Latest / The Spiro Podcast: Managing your Real Estate Photography & Videography Business / Unhappy Clients: The End of the World?

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Unhappy Clients: The End of the World? · 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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Reach out to others were meant for community, right?
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Is iron sharpens iron.
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One person sharpens another.
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Rely on your team.
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Your team has other members of your team have other gifts and talents and insights
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and perspective that they can bring to you that maybe you haven't thought about.
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Take that not as is criticism, but take that as something to grow from
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and add to your your toolkit to be able to serve your clients.
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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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Hi, and welcome to the Spiro
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podcast, Managing your real estate photography and videography Business.
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Spiro is a software platform designed to help you manage
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and grow your real estate Visual marketing Company.
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I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
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Thanks for joining us, as always.
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Our co-host and Spiro founder and owner Todd Kivimaki.
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Spring is upon us, Todd.
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Oh, it sure is, Craig.
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It's it's fabulous here in Ohio, the spring season.
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I've got a leak in my roof, though, at the office.
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So that's not good about the wind and the rain.
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Yeah, no, no leaks overnight, though, right?
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No, we actually no, apparently have the bucket in the correct spot in the attic.
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So I, I have not been up in the attic yet.
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I am my size, am not too great at going into the attic.
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I go through them sometimes and I'm six foot seven a little clumsy.
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So if you step wrong in an attic, you've got legs dangling.
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That's a Larry Bird commercial.
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You see that Craig are.
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No
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There is a he's the progressive, I think, commercial.
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And he goes up in the attic to get a bird and then he falls through.
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So that's me.
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But anyways, wow, what a tangent.
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It's busy season, though.
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It is. It is.
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And we're going to we're going to dive into a topic this week
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that talks a little bit about busy season
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and some of the challenges that come with that in specifically.
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Well, I don't want to give away too much, but let's just say
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with the increase of business comes
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more customer and client complaints.
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How do we handle those?
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So there's a little teaser for you. Okay.
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But before we get to that, let's take care of some
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some opening and opening information that we always like to pass along.
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First of all,
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do we want to handle Spiro updates?
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Let's talk. Yes.
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- What's on the plate here, - give me a minute.
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We just push these
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invoice pdf.
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You now have full details on the invoice pdf.
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A lot of you have requested that we put it all on there
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and we are excited to have that on there on the calendar view,
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you can now click the calendar bubble and we'll go to the job.
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So that is on there.
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There's a few iPhone finesses with UI, so we're always looking
3:04
at the user interface and we're always adjusting those per
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the different many different mobile devices.
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So we're always trying to finesse those.
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So there's a good amount of fixes that went in to that. time zones.
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So multi time zone, if you are operating out of many time
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zones, we put in a ton of infrastructure that's going to greatly
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simplify your life and make it very clear for you and your agents.
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So that is all in there now.
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Translation that we launched in a beta format
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a week or two ago, it is available in your system now.
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So international users, you can translate
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what your clients will see into your native language.
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You also can put your currency and your measurement
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and of course, your time zone.
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So this will feel just like yours.
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It will be in the correct language and we are excited to have that for you.
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It's inside your settings. If you would like to enable that
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merge Fleet. man the teams will work it hard on this.
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As I talk about these merge fleet now has vertical support.
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So many of you that are using the merge fleet and trying out the merge fleet.
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It was just horizontal video previously
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when this update we pushed a couple of days ago.
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You now can upload a vertical video to the merge fleet
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and have that fantastic logic based editing done for you.
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So give that a try.
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If you're like Hey, what's the merger?
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That I have no clue.
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The Merge fleet is our automatic video editor that we built for our company.
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We do 8000 to 9000 videos, shoots a year
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and this automates all of the editing.
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You can try it for free even if you're not a Spiro user.
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Sign up for free, click the merge fleet,
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upload clips, and then click the test render.
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That testing is all free.
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We'll put a watermark on it, but it's completely free to trial and to use.
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So if you would like to increase your average order
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value by adding video horizontal and vertical.
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Now that is all in there and I'm really excited about that.
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That's that's an incredible way to just expand your business
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and to take your revenue to apart anytime you can increase revenue
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but not do one more job, that's a good thing to
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- preach - daily mileage.
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We have a new pay out threshold in there.
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We support a couple of new currencies.
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We have the tracker page
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where it is our Domino's Pizza tracking that your clients get.
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You all said, Hey, are enough.
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You said, Hey, can you remove Spiro from the bottom of that?
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We wiped it off. Spiro is not on there anymore.
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It was just hanging around from a long time ago.
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We understand that Spiro means nothing to your clients.
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Are really not that particular about having our name out there.
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We know this is your business, so thanks for that feedback.
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It's gone there now.
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You won't see it on there
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and we have
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some really good updates coming, but I'm way over my minutes
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so on it just tease everybody with that and we'll continue the show.
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Yeah, again, feedback critically important and valuable to us.
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So keep that coming and we'll get to some feedback that we got
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some comments on the podcast in just a minute.
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But before we do that, talk a little bit about the
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the live YouTube broadcast that you did with Eli Jones, Todd.
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Yes, that was Eli Jones,
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and I did a YouTube live on metrics.
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So what metrics are important or should be important to your business,
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what they mean?
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How does one metric affect another?
