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Introduction to Coaching Techniques · The Spiro Podcast: Managing your Real Estate Photography & Videography Business

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Coming up on this episode of The Spiro podcast.
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When I started to realize how important feelings were,
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that's when it allowed me
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to really connect with my team and get those feelings back.
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When I shared, they would share, and that's when we made progress.
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Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
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Managing your real estate photography and videography business
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with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
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and Craig Magrum
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Hello and welcome to the Spiro podcast.
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Spiro is our real estate software platform
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that will help you manage run and scale your real estate media business.
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It was designed by real estate photographers for you,
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the real estate photographer, and we have used it at our real estate
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media company since inception for over 21 years here.
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Now, it's looked a lot different,
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but we have great features in there for you and many more coming up soon.
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So welcome to the podcast.
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My name is Todd Kivimaki
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I am the owner and the founder of Spiro and unfortunately.
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My co-host, Craig is not with me today, Craig Magrum.
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He is my partner in crime
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and he had to take a few shoots today with wow video tours.
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Our real estate media company.
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He works there.
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If you don't know him, he has our hybrid role in sales and also photography.
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So just me today, excited to be here with you today.
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Craig will be back on next week and we will continue on with him together
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this week.
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I have an exciting topic. What I did yours.
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I went back into the archives of my coaching notes.
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I've got them printed off here and over the years
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I have hired various different coaches.
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I truly believe that a coach having a guide, this is a mentor.
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A guide can
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exponentially increase
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the trajectory of your business and the growth.
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And I always when I say growth, growth is what you want it to be.
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For us, Wow video tours, we do over 12,000 jobs a year.
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We are growing.
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We have 30 some photographers and we have defined growth to be number of
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jobs, revenue, average order value growth doesn't have to mean that for you.
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It's actually taken a little bit of a transition in growth for me at Wow growth.
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For me at Wow, that I was able to step outside of the business.
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I have two fabulous leaders that run the company
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and they are able to grow the company without me.
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I'm there to
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I'm there when they need me.
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I'm there to help build a sense of community,
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but they are doing all the heavy lifting and they're putting people underneath them
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that help them grow and take things off their plate.
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Coincidentally, that's kind of what we're going to talk about today
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on the podcast I'm excited to share my notes from.
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His name was Dennis, one of my early coaches,
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and we're going to talk about a few things,
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a few things that we're doing at Wow that connect all of these.
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But before I do so, I wanted to take
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just a quick minute here to let you know about two exciting things coming up.
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One is
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we have some exciting classes
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for you Spiro users out there.
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We call it our Spiro Academy and myself and Shannon Landers,
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our VP of product at Spiro, who also helped me grow and scale Wow.
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Our media company is going to be teaching, so we're going to do a couple three
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different classes right now and we're happy to add more
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and we're going to be doing these monthly
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and some of them a couple of times a month.
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So the first class we're calling Spiro 201,
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and that is going to be myself teaching you
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all the day to day tips and tricks of how to use Spiro.
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So are you using all of the functionality?
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What happens?
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How do I quickly reschedule at I quickly place in order?
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How do I do the day to day task of what are
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and what tips and tricks do I have to share with you then?
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And Spiro 202, Shannon and myself, when available,
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she is going to be teaching you pricing strategies.
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So this is going to be fabulous.
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This is going to be how to think about your services,
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how to think about what's involved with the cost of goods, with overhead,
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with pricing to your clients competitions.
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What should I price, what should I sell before
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we see this question asked all the time?
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And it's a question that we I had very early on too.
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So we're going to solve those things for you.
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Tell you about how we strategize and what we do
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to make sure that you're pricing things correctly.
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Then finally, our third class is going to be Spiro 203
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and that's going to be task and workflows.
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So this is the engine, the powerful engine inside Spiro
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that can automate the after shoot process,
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dropbox folders, sharing with editors,
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adding in task all of your to do list auto importing back into the property
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website, automatically sending delivery emails if you want that,
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whatever it may be, we are going to show you how to automate
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that engine for you so that you can get your time back to focus on
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what growth is and what steps you need to do
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to grow your business.
