I hope you had a safe, productive, and fun week Friend.  Brett Hoffstadt here. Since you wanted to know when the book "Using a Drone in Civil Engineering" will be available I wanted to share another quick update with you.

Thanks again for your desire and dedication to use a drone safely, legally, and productively for this purpose. Let me repeat my invitation again - if we haven't spoken yet 1-on-1 about your particular situation and goals, we should do that!  It will help me help you so that this book has exactly what you need & want to make you successful.  

To prove how serious I am about that, my cell is 210-753-0843. I prefer we set a day and time to talk ahead of time over email. But you can jump to text or calling me if you want. If I can't answer right then I will call you back.

This week was exciting on the book front. The cover design is underway right now with the same graphic design company I've used for 3 previous books. They are in Yugoslavia, by the way.  Welcome to the connected gig economy!

There are 3 frameworks I wanted to use for the book.  Then I decided, what the heck, we really need all 3.  So the book will have 3 major sections:

How each of those disciplines relate and are necessary for the safe, legal, and productive operation of your drone program are going to be addressed in those sections.  They will have several short & concise chapters.

As I said before, the passionate goal of this book is to give you the most important 20% of knowledge, tools, and tips that will provide 80% of the value and experience you need to massively accelerate your learning and success.

I ran a poll with a Facebook group of commercial sUAS pilots that I'm in. Turns out that the entrepreneurship section had (by far) the greatest interest.   That makes sense since most of those people are the DSPs who are trying to earn money outside of or instead of their full time job with a drone.

Is that you too, Friend?  

Here's a statistic you may find interesting. When running a new business, how much proportion of time do you think should be dedicated to marketing and sales?

The answer that I've learned from a lot of entrepreneurs is... 

Would you believe 20% ?

Sorry, that's wrong.  It's actually the reverse.

80% !

Without strong marketing and sales, it doesn't matter how good your product or service is.  Maybe sad to admit, but true.

That's the section I'm working on right now.  Taking a quick break to do some of that actual marketing and sales effort with you right now. ;-)  Don't know if you realized that, but it's true.

And if you're really curious, I'm failing big time on matching that ratio of 80/20.  So far of the approximately 66 hours I've spent on this book project, 25% has been on the marketing and sales.  I'm keeping track.  

Of course, after the book is launched, 100% of the effort will be on marketing and sales. But one of my big lessons in business has been that you need to start the marketing and sales on day #1.

What about your drone effort, Friend?  

Any burning questions or issues with marketing or sales that you want help with?  That's what I want to help you with in Part 3 of the book.  Reply or give me a call so we can talk about what that might be.

Have a great weekend,

   Brett

   Still in Folsom, CA

P.S. Also this week - I've teamed up with some high profile and very successful people and companies in the AEC and commercial drone world to lend their review of the book.  This will be the best of the best!  If you think you should be included with any use cases or success stories, you need to get in touch with me immediately so we can figure out next week how to get you included in the book. After that it will be too late. For this first edition anyway.  Maybe you'll catch up for the next edition. ;-)