Latest / The Spiro Podcast: Managing your Real Estate Photography & Videography Business / Fortune is in the Followup

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Fortune is in the Followup · 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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like think eight years to get a deal.
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And of course, we pursued other deals and we did our client acquisition
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and we continued to build relationships, but we didn't forget about people
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that said, no, they didn't really say no.
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They said no, not right now.
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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, Kevin Mackie
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and Craig Mann.
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Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast.
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Managing your real estate, photography and videography business.
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Spiro is a software platform.
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If you're just watching or listening
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for the first time, it's a software platform designed to help you manage
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and ultimately grow your real estate media business.
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My name is Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
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Welcome back to another week and, we're all about talking
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about the business of real estate media and visual marketing.
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We have some lighthearted commentary and banter as well
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here and there, because we're relational people, right?
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So let me introduce our co-host and owner and founder of Spiro Todd Kivimaki
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Welcome back, Todd.
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Craig, it's great to be here another week.
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Exciting things to talk about.
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Great topic this week.
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Thank you all for the feedback.
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I think you guys are contacting us more and more, which is fabulous.
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We love to hear from you.
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So please leave a comment wherever you're listening to this, YouTube,
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any podcast channel, if you can even do that, I don't know.
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Or email us hello@spiro.media.
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Also, if you're a Spiro user, please use the little pink chat bubble.
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You can say, hey, can you send this to Todd or Craig?
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They will tag us in here.
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If it's something urgent with Spiro, you're trying to get something set up
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or figure it out.
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Chat can help you as well so that all the support team is in there for you.
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Absolutely, absolutely.
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All right.
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Well, we always like to, to hit Spiro updates first.
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A lot has been going on the past week or so here, Todd.
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And, I'm just going to let you take it.
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Yeah.
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So thank you for that, Craig. Lots of great stuff.
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So we launched the beginning of this week, a very large update.
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Excited about it. I've talked a lot about this.
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I'm not going to I'm not going to spend time here.
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Your valuable time talking more about it.
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But this is making your order pages look great.
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Landing pages photographer start time end time service areas.
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Lots of great things in there.
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You can find all of that inside of Spiro.
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And, the release notes.
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You can find those in your inbox or just as a team in the pink chat bubble.
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We are working on cycle ten is what we're calling it.
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And that's the next development updates for you
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and I wanted to just let you know kind of where we're landing right now
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and where we land is based on all of your all feedback from us.
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So we want to make sure
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that we put in valuable functions and features for you guys.
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Spiro started off for just our real estate media company
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Wow video tours, and we did everything that Wow needed.
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And that was years ago.
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And we still, you know,
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Wow was still using it to shoot the 12,000 plus jobs a year.
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But we focus on what you guys want and we use it to it. Wow.
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So it's exciting. You know these new update, you guys have great ideas.
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What we're looking at for cycle ten, which is going to launch
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the end of April.
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The biggie there that I want to at least let you know is we're looking
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at that marketing content.
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So we've had a lot of feedback.
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It's great that your agents want to use it.
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There's a few limitations.
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One thing, it's very simple right now, so it's easy for our agents to use it.
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Craig, we all know that our agents, you know, I think of my my mother,
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she's 79 years old. She's a real estate agent.
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I think of her being able to click around on on her,
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computer to do that, and,
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she can't do it, by the way.
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She she she.
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So it's not like I can't design it for my mother because my mother's like,
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where's she'll call me and say, Todd, where's the W key?
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So we can't make it that simple.
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I love my mom, by the way.
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She's not listening.
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She has no clue what a podcast is, but
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we we want to give
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some more functionality and that marketing kit for you.
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So, you know, these are things like change the font, zoom,
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crop, zoom into the image, drag in a new text box,
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change this thing, change that thing more Canva like
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features that you all the higher level users are used to
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and give you more templates as well.
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And looking to expand those templates into a couple different formats.
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So we've got some ideas that we're going to build around that marketing kit.
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So I'm excited for that.
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Some other goodies come in as well.
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But well the other one I, I will mention because it's quick is property websites.
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So you will have at least one new property website.
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And then we've built a flow that we can more quickly and easily
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get you new designs and templates for those property websites.
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So if you've got a property website out there you love,
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and it doesn't necessarily have to be a property website,
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maybe it's just a website that you go to and you're like, I love this gallery,
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or I love this font, I love this header.
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This will be cool to have
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in Spiro for my clients.
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Can you send me that link?
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Just hello@spiro.media say on podcast.
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Todd ask for some website examples.
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Send them to me.
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I'll put them in our document station for our designer
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that's doing those websites as inspiration.
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And then we'll look to incorporate elements in those.
