Mike DiCosola - The Revenue Maze - Episode #024

Today’s guest has designed several patents over the years. He was inspired by the idea of Amazon using drones to deliver their products, so he went back to school to learn how to make drones and use them for everyday purposes and make jobs more efficient. Mike DiCosola, the CEO at Drone Industry Systems Corporation. Mike joins the host Valerie Cobb to share his tips on how a company can increase its revenue.

Takeaways:

  • One way to increase the revenue for your company is to find a problem and solve that problem by using the current technology you have available.
  • A drone isn’t just a flying robot, it can be anything that is autonomous. This means you can create a unique type of drone to fill a gap in your company.
  • When it comes to building drones, it’s a long-term commitment and endeavor but it will pay off for the future use of a drone to make jobs more efficient.
  • You need to feel empathy for the problem that you are trying to solve because you don’t want to sacrifice all your time on one single issue unless it is worth it.
  • You want to have empathy for the consumer. It’s important to feel that connection with your consumer and build that relationship with them.
  • Surveying your customer constituents is one way to find a gap in your company is see if you are able to fill it.
  • Even if you can’t get away for a full vacation, appreciate the moments when you can step away and recharge your batteries a little bit.

Quote of the Show:

1:44 “Filling a gap, a gap that might be a boutique gap or an all-encompassing gap that is not necessarily being paid attention to or has just been avoided for some time. And now new technology that has come can fill that gap.”

Links:

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Showing Empathy – Mike DiCosola – The Revenue Maze

I have a fantastic guest. Anybody who’s ever been through new product development or product development, written patents or those types of things, he’s done several patents. That means he’s an inventor as well, which is super exciting. He is the CEO of Drone Industry Systems Corporations. I want to welcome Mike DiCosola.

Thank you, Valerie. I’m excited to be on board here.

Mike, everybody wants to know a lot about anything that says the word drone in it for sure. We want to know more about who you are, what you’re doing, and all that fun stuff. We always start the show with one question. What is one thing that you can tell the readers that they can do to help them get out of the revenue maze?

The one thing you want to do is figure out a problem and solve the problem with a novel concept that is within reach of the current technology. It’s capable of creating a solution, not acknowledging the problem, but filling a gap, a gap that might be a boutique gap, or might be an all-encompassing gap that is not necessarily being paid attention to or has just been avoided for some time and now new technology that has come can fill that gap. I would say your core competency needs to be applied to that.

Figure out a problem and then solve that problem with a novel concept that is within reach of current technology. Don’t just acknowledge the problem. Fill a gap.

That sounds simple. Find a gap that technology could address that they don’t completely appreciate or underappreciate at this moment and then work that through. Give us a couple of pointers on finding the gap. That’s broad. People are heroes in their minds and they think this is something everybody wants and it isn’t. Tell us about that.

Using an example, what I had done myself is I had to say, “Drones have been around forever.” Nikolai Tesla made the first missile, which was a drone. There’s nothing new there and I bring that up deliberately because a drone could be anything autonomous. You would think everybody’s thought of everything about it, but there are many virtual ideas, physical ideas, and concepts that can be made from it.

I had to say to myself, “The military was using this, but how is the commercial world going to be able to see a unique differential between what I would like to bring forward and what others would?” That’s that gap whereas that gap of what differentiates you from the competition. For myself, it was looking at a drone and seeing somebody like Amazon years ago going, “We’re going to deliver using drones.” I said to myself, “How exciting.” My father was in the Air Force and this triggered me to go back to school to take a double degree in Aviation Transportation Management with robotics and unmanned ground systems for marine ground and air for this.

I’m sitting at the seat of a master because you did gibberish. Keep going. I love it.

This is what triggered me on that because I said to myself, “There is a gap. I’m not seeing this. I would love drone delivery product services, but what is the problem here with infrastructure?” Infrastructure all of a sudden is a big problem. Everybody has this concept of how they’re going to deliver a drone. Where was it stationed? Where was it sitting, and where did it go after it delivered things? These things pop up. I was like, “Where are we going with this?”

I saw a gap, and the gap was, for myself, infrastructure for autonomy. For autonomous infrastructure, you can’t rebuild the world. Now we have to figure out how do we make a novel solution within your grasp. That’s what I meant by that. What is within the grasp of your core competencies?

TRM 24 | Showing Empathy

Showing Empathy: We have to figure out how to make a novel solution within our grasp. What is within your core competencies?