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And Eli and I went into a in the first segment
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of the live, went into a little bit of
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psychology as to thinking about metrics
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and is it what you think or what you know.
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So we talk about it's very important the difference of what you think versus
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what you know, has been a huge that scene has had a huge impact on me.
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I kind of share the story of how that I came across that what client of ours
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shared it with me and how we use it to scale our business.
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Shoot 12, 13, 14,000 jobs a year.
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So you can find that on on Eli Jones's YouTube.
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Just search @EliJones on YouTube, click the live tab
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and you will see the metrics, the metric video with that.
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we did
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very cool.
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I'll put a link, we'll put a link to it in the description
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for this episode as well to make it easy for you.
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So check out, check out the description.
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We'll have that link for you.
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So very cool. Yeah. Good data.
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All right.
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So a tease a little bit, some comments and feedback that we got on
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on the last episode that we did, Todd.
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We we don't we don't make it a point to hide
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kind of what our
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you and I share in terms of faith in a worldview, Christian worldview.
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We try not to have that dominate this podcast.
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Ultimately it's about the business, but
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how we do business is really shaped by our worldview and our faith.
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And we talked about that a little bit last week
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and we got a couple of just really cool comments and one in particular
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that I wanted to share because we we understand not everybody in this
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audience shares the same faith that we do or even necessarily the same worldview.
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We're not trying to shove this down
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anyone's throat, but we want to be real and authentic with people right in in
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why we do what we do in our business and what drives that.
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But this one comment came through from from J.R.
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And Todd, I just want to share this because I really appreciated this and J.R.
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said on on the YouTube channel, really enjoying the podcast.
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I don't consider myself religious at all.
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However, I do find the positive attitude
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in faith, in honesty and kindness very uplifting.
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I can see
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why Wow media is successful, I'd work with you people in a heartbeat.
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And I just.
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J.R., if you're watching this man, thank you for that comment.
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You know, it's that kind of respect and civility that J.R.
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has demonstrated that we mean we need more of in our world.
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That kindness that he just shared with us.
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He said, hey, I don't necessarily have a religious viewpoint on things.
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And he was honest with us, but he showed respect.
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And I J.R., I just want to say I respect you for that.
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And I thank you for that encouragement.
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That was awesome.
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Yeah, just incredible.
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This is
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there's so much I could say about that, but just thank you, J.R.
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It's really cool.
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This is such an incredible opportunity that I have the privilege that Craig
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and I have the privilege to have is literally we we both sit
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I sit more in the middle of a cornfield
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than he does, but he's very for an hour, an hour and 15 minutes from me.
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Like we sit I'm in my office, he's in his front room like,
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and we get to speak to you guys. It's guys and girls.
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I mean, it's so cool and it's such a privilege that,
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like those comments, I go home, I share with my wife and,
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you know, just really good stuff.
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So thank you, J.R.
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There was a lot of other comments and emails as well, and thank you for that.
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It's encouraging to us.
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We're happy that we can encourage you.
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Hopefully y'all laugh at the dumb things I do, too,
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and we all can move our businesses along a little bit further.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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Well, part of what what he said, you know, he you know,
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he likes the kindness and the honesty, and he'd work with us anytime.
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Part of what we're going to dive into is just some some authenticity,
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some transparency, because we're human, just like anybody else, right?
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We have challenges, we have mess ups, we have bad days.
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You know, there's there could be friction among staff
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that we work through,
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friction with clients,
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unhappy clients, and how do we handle those things.
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So that's I'm going to stop there
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and I'll I'll throw it over to you, Todd, to kind of set this up
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and dive into the challenges associated with busy season.
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Yeah, thank you for that, Craig.
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And it's something that I think we're all feeling right now and
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if you're not feeling that's busy season,
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then don't be too paranoid about it.
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Maybe there's a factor in your market that you are that we're not aware of
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or you're not aware of, or maybe you're just growing your business.
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But one thing that's good to be aware of is anytime you scale a business
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and if you're in
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a particular season when business is higher than other portions of the year,
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everything will be increased.
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So Craig, let's say, for example,
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3% of your clients are going to be unhappy.
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Maybe it's five, maybe it's ten.
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I'm not saying what the right or wrong number is.
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Let's just say for this example, 3% of your clients are unhappy.
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They're always going to be unhappy people.
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Some people are just unhappy people.
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So no matter, even if you do just a knock out job for them,
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they're going to be unhappy with something and.
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And being in customer service, that's a lesson that was tough for me to learn.
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And I oh my goodness, I wore a lot of these on my shoulder
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and we'll get to a point to where Craig, like, is laying in bed
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with this story we're going to tell, like wondering about this.
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And it's only somewhat natural, but at some point
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you just as you do it long enough, you're like, yeah, that's just part of it.
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Like I expect it.
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So if you do 100 jobs
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in a slow month, just for easy math,
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if 3% of your clients are unhappy,
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that means three out of 100
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are going to e are going to contact you unhappy.
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So over the course of 30 days,
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that means on average, every ten days somebody is unhappy.
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Craig That's a pretty big gap.
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It's like, Hey, day one, yeah, I'm feeling the effects.
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They didn't really like the editing, but by day five or day eight
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I forgot about that unhappy client.
