 Here are some ways I found amazing and well-paying work as both a drone pilot and a video creator and how you can as well. So a lot of people who start picking up drones or cameras often have trouble transitioning into paid work as it is quite a different world than just flying or shooting for fun. That's because there are some specific skills you have to learn in order to become a professional. So by doing some more research and combining that with my own experiences I created a framework so that by the end of this video you guys will have the knowledge you need to make better connections, find amazing clients, and do highly rewarding work. Since our goal is to find more paid work let me introduce you to a framework that will help you build in the right direction and I call this the gig try force. Keep this try force like in zelda in mind I'll reveal each of the steps as we go through the video. Now if I were to take where I am now years of freelance video experience and FPV drone piloting and upwards of six figures in income and just slash that back to zero the way I'd start would be by smashing that like button and subscribing to Kyvertigo because he's going to give you a lot of information that will help. In the event that Kyvertigo didn't exist then the first thing I would do would be to make sure my skills are at a baseline level. Of course before you start getting paid for work you want to make sure that you can at least satisfy yourself. You know how to at least go through the workflow of think of a video idea shoot the video idea edit it and put it out somewhere. If you're a drone pilot you want to be able to fly confidently without crashing into something the last thing you want to do is make a client unhappy. If you don't know anything about video yet I'd recommend you learn more about video settings how a camera works in shutter speed aperture and things like that just so you can produce a good image for clients will be shooting for. Bonus tip get your license I feel like that is just very helpful in terms of knowing the knowledge to be safe also it's a nice emblem to show people that you're legit you put in the time to actually get licensed it's a good sign highly recommend as we're building our baseline confidence and ability the next thing I do is start working backwards which means that instead of charging blindly into the next job the next job the next job think about where do I want to be in three years what kind of work do I want to be doing do I want to be shooting cars do I'm shooting skydivers gansers you know there's a bunch of different particular things I think we each think we'll enjoy filming and even if it's not 100% yet having a goal is always better than not having a goal once you have an idea of what that goal is I can introduce you to the first point of the gig triforce which is skill sets and this is arguably going to be the most important point of the gig triforce because your skill set is going to power the other two sections as well the higher your skill set and the more that you understand and are able to do things in relation to your goal the quicker everything is going to propel forward so having a goal is going to inform you on what you need to learn and teach yourself in order to get ahead of the competition and get the ideal clients you want I was watching the future which by the way is a great channel for freelancers and professional creatives to learn from and they were doing this interview with john in stark and he mentioned that if you're going to pick a target market you might as well pick the one with the most money that you feel like you can confidently interact with which is why I think it's helpful to set a goal especially if one of your goals is to make a higher income and choose a subject matter that you can film that will hopefully yield better results financially once you've picked an industry or a field that you want to study more of you can study that industry more and you can learn more about what makes a good real estate video what makes a good car video what makes it a top high tier dance video once you build your skill set and knowledge in terms of being able to shoot that then you can go out and start shooting it which is the next thing I want to mention when you first start out as a freelancer or as a professional you're not going to get handed work out of nowhere you got to prove yourself and that's what this whole video is about is about building that foundation and that traction to start getting reached out to instead of having to reach out to and so the thing I'm going to recommend to you guys next is actually a beautiful thing about our career path is that we have the opportunity to make our own projects and that is going to be one of the most powerful tools as we continue down this journey when someone's not giving us an opportunity for something we want to shoot we've got to take it into our own hands we've got to make a project that casts and proves that we can do something like this and we can show that to more people and I'll get more into that later on but the important thing is to make sure you're making opportunities for yourselves and making projects for yourselves that's also how you're going to learn the fastest and build your skill set in the gig triforce but of course we can only do so much by ourselves at the end of the day it's still extremely helpful to have people around us that we can rely on which the next thing and the next step is going to be starts with those around you you have access to start with the people that you are most comfortable with your friends i've done this before actually i wanted to get some car drifting stuff for my fpv portfolio and i reached out to a good friend of mine i went to school with and i said hey i want to do more stuff with that fpv for cars and he's like yeah let's go to the mountain and shoot something real quick i have never chased a car before but there's a first time for everything so we did and it actually turned out really really cool and the coolest thing was there was no pressure to perform for a rando