Parker Sheppard (00:00):

I got this one FPB shot that I remember when I posted it. It just blew up and it was just millions and millions of views just rolling in and it ended up getting 50 some million views on TikTok. I forgot how many millions of views on Instagram, but it just skyrocketed my social media accounts. I broke a hundred thousand followers in a month.

Ross Borden (00:21):

This is creator, the podcast from Matador Network. I’m your host Ross Borden, and I believe creators are the future of all global advertising. So join me as I sit down with top creators to hear about how they got started, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the tips you need to become a full-time creator. Alright, we are back with another episode of Creator the podcast. Today I have Parker Shepherd. Parker, welcome.

Parker Sheppard (00:49):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ross Borden (00:50):

Where are you calling us from? Where are you based?

Parker Sheppard (00:53):

I’m currently in Salt Lake. This is where I’m based at now in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ross Borden (00:57):

Okay, nice. So Parker is an FPV drone pilot and maybe much more we’re going to find out, but I definitely discovered you from seeing just your insane drone videos across TikTok Instagram. So for those who are not familiar, tell us about FPV Droning and how you got started and a little bit of your origin story.

Parker Sheppard (01:22):

Yeah, so FPV, if you know what FPV is, it’s first person view drones, it’s this kind of new technology and new style of drones that has emerged in the past several years, well emerged in the filmmaking industry. It’s been around in more of just having fun doing freestyle racing kind of stuff in the past. But yeah, it emerged in the past couple years and it just kind of gives you a more immersive way of filming with drones.

Ross Borden (01:49):

And this started, I think the first time I ever saw these was racing. Did it start before we were documenting travel and doing it

Parker Sheppard (01:58):

As

Ross Borden (01:59):

Filmmaking? Is it racing where it all began with the racing drones?

Parker Sheppard (02:03):

Yeah, racing was kind of the beginning of it. Racing and what we call freestyle where they go out and do flips with it and people will go to abandoned buildings and stuff and fly through the buildings and through gaps and everything. So there’s kind of those three different niches of FPVI sit more in the cinematic world of it, but I still enjoy going and doing some freestyle and racing for fun on the side. But yeah, it all started with that and it started years ago, well before I jumped into it. I have friends of mine that tell me stories of when they started flying FPV, they were tearing apart weed controllers to pull the gyroscopes out of the weed controllers to put in their drones. They didn’t have gyroscopes for it back then.

Ross Borden (02:46):

It was like an engineering feat. People were building these things basically.

Parker Sheppard (02:50):

Yeah, yeah. I mean I still build a lot of my drones as well. It is more accessible now. You can buy pre-built ones, but yeah, this is my little work bench back here that I build a lot of my drones at.

Ross Borden (03:02):

Why do you build your own? It is just like

Parker Sheppard (03:05):

It’s better or being able to customize it because mobility of it. So for instance, we just needed, there’s certain scenarios it’s like, oh, I need drones specifically for this and I can’t really find a good prebuilt one, so we’re going to build ours ourself so we can customize it the way we need it. For instance, we needed a drone recently for a project where we were flying over crowds of people and you can’t legally fly over crowds of people unless you have special waivers from the FAA. If they’re not under 250 grams have protected propellers, so you have enclosed propellers

Ross Borden (03:42):

On it

Parker Sheppard (03:43):

And that you have remote ID that communicates with FAA. And so to get all of that under 250 grams is very difficult.

Ross Borden (03:50):

So what was that like a music festival or what were you documenting? Were you flying over crowds of people?

Parker Sheppard (03:57):

That one was a sports festival. It’s called the Arnold Sports Festival, so it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s big sporting event he puts on every year. So I was filming that, but we’ve done the same thing for concerts and music festivals and stuff like that as well.

Ross Borden (04:13):

Tell me about the business that’s developed. You have a production company, right?

