We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Graham Hill. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Graham below.

Graham , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, as a GIS and policy analyst, where I became interested and fascinated with satellite data. From there, I started following the rise of drone light show technology as a means to capture my own data, rather than purchasing a license from satellite providers.

When I left the lab in 2013, I began to tinker around with drones, building from scratch, trying out new models. I didn’t have a clear business idea yet, but I also couldn’t keep my hands off them, and was just enamored with this growing ability to fly and capture a view from the sky.

In 2019, we got our first drone light show request, and just like I’d done in the past, I set off to figure out how to accomplish this. So, I brought over a group from Dubai and struck up a relationship, deploying their drones for a weekly performance up in Copper Mountain, Colorado. I took the time to really learn and understand the market (which was so small!) and look for better ways to train myself and get better equipment. And while Covid would strike in March of 2020, I knew that eventually I would be going all in on drone light shows.

So, in January of 2021, I made an investment and by March of 2021, we’d already booked 3 shows for April and May. Since those first performances, we’ve now done 100’s of launches and shows all over the country, and continue to book out far in advance for our services.

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?

In the previous question I described my background.

Personally, I’m an outdoor enthusiast. I moved to Colorado after living in New Zealand, where I traveled around, sleeping in my car, chasing any vista, glacier, beach I could for about 8 months. If I go a week without getting on a trail or out in the wild someway, I’m not right. I know it’s easy to say that, living in Colorado, but for me it’s to a point where owning a business and being a lover of nature presents many ethical challenges, and in fact I would consider myself a “reluctant businessman.”

But, this is one of the reasons I love our business. We leave virtually no trace behind after a performance. Just about all of our work leading up to a drone show can be done remotely. We power our shows using battery generators, and have upgraded to smaller, more efficient drones, allowing us to require smaller crews to travel to shows. We are always seeking the next best technology to deploy, but it must meet our ethical standards. We also have a “let my people go surfing” mentality within our office. Some days, we will work a late night preparing for a show or doing maintenance, but as soon as the work is completed, you are mandated to leave the office and go enjoy Colorado.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I left NREL in 2012, I feared that I would not be able to quickly find another similar career path, or that the next job may force me to move out of Colorado.

Instead of quickly looking for work, I decided to spend time on improving my skills as a worker. I explored web development, app development, project management, and slowly over time I realized that I’d developed many important skills for getting a business off the ground, and that’s what I did. Up until that point, I’d always worked for someone else, but I knew I had some marketable skills that I could put together towards my own business.

So, as a college tennis player, I started a tennis business and was quickly replacing my lab job in just a few months, and feeling very proud of the ownership of having done it on my own.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

We built an SEO strategy around our drone light show offering, making sure that we can be found in any market, and we constantly updated all of our content in the drone space year over year for the past 8-9 years. This has given us a huge advantage over other upstart companies in our industry. Consistency is the key, as is the tone of voice you choose to talk about your product and services.

As a result, our inbound traffic was responsible for about 95% of shows in 2021. The key to our conversion has been lightning fast response time, as well as a response package the gets people important information, as well as visual information within 1 hour of submitting a lead to us. When our customers say “wow that was fast!”, that achieves a major goal for us.

The good news for us is that inbound traffic is becoming less and less our main source of requests, as we have developed trust with returning customers year over year.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hireuavpro.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hireuavpro/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-hill-26b6a76/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@hireuavpro