you said you’re gonna do, and you’re gonna do well and whatever business you go out there and tackle and we’re having a lot of fun in this space, and hopefully others are having fun in their space.
Max Branstetter 34:02
I’m having a lot of fun in the “Interviewing Rick” space. Rick, thank you so much for coming on the Wild Business Growth Podcast, sharing all you do in the drone-tastic drone world and all the ins and outs of Sky Elements. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite podcast app and tell a friend about the podcast and then maybe go see a drone show with them. And I’m sure Rick can tell you, Rick can tell you the nearest ones. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are plenty of podcasts and not yet drones but maybe drone podcasts – actually there probably are drone podcasts, too. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Drone Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