You sit there and go, “I can’t redo the world, but I can repurpose specific infrastructure.” That’s where we created a patent that we filed in early nineteen called the Smart Rooftop and Ground Drone Airport. It’s taking a rooftop that was worthless, but still pre-existing as an infrastructure and turning it into a drone airport.

Now that creates an infrastructure solution for drones that don’t have a place to stay, charge, take off the land, and frog leap between locations. That’s where that gap was. We needed to figure out the ancillary parts, and this is where those several patents come into play because you have to figure out the ancillaries. How do you make this novel idea a reality and how do we integrate it into existing infrastructure? That was the repurposing.

I had a flashback to food replicators from Star Trek and having it be ready. We see those now. I did a presentation on autonomous vehicles a few years back based on some of that fun stuff. It’s like you’ve taken some of them that feel imagined and said, “We do have the tech ability to do it now.” I hadn’t even thought about the infrastructure portion. We do like electric vehicles. It’s an infrastructure issue. Where do you charge? Where do you go? It only goes this far. You saw the rise up of that and it went Infrastructure. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought of that with the drones.

I remember when Amazon said that and it was interesting. It also reminded me of an X-Files episode that they re-did. I don’t know when was it. It was a few years ago where everything was tech. You couldn’t even order through a human being and all the drones started taking over and everything. I thought they have to be able to take off and park somewhere. If a truck is leaving from point A to point B, we spent how many years creating roads and highways for infrastructure.

That’s why that’s an impossible arm to reach when you want to rebuild the world. That’s where that repurposing, and you brought up a good point there, of existing technology. Filling the gap allows you to do that. A drone hanger is equivalent to an airport hanger. I’m from Illinois and O’Hare Airport is a Class B international airspace.

You have a hub but at aviation, the spoke would be a little airport, like a Midway, now Gen O’Hare or Rockford. These are little airports. That’s a hub in a spoke environment. Now that you have the idea, you have to research how you integrate it with current, existing infrastructure. Now I take it to where do we do that migration? How do we create the integration? Where is the gap that has not made that happen yet? That’s where you brought up current technology. There is current technology that can build that gap, and that’s where that novelty comes in.

To me, that’s extremely interesting, but I’m interested in many things. It’s not hard to fascinate me with things. I’ve always thought that was an interesting thing. If you’re going to get a package on your doorstep, how are you going to do that? Who’s going to create those hubs or whatever you’re talking about?

It’s a great topic on getting out of the revenue maze because at times, we want something or we wish for it, and it doesn’t mean the globe is ready for it right there. We talk about you could fix this problem but a lot of times, what happens is you’re not even sure you’re solving the right problem for that period too. Let’s take us through a day in the life of somebody who’s almost started with a daydream. How many years ago was it?

Eight years.

It prompted you to go back to school, get this education, then go and do what you needed to do to start in 2019 to now where you’re going to be launching. From a daydream, what was that like? Did you go, “I have this light bulb?”

It’s that entrepreneurial spirit that kicks in and it combines with that inventive spirit. That’s enough fuel to start you. From a perspective of reality, I felt it was obtainable. It was a true commitment where I needed to do driving for GrubHub to feel what somebody felt like when they didn’t get a tip. I needed to feel what it was to have an algorithm send me 5 miles away from the best location where I live to fill in somebody who wanted one order and there’s one restaurant on their whole application, but within my three blocks, I had hundreds of them. You have to feel the pleasures and pains of what people are going through to fill those gaps.

Having an entrepreneurial spirit combined with an inventive spirit is enough fuel to start you off, that’s for sure.

It’s not necessarily the idea or the concept that sparks what you are ready to do. What are those pain points that are reflective not just on the end user, but on the operator, the business and the infrastructure, in this case, aviation? By creating that one concept, others stemmed from it. The reason why it took so long is that I had to look at this and go, and you said another point here, sometimes the world is not ready for something. I had to make sure this was a long-term goal, and I thought this would be a ten-year goal.

The question is, can I eat an elephant one bite at a time over these ten- years? By the time the market and the world are ready, where will I be? This was a long-term investment and commitment for me. You got to decide, is this something you’re going to want to do within a year? What’s the executable time on this? Some things can get executed quickly and other things like this. It’s a long-term endeavor, commitment, and sacrifice with no guarantees. That’s part of the challenge. The trip down the memory lane you’re making me go through is what you grasp onto because you look back and go, “Eight years went by.”

Second, we’re two years away from your goal. We’re getting very close and it’s an exciting time. I would say find the problem, create the solution, and feel empathy for that problem. Is that problem solvable with a novelty idea that can happen in the timeframe you are willing to sacrifice? It’s because that’s another issue all in itself.