Parker Sheppard (04:19):

Backstory is when I was 18 years old, I started a media agency back in West Virginia and that was what spurred me to initially get in FPV. I saw FPV and I really liked it and I thought it was really cool and unique and I wanted to jump into it, but I was still a college student at the time, didn’t have a lot of money and it was a big investment to jump in FPV and there wasn’t a lot of knowledge out there. So it, a lot of it was like if I jump into it, it’s going to be a lot of trial and error and just trying to figure it out on my own. And initially I didn’t see enough value in it for me to front the money to jump into it, but then I saw a bunch of people doing FPV, these FPV drone tours of real estate properties.

(05:05):

And so I had to decent amount of real estate clientele at the time and I was like, this could be a unique way for me to stand out from the competition. So one of my friends from Chicago, he had built my first drone and sold it to me and sent it over to me and helped me set it up and taught me how to fly it and everything. And then I slowly just jumped into it from there and it still took a year after I got my first drone to really get to the point where I could film anything commercially with it really, because it was so hard to learn. Yeah,

Ross Borden (05:36):

It is really hard. They move so fast that I’ve flown a lot of drones for travel and filming, being out with the teams in the field for Matador, but I’ve never flown an FPV and I always wonder it’s got to be hard. The thing is moving so fast and above and beyond all the tricks of going in little windows and under tree branches, is it just difficult to even just basically fly it or have something that’s usable in terms of the

Parker Sheppard (06:05):

Film? Yeah, it is really an art form of it’s fully manual, which is what makes this different from typical consumer drones that you can buy at Best Buy. And now they do have FPV drones there, but aside from those, the drones that are there have GPS in them. So it’s like if you look at the sticks, the drones is going to level itself out and hover there. Whereas with an FPV drone, it’s like if you bank the drone to the right to turn to the right, you have to move your stick back to the left to level it back out yourself. I knew the more I practiced, the better I was going to get and all I was going to do was take time. So I was determined to get good at it and be able to use this for commercial videography. And so I basically said every single day, no matter what, I was going to fly four batteries and I And that’s which

Ross Borden (06:52):

Is how much flight time total four batteries last you?

Parker Sheppard (06:56):

That’s about 20 minutes of flight time. It’s not. Okay.

Ross Borden (06:58):

So these are not like the DJ I drones that last 20 minutes in the air?

Parker Sheppard (07:02):

No, it’s

Ross Borden (07:02):

Quick spurts and the battery’s

Parker Sheppard (07:04):

Dead.

Ross Borden (07:04):

You need to land immediately.

Parker Sheppard (07:06):

Yeah.

Ross Borden (07:06):

How many hours would you say, or do you have any idea in terms of under your belt right now, FPV, your whole career?

Parker Sheppard (07:13):

I couldn’t tell you. It’s thousands hours, probably tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand hours. It’s a lot now. It’s been so many years and I’ve just flown every day and there’s shoots that I’m on that I’m flying just continuously cycling. My battery’s charging as well all day long and whenever I’m traveling it’s like we’re just spending so much time flying FPV, so I honestly don’t even know how many hours, but it’s a lot. Do

Ross Borden (07:42):

You just close your eyes and you see the drone view, that’s like your sleep state is the drone drone

Parker Sheppard (07:49):

Simulator? I think early on I think I definitely did. I was definitely spending more time flying early on as well than I do now just because I knew I was really bad at flying and I knew the only way for me to get better was to practice over and over again. And so yeah, like I said, I went out and flew four batteries every day and I did that for probably 10 months before I ever got my first job flying FPV for a company doing real estate?

Ross Borden (08:15):

Yeah. Well, I mean I’ve never personally done FPV, but I know the drone drama firsthand because we’ve had ’em on every shoot and we’ve done hundreds of shoots all over the world and there’s always a great payoff for an amazing drone shot, but behind every great drone shot, there’s some kind of stress or hassle or malfunction. So it can be extremely stressful. So you started with real estate in terms of monetizing this and making it into a business. You started doing real estate first and then tell us what’s happened since then.