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Finally, the second thing that I want to
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mention were up and coming Spiro updates.
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So we are looking at an early March 2025
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release date and we are going to give you some goodies.
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We're going to give you the ability to send feedback forms after the shoot.
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This could be after the photographer leaves the house.
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This could be after you deliver the media hack.
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This could be after the order is placed.
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How was the ordering process?
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Do you have any questions for us?
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You can set expectations in that and we also have a mechanism
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to help you understand how that went for your client
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one through five stars and you can send them
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to get Google reviews, Facebook reviews and to build your profiles there.
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So we're excited about that.
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We are also looking at the order pages
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and how you can sell better your AOV
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or your average order value is incredibly important.
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It's one of the three
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most important metrics at your real estate media business.
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We track it.
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We know what it is at ours, and we know what the goal of our AOV is,
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and so does everyone else at the company.
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So we are going to look at how you can sell better on that order page.
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Then finally, we are giving or we're creating and launching
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what we call landing pages.
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So this is a collection of different order pages so
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your clients can go to this landing page and they can go to the appropriate
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order page.
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Maybe they have an Airbnb that needs done and they're not going to order.
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From your residential order page.
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You can display your Airbnb, commercial lifestyle, headshots,
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whatever segments you want to advertise, you can do it on there.
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You put your brand colors, you put your brand messaging on there,
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and you make it easy for your clients to get to the appropriate order page.
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So excited about those updates coming up and like I said,
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early March 2025, those will be live inside your system.
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So I dug into the vault for you all.
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I literally went and I have
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paper notebooks that I have written on.
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And keep in mind, I kept my day to day notes and journals in,
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and I kept notebooks during
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my coaching calls with my coaches over the years.
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And this is something that was fun to go back through.
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And so I went back years ago, I think this was 2018
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of these coaching notes, and it was fun just to read them and just to kind of see
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what was in my head at the time and to see what my coach was teaching me.
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So one thing that I learned as you transition in your business
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and grow your business and you step out of the singular role
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of photographer into business owner,
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one thing that is incredibly important
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is that you continue to tell everyone why.
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Why are you doing
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what you are doing?
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Why are you asking them to do what they're doing?
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I think early in my career
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I minimize this idea of telling everyone why.
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And as I look back, it's probably because
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I knew why in my own head, right?
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I mean, think about it.
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Why are you doing what you're doing?
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You don't have to say it to yourself, right?
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You just know instinctively because your brain works like that.
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So I found out in some negative ways
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that not telling people why
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a lot, they would conclude why.
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So a saying I love and use all the time is you're for employees.
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Perception is their reality
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and if they perceive something in the wrong way, that's their reality.
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And you know what?
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They're going to go tell other employees or other contractors.
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Heck, maybe even some of your clients, some of these things
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that are simply not true.
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And you all it's not because they're being and negatively intentional.
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They're really not.
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It's not like they want to undermine you.
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It's not like they want to hurt your business.
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They just need to know why.
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And they're trying to give that to your employees, your clients,
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whatever it may be.
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So it's incredibly important
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that you set this Why
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For your company, for your clients and for your employees.
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Now, one thing that we just did,
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and in fact we just did it this morning, we did a company kickoff.
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And what that was, was we got everybody into a virtual meeting room.
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If you can do it
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live and in person, get everybody in the same room, rent out a room,
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get a board room
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somewhere, have them into your house or have them into your office,
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have some food, some beverages nonalcoholic.
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I mean, you do what you want, but you know, this is professional
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and gather with them face to face.
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Now, for our team, we spanned many different states.
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We span across the world.
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And yes, we have our VAs in here as well.
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So we have team members in Kosovo, we have team members in the Philippines,
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and we want to make sure that they are in this meeting.
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They're a huge part of our business.
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We could not operate without those team members,
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so they need to know why as well and we include them.
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So we did this kick off meeting and what we did is
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we looked back at 2024 what happened last year.
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We happened to send a survey out to our clients at the very beginning of 2025.
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And in it we asked a typical questions.