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So a screenshot, a link to the website would help us.
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And we'll put those as inspiration
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There you go. Awesome.
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All right.
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Any other any other updates coming up that you want to talk about or
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not updates.
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I mean, we launched another update or a partnership with autoHDR, right.
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And, so thank you all for the support and trying that.
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So if you are just finding out about it now, it's AI photo editing.
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And this is a one.
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It's not a it's I do not own the company.
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I don't have any ownership in the company.
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I know the owner, Matt.
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And, Matt is a real estate business owner as well.
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He, Long story short, and I posted some of this
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on our Spiro super user group, so because I want to be 100% transparent.
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Matt is a real estate business owner.
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He has a degree in machine learning,
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real estate business
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or real estate photography media business.
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Oh, sorry. Yeah.
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Real estate photography. Yeah. Real estate and media.
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Yeah. Okay.
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He's a real estate photography business and
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he he's in the I always say
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the Hamptons but it's not the Hamptons and it's another very high end market.
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Nantucket is where he's at and he's a Spiro user as well.
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And we've been talking for a long time, so he contacted me
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quite a while ago, and he's like, hey, show me the model, ask for some images.
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From Wow.
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And we were really busy at that point, like, Matt just, you know, not right now.
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Respectfully, no.
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And he found me in Vegas and we talked, and he caught the eye of Jess,
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our operation manager, what he was showing us.
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And we've worked with him since we've had those conferences in November.
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And he has done an incredible amount of work, y'all.
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He moved away from his real estate media business
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because he didn't want to focus on it,
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because he wanted to focus on this new model, on this and this editing
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and he's got it to the point of where we are using it, our real estate
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media company.
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Many of you all who know Eli Jones, he's using that at Norman and Young
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and we feel like not only is the product great,
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but we align really well with Matt and Matt as the business owner.
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And that's super important because we will never recommend a business or recommend
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you use something that we don't align with, aligned with the values.
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And one of the cool things is, much like Spiro, where
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there's some things in Spiro, you guys go, oh, that's interesting.
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How do you know to do that?
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And I say, hey,
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because I screwed it up for 20 years and then I created software around it.
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It's the same ideas as to how he is so much further ahead than other AI systems.
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He's only done this now for about eight months.
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I think. Eight months.
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I've been talking to companies for years
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and they're nowhere near where he is at now.
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Is it perfect? It's not perfect.
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It's really darn good.
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I'm. I was on a call the other day with someone, and we are looking
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at some of the images and they're like, oh, what about that fascia right there?
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And we zoomed in to see if there was clouds on it
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and like, no, there wasn't clouds on it.
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But I say this kindly to all of you, if you ever have to really,
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really zoom into an image, you're being too picky,
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Send it to your clients and you're going, no, no, to Todd.
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You don't understand.
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You do volume at Wow.
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I have really picky clients.
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No, I do understand we have particular clients as well.
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Every client deserves a great image, but they don't have your eye.
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If you ever have to zoom in and pixel peep, I'm sorry you're spending your time.
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Not very well.
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I say that from a place of love in my heart because I used to do that.
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Should I send it? Should I not send it?
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Good is good enough.
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Hit the send button reactively.
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If they want something changed, show how good your customer service is.
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Yeah. So that's that's autoHDR.
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I digress there and went a little off of off of the story, but it just wasn't hot.
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It's a hot topic right now.
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It's it's on all the Facebook groups.
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And so now I think it's important to talk about.
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Yeah.
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So we and we mentioned this in last podcast,
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but we had an open conversation.
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We care about humans here y'all.
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That's all we we talk about relationship
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I have ownership in Creo an editing company that does that.
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Wow. Sends most of our business that way
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and I'm not going to leave them afloat.
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So I've been talking to them like, hey, what else can we do with your team?
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We love your team.
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You guys are talented. What else can we do?
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Right?
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And they went, oh, well, we would love to pivot into this.
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So it's not that I don't care about humans, it's just that
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I'm not naive to think that AI technology is not going to evolve.
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And if we don't evolve with it, yeah, then we're going to be obsolete in the end.
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You know, just one more thing on this, Craig. And,
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I love this discussion, but
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like, I set out in a cornfield for ten years
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with Wow, and I thought
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I was going to keep it all to myself.
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And, you know, honestly, like, we we were doing thousands and thousands
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and thousands of tours a year, and we tried to tell no one about it
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because we thought that if we didn't tell anybody, we would be.
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That would be our unique advantage, that no one was going to figure out
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how to take a real estate photo or video.
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And I will tell you, ever since we've kind of launched, Spiro
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and I've gotten to talk to a lot of you
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all, and we do coaching and we, you know, Eli Jones's coaching.