Parker Sheppard (08:48):

Yeah, so I started out with real estate. We did drone tours. It was actually awesome because I was still broke at this point whenever I first got my first jobs doing FPV and I was just putting every penny I had back into FPV because I was like, this is going to be the future of videography. The more I spent flying, the more I started to see the potential with it. And then when I finally got to the point where I was comfortable, ready to do my first indoor drone tour, which is what I wanted to start doing initially, I reached out to all the top realtors in West Virginia. I shot them all a message on, I sent them an email and sent ’em a message on Instagram and I said, introduce who I was, said, this is what I’m trying to do. I have this new technology, nobody in the state is doing it yet. You could be the first person to do it. And I said, I will come and do the first. If you have any good properties that’d be good for this, I’ll come and do the first shoot for free just so I can get a portfolio piece and you can see the potential of it. That’s

Ross Borden (09:45):

A good pitch. I like it. Okay.

Parker Sheppard (09:46):

Yeah. So then the top realtor in the top producing realtor in the state messaged me back and said, Hey, I have a property that I would love to have you come shoot. And it was perfect timing. She just so happened to have her photographer leave the state and it was right that same week she needed a new photographer and that was the benefit with doing the media agency as well as I could do the photography and videography on top of the FPB drone work. So I went and shot the first property for free and the property sold within 24 hours sight unseen. And that was the first time she’d ever had a property do that before. And the buyers specifically told her, Hey, we chose this because we saw the indoor drone tour and that basically made us feel like we had toured the house in person ourselves.

(10:33):

She was like, that’s the best virtual tour I’ve ever seen of a property. Interesting. So then immediately the realtor came to me and she said, what number would it take for you to exclusively work with me for the next six months? So I threw out a number there and she agreed. And so I basically got an exclusivity contract. She was still paying me for all the shoots on top of that, but I had exclusivity to just shoot those properties with her for the next six months and she was doing a very large volume. So it gave me the opportunity to hone my skills for doing that while also building a portfolio. So when the six months were up, I was able to go and get all these other realtors as well. At the time, that was the biggest contract I’d ever received in my career as a videographer. And so that was the

Ross Borden (11:19):

First break, pretty’s. Awesome. Alright, so you’re dominating real estate. You’ve got in West Virginia, you’ve got your exclusive deal with this top realtor. Then what happens? Where do you take this

Parker Sheppard (11:29):

Next? I finally decided to drop out of college and then real estate was really taking off then. And my business in West Virginia was really taking off. I was doing a bunch more commercial work, TV commercial stuff for businesses there. So I dropped out and within six months I hired my first salaried full-time employee for my agency and then also hired some part-time employees as well, hired another FPV pilot to help do shoots. So they started doing all of that, and in the meantime, I started traveling. I finally had this extra cash flow. I’ve always wanted to go travel. My first place I ever wanted to visit was Iceland. So my first ever trip out of the country, I went to Iceland and I was pretty the

Ross Borden (12:07):

Ultimate playground for FPV

Parker Sheppard (12:09):

Literally. And so I went there and it was funny, I still felt kind of new to doing FPV outside of real estate. And so I went there. I took one FPV drone with me on the trip and I crashed it early on the trip. And so I didn’t really get to fill much FPV while I was there, but a volcano erupted while I was there. And I remember I went to the volcano and shot a bunch of stuff, but I didn’t get the fly F PV at it. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I don’t have a drone

Ross Borden (12:35):

Film. You didn’t have your drone to film this with?

Parker Sheppard (12:37):

Yeah. And this was that year, I think only one person had filmed the volcano with the drone and the Clipse didn’t get a whole lot of traction on social media. So then I told myself, I was like, okay, if another volcano ever erupts, I don’t care what’s going on in my life. I don’t care what’s going on, what it takes to get there. I’m on the plane there and I’m going to get the FPV shots of it. So then fast forward a year, I did this trip that I called it my dropout trip. It was supposed to be the, I booked it for the same week I would’ve been walking at graduation, and it was to my dream bucket list location called Pharaoh Islands. And I always wanted to go here. I was still really small on social media at the time, less than 5,000 followers on Instagram.