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It's the same survey we send every year, so we ask them about quality,
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quality of the customer service
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call, quality of the scheduling and ordering process,
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quality of their media overall satisfaction.
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We're asking them those questions and we're having them rate them based on
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a scale of
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extremely satisfied,
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satisfied, neutral,
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dissatisfied, extremely dissatisfied.
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And then we have a not applicable.
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So we rate them on that scale or we ask them to rate us on that scale,
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and then we look at that feedback.
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So we had collected that at our media company
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and we had that data to share.
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Now one thing is, is all of our employees knew that we sent that survey out.
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So we're always communicating this.
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And we just once I found over the years that the more transparent
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you can be as a business owner, the better.
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Again, remember, some of these things live in your head.
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You know everything about your business.
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So it seems like a waste of time, or at least to me
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it seemed like a waste of time to actually slow down
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and tell everybody what I already knew, right?
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I mean, think about it.
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How busy are all we?
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This is what was going on in my head by the way, how busy are all we?
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We have way too much to do. I'm way too busy.
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Why would I stop and tell them something that I know?
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It sounds
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kind of crazy even saying it,
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that that wasn't aware that
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I was not aware that that needed to be done.
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Like, why would I just assume
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that they knew everything that was in my head?
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But I've learned from it.
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So if you have that assumption, please take time, slow down
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and tell your team what is happening.
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So our employees knew that this survey went out
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and we needed to close that loop of communication,
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meaning they needed to know what the survey said.
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Heck, they're directly involved with this overall satisfaction
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and the growth of our company.
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So we took the first half of the presentation today to go
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over those numbers.
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And for us, those numbers were great.
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We were excited about them.
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They were really about what we
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received the last time we did
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the survey and nothing more to know other than that
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we just were still very high, you know, an overall net promoter score.
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And this is something that Steve tracks for us
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and we can go into what a Net Promoter Score is
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and maybe another podcast or maybe one of my coaching calls.
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But we had an overall net promoter score of 84%, 84.6%.
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So 85 if you round up, which we feel and from an industry
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standard is an incredible net promoter score,
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that is someone who is extremely satisfied with your services, meaning
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they're giving you referrals, they're raving fans
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and we wanted to celebrate that with our employees.
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It's they're the reason why we got such a great score.
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So we
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took time to do that and then at the end of that
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or we transition excuse me, we transition
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in the next segment of telling them what's ahead.
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So we're looking back to 24 and we're looking ahead to 25, right?
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Everybody wants to know where we're going.
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Think about it.
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If you were in the car going somewhere
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and you have no clue where their driver is going,
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doesn't it get a little unnerving, like, why am I in here?
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Why am I doing this?
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So your employees
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and your team want to know where you're going again,
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I'm going to say it again and this is going to become redundant.
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I'm sorry, y'all, but just because it's in your head
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does not mean that your team knows about it.
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And when they don't know about something, they're going to make up
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a conclusion to it.
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And that sometimes might be crazy,
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right?
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You're like, Remember the telephone game?
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We used to play an elementary school
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telephone game where you start
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was saying something with the first person and then you whispered in that person,
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whispers it into the ear of the second person, into the ear of the third, fourth.
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Well, by the time you get to the 20th person, that is nowhere even close.
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That statement or that idea is nowhere even close to the way it started.
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So please, you have a great opportunity
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as the business owner to make sure that everybody is clear.
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Don't play the telephone game.
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Just get over the loudspeaker in announcements. Okay?
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Why did they do announcements?
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The Pledge of Allegiance on the loudspeaker?
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Because everybody heard the same message.
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Okay, So that needs to be you.
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You are the principal of your business.
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Okay, So the second
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portion of this kickoff meeting, we looked at 2025.
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And for us at our company, we are focused on a two prong approach.
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In 2025, we want to look at the foundation of our business
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and just fill in anything
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that is a little bit weak, any gaps.
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So this is systems, processes, this is personnel.
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We're hiring six photographers, we're hiring an admin and two Vas.
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Right now.
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This is filling in all of those gaps.
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Okay.
