Sample to book coming in 2019

Chapter 1: The Bus Ride

I bought DroneCamp.org for $2.99 in March of 2016 and I was thinking how in the world I was going to roll out a summer camp for kids. Several months later, I shared my idea with my parents and they thought I was crazy. “Matt, parents have already registered their kids for camp. It’s May, you’re too late.” said my Mother. “Good luck getting into schools.” said my Dad.

Now my parents eventually became supportive, besides my mother thinking I was going to kill a kid with a drone flying out of the sky. I always liked that my parents never sugar coated their advice. After talking with them I felt destroyed and I got a queasy feeling in my stomach that I couldn’t pull this off.

Weeks later I was on a bus ride headed back to my college where I met my soon to be business partner, Daniel Majestic- yes what an incredible last name! Daniel and I were small talking and he had a similar story like mine. In high school he started a car and boat detailing company that became rather successful. He eventually hired about six of his friends and they spent their summers cleaning cars.

“The supplies only cost around $20 and I charged $300 per boat. We did around a boat a day.” he told me. This is how Daniel saved up for his college education and his business was ironically called, College Bound Detailing.

There was something about Daniel that I was fascinated with. Like me, Daniel took a risk and decided to throw the typical summer fast food job out the window. He was the only person besides me that I heard of who mastered the art of leveraging his age. After hearing Daniel’s story, I knew that we would become life long friends.

After about an hour of talking with Daniel, I became comfortable telling him about my Drone Camp idea. It’s not like this kid was going to steal my name- I owned DroneCamp.org after all. I started to see his wheels turning as I was walking him through the idea and I knew I had him locked in.

“The only problem is that I think I’m too late for this summer.” I said as reality started to sink in. Daniel’s ingenious response was why I asked him to be my first ever business partner.

“Matt, you live in Cincinnati right?” I nodded. “The amusement park Kings Island is like minutes away from your house. Do you plan months in advance to go to Kings Island for a day?” he said.

“I’m not following you man.” I replied.

He continued, “Your Mom is right. Parents have registered their kids months in advance for week long summer camps. What about making it a one day camp?”

Believe it or not, but Daniel was the person that motivated me to keep trying. I knew that he saw the potential and he shared the same work ethic as me.

“Do you want to spend your next summer cleaning cars or flying drones?” I asked him. He smiled, extended his hand and said that he was in.

Chapter 2: Football and Superman Underwear

The clock was ticking and we only had three weeks to bring our bus ride concept to life. I have never been a coffee drinker but that was about to change. The first step was to find a location where we could have our camp. Daniel was from Fishers, Indiana and the median household income was $103,000 so we figured that this would be a solid place to start.

My mom is always accusing me of exaggerating my stories but I literally called over a hundred people to get this off the ground. Each morning I woke up and called real estate agents, farmers, and schools to try to convince them to let me use their land. Let’s just say that my concept of leveraging my age was not working.

“You’re going to kill someone. Let me see insurance. Hell No.” became common responses that I received. But I didn’t give up.

What does any college student do when they are about to hit rock bottom? They either open a bottle of Smirnoff or they get on their knees and pray. I chose the second option.

Why is it so hard to secure land? I started crying and I asked God to provide a place for Daniel and I to hold the camp. “Lord, we just need one place!” I started shouting in my superman underwear from my dorm room. I went to bed that night defeated and I was prepared to tell Daniel that Drone Camp was over.

The next day I was walking back from my 8am media law class when I saw two students standing on the street corner handing out flyers. As they were forcing the flyer in my face, I politely grabbed one and walked away. Before throwing it in the trash, I glanced down at it. It read, “Flag Football Tournament at 8pm tonight. Location: Muncie Presbyterian Church.” I stared at the flyer for a minute and then I took off running to Daniel’s room.

“CHURCHES! That’s the answer!” I yelled as I ran into his room. Daniel just looked at me dazed and confused. I was thinking about places that had huge pieces of land and Churches were not even on my radar.

Daniel and I started calling churches and it was a pain in the ass to get past the Church secretary. “Our church mission does not believe in Drones. Have you watched the news? Children are dying from military drones everyday.” said a secretary right before she hung up on us.

We were down to our hundredth phone call and I decided to change our pitch and say that we were putting on a “science and technology camp.” This at least got us past the secretary and onto the Church’s business operations manager.

While I had the business manager on the phone I told her what our plans were and she asked a lot of questions. I told her that we would be willing to give 10% of our profits back to the church since the bible says to tithe 10%. She said that she would talk it over with the leadership team and get back to us in a couple of days.

That Saturday I was down in Nashville for my sister’s graduation at Vanderbilt University. Now keep in mind that I go to Ball State University (commonly referred to as “Testicle Tech”) and our STD rate is one in three. Let’s just say that I blended in perfectly with the Rhodes and Fulbright scholars surrounding me. My sister was about to walk up on stage to get her diploma when I received a phone call.

My parents were pissed that I took the call but I recognized the Fishers, Indiana area code. It was the business operations manager and she told us that we could use their facilities for the entire summer. I thanked them, hung up the phone and screamed ‘YES!’ in the middle of Vanderbilt’s commencement.