(13:23):

And we filmed the whole week and there was this one location there that I really wanted to film that I remember I’d seen it one other time on, two other times on Instagram and such a unique location that was, it was one of the locations that made me want to go to Fairwell Island to begin with. And so it was one of those locations where it’s like, I’m not leaving this country without visiting this spot. So yeah. So we went there and then I got this one FPV shot that I remember when I posted it. It just blew up immediately and it was just millions and millions of views just rolling in. And it ended up getting 50 some million views on TikTok. I forgot how many millions of views on Instagram, but it just skyrocketed my social media accounts. So

Ross Borden (14:13):

At the time you had what, 5,000 followers?

Parker Sheppard (14:16):

You were

Ross Borden (14:16):

Unknown basically.

Parker Sheppard (14:18):

And it skyrocketed my social media career to where it was. I think I broke a hundred thousand followers within the month on Instagram. And then I jumped up. I had a decent following on TikTok at the time, but it jumped me up a few hundred thousand followers on TikTok. That’s like 400,000, 500,000, something like that. Just from one video, just from the one video. And then the next month, I remember I was at my parents’ place, and I remember I’d gone up to take a shower and I got a text from one of my buddies from Iceland that a volcano had just erupted in Iceland.

Ross Borden (14:54):

I knew

Parker Sheppard (14:54):

It. And I remember just running downstairs and being like a volcano just erupted. And we had a three day window that we had free that we could make it to Iceland to shoot the volcano. It’s like, do we just do it? And I remember we just decided to book flights for the next day and we land and we couldn’t get a rental car. Everything was booked out. We barely were able to get an Airbnb. And my friend, because

Ross Borden (15:20):

Of the volcano, were other people going there to see the volcano huge towards an event.

Parker Sheppard (15:25):

Yeah, I think that’s my only explanation is it had to have been because the volcano and then we were just at the volcano all day long, just flying over and over and over again. And I was kind of conservative with my gear at this point. I didn’t have any gear sponsors. I had some money from my agency, but I have a ton of money to where I could just crash a thousand dollars, $1,500 drone in the volcano and lose

Ross Borden (15:45):

It.

Parker Sheppard (15:46):

That would definitely still hurt. And so I went and filmed it and I was slowly just getting closer and closer every battery. And I had this one shot where the volcano just erupted, Ray. I was passing by it and just lava sprayed all around it. And the drone survived it, but

Ross Borden (16:04):

Didn’t hit the drone. It didn’t hit the drone. I know the exact shot you’re talking about, and it looks like it had to have gotten hit. There’s bubbles of lava everywhere as you’re flying through, but if it had hit, that would’ve been it, right? It would’ve

Parker Sheppard (16:17):

Gone

Ross Borden (16:18):

Right. That’s lava’s heavy. It’s not like splash a little water. It’s hot too, and it’s thousand completely toast your drone. So you got the ultimate money shot

Parker Sheppard (16:32):

And

Ross Borden (16:32):

Then made it back. Was the drone still melted? When I was watching that, I was like, just from the heat, even if it didn’t get hot, even if it didn’t get hit directly, how does the drone not just completely melting from just the heat and the air?

Parker Sheppard (16:46):

Yeah, no, the drone definitely melted. The GoPro was melted. The GoPro, the front screen was bubbling up because it was so hot melting and my propellers were melting and stretching out and I was having to swap propellers between flights and stuff. Yeah, I’m still amazed that Jerome made it out of that. So that kind of helped skyrocket. It was like that compounding with my Faroh Islands content just skyrocketed my social media career. So then I felt like I was running this kind of dual life where I was managing a media agency with a team back home, working with a bunch of corporate commercial videography work while also still doing all this travel social media stuff on the side. And it was funny. It was like the travel social media stuff. It was like nobody had any idea that I was doing all this other stuff on the backend. People just looked at me as the drone FPV drone pilot.

Ross Borden (17:33):

And then have you become, I mean as far as I can tell, you’ve achieved your dream. You are one of the top FPV pilots, at least you’re one of the most followed that I’ve seen on social. Are you now gun for hire for like were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s event or different sporting events or GoPro things where people are like, we need an ACE FPV pilot. Like, oh, I know the guy. Are you just getting tons of leads from your social media following?