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Now let's flip the switch the busy season
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and let's say you're doing three times
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the amount of jobs that you were used to.
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So now you're three monthly
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unhappy clients gets multiplied
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by three and turns into nine.
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It's the same percentage, 3%.
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It's 300 times
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as it's 300% is more three 2%.
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It's three times more.
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Yeah, that's 300%.
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Sorry. My math brain was going crazy.
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I was trying to make that seem really good.
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And I was like, Well, Todd, are you being too dramatic?
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You're like, Are you lying?
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Yeah, it's three times more, which is 300% more.
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So now out of
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the month instead of every ten days.
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Now every two or three days, you have an unhappy client.
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And you know what? It always happens.
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There's going to be one of those days
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that you're going to have two unhappy clients, and it's going to make you feel
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like you just need to jump off the cliff and close your shot, Right?
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Give it all.
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I’m done
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It's Moore's Law.
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It always happens
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with no. Okay.
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Say that again. What law?
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Is that Moore’s?
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I don't know.
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That's why I asked Moore's Law.
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Moore's? It's.
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It's like compounding. It's just everything.
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It always so happens the line up that
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I had a day of this a week ago.
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We are super busy the day after the eclipse we are shooting 77 jobs.
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Everybody in the office is frustrated.
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All of our clients are frustrated.
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We're all overworked.
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I finally get the day done.
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I go to hall, I go to walk out, to go home.
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I go back in the office, say goodbye to Ryan.
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I look up
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and the ceiling's dripping.
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Murphy's Law, if it can go wrong, it will. Is.
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Is that the one year? Yeah. Yeah.
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I'm going get.
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Well, I don't know who. Yeah, I don't know who Moore is.
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I'm like, okay, Moore's Law, This is a new concept.
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Tell me more. And you.
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Okay, got it.
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Got it. Literally tell you more.
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I see what you did there, Craig.
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That's pretty good.
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I, I can't.
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I can't take credit for that one.
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- But I'm glad you caught it - Murphy's Murphy's Law.
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- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So that's Murphy's Law.
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That one day two of your clients are going to be unhappy.
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The same time and it's going to compound on you
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and you're going to feel like you are the worst photographer,
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worst business owner, worst customer service individual in the world.
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Folks, I'm going to tell a story.
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Todd is going to keep setting this up.
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But when you break it down this way with numbers, boy, do I feel silly
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for feeling the way I do right now, but go ahead.
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Well, that's no, and that's Craig.
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I'm so glad that you use that term because there's a term
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that I use sometimes and a coach use with me.
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His name was Dennis and I did something really dumb
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one time and I was upset.
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He pointed it out to me
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and I was really upset that I had that thinking
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that I didn't think differently of what he just enlightened me with
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and he used an incredible term
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that stuck with me that he said, Todd, it's fine.
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We're all just silly humans.
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So the cool thing he
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did there and I would encourage you to use this if you have a team, if you
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and we should all use this, even if you're a one man band,
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if you do something
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that you're mad at yourself
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that it happen, don't beat yourself up about it.
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We're all just silly humans see it as that.
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Now you have different thinking
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and you've grown some.
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And just, just the flip side to that
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is that if you are a team leader or you're leading,
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even if you have one other person that helps you,
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The thing that Dennis did to me that I didn't pick up on right away,
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but he said, We all are just silly humans.
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He didn't say, Todd, you're just a silly human.
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There's a big difference there.
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If you are trying to make this point to someone else and you say,
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Hey, you're just a silly human that might look back at you, be like what you say.
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But if you say, Hey, it's okay, we all are just silly.
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We all are just silly humans.
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I've done it before, you know, and you've got a great opportunity to learn from it.
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That can be very effective with your team members as your business grows.
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So but yeah, Craig I mean, we are, and I'm so glad
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that you use the term silly because it's nothing to beat yourself up about.
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Sometimes we need to go back and look at what we
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know versus what we think
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And that puts things into perspective.
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Yeah. Yep.
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Well, should I, should I share the story?
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Yeah, please do, Craig, Because this one
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is so relevant.
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Yeah. So,
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you know, we do this podcast,
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we share the knowledge that we've gained over all these years,
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and I don't know about you, Todd, but when I listen to other podcasts,
18:13
you know, in experts and fields, not that we have it all nailed down,
18:17
but say a Jon Acauf come for, you know, a or whoever
18:21
that has really good information, you
18:25
I as a listener tend to think, Oh, they've got it all figured out.
18:28
They're running super smooth.
18:30
They don't have problems, No, they do.
18:33
They do.
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And we wanted Todd and I talked about this before
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we started recording this morning because he asked me how I was doing.
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I said, honestly, I'm a little frustrated right now.
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He goes, What's going on?
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So I shared with them the story of an interaction
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that I had with a client yesterday, that
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I was
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silly and stewed on the rest of the day yesterday
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and into last night and this morning because it just it stunk.
18:59
Okay.
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So we have run ins with clients just like anybody else, people that are unhappy.
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Like Todd said, it's spring.
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A number of jobs is going up.
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So your percentage of unhappy people go up.
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And I'm used to I'm wired as a people pleaser.
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Okay? I like to make sure people are very happy.
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Kind of like you, Todd.
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You've you've shared that about yourself as well.