like a client we had a good time we got awesome shot it was super fulfilling and then i had a super cool piece that i can now show to other people that i want to do car stuff for hey i can do this and it actually helps a lot in making that snowball and that leads us to the second point in our gig triforce which is going to be connections connections are going to be some of the most important things you have so the better you can get at being a good point of contact being a reliable person being a good person a good friend then the higher success you're going to have being able to get paid work in the future an example of this is one of the biggest jobs i've ever gotten was a job i did with top golf and the way i was even able to work with them wasn't by necessarily networking through business contacts it was a good friend of mine i had before i even started fpv that i was doing a lot of art stuff with he ended up becoming a project manager for a marketing agency and when top golf was their client he thought of me because he saw i was posting fpv content and he knew i was down that road and because he trusted me i had to go set the back it up he gave me the job and the rest of his agency were down to do it and they've been an amazing continuous client that pays well so that's just one example of how connections can be an extremely extremely valuable part of your entire paid freelance professional life so by building your skill set into connections you're going to learn how to be a better provider and one thing i've heard multiple times over my experience is that people who are really good at their craft but are not good with people still get picked over people who may not be as good but are just a pleasure to work with that is one thing that separates the amateurs from the pros is how much of a pleasure that they are to work with on top of being able to get the job done so you might be wondering what makes you a pleasure to work with in the first place and gary v talks about this a lot if you watch his stuff he has a lot of knowledge and experience in business and he talks a lot about the word empathy it's a buzzword but at the end of the day it just means being able to put yourself in the shoes of the people that you're working with being able to anticipate their needs understand what their goals and their drives are what their fears are and how you can step in and solve their problems and make their lives easier the more you can do that the more you can make their lives easier be a pleasure to be around then the more they're going to like you the more they're going to want to work with you the more they're going to want to give you what you're worth and the more they're going to want to refer you to their friends and this can be hard to really wrap your head around as an amateur especially when you're starting out and you're scrappy and you're grabbing for everything and you're like i need this certain amount of money to keep moving on with my career but at the end of the day if you want to make more and you want to be with people who are going to treat you well and give you what you're worth then you have to put yourself after them you have to put their needs first and they will reciprocate because they see you making the effort to do that be someone who can solve a problem of theirs not someone that needs something from them if this information has been helpful to you guys so far please consider subscribing hitting the bell for more videos let's keep it going and on to the next step so we've worked backwards we started building our skill sets we've started to reach out to friends family and beyond and in turn in the gig triforce we are building our skill sets and we're building our connections so now at this point you should have started to work with some people you should have started to manifest some of the projects and the next thing is now that you have work is to increase your legitimacy and the way you do that is by sharing your work online having a good skill set is imperative because that's what allows you to grow having connections is important because that's what allows you to continue getting more and more clients and better clients but it's going to be hard to grow outside of your bubble if you're not sharing your work and one of the best ways to showcase your work in a way that people will love it is the third piece of the gig triforce which is portfolio your portfolio is awesome because you're no longer having to just by word of mouth tell people what you do and relying on people who have worked with you to speak for you now you have a whole another entity to demonstrate that for you whether you're there or not take the work that you've been trading for yourself for your friends and for your first clients put it into a portfolio reel of like a minute or less since attention is for never these days a minute or less is best and put it on Vimeo so that you can link it whenever someone asks for your work and of course post on social media just because we are in a crazy state of social media right now where I feel like attention is easier to get than ever because of short form content so being able to understand how to use social media to increase and maximize your reach is going to be imperative if you make content and it's actually getting increasingly more amounts of views and engagement when other people see it on your page they might think hey it's working for him if I hire him maybe it'll work for me too and this is another important step in terms of getting higher paid work and better clients is differentiating yourself from everybody else and of course easier said than done especially when you're starting out it can be a giant question mark in terms of how to actually start getting more views I completely understand that I was took me nine eight years to get to five thousand followers on Instagram and it wasn't until year nine where I had one explosive video and something finally clicked it's finally understood something and I went from five thousand to I'm at like seventy thousand now and it's been less than six