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Looking at our hiring process, we know if we want to grow,
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we've got to be able to hire and train quickly and effectively.
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This is the system where in the system we have some old tasks hanging out.
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Do we have old pricing?
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So this is the foundational base of your business.
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Now, as the
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business owner, you might be sitting there saying, Hey, well, Todd, how do I know?
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This seems like a lot of work to do.
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Like I need to go back and I need to I got to figure out what's wrong with it.
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I'm just so busy right now
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trying to keep up with the added shoots that are coming in.
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And it's awesome that your business is growing.
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But I would say, no, this doesn't need to take up in a time.
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How do we figure out those gaps?
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It's really simple.
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We ask our employees, we ask our clients.
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That's one thing over the years that I've learned
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that if I don't ever know something, I used to sit and try real hard to think
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like, Let me
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think about what's wrong with my business. Hmm.
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You know, maybe one or two things come to mind.
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And those are probably the the most recent problems you've had at your company.
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It doesn't actually mean it's a problem, though.
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It means it might be a very small thing that you don't need to turn attention to.
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So we ask our employees, we track these things.
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We look at the metrics of how frequently these things come in.
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So we ask our employees, and we've done this over the last three months
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and we've been collecting that so we know where these gaps exist.
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So we are letting everybody know about those gaps.
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Also, the thing that we've been doing at Wow
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is we've been empowering our, our, our employees.
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So one really neat thing that we've done,
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you know, I think about ten years ago or 15 years ago,
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I personally posted, created
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and posted job descriptions for new employees.
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I would personally call those people.
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I would personally set up those different rounds of interviews.
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I would arrange all of that.
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I would look at, you know, feedback,
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I would call references.
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And then as we grew,
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the managers at Wow Begin doing that, and there was a segment
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where I would do it with them and they would do it with me,
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and then they would do it by themselves and I would review
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and now the managers all do that on their own.
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Well, one neat thing that we've done
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early in this year is we have passed that hiring, that sourcing
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and hiring down to the people and the division.
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So we've had people at Wow that have been here five, six, seven, eight years
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and they are
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doing their job all day, every day.
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So really they're the best person to understand who the correct teammate is.
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So we had trumpeted this.
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We talked about this at this team meeting.
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And one thing that we did is
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we made sure that we were intentional about saying the growth
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of every employee in the meeting and this was the bulk of the meeting, and
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I think it was actually the most important thing in the meeting
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because we got to say thank you to everybody.
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We got to talk about how the person who used to do head shots
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now has a different person in the company doing head shots.
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How fabulous troubleshooting and who stepped up to be
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a very good teacher who is doing that hiring and onboarding process?
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We looked at sales and stats from our sales team.
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We looked at one of our salespeople stepped up
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and now they're one of our or they're our sales manager right below.
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Steve So we looked at all of these items and we celebrated the team.
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And some of that is because
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we understand that belonging is incredibly important to human beings.
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That was one of my notes.
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I rode down here and I am really getting to my notes, y'all.
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They, they fit together.
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But in my notes here from Dennis,
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I have number one biggest motivation
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and equal sign is belonging.
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When people feel like they belong,
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they will run through walls for you.
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They will make your life easier.
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They will solve problems.
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They won't just come to you with problems.
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They will come to you
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and tell you a problem and they will tell you how they solved it.
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Oh, how fabulous is that for
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you as the business owner?
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You know, stepping back real quick
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and looking at the way I ran my company very early on,
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I felt like I needed to be involved in everything.
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I felt like I was the only one that could make the right decision.
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I was the only one that really cared enough to make the right decision.
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Literally.
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What copy paper do you want?
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Like, Oh, well, probably Todd's the only one qualified to decide
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if we get the £27 or the £31 copy paper.
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Right. It's crazy.
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It's crazy talk in my brain.
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Like I want to make sure I pick out the copy paper that we get the 98
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brightness or the 100 brightness.
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And that's a silly example, but I say it to make fun of myself.
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And so you all can laugh at me because those were things
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that slowed me down, not empowering the team.
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Why would I spend my time thinking about copy
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paper?