TRM 24 | Showing Empathy

Showing Empathy: Find the problem, feel empathy for that problem, and create a solution.

Empathy is one of the things that sometimes gets missed. It’s all numbers. Are there enough numbers? Especially, when you’re dealing with go to market, you can forget that a bit. It was in Blue Ocean Strategy. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book. I can’t even remember the name of the company, but they were trying to come up with an iron. Everything was great with this clothing iron, so they were ready to go to market. They packaged everything and it was a dismal failure because they hadn’t pressured tested and who their downstream was.

I can’t even remember if it was because they packaged it more for a female audience, but it was created for a male audience or vice versa. The story is they had this great thing that solved this problem and they got to the end of the tunnel and they forgot to test the market before they launched. Even down to the packaging, we’ve done the state gauge process. We do the business case, and that’s all the numbers. As you get into whether we should do this or not, you start testing the entire subsections or whatever. You start pulling people in and then from there, you get their responses, you edit, you do all this stuff, and you eventually get down to some, hopefully, clinical trials and even packaging.

Do they like the name? What’s the price elasticity? What if somebody is willing to pay, not specific, but in that range? When you started talking about it’s been this eight-year road and it goes into empathy. One nugget that sometimes is completely forgotten in the testing phase is the whole hero in our mind. We think it’s right and we forget an end user has to adopt it for it to solve the challenge and be successful. I love that empathy. When they go down the different personality types, are you an empath, or did you learn to do that in your process? How did you do that?

For myself, I always look at something going, “I’ll support you if it has a solution. Is that solution talking to me and my problems? If it is, we have the synergy for me to go further with you and take my money.” I want to feel like I can’t forget that empathy for the consumer because we all drink our own Kool-Aid. When we get to the point where we believe in our product, we are drunk on that Kool-Aid. If you’re not, you don’t believe in it yourself. It’s personified. People will know that. They can tell if you like what you do or if you’re believing what you do. All these things come into play. In the end, you set another point here, which is it’s the end user.

We can’t forget to have empathy for the consumer, because we all drink our own Kool-Aid. When we get to the point where we believe in our product, we get drunk on that Kool-Aid.

One of the things I learned about indirectly was different aspects of those end users because you would think it’s the mobile application customer, but it took me down different paths of empathy in different areas that you never thought would touch it. Unless you broke open the actual matrix of it, what were some of the problems that stemmed from it? What were these tentacles? One of the things that you would look at is you went to aviation and there’s another gap involved here. There’s no weather information that is currently available for drones that they can use between airports from ground to 400 feet AGL, Above Ground Level.

From a surface of 400 above ground level, AGL, and between airports, they use this underground-type weather information, but there’s no to-the-doorstep situational awareness of what that weather is like. You now have another gap. You start stemming off, spending more attorney fees, and buying more patents.

You start to realize, “Aviation needs situational awareness to detect and avoid from a remote location. I need to know what that other side is doing. How’s the weather there? Is it conducive for flight?” Now there was weather needed at the doorstep. We created the Smart Delivery Doorbell Miner. It will mine data and allow somebody to own a doorbell, but it can attach to any shipping carrier in the world. It will be able to be on the blockchain. We’ll be able to reward the data that’s coming to us, which stems into empathy. The customer always knows these days. We’ve all gotten wise that your data has taken it from you.

Why did that commercial show up?

All of a sudden, your Google has some ad coming up. This is the point. People are like, “That’s my data. I want to own that data.” It’s another empathy, an indirect part that you don’t realize. That’s why we introduced crypto utilities into another patent because we want to be able to be transparent with a frictionless relationship where we can get that metadata from the direct customer and provide aviation situational awareness now solving this problem. That was indirectly not meant to be paid attention to in the beginning.

This is genius. I can hear my daughter saying, “Genius. I hadn’t even thought about that.” It’s a fun road that you’re going down. We got to get an attorney and a patent again, and now we’re running into this. We got to get it. There’s not much disruption out there. We use the term disruption all the time. The last huge disruption was the iPhone and that was in 2000. That was simply because they beat others. They were better at marketing because there were other technologies. We laugh at this.

It ages me but Palm did a live drive that had a phone app in and you could do the stylists and all. I’m sure if we go back in time to all the early computer processing and all that stuff, there’s stuff that I have zero clue that was already there. It sounds disruptive in what you’re doing. I was thinking about drone airspace and how you have to get certain permits to have that airspace. In places like Amazon, how many drones will be out there? You have to deal with privacy policies, too, like, “You can’t fly over the person’s backyard. They might be sunbathing with less than what you wanted to see,” or whatever. I’m sure you have completely thought of that too.