Parker Sheppard (18:04):

Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of leads from social media. It landed me a lot of really awesome projects. I’ve gotten to work with some really incredible companies and some incredible people just from my social media following. But I started to realize I’m more of, I got into filmmaking because I enjoy the outdoor sports and adventure and the travel, that lifestyle. And I got into filmmaking because I wanted to capture that. And I think I had this moment where I realized I was definitely leaning more towards just doing projects that were really high paying, but I wasn’t really passionate about over the things I’m really passionate about, which is the outdoor adventure travel industry. And that’s why I’m uprooted and move to Utah. I was like, it was hard for me to say no to that money because it’s good money to be doing all these projects, but the passion wasn’t there anymore.

(18:57):

And I knew I wanted do stuff that I was really passionate about. And so that’s whenever I was like, all right, I am just going to remove myself from that situation and just plant myself in an area that inspires me to do the stuff that I’m really passionate about. And when I think about all the things I love doing snowboarding, rock climbing, off-roading, hiking, all that stuff with incredible landscapes, like Utah was the spot for me. And so that’s what inspired me to uproot and move out here and just kind of go all in on doing more of the projects that I’m really passionate about, which mostly FPV is. Most jobs I’ve do with just FPV I’m pretty passionate about because it’s fun doing FPV.

Ross Borden (19:36):

What about hotels? Do you ever get hired by international hotels and amazing places to make similar videos than the ones you’re making for the real estate agents back in West Virginia?

Parker Sheppard (19:47):

Yeah, I’ve done a lot for, there’s a resort in The Bahamas that I’ve done a lot of work with, and I’ve worked with some tourism boards around the world that I’ve gotten to go and shoot.

Ross Borden (20:00):

What about other bucket list items? You mentioned Dolomites, you’ve done Iceland, Pharaoh Islands. What about legal places that you are allowed to fly? You just haven’t gone there yet. Do you have anywhere on your list that you’re really pumped to get to?

Parker Sheppard (20:16):

Yeah, there’s one specific one that I can’t reveal just because done it yet, and it’s been very big on the list, but there’s places like Indonesia and Sri Lanka and places like that that I’ve been dying to get out to, and hopefully this year will be the year that I make out to those locations. There’s just so many places in the world to explore and just not enough time to explore them all. But those are high on the list that hopefully will get knocked off this year. And then there’s a few big ones that I’m working on always actively trying to figure out how to make happen. That will be pretty big if I can get out there to film.

Ross Borden (20:56):

Awesome, man. Well, Parker, thanks for coming on the show. I ask everyone a question, same question, who comes on the show? Because most of the folks on this show have traveled quite a bit. If your passport only worked in three countries, meaning you could only live or visit three countries in the whole world for the rest of your life, what would those three countries be?

Parker Sheppard (21:18):

One would definitely be Iceland for sure. Another one would be the United States, just because one, because it’s home and family, but also there’s so much to explore here.

Ross Borden (21:27):

Yep.

Parker Sheppard (21:29):

Man,

Ross Borden (21:32):

It’s that third one that gets, gets everyone.

Parker Sheppard (21:33):

Yeah. Third country. I feel like I have to pick some more tropical just cause I have the cold side of things. So I would honestly probably say Costa Rica. I love Costa Rica. Quick pick. So I think those would be my three.

Ross Borden (21:46):

Awesome. Well, we’ll be watching Stoked that you made the leap and you’re focusing only on the stuff that you’re fired up about. And man, the shots are just amazing. Keep it coming. For those who don’t already follow you, let us know where to find you online.

Parker Sheppard (22:02):

Yeah, so I am at P Shep fpv, P-S-H-E-P-F-P-V, across all platforms, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and that’s where I post all of my FPV content and travel content.

Ross Borden (22:14):

Alright, check this guy out, guys. Unbelievable. Jerome, pilot and footage. Parker, thanks for coming in on the show.

Parker Sheppard (22:21):

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Ross Borden (22:25):

Creator, the podcast is produced by Matador Network. We are a leading global travel publisher focused on travel and adventure. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe. Every week I interview a new top creator. New episodes are released every Tuesday on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts are found. Thanks for listening.