months so it's been crazy what I think helped a lot was being able to understand what people wanted and once again that goes back to empathy being able to study content that was really good and talk to people about what they really want and understand what clients really liked in their type of videos and then taking that DNA putting it into my own work and sharing it and that ended up working a lot now I've been able to consistently get more views because I understand what people are looking for so once again putting yourself into the shoes what problems do they need solve if you're trying to real estate what are real estate agents looking for they're probably looking at their top real estate agents who are hiring the best real estate fpv pilots or the best real estate videographers watch those people who are making those videos and take DNA from them integrate it into your own content and you'll start to see magic happen and of course you can't just copy them because they're the best at what they do so the next most important thing is finding your own DNA what makes you different what combination of interests skill sets and perspective do you have that you can start to create your own version of it and stand out and become your best self i think the reason why i'm able to stand out as an fpv pilot is because i don't just post my portfolio work as it is because i'm definitely by no means the best pilot out there but i started integrating more of a human element into it i embrace the fact that i am the pilot i'm the person you're going to be working with and i want to reflect that in my content because i take pride in trying to be a good person and a pleasure to be around and work with when i'm on a professional set so showing that in my content and my portfolio is important because then people understand what they're getting when they hire me and here's one thing i want to touch on and don't want to gloss over because i do think it's important and it's something that once again a lot of amateurs struggle with which is being able to focus and niche down as they say a lot of people are scared of this especially when they start out because you might think oh i'm limiting myself from doing all the things i want to do but in reality especially when you're starting out if you say you can do everything you can do sound video drone real estate cars dancing at the same time then people are really confused about what exactly it is you're really good at one thing about niching down is it doesn't have to be permanent don't worry it's not going to be you for the rest of your life it actually gives you more leverage to join bigger projects and gain higher opportunities because i stopped just focusing on video and i took fpv drones and i started to carve out my own voice with that tool very specifically i was able to be noticed by higher level productions and i was able to get on and paid higher level rates because i had this very unique skill instead of just being a general crew member and by getting on these higher level sets you're going to see higher level people and you're going to learn more things quicker it's just a win win and once again you don't have to stick to it all the time you just carve out your niche and then you start to explore on the boundaries of that niche and you solely expand in that interview i was talking about with johnson stark in the future he mentions a really good analogy about a magnifying glass so if you put a bunch of kindling on the ground i don't care how hot a date is usually the ground will not automatically catch on fire but if you take a magnifying glass and focus the energy on a particular point you can light a piece of wood on fire right so he says focus is what you need to start the fire so start your fire baby i understand the resistance to this thought process and once again you don't have to take it but i had the same resistance and i've tried both and i've always noticed that whenever i do embrace being specific and having a spearhead i like to call it a spearhead which is my fpv drone that i use i've always found that yields much better results so recapping the steps i would say after achieving your baseline ability to create product video start to work backwards cast your goal in terms of what direction you think you want to go once again doesn't have to be perfect and then start to reach out to the friends and family and people around you that may have connections and resources to help you make work that will help you move towards these goals and then once you've made that work showcase it and share it and increase your legitimacy and this goes in tandem with the gig triforce which is to build your skill sets once again the most important tip and then this gonna bleed into building your connections which is going to help you get better and better and more consistent work taking the work you create with your skill set and connections and putting them into your portfolio which is going to work for you which is going to demonstrate how capable you really are to people who you may not have met yet and build your social media following all these different things and the cool thing about this is that each time you increase one of these it may be hard to kind of get that ball rolling but as you continue down this journey and as you apply more and more it starts to snowball and it starts to move more and more and this is the point where i'm starting to experience in in my career which is where i've been putting in a lot of reps i've tried a lot of different things and through this advice and through this experience hopefully i can shortcut your journey and cut out all the fluff and the mistakes i made follow this and you should be able to get that snowball of your the rolling much faster much larger if this video sparked any ideas or questions you have please leave them in the comments below i'd love to respond to them you might ignite the next video idea this has been kai thank you guys subscribe hit the bell if you like this content and i'll see you guys soon thank you very much take care best of luck peace