You had to think about that one. That’s a very good point. Those are things now. We call those roadblocks. How do those roadblocks now affect the concept or the novelty? I would say another thing to consider as an inventor is to defend your business model. Pretend like you’re sitting in front of somebody and you have to defend it. Somebody that turns around and says, “I’m not letting you go over my rooftop. That’s my private area.” This can happen, but now you could say, “You’ll get crypto rewards if you do because it’s a utility. It’s not security. We give you rewards that you can apply to your favorite vendor when you do the orders.” All of a sudden, it’s okay. We also have drone landing pads that are going to be made for specific geolocations.

TRM 24 | Showing Empathy

Showing Empathy: Defend your business model. Pretend like you’re sitting in front of somebody and you have to defend it.

You can put a landing pad in different areas and you can have the weather there. Now you can get rewarded that way. It’s like, “I don’t want you to fly over my house, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll put a landing pad for that drone in front of the house.” You got to think that way. The crypto rewards will exchange their authority. We have to give the power back to the consumer. It needs to be flipped on its head. It needs to be able to say, “You own this data. How do we compensate you for it?”

Because somebody is going to buy it from us, we need to be able to compensate you and we need to incentivize the vendor. The vendor turns around and says, “I’m getting free in what way?” Yes, but you have a captured audience and now we can apply that towards marketing like Uber or GrubHub will be able to promote you and these can be applied to you. Now you have this environment where you have a captured audience that supports what you’re doing because the innovation is around them and the empathy connects. It’s not just to the operator anymore. It’s to the customer, the vendor, and even the building owner who you’re repurposing their rooftop.

Now they say, “Mike, why do I want one of those on my roof? Will the municipality even care?” “At this point, your roof has been a liability.” I’m talking to a revenue officer here. “Secondly, I don’t see you making revenue from it, so you can either subsidize or monetize it through sensors that are going to be repurposing your rooftop. What if you had five tenants, a lab testing company, a retail store, a fast food chain, and a convenience store? They might all want your rooftop drone airport. Maybe you’ll charge them a percentage of ticket sales. Maybe you’ll charge them more rent if they want that product.”

You have a huge education piece out there because it’s almost a bit like the cell towers. When people were going but a lot smaller because you don’t see it. Unless they’re taking off, it’s on your rooftop. It’s out of sight, out of mind. You’re like, “If we rent this piece of land for this cell tower, this behemoth cell tower is sitting in my yard.”

You’re right. That’s another reason why it’s on rooftops. The patent says Rooftop and Ground Drone Airport, so it uses surrounding ground space. We’re all about safety, security, and sustainability. Bringing those drones and the sensors on the roof, we now have low weather information that’s never been available.

We have the security of the drones sitting behind the parapet wall. Those are little features. Again, we’re looking at the empathy of the landlord. The landlord is going, “Tell me why I want this. How are you going to get this with the municipality? How are they going to get involved?” Now we have another empathy. How are we mixing this stew here? You turn to the municipality and say, “How about a first responder drone, an Amber Alert drone? How about a 911 drone? How about a news-on-demand drone? Why don’t we have these lines?”

I can already see all these channels. Here’s your government channel, commercial channel or whatever it is going to be. You then have the buy-in. It’s interesting that even in this show, we’ve been talking about small businesses that are trying to figure out how to get out of the revenue maze. Sometimes, I haven’t brought it up much, but surveying your customer constituents. I thought, “I can see Mike. He’s going to be posting on LinkedIn and he is going to be going, ‘What do you think,’ so that he can find the gap, and figure out what might be the gaps in the hole in the story.”

That’s the empathy thing that you were talking about. The buy-in and the education piece and things that are necessary. Mike, you’re Italian, so we’re going to go off-script. People like to also learn about the person that is on the show. I brutalized your last name. I know it because I saw the look on your face.

You did it perfectly now.

It took me three times right in my brain. Anyways, I’m not Italian, but my hands go crazy. We already talked about that. I’m already halfway there. I always say we played one on TV, but I was an opera singer, so I sang in Italian. At the end of the day, what are you passionate about? I know you’re passionate about drones and solving problems. What are some other fun things that you do in your free time? What do you do?

I like playing pool. If I get the time and I want to wind down, I’ll play some pool.

I’m horrible at the pool. Usually, they want me on the team to make sure that the other person can win.