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So empowering your team is incredibly important
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and the way you empower them and you get decisions that you would make
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or even better is that they feel like they belong at your company.
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So we felt as though taking time out of this meeting to highlight
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and give kudos and to cheer for everyone was incredibly important.
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Last year was our best year ever at Wow.
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And when you grow to a company and we did
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12,253 shoots, that was our best year ever.
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And it's tough to continue to grow.
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There's a lot of moving pieces.
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And not only did we grow,
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but we felt like everyone at the company grew and was taking steps up,
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so we wanted to make sure that they felt like they belonged.
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And taking time to do so was important to us.
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Finally, we wrapped up the presentation.
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We're just looking ahead at 2025.
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What the rest of it looked like.
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It was those foundational pieces, making sure everybody could step up
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and continue to feel like they were growing, that wow,
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that they were doing things
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that they felt motivated to do and they felt belonging and doing.
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And then we looked at how we were going to grow.
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And this is basically just that we were going to evaluate
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these opportunities, look to see where the team saw the most growth,
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and we were going to then focus on those activities.
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So that's what our presentation looked like.
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We took a outer space theme.
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Steve did a great job with it. We took an outer space thing.
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This was getting ready to launch.
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And the thing about this was, is your company
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is going to go through all of these things.
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And Steve made a great point at the end of the presentation
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that as your company grows, you're always going to create more gaps.
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You're always going to figure out how to fill those in.
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People are always going to step up and help you fill those in,
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and then you're going going to pour some gasoline on the fire and grow some more,
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and you're going to grow till you create some cracks.
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And when you create those cracks, you're going to fill them back in.
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And this it's this continuous
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cycle of patching and then growing and patching and growing.
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So that was an exciting time.
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The overall meeting was about 60 minutes.
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It was probably a little bit long.
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I'll tell you all in person, it might have been okay,
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but we did it in the early morning before.
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Well, as the day got started.
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And I think
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some of our especially customer service team was maybe a little distracted
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or feeling anxious about what was coming in on the phone lines and emails.
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So ideally, if you can get the whole team together
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outside of business hours
25:27
and if you can get somewhere and feed them dinner
25:29
or you can do something like that, I think that's a great use of time.
25:34
So I wanted to hit a few more notes here and
25:38
and then I'm going to wrap up for today.
25:40
But I want to stay at a high level and kind of the touchy feely,
25:44
you know, overall, or this is after all, this is Valentine's Day.
25:49
I know it's not when you're listening to it, but I'm recording
25:52
on Valentine's Day.
25:53
And I think that touchy feely
25:57
has gotten me so much further along in life
26:00
and business being in touch with those emotions.
26:04
I know some of you out there,
26:06
especially some of you males, are like, Oh, Todd, I'm turning you off.
26:10
Please don't.
26:11
Please don't.
26:12
When I started to realize how important feelings were,
26:17
that's when it allowed me
26:19
to really connect with my team and get those feelings back.
26:25
When I shared, they would share, and that's when we made progress.
26:30
So one thing that I have written down here from Dennis
26:33
is that everything you do becomes symbolic.
26:39
Let me read that one more time.
26:40
Everything you do becomes symbolic as you grow
26:44
to be the leader of your company.
26:48
You should try to move your team along in a way
26:53
that they are remembering these things that you say, these motivational terms,
26:59
and then they
27:00
begin using these motivational terms.
27:03
Okay, You know, just some silly things.
27:05
Over the years, I would say,
27:08
look at Wow we say we give the people what they want,
27:12
give them what they want, and people will repeat that at, wow,
27:15
you know, a client calls and they want something like,
27:17
that's a little crazy, but hey, we give them what way they want.
27:20
It doesn't mean it's what we want, but we want our clients to be important.
27:24
Clients are our number one priority.
27:26
Another thing I can't tell you how many times I hear repeated
27:29
throughout the company are one of our five core values.
27:35
Core value number one is clients are our number one.
27:37
Priority.
27:38
Number two is hard work.
27:41
It takes hard work.
27:42
If it was easy, everyone would do it.
27:44
Number three is we are family.
