Bill Pulte is exactly what The Apprentice and The Aviator have in common. Perched in a helicopter cockpit, the Medill sophomore is nearly laughing, yet bursting with determination. “Roger that, over and out,” he says in a pseudo-serious voice. He hangs up his cell phone and reaches for his radio headset.
Minutes later, hovering over the North Shore suburb of Kenilworth, Pulte is thrilled – and working hard. He had always wanted to fly a helicopter, and now, less than a year after obtaining his license, he is making $10,000 a month doing just that.
In November, Pulte and his business partner, Weinberg sophomore Dave Weinberg, launched Great Lake Helicopters, unsure if it could survive. But the venture, which provides northern Chicagoland’s elite with aerial photos of their lavish properties, succeeded immediately. “People thought I was loony when I first brought it up,” Pulte says. “People in my dorm were like, ‘Who is going to buy an aerial picture of their home?’ Well, we went to our first six houses and boom – six of them sold. I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve got myself a business model here.'”
The company’s success silenced the skeptics. “At first I didn’t think it sounded like a great plan,” says Daniel Farahi, a Weinberg sophomore who is now part of Great Lake’s eight-person student sales team. “But you can’t argue against the profits that have been put up.”
Pulte’s squad makes most of its money by taking pictures of expensive homes in affluent North Shore neighborhoods. After having them cropped, enlarged, printed and framed, the sales team knocks on the doors of those houses and pitches each photograph to the tune of $500. “It may seem very expensive,” says Pulte, who targets only the wealthiest local residents. “But the bottom line is this – when are these people ever going to encounter a high-quality aerial picture of their house again?”
Not all of the company’s clients are one-time shoppers, though. Local real estate agencies, which use aerial photographs in ads and as housewarming gifts, often contract with Great Lake to get pictures of their holdings at a reduced rate. Homebuilders also hire the company to survey their sites from the air.
With three streams of revenue, Pulte and Weinberg averaged about $10,000 in profits per month in November and December, more than making up for an overhead of $1,200 per hour of operating the helicopter. They closed shop for the most part during the winter months, but they now intend to hit the skies even harder. “When we go up there now, we know exactly what we’re shooting,” says Pulte, a journalism major with no intention of pursuing a writing career. “We know what we have to do, we fly there, we do the job, and we get back.”
As Pulte and Weinberg have learned on the job, questions arise about the company’s long-term viability. Most cities lack a single established aerial-photography business, says Pulte, who sees “mom-pop drug stores” turning into Walgreens and hopes Great Lake Helicopters can take a similar national role. Weinberg, though, is less certain about the company’s future. “I started doing this with Bill because I wanted to learn about running a business,” Weinberg says. “That was the number one priority. Sure, it’s been more successful than I could have ever imagined back in the fall, but at this point I don’t really know. I just want to see where it goes.”
Whether the duo keeps working or sells the business, Pulte is confident that new ideas are just a brainstorm away. Prior to his helicopter enterprise, he owned NUlist.org, a popular Northwestern classifieds Web site that he sold for an undisclosed sum once Facebook became involved in the online marketplace industry. He used the money from this transaction to buy his helicopter license and jumped from one startup to another. “My dad is an entrepreneur himself, and so is my grandfather,” Pulte says. “Entrepreneurship is in my blood, and my family encourages it. It’s something we all thrive on.” For now, this duo’s high-rolling, high-flying venture has as much wind under its wings as there are palatial manses to photograph.