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We have some calls in there.
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And ever since, we're like giving like, here's what we do, here's what we do,
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here's what we do.
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It took 21 years to develop that and I've switched the mentality
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that's like, hey, I'm just going to freely give,
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you know, AI because we're all going to make this better because then you guys
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go and do it and you ask this question like, oh, that's a great question.
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Yeah.
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If we could make it better by doing that. So
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I hear the idea of like, I don't want your editors to be out of work.
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I understand they feed their families what the income you give them that
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that weighs heavy on me as a business owner relies heavy.
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It weighs heavy on all of us. Right.
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Every night I lay down and I think about all the employees that.
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Wow and Spiro and the different companies I'm like, that is on my mind.
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I want them not only do
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to feed their families, but I want them to hit their goals.
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I want them to feel fulfilled with their work.
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And that's just all part of business.
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And sometimes you have to pivot and sometimes you have to change.
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And change is not easy to know, but hard.
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It is hard.
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But there's a book and I can't remember.
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The author right now, but it's titled What Got you here won't
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- get you there. - Yeah, I've heard that one.
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And it's it's a great read.
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It's a pretty quick read.
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Yeah, but it's so true.
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Yeah.
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Can I relate just a real quick story
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related to change in it.
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Leading change is one of the hardest
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things you will ever do is is a business owner a leader?
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Before I was in the real estate media field, I worked in in broadcast
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radio and my last role I was general manager of a station
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and myself and our program director at the board's behest.
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We were non noncommercial at the time and non profit station,
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the station
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was the oldest Christian radio station in our market, and it was literally dying.
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And I was asked to interview for the GM position.
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And, and I thought that's that's not the type of station I'm really
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that thrilled about potentially leading
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and I knew that I agreed to the interview,
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but with the intention of asking the question, is there
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a willingness by the board to make some major format changes
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to breathe some life into the station again, enrich our community again
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with the message that we're tasked with caring?
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Is there a willingness?
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Because change is hard.
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Well, Todd, before I even got to asking that question,
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the board told me we need to make changes.
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And what are your ideas for changing
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what we need to do to be relevant to families in our market?
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Again?
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And when you have an entrenched
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audience that's used to doing things a certain way,
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nobody wants to change who really wants to change?
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And it's not comfortable.
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And you can be accused of leaving people behind, but the intent
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is to reach new audiences, reach new people, be relevant to your market,
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you know, and it doesn't really matter what industry you're talking about.
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But leading through that change and dealing with,
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the pushback is extremely hard.
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And you do have to find creative ways to make it a positive change.
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And in.
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Be authentic about it
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with with your reasons for it.
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You've got to find your why
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in leading the change, whether it's an AI editing change or whatever,
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you've got to find your way of why are we pursuing this change?
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Are my reasons.
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In in,
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my reasons for pursuing that change.
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Authentic. Transparent.
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Good. Profitable.
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Good for people.
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It's it's a hard thing.
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So you do have to pause.
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You know, leading a change is, is one of the hardest things you'll do in your life.
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So we don't take it lightly.
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And it's not a topic that we just are traipsing across.
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You really do have to think through it.
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And what's the impact for your business?
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So that was the whole purpose of last
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week's episode is what is the impact for a major change like this?
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So we do encourage you think through what's best for your business
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and for your team and your editors and all of that.
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We don't take that lightly.
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Yeah. We don't.
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That's a great story, Craig.
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And, you know, it's some of the things that we have to
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we have to be willing to push through as a business owner.
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Change.
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I'm not saying you have to use autoHDR.
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We're not we're not saying we're we're not saying you have to use anything.
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We're just telling you much like any other experience, what we do.
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And you're welcome to take it or leave it.
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That's the beautiful thing about being a business owner.
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You have that power.
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So, you know, we wanted to be
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careful with it in the way that we used it with our company.
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So we had those conversations because we care about those editors
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and those people and, you know, maybe this is something you'll take, maybe not.
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But I think that story, Craig is, is perfect for business owners
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because that's one of the most difficult parts of being a business owner.
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What what ultimately ended up,
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ended up happening with that change at the radio station with that format change
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to working for younger families again, was some of the entrenched audience.
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Some of them actually did catch the vision and realized,
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hey, we need to take the message that this radio space station
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is trying to share with it the community, and we need to pass that message
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on to the next generation in a way that they understand and get.
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And so that older generation that was used to listening to this station,
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quite a few of them
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did make that shift. And,
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making a shift is painful.
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It's hard. But man, I admired them for that.
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And their willingness to find new ways to pass on the faith that they had.