27:47
We talk about family a lot.
27:49
Number four is be a disturbance in the force.
27:52
We want to do things differently.
27:53
We want to continue to give our clients new and better and pioneer things.
27:58
And number five is think growth.
28:00
We want to grow. That's important.
28:03
It's important for our clients to feel like we're growing.
28:05
It's important for our employees to feel like they are growing.
28:10
So we have a lot of employees that use those phrases
28:13
and tie core values back in, and that would only be possible.
28:19
Or that is only possible because we do
28:22
think symbolic about what we say.
28:26
And now you're not going to say, you know, they're not gonna quote everything
28:29
you say.
28:29
Sometimes you just need to get some work done in.
28:31
You're talking normal conversation.
28:34
But if you can always tie that back in,
28:37
remember the why
28:39
Why are you doing this?
28:41
It's for a bigger reason.
28:43
And if you can tie people in to that, then they feel that sense of belonging.
28:47
Okay, I've got two more things for you.
28:49
All that I've highlighted here on my notes from my one of my calls with Dennis,
28:54
a coach of mine from several years ago, this is a funny one.
28:59
He said the number one tax a business pays.
29:03
Does anybody know what that is?
29:05
What's your number one tax that you pay?
29:09
The number one tax that you pay as a business
29:11
is the stupid tax
29:15
man.
29:16
I have paid a lot of tax in stupidness over the years.
29:21
I don't know about you guys, but I can think
29:22
back over things of, Wow, I really did that.
29:26
Aw man, we really spent that money.
29:28
Heck, one year we are.
29:31
We met with our largest client and she decided to do upgrade
29:35
into our what we call our social six.
29:38
It was five more videos and a landing page of social media videos
29:43
that they could use at various stages of the of the listing lifecycle.
29:50
So coming soon just listed sold pending things like that.
29:53
See it today and she did
29:56
she does 100 with us a year 100 videos with us a year.
29:59
We realized towards the end of one year we didn't have a miller for any of those.
30:04
Okay.
30:05
Yeah. 100 times 100 bucks.
30:06
We lost ten grand there.
30:08
All right.
30:08
That was the stupid tax guy.
30:11
We flipped it on side.
30:12
We made sure that she knew, like, Hey, we're going to take care of this.
30:14
We're not going to expect it back.
30:16
Bill, you we use it as good.
30:18
So when you do something stupid, you got to find out
30:20
how you can get the good from it.
30:21
A lot of times if you do something stupid,
30:23
you just have to go tell that person and be genuine with them.
30:27
But man, I've paid a lot of stupid tax over the years
30:30
and when you do it, it's no fun.
30:33
But if you harp on it and if you beat yourself up over it,
30:39
you're going to continue to pay that tax.
30:43
Okay, find
30:44
the good in it, there's always good in everything.
30:46
I truly believe it.
30:48
I love the live that way.
30:50
I much prefer to live that way to find the good in something than the bad
30:55
and move on from there.
30:57
Another term we use here is that's a badge of failure.
31:00
So we wear that badge of failure.
31:04
You know, I'm wearing it proudly because I've learned from it.
31:07
And you know, also sometimes we say that's just the cost of education.
31:12
So, you know, how many of you went to school
31:15
and got your degree and running a real estate media business?
31:18
Right.
31:18
Not nobody. Right. I'm being silly.
31:22
So you haven't learned this?
31:25
It's not.
31:25
We're learning as we go.
31:27
And some things, no matter how much you read or listen
31:30
to people or study, you just have to learn some things by making mistakes.
31:36
And mistakes can be really good things for you.
31:39
They hurt, but man, if you can find how you can turn things around
31:44
in the good in that, then that stupid tax is worth paying.
31:51
Finally, the last thing, it's a little bit of an activity
31:54
he left me with and I think this is a great activity.
31:56
So what he challenged me to do is to sit with one employee
32:02
and he told me, he said, Hey, blame this on me.
32:06
So hey, I'm working with a coach right now.
32:09
And he told me that I needed to sit with someone.
32:12
And I really highly think I think highly of your opinions.