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I try very, very hard to provide a very high level of service,
19:24
you know, customer service and and providing a good product to people
19:30
because that's that's our bread and butter, right?
19:32
We want word of mouth advertising.
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We want good, you know, good advertising, word of mouth advertising.
19:40
That's how a lot of our business grows.
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So I do everything I can to make sure that people are happy with what we've done.
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And satisfied.
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And my personality type is such that if somebody is not happy,
19:55
I do take it a little personal
19:58
and that's kind of what happened yesterday.
20:00
So I was I was going through some of my numbers and activity and,
20:04
you know, number of shoots that that I've got in my my territory.
20:08
And I just I've been feeling like even though the numbers are saying
20:11
I'm doing okay,
20:13
I've felt it's not where it should be and that I haven't put enough
20:16
effort into things.
20:17
So I was starting to look at some of my numbers
20:19
and I pulled up a report of agents that haven't ordered for the last 60 days.
20:23
Right.
20:24
Because I want to get back in touch with some of these people,
20:27
but maybe I haven't reached out to in a little while.
20:29
And I had this one team, two person team
20:34
that I saw they haven't haven't ordered since January.
20:37
And this was a client, a team client that we worked very hard
20:42
on getting back last year and we did get them back on board.
20:46
I was super excited because they do a lot of business in
20:49
in one of the area markets here and they they operate at a very high level.
20:55
So I was really excited that we got them back as a client
20:57
because we had had them, we had lost them and then we got them back.
21:00
So I was super excited, very proud to work for them, try to give them, you know,
21:05
the best service that I can following up, making sure they're happy here.
21:08
You know, our
21:09
constant feedback was, Yeah, we're happy you guys, you're doing great.
21:13
So when I saw that they hadn’t ordered, I'm like, Huh, What's going on?
21:18
You know?
21:19
So I did a little Facebook stalking.
21:23
I'm like, Are they just not getting jobs?
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Because inventory is still an issue, right?
21:27
Or there's a cold sweat immediately, right?
21:29
Craig Oh yeah. Like it's you see that name on the list?
21:31
- It's like, Oh, - what happened?
21:33
Yeah, because I know that they're kind of listing leaders.
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So I look up and I see that they do.
21:40
They just got a listing and the photos weren't ours.
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And I'm like, You get that,
21:47
you know, punch in the gut feeling
21:49
like, Oh, what happened?
21:53
Okay. Did I not have availability?
21:55
So they went with somebody else.
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Were they not happy?
21:59
You know, is that a pricing issue?
22:01
You just you go you start immediately going through all these questions of
22:04
why did they not call us?
22:05
Why did we not get this job right?
22:08
After all the hard work we did to get them on board?
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So I called both
22:13
members and got their voicemails left and both of voicemail.
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Hey, you know, Craig, just checking in.
22:18
You know,
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I know it's been a tough another challenging time with with inventory.
22:24
And it's been a little while since we shot for you.
22:27
But I just wanted to check in, you know, see what I can do for you.
22:30
You know, any feedback you have greatly appreciated, give me a call back.
22:34
So about 2 minutes later,
22:38
it was literally about 2 minutes later, one of the one of the two agents
22:41
called back and and thanked them, you know,
22:44
for the quick call and not to drag this story out.
22:48
But I asked him point blank, I said, hey, you know, I know it's been since January,
22:52
since we shot for you.
22:54
I saw you just got this listing and exiting and it wasn't us.
22:58
That did it.
22:59
I just I'm going to
23:00
just be upfront because I trust you and I respect the relationship we have.
23:04
Can I ask why we didn't get the job?
23:06
I just was very up for it.
23:09
There's no point in beating around the bush, you know, these are salespeople.
23:12
Just be direct with them.
23:14
I respect him.
23:15
He respects me.
23:16
We can have an adult conversation, right?
23:18
And he said, Yeah, you know, fair question.
23:21
And it boiled down to they are significantly cheaper.
23:25
And we felt the quality was comparable.
23:28
Now I understand pricing.
23:31
Let's be real, right?
23:33
We all know what realtors can be.
23:35
Realtors can be cheap and they're looking for the bottom dollar,
23:40
not all of them.
23:42
So I understand the pricing.
23:43
If somebody is significantly cheaper,
23:45
you got to consider them, especially if quality is comparable.
23:50
Todd It wasn't so
23:52
much the price feedback that I got that bothered me.
23:55
It was the quality issue.
23:57
I felt like I got punched in the gut because I take pride in the editing
24:02
that we do the composition, you know, how we take the photos, the process we use
24:07
because we get so much good feedback.
24:11
And the reason that stung
24:14
was because I looked at the photos of this newest listing,
24:18
and in my opinion,
24:21
the photos were pretty poor quality,
24:24
no consistency in the editing,
24:27
the exposure or the composition.
24:30
I just personally felt
24:33
I'm just going to be real that we talked about authenticity.
24:36
I felt insulted.
24:39
Like I felt insulted
24:41
because I take great pride in the consistency that we deliver.
24:45
And as far as I knew, we were working
24:47
very hard and had a really good product that we were we were delivering
24:52
and man I stood on that. Todd
24:56
I stood on that.
24:59
I don't know if you have questions for me at this point
25:01
or if you want me to just keep going.