I love that. It’s like chess where you set up the ball for the next ball. You can’t just grab it. You got to get it there. That’s one of the things. I also like to find those innovations. Believe it or not, it’s a hobby of mine. I like to innovate, so I’m always listening to what’s out there and trying to go from there. On the relaxing side of things, I like going to the movies. I like the traditional movies going to the traditional theaters. We work a lot, so going out to dinner is a little mini-vacation to me. I love to cook, which is another hobby of mine. It’ll get you here when I make my sauce.

TRM 24 | Showing Empathy

Showing Empathy: Believe it or not, innovation is really a hobby of mine. I really like to innovate.

I have this drone coming to my doorstep giving me the sauce.

Those mini vacations are so nice because it’s stepping away. Even though sometimes you can’t take a vacation, it’s like having that moment where you can enjoy yourself, and appreciate the person who’s taking care of you. You always got to appreciate them because they’re hard workers. That’s a way of giving back and not losing that human factor.

Now I’m hungry because I’m thinking of Italian food and I just had that on. It was funny because we went to the movie and we saw Where The Crawdads Sing. We talk about pricing decoys for everything. I always buy the big bucket. That is because it’s more for me, even though I don’t eat it all, it feels like I won something for the price. I got more because it costs $0.50 to make that popcorn. It was a great memory because we watched this great movie. We went to an Italian restaurant, believe it or not, right before it, and I had this amazing parmesan chicken.

You brought that up and it’s true. It’s a little bit of giving back. I jokingly talked about the X-File episode, and if you haven’t seen it, I don’t remember the title, but it was all around not tipping a robot the entire problem with all the drones and everything. It’s like, “You have five more seconds to tip this robot.” They wouldn’t do it. Fox and Molder wouldn’t do it and then at the last three seconds, it’s like, “We’re going to pay the tip. My whole smart house went against me.” I was thinking to myself, it is showing that appreciation back to that person who works so hard.

Again, that falls back to empathy.

Yes. Anyways, Mike, this has been such a fun dialogue. These are some of my favorites when we get into tech because I’m such a sci-fi geek, to begin with. I know a lot of people would like to know how to even get ahold of you to run ideas past you. What’s one way?

You can get me on LinkedIn at Mike DiCosola. You can also get me at DroneIndustrySystems.com. and DroneIndustrySystems.io where the NFTs are for those Smart Delivery Doorbells. We have another website called Smart Delivery Drones. These are all the developments that we’re working on.

Everyone, thank you for reading and whatever you do with this episode. It is so fun to do these. It’s my therapy. Anybody, if you like it, you want to chat whatever on the episode, we’re so glad that you tuned in on this. Mike, I want to thank you again.

Valerie, thank you. It’s been fun. I’m so appreciative of you inviting me.

You’re welcome.

Important Links

About Mike DiCosola

Mike DiCosola

Mike DiCosola, CEO and founder of DISC, leveraging more than ten years of general contracting experience and seven years of research and development in autonomous vehicle delivery, developed a strong portfolio of UAS/AAM infrastructure intellectual property which includes an Autonomous Fleet Logistic Infrastructure and Delivery System or “Vertiport In-A-Box System” (VIB). A fully autonomous smart airport that works with aircraft ranging from small quadcopters to large electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, the system also includes a separate but integrated smart vehicle mailbox/parcel landing/takeoff pad and charging station and fully integrated cyber security support services.

Mike designed the network to be scalable, modular, interoperable and cyber secure on an open platform with blockchain data validation, encryption and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) backbone software, supported by a node-centric edge computing mesh network. Mike has designed several patents over the years. Mike’s manufacturing experience has allowed him to create products from cradle to grave. From designing & creating retail products, as well as its packaging and marketing material that goes behind it, to managing wholesale distribution and warehouse logistics.

Mike’s interest and focus is in National Air Space Infrastructure for the UAS/Drone Delivery and Services industry. Mike has extensive experience in General contracting over the past ten years and is currently in the process of developing a Smart Home subdivision in the hopes to have it integrate with drone delivery services. Mike’s studies are focused on a double degree in Aviation Transportation Management and Unmanned Systems and is currently working on his accelerated Master’s Degree. Several of Mike’s patents focus mainly of this subject of interest.

Mike’s goal is to make UAS delivery & services a safe and proficient method used at both the consumer and commercial private sector, as well as the public and military sector. With over 600 UAS & AAM industry URLs, UAS patent filings, and dozens of UAS trademarks, Mike hopes to help contribute to this industry and its very talented wide range of participants, by providing the R&D needed to make drone delivery a reality in every day life.

 

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About The Author : Valerie Cobb

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