32:15
And I, I just need maybe 15 minutes with you to ask you a few questions.
32:20
That's the way you could phrase it.
32:21
So, again, blame it on me.
32:23
Blame it on the fact that I'm asking you to do this with one of your employees.
32:27
I think there is value and being transparent
32:31
and saying that you're working with a coach there.
32:33
There's nothing bad about that.
32:34
I think I thought that before, Hey, I'm going to hide that.
32:37
I'm working with a coach because I don't want anybody to know how messed up I am,
32:42
right?
32:43
I mean, come on.
32:44
No, just tell them.
32:45
They're like, Oh, that's cool.
32:46
Todd's trying to get better.
32:48
Todd's working on building this bigger.
32:51
So tell him that.
32:53
Tell him you're working with the coach
32:55
and Dennis.
32:57
He challenged me to talk about progress and belonging.
33:01
So here's a few things that you can ask them. So
33:05
first off, in any meeting, I like to start off in asking
33:08
what's going well, I always like to start off on the positive.
33:12
What's going well, see where they're at.
33:14
It might be it might just be a specific situation.
33:17
I made this client happy or we fix these photos
33:20
or it might be something more,
33:24
you know, higher level where they're saying, Hey, I'm progressing
33:27
towards some of these skills or I feel good that the team is growing.
33:31
But I love getting started with what's going well.
33:33
It's just a good way to start meetings
33:36
then, You know,
33:38
the flip side of that is asking them, you know, where
33:41
there are some areas for improvement and just listen, write those down.
33:45
Don't try to solve them.
33:47
Do not try to solve them. Just listen.
33:49
I can't tell you how important it is and how much your employees
33:52
will appreciate if you just listen to them.
33:55
So what are areas of improvement?
34:00
And then ask them
34:03
if they have what their goals are,
34:07
personal and business wise.
34:09
One thing that I always ask is I say, you know, I really value
34:13
you as an employee and appreciate all that you do, and I want to make sure
34:18
that you feel full, feel fulfilled here
34:22
at wild video tours
34:25
and I want to know what fulfilled is for you.
34:30
What does that progress look like?
34:33
You know,
34:34
today you are in our customer service.
34:37
You're leading customer service.
34:39
What would you like to be doing?
34:41
What would you like that to look like in one year or three years or five years
34:46
and then let them talk again?
34:48
Some things that I did is I brought some of that terminology in,
34:52
okay, how can you be fulfilled?
34:55
What are your goals?
34:58
This makes them feel connected to you.
35:03
And again, remember, we're trying to have them feel
35:07
like they belong at your company and just let them talk.
35:11
You're not going to try to guide them here.
35:13
You're not going to try to do anything but just write this down, okay?
35:19
Write down what they say.
35:20
So you know, and you don't forget it.
35:23
They will find value in the fact that you ask them
35:26
and they will find value in the fact that you are writing it down.
35:30
Then finally,
35:33
you know where they want to grow.
35:36
And for me, when I used to do this
35:41
and without the last question I'm going to give you,
35:43
it felt very heavy for me because I felt now they told me what they wanted
35:48
and I'd have to figure out how they would get that.
35:52
And again, that's just a thought ere that was putting it all myself.
35:55
Why would why would Todd need to figure out how they grow?
36:00
Just ask him.
36:00
Todd again, I paid stupid tax here.
36:05
So the next question I want you to
36:07
ask is and say, Hey, thank you so much.
36:10
I love to hear your definition of growth and where you want to grow here.
36:15
And I'm so honored that you want to grow at our company.
36:20
Now, looking at where you're
36:21
at today and understanding where you want to grow in one year,
36:26
three years, five years if you are here today.
36:31
And I always put my hand up,
36:32
you know, my left hand up, you know, I put it around my chin and then I say,
36:37
if growth is up here and I put my other hand up higher.
36:41
And for those of you watching on YouTube, this is going to make sense.
36:43
But I have one hand lower, one hand higher.
36:46
The hand higher is growth
36:49
and there is gaps in the middle.
36:51
I say if you are here today and you're trying to get there
36:55
in this middle, what do you need to learn?