25:03
did you
25:06
did you feel like after
25:08
you got that feedback that
25:12
you that all of your shoots are bad?
25:15
Like there's something that's
25:19
like maybe I'm just a crappy photographer,
25:21
maybe I'm just crappy at building relationships.
25:25
I, I mean, a little bit,
25:28
but I've had so much good feedback that I know
25:31
that I knew that couldn't entirely be the case.
25:34
But I know there's little things I need to constantly
25:37
be aware of in my own shooting
25:40
that I need to make sure, you know, say verticals.
25:44
You got to make sure your verticals are straight, right?
25:45
Every once in a while I'll get home looking like, what was I thinking?
25:50
That's off kilter now I know we can straighten it.
25:53
And in editing, but it's like I got sloppy on that one.
25:58
So that is magnified, right?
26:03
Just the least little thing you do wrong.
26:05
It's like, Oh, that wasn't good enough, you know,
26:08
for this client.
26:11
So I thanked him.
26:13
Initially. I didn't I didn't push back.
26:15
You didn't argue that you're nuts.
26:18
You know, the quality is stratosphere.
26:20
You know, it's just totally different atmosphere,
26:23
different world in terms of quality.
26:25
I thanked him for his honest feedback.
26:27
I said, I appreciate that.
26:28
That you felt comfortable to be open and give me that feedback.
26:32
We're always looking to get better, so I'm going to look at this and
26:35
and see what we can do better to serve you.
26:37
And he said, You know, it's not like we're never going to use you again.
26:39
You know, we'll we'll use you again down the road.
26:42
Well, now my marketing mind is kicking in.
26:44
It's like, no, no, no, no.
26:45
Pick one provider.
26:46
Be consistent in your branding.
26:48
You don't want different looks, shoot to shoot.
26:52
So the consultant part of me was kicking it.
26:54
I didn't say anything there either.
26:55
Wasn't the time I didn't feel was the time or the place
26:58
because in the heat of the moment of being given
27:00
that kind of news, you don't want to start arguing with your client, right?
27:03
So I just took it,
27:05
thanked him for the feedback, said you've given me some things to look on.
27:08
I'm going to see what we can do better because, you know, I'd love to
27:11
continue to work with you.
27:15
That's the diplomat in me.
27:17
Then I hung up and I just started stewing.
27:20
Yeah, Yeah.
27:22
So here's. Here's what I've done.
27:25
Obviously, I stood on it last night, but I reached out to Chris.
27:29
Our our sales manager told him the situation, asked for his feedback.
27:33
And this morning, Brenna, who's our assistant to Ryan,
27:38
who helps with our quality and training, I asked for feedback from both of them.
27:42
I said I said personally, I feel a little insulted.
27:46
Here's the shoot.
27:47
This other photographer did that.
27:49
They're comparing us to What can I do better so that
27:53
they're not tempted to say that again.
27:56
And Chris had some really good feedback.
28:00
They're always going to be clients that aren't happy.
28:03
Now, these are not clients
28:04
I expected that from, and I don't I don't think they're that way still.
28:09
So I want to fight for this client. I'm not going to give up on them.
28:13
So Chris said, offer him this
28:16
offer to reshoot this listing that we didn't get for free,
28:20
and then take them out to lunch and do a, you know, a side by side
28:23
comparison and get their feedback on which ones they're preferring
28:28
and get that feedback.
28:30
Offer your insight on why you, you know,
28:34
why we think that this would be a better product or better service for you.
28:38
But take care of them, offered to do it free and take them out to lunch.
28:41
I'm like, Hmm, yeah, okay, why didn't I think of that?
28:45
So really appreciate Chris's feedback
28:49
because these are good clients that I want to fight for.
28:53
They're going to be clients that aren't worth fighting for.
28:55
They're just bottom dollar agents and they don't care about quality.
28:58
And you can tell
29:00
I don't feel these clients are that that's why this one stung a little bit more.
29:05
So this morning I
29:07
typed up an email to them both that both team members
29:11
and made that offer and said, you know,
29:14
I do have some concerns about that.
29:17
You know, some of the photos that kind of stuck out to me.
29:18
On your newest listing
29:20
I'd like to offer
29:21
to reshoot the whole thing for you for free, including the aerials.
29:24
Take you out to lunch and let's let's compare.
29:27
I want to get feedback from you.
29:29
And if you're happier with the newer photos, take them.
29:32
Use them for your listing.
29:34
No charge because I'd like to earn your business back consistently.
29:38
So we'll see what they say.
29:40
But I really appreciated that insight from Chris.
29:42
And then Brenna is going to take a look at a couple of past shoots that we've done
29:45
for them that they did express a little concern on to previous shoots.
29:49
We took care of those those issues and sent resent those photos back out.
29:53
Never heard anything negative after that.
29:55
So I assumed that they were happy.
29:57
But folks, you know, that's that's just the reality of a business.
30:01
Not every one of my clients is happy,
30:04
but my personality is such that that stung.
30:07
And I stood on it last night
30:09
and that can be magnified because I haven't had any complaints for a while.
30:14
So when you do get one, yeah, it's like, oh,
30:18
so there's just a real authentic look.
30:20
Look at the day of a day in the life of
30:25
a client that wasn't happy.
30:27
Yeah.
