We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chaz Simmons a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chaz, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today.
If I were to start back over, I would’ve focused more on marketing my drone portfolio towards large commercial businesses and organizations that were not yet utilizing drones in their marketing budgets. I began flying recreationally and mostly flew my drone to film my travels, then small businesses once certified but they don’t always have the budget for drone marketing, don’t see the need for it or simply no longer exist as a businesses to use my services.
Most large businesses use drones to survey/inspect which is significantly faster and easier than the editing I would I have to do if I continued to focus on travel, film and music.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
When I first began flying drones in 2017, I was a travel rep preparing for my next international trip to Dubai. Inspired by a friend, I bought a drone in hopes of filming my travel from a different perspective to promote my business. I learned within minutes of putting my drone in the air, that I needed to be certified to fly in the UAE and that motivated me to get my Part 107 certification.
In 2019, one of biggest opportunities was filming the soon to be 200 acre solar farm in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Houston that will utilize a landfill that was decommissioned over 30 years ago but then the pandemic hit.
The quarantine definitely slowed everything down but then my next big opportunity came during quarantine. Costco Wholesale was considered an essential business and allowed Instacart and Shipt deliverers inside of the warehouse outside of business hours. The problem is that they would have to shop with forklifts actively moving around the floor, posing risk to the shoppers and drivers. The solution was creating a path for the delivery shoppers follow and the best view of the path was an aerial view. I filmed the aerial views for the training videos and now I’m the Costco Drone Pilot for the Texas region.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding experience is hearing that “wow” from someone, after seeing one of my images or replaying one of my videos.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As far as resilience goes, I’ve had to push my drones to their limits so that I could know mine. Whether it’s below freezing, windy, hot or raining; I’ll fly just to get a difficult shot of the sunrise. I’ve had to replace a few drones due to this but the shot was well worth it in the end.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carolinaschaz7.wixsite.com/eyez-of-chaz?fbclid=PAAaa8kPDN0K3oF17ftgtTLsA7XDVbRZR_ykBTbUwnD-7CffTQH1grwsQN28g_aem_AQ6jF9a6oTaNGlKv5R9RX25l8GuuPyqhmXstYcV_RsAzLv_E2VD5HGmoUxQUm4cIF9I
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eyezofchaz/profilecard/?igsh=ZW9hN2dxMnd6eHB4
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@eyesofchaz?si=4fdegd4zfGeGE4l1
Image Credits
Vi4ion productions.