37:00
What do you need from me to be
37:03
successful at your growth?
37:06
And then just listen.
37:09
I can tell you the things
37:10
that I've gotten from this question have been,
37:14
hey, I probably need to shadow photographers.
37:17
I need to learn what the photographers are doing better.
37:19
I'm going to help our customers and I and I'm going to build relationships
37:24
with our photographers.
37:25
I truly need to know what they're going through.
37:28
A customer service person told me that I've had
37:32
other people tell me that they need to learn more about personalities.
37:35
They want to manage,
37:37
and in order to manage, they feel like they need to understand personality types
37:40
and how to help motivate and set goals
37:44
for those personality types, how to communicate more properly.
37:48
So you will find gold in this when you ask them if you're here to get
37:53
there, which is your goal in between, what do you need to know?
37:57
And then just write that down
38:00
and then
38:00
finally ask them one more question and say,
38:04
what makes them feel like they belong here?
38:07
Now This is a little bit of a touchy feely question.
38:10
Again, here's my feelings clock.
38:12
I know a nosey on YouTube.
38:14
You're seeing my feelings clock right now, but those you that are listening
38:18
only I have a clock and it has a whole bunch of different
38:21
feelings written on it and they're in colors
38:24
and they're everything from feelings of astonished to worried,
38:30
to violated, to loathing, ignored, loving,
38:34
hopeful, sensitive, peaceful, powerful.
38:38
This is what you're asking for in this case,
38:42
asking them what makes them feel like they belong.
38:45
And this might be a hard one.
38:46
They might not have something to say if they don't just say,
38:49
Hey, I just want to make sure that you do feel like you belong here
38:53
and I highly value you and all the work you bring.
38:56
I want to grow with you.
38:58
So if there's ever anything in the future that you think of
39:02
that makes you feel like you belong, I want to make sure that I know.
39:07
So again, those are the things that I like to ask
39:11
that you that I'm challenging you to ask in this meeting.
39:14
So what's going well?
39:15
What needs improvement to stay very high level and quick there?
39:19
Then get to goals.
39:21
If you are here and your goal is they're up higher, what's in between?
39:25
What do you need to know?
39:27
And then ask them, Hey, I really appreciate you and I want you
39:30
to make sure that you can achieve your goals here.
39:33
What makes you feel like you belong here?
39:35
At Wow Video tours.
39:38
So that is a challenge to you all.
39:40
I mean, some of you are saying, hey, this is this is a little weird, Todd.
39:45
This is pretty touchy feely,
39:48
but I can't tell you how symbolic.
39:50
Again, I'm going to use one of my words.
39:52
This will be in the eyes of your employee
39:56
that you took time to sit with them.
40:00
You don't want
40:00
to be the boss that's too busy to care about their employees,
40:04
that's too busy and unapproachable to come ask questions.
40:08
You don't want to be that.
40:09
I've been that people make up their own reality.
40:11
They make up their own things.
40:12
They feel like they're on an island and then they leave your company.
40:17
Please take the time to care about your people
40:20
and it will come back to you tenfold.
40:22
And again, you're not doing it because you hope it comes back tenfold,
40:26
but you're simply doing it because it's the right thing to do
40:29
to serve them.
40:31
Well,
40:31
that's going to wrap us up here for another week of the Spiro podcast.
40:35
Hey, thank you for sticking with me.
40:38
Let me know how these conversations went.
40:40
I'd love to know what responses you get when you ask an employee,
40:45
Hey, if you are here now
40:47
and your goals are up here, what do you need to know in between?
40:50
Were you shocked at what they said?
40:53
Did you ever think about that or was it what you expected?
40:56
Please share with me.
40:57
You can contact us here at Spiro.
41:01
hello@spiro.media.
41:03
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41:07
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41:10
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41:12
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41:32
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41:37
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41:46
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41:49
Hey, have a fabulous rest of your day.
41:51
Thank you for spending time with me and we will see you in a week.
41:55
And be sure to take time to take a breath.
41:58
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro podcast, managing
42:01
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42:05
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42:08
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