30:28
Craig And I think a couple questions and it might not have been
30:32
this exact question I asked you, but is it reasonable to think that
30:38
100% of people
30:41
you're is it reasonable to think, excuse me,
30:43
that you're going to have 100% of your clients always happy?
30:49
No, no.
30:51
I mean, it's what we want.
30:52
And I saw your brain.
30:54
You said that in your head is like, well, that's what I want. Yeah,
30:58
exactly.
30:58
Yeah, that is what I want.
31:00
Especially for a client.
31:01
That is a high volume client.
31:03
Does a lot of business.
31:05
Well known in the community.
31:06
I want their business,
31:08
you know. So like I said,
31:10
this is a client I want to fight for and want them to be happy.
31:14
But if it ends up that they really are just looking for the cheapest price
31:19
and they're going to settle
31:19
for lower quality, in my opinion, what is lower quality, then?
31:23
Maybe that's not the type of client I want or need to spend the time on.
31:28
And that's hard because my perception of them is different.
31:33
But yeah, not every client will be happy.
31:34
So there are some things that you think in this story
31:38
and there's also some things you know or that you don't know.
31:42
Yeah. Mm hmm.
31:43
You know, this is that that scene alone.
31:45
Like you think your perceptions are different. That's what you think of them.
31:48
Maybe they really don't even care about the photos.
31:52
Right?
31:53
And the price difference isn't, you know, enough?
31:57
Maybe they really do think our quality is a little bit better,
32:00
but it's not worth the dollars for them because we're not going to race
32:02
to the bottom on price.
32:04
Right. We're not going to be that bottom feeder.
32:08
So we just have to be okay with that sometimes.
32:11
But as a people pleaser, I forget about that sometimes.
32:15
Yeah.
32:16
And there's going to be some times where those client you're going to have
32:19
lifecycles of clients and as your company grows,
32:23
you're not going to keep
32:26
all of the clients that you used to have.
32:29
You'll get new clients.
32:30
That's great. Every business
32:32
I've started, every business I've grown, has been like that.
32:35
And with Wow when I started it,
32:39
I was able to go out and I was able to get
32:42
just about any client big or small.
32:45
And as we grew, we kept a lot of those clients,
32:48
but we lost a lot of those clients too, and some of them
32:53
just flat out told me like, Hey, I really liked it when you shot for me.
32:56
- Yeah, yeah, that's a big one - there's one.
32:59
Rhonda.
33:00
I just I'm still sad to this day that we do not shoot for her.
33:04
I worked really hard to get her.
33:06
I remember the first listing I did.
33:08
It was a builder's home.
33:09
I remember everything about it, and I got her right after that shoot.
33:13
I shot impromptu.
33:13
Her photographer was out of town and dang, I walked out the thing.
33:17
I nailed it like I was on my game.
33:18
My jokes were good that night.
33:23
My photos are still terrible
33:25
Yeah, my photos I know my photos were still terrible.
33:29
If I go back and look at like, yeah, those photos are terrible.
33:32
They were good back then.
33:33
But anyways, that's we're going to have that and it's still, it still hurts.
33:38
Like that's a name that I can say instantly.
33:40
Like, Man, I wish Rhonda still used us
33:43
and she doesn’t, and I have to be okay with that.
33:45
The funny thing is Rhonda actually refers a she owns part of a company now.
33:49
She refers us to her agents,
33:51
- but she doesn't use us - well, she doesn't literally list anymore.
33:54
So, like, she likes everything and she's like, Hey, I'm just.
33:57
I just wanted you. I want a particular thing.
33:59
I want to have the personal relationship.
34:01
And that doesn't line up with what our company is doing.
34:04
Our company's a scale company.
34:05
We want to do volume, and we want to service the clients
34:09
with great value and a a great lead time and turnaround time.
34:15
And if they want a personal relationship where it's just one photographer,
34:18
shoot for them.
34:19
And we just we don't deliver that here.
34:23
They can request
34:24
can request a certain photographer but they're not guaranteed that.
34:27
Right. Right. Yeah.
34:29
And that's that's been hard to break to get realtors in my area
34:34
the Toledo area get getting them used to that
34:38
because prior to Wow being their provider it was me on my own
34:43
with my own company and they got used to that one on one relationships.
34:47
That's been my biggest battle up here is getting them to understand,
34:50
Hey, Craig can't do all all of your shoots necessarily.
34:54
You are going to have to use harmony or,
34:57
you know, or one of our other other
35:00
one of our other realtors, one of our other photographers.
35:03
So, yeah, that's a that's a challenge, though.
35:05
It gets easier
35:06
as you bring on new clients that aren't necessarily used to you that.
35:10
Just right off the bat, you you introduce the fact that, hey,
35:14
we have a team of photographers that can serve you.
35:16
And so it gets easier as you scale.
35:20
Yeah, I mean, I
35:21
haven't had any I haven't had anybody request me in ten years. So
35:26
now this, this is perspective.
35:29
Should I be upset about that, that nobody wants Todd to shoot anymore?
35:34
No, not at all.
35:35
I'm so happy that the team is better than I am
35:39
and that our clients have relationships with our team,
35:44
with their photographer photographers.
35:47
So it all comes down to perspective and expectations of what you expect.
35:53
You know, I'll reuse this a quick story, and I'm stealing this from some
35:57
someone else who reuse it.
35:58
So this is a Alex Hormozi quote
36:01
and Eli Jones said it on the Facebook Q&A last night.
36:05
So I'm just reusing it twice.
36:06
So I just be completely transparent this is not me, but it goes
36:10
with like traffic.
36:12
If you leave work or your house at 5:00 on Friday night
36:17
and you have some traffic, you're like, okay, yeah, it's going to be busy.
36:21
People are trying to go somewhere
36:24
so the traffic's not as bad.
36:26
You know, the ten extra minutes doesn't seem as bad.
36:29
But if you hit traffic at 8 p.m.
36:31
on a Tuesday evening, when you don't expect there to be a ten minute delay,
36:35
you hit that ten minute delay and you're if feels like an hour
36:39
because you don't expect
36:42
traffic at 8 p.m.
36:44
on Tuesday.
36:45
So it's just expect that
36:48
there's going to be more unhappy people.
36:51
And if you're an optimist, then
36:55
you have more happy people to if that makes you feel better
36:59
just every time you have more unhappy people, like,
37:02
you know what, I have more happy people too.
37:05
And just try to reset those expectations.
37:08
See every, see every
37:13
negative as an opportunity.
37:15
Right?
37:15
And I'm so happy that Craig took it as this, you know,
37:18
he could have stewed, he could still be stewing.
37:21
But, you know, he reached out a little bit and that's okay.
37:24
That's human. Like you're we're competitive.
37:26
We're all competitive. Right
37:29
But he reached out to Chris
37:33
and say, hey, what can I do?
37:35
Reached out to Brenna, ask for feedback.
37:37
They have a plan.
37:39
What an incredible opportunity
37:42
to not just win this one client back.
37:45
We may we may not, but what a great opportunity
37:48
for moving forward to have this,
37:52
you know, the idea of running the report.
37:55
Craig, you said you went in, you ran the report.
37:57
So one thing that I wanted to point out is this is super easy to do.
38:00
in Spiro, Craig said,
38:02
I ran the report to see what clients haven't used us in 60 days.
38:05
Inside of your metrics, you can set that day figure.
38:10
So we have 60 and then we have a different figure for VIPs.
38:13
And Spiro can give you a list of clients
38:16
that have not placed an order in that amount of days.
38:19
So it's very easy to identify the reason why that report's in there.
38:24
We we use it like we really we just don't create junk that we think is cool.
38:29
We create stuff that allows us to scale and shoot tens of thousands, you know,
38:33
a ton of shoots per year.
38:36
So the other
38:38
thing I want to quicly point out and just compliments you on, Craig
38:41
and as a suggestion
38:43
for everyone else, Craig said
38:47
he called the agents immediately.
38:50
Not only did he call the agent immediately, he got a voicemail to begin
38:53
with.
38:53
He called both agents immediately.
38:57
It makes such a big difference. Yes.
38:59
You're all saying, hey, he emailed a follow up.
39:01
That's because we already talked to them and we had an offer for them.
39:05
He called immediately.
39:06
If you are sitting at home and something like this has happened to you
39:10
and you are in your own head thinking, what is wrong with me?
39:13
What is wrong with them? What is wrong with the world?
39:15
You're never going to solve it.
39:17
Pick up the phone and call somebody.
39:18
Yeah, call the agent.
39:20
Call your friend. Get feedback.
39:23
Don't stew in your own head. Right.
39:25
Go to someone, get some perspective, and then try something.
39:30
You've got a great opportunity to improve your business.
39:35
Yeah.
39:35
So job well done, Craig.
39:37
Thank you.
39:39
There's a couple of books I put on my Amazon list that are basically
39:42
talk about overthinking and getting stuck inside your own hat.
39:46
Well, one of them, I think one of them is a book you suggest I put on
39:49
on my list from Jon Acuff Soundtracks.
39:53
Yeah, I think it was.
39:54
I put that, yes. Oh yes.
39:56
My birthday's coming up Sunday, the 21st, and we'll see if I get that book.
40:00
But it's it's on my list.
40:02
But yeah, like Todd said, don't.
40:04
And that's one of my tendencies is I get stuck in my own thinking.
40:08
Right? I'm an introvert.
40:09
I do a lot of internal processing, a lot of analytical thinking.
40:13
I stew on things.
40:14
A girlfriend in college, her mom saw that the first time she met me, she.
40:19
She told her daughter.
40:20
He's a thinker, isn't he?
40:22
Being a thinker is not a bad thing, but you can take it too far, so. Yes.
40:26
Yeah. Yeah.
40:27
Reach out to others were meant for community, right?
40:30
Is iron sharpens iron.
40:32
One person sharpens another.
40:34
Rely on your team.
40:35
Your team has other members of your team have other gifts and talents and insights
40:39
and perspective that they can bring to you that maybe you haven't thought about.
40:43
Take that not as is criticism, but take that as something to grow from
40:47
and add to your your toolkit to be able to serve your clients.
40:51
So yeah
40:55
already
40:57
I feel better, Todd.
40:58
Thank you for the therapy session.
41:00
Well thank you for talking us through.
41:01
It's it's not always easy You know I go back to
41:04
I use this morning meaning today but my my feelings clock.
41:07
You know
41:08
it's like these it's awesome
41:09
these feel these feelings are difficult on here to share.
41:13
And I really, really compliment you for sharing them.
41:16
It's not easy.
41:17
Once you start doing it, it gets easier.
41:19
So, you know, Craig, you mentioned contact somebody.
41:23
We don't mind that people contact us with the question, how do they contact us?
41:27
Right. Just drop us an email.
41:28
hello@spiro.media that's SPIRO
41:32
dot media and yeah, if you have a question,
41:35
let us know something we can cover here
41:37
on on the podcast or, you know, reach out to you individually.
41:41
We're here to serve you and be an encouragement to you.
41:43
I know I'm not the only one dealing with that issue of feeling
41:47
like you're the worst photographer in the world.
41:49
When somebody gives you
41:49
a negative feedback or you lose a client, we all go through that.
41:54
So anything that we've learned that that helps.
41:57
If we can help you and encourage you, we want to do that.
42:00
So feel free to drop us a line.
42:02
Yeah.
42:02
Also, if you're looking for a little more custom
42:05
and support, if you will, I mentioned him quite a bit.
42:09
Eli Jones with the Repp team.
42:12
They have an incredible coaching program
42:15
and I from the outside have seen it and seen how photographers have grown in it
42:20
and it's kind of cool because myself and my team, my leadership team at Wow
42:23
we have a coaching call once a week in there where students inside
42:27
the program can come,
42:28
they can ask us any question and they have fabulous coaches as well,
42:32
but you can find out more information reppteam.com
42:35
R E P P T E A M dot com they've got a great group
42:39
of individuals that you can call and you can talk to them
42:42
about what your business is and where you want to be.
42:44
So if you're just
42:45
feel like you want a little bit more, you can gain a lot from podcast and books.
42:49
But some of you, just like I just need someone to guide me, I wholeheartedly
42:55
suggest that you just at least give them a call.
42:58
It's worth an opportunity.
43:00
Talk to their team, see if it would fit for you.
43:02
They have incredible guarantees too, which is really cool
43:04
that you're going to hit certain platforms.
43:06
So that's another option as well.
43:08
There's other programs out there, but our reppteam.com.
43:13
All right. There you go.
43:15
Well, hopefully that was an encouragement to you guys.
43:19
Well, I didn't I didn't initially think we were going to talk about that on
43:23
on the podcast.
43:24
But if it benefits somebody else, then hey, learn learn from our mistakes
43:29
and our challenges and we just we want the best for you. So.
43:34
Yeah.
43:34
And just no, I'm sorry, I should have made this point.
43:37
Just know that everyone has the
43:38
so if you're on social media and everybody's like,
43:41
you know,
43:41
I sent a screenshot
43:42
to somebody the other day and it's like, here's
43:44
he want to see how many orders he takes in a week and I send it
43:47
from Wow like we took 260 orders this week
43:51
and I didn't mean to do it as an I was simply showing him and it happened
43:56
to have the number of orders like, wow, I did.
43:58
I can't believe like, I can't wait until I take that many orders.
44:01
Like, there's always someone out there that is like
44:05
and I know some business owners who, if I saw their numbers, like,
44:10
I would feel very insignificant at 260 orders.
44:13
So there's always
44:16
just please try to understand that what social media
44:19
and what the world wants us to feel and what is actually happening
44:24
are two different things and give yourself the benefit of the doubt
44:29
Yeah. All that to say.
44:31
Yeah.
44:31
Social media makes everything look hunky dory, right?
44:34
And like, the best things are happening.
44:36
That's why we shared the story
44:38
that we did today, because we have challenges as well.
44:41
You know, this is a challenge for me to to grow from and learn from that Hopefully
44:45
you've learned something as well and can take, you know, some good advice.
44:49
And when it when it does happen to you,
44:52
when you have an unhappy client because you will have one,
44:56
think back to think back to this episode and okay, how can I handle this?
45:00
It's not the end of the world.
45:01
I'm not the worst photographer in the world.
45:04
And just take some comfort and peace in that.
45:06
Just,
45:07
you know, get that off your shoulder.
45:10
Yeah.
45:11
Well said, Craig. and thank you.
45:12
Yeah. Okay, enough.
45:14
I think we've belabor the point.
45:16
- I think we're good. - Send us home.
45:18
All right.
45:19
Well, again, if you have a question for the podcast,
45:23
you'd like to see a business question answered on Spiro.
45:26
We would love that again.
45:27
Drop us an email. hello@spiro.media.
45:30
If you want to learn more about the software of the Merge fleet,
45:33
the automated video editing, check out the website spiro.media.
45:37
There's a knowledge based link.
45:38
You can check out a bunch of tutorial videos and articles.
45:40
It's it's a great resource, so check that all out.
45:43
But in the meantime,
45:45
take some time to be thankful for the blessings you have,
45:48
time for the happy clients that you do have that far
45:52
outnumber the unhappy clients and sure, you take a breath.
45:56
Thanks for watching.
45:57
Thanks for listening. We appreciate you guys. Have a great week.
46:00
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro podcast,
46:03
managing your real estate photography and videography business.
46:07
This is a production of Spiro and wow video tours.
46:11
You can find out more about Spiro
46:13
is real estate, media, business management software at our website.
46:17
Spiro.media.