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You know, obviously Christian radio station is what I love.
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But I just just to see them
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looking to the next generation and how can I benefit them?
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How how can this change benefit people beyond me?
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So anyway.
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- Yeah. - And Craig, I just have to ask.
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I have to ask because I know the listeners like what happened.
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And I know you're super humble.
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I know what happened and and how you what you did with the station.
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But what the once you made those changes and you know, worked out,
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what did you guys do with the station?
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Well, we, we went from an old format of,
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of a lot of teaching and preaching programs, gospel music,
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like southern gospel music, choral, inspirational, sacred music
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to much more of an adult contemporary, type of style.
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So more pop, you know, light rock, things like that.
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All, all faith related.
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And started really marketing that, getting out to churches, talking about it.
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And, I, I'm very happy to say the station
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is doing incredible and very, very,
18:05
much alive again in reaching families and connecting,
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you know, helping promote local concerts, being in the community a lot more.
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The station wasn't in the community hardly at all.
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But it's it's vibrant.
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It's doing really well.
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There are businesses supporting it like crazy now.
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So it's it's doing really well now.
18:24
Yeah.
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And again, you're so it's like the station, Craig. Right?
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Like you turn it like it's the station.
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Like you like it's what everybody knows.
18:32
It's everywhere.
18:33
It's making an impact on the community.
18:36
So kudos to you for that turnaround.
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It was a team effort without the board,
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being willing to make those changes.
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It wouldn't it never would have happened.
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So the, the, the board of directors empowered me to make that change.
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So it was a group effort.
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And the program director that I had, Cliff,
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she he was fantastic and really,
18:56
really implementing the changes on air to, to reach that new family.
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So, it's it's it's going to be the same for you with your business.
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You're it's going to take a team effort.
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Yes. You're you're the visionary.
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You're the leader out front leading that change.
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But make sure you've got a good team around you that's going to support
19:14
you and be on the same page of the changes that you want to make to that business,
19:18
and that they understand that and can work together.
19:21
You know, in create.
19:22
I hate using this word because it's a business buzzword.
19:24
Todd but creating synergy in this.
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Yeah, in the same direction.
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is Nick Kellis here saying that,
19:30
- is he a synergy guy? - that’s a Nick Kellis word
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So but that that's important.
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You you can't do it alone. No.
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No person is an island
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Hey, just two more things about about the autoHDR
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because I just want to make it there.
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But there's questions that I've been asked and I want to let you all know,
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I think I said this, I don't own any portion of autoHDR.
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Our company uses it Wow video tours.
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Our company pays to use it.
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If you click my link, I do get a little kickback.
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So if you go to autoHDR/Spiro, you get 30 free credits.
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I get a little kickback.
20:02
If you don't want me to have the kickback, just delete Spiro
20:05
and there'll be no tracking on there.
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So you choose that. You choose that.
20:08
If if you want to support us. I don't care either way.
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I just want to make sure it's good for you.
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Truly do.
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It was going to be a really life changing thing to Todd.
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And also,
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the decision for us to integrate autoHDR with Spiro
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was was not a paid sponsorship from autoHDR in the Spiro.
20:26
We wanted to streamline the workflow.
20:28
And so we built that integration one because we wanted to completely streamline
20:32
it not only for a Wow, but for all of you guys.
20:35
So if and it was almost in the task and workflows already.
20:38
So the pipeline was about built, but we decided to build that because we felt
20:42
so confidently and streamlining this that we runs you all.
20:46
We wanted to we wanted to give you the easy
20:48
button is what it was if you wanted to use it.
20:50
So you don't have to use it, by all means, keeping it in your core.
20:53
Keep the feedback coming. We love it.
20:55
We love constructive, we love good.
20:57
Whatever you want to give us, please do.
20:58
I think it just the conversation is phenomenal.
21:01
It can always lead to good things as long as everybody has an open mind
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It comes at it in a positive way too.
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agreed agree
21:10
Just thought I'd throw that out there. Awesome.
21:13
All right.
21:14
Well cool.
21:14
Lots of great things happening Todd.
21:16
Thank you for all those updates.
21:17
And and the more in-depth discussion on on the hot topic of the day.
21:22
Yes,
21:22
AI photo editing.
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So if you don't have anything else, I'd love.
21:27
No we have a listener?
21:29
We. listener.
21:30
Oh well yes.
21:32
Which well which one.
21:34
Well that's our topic right.
21:36
That's our topic. Yeah.
21:37
And it's a great one because it actually tied into,
21:40
one of the wins that was celebrated during our staff meeting this morning
21:43
For Wow video tours and a major part of
21:47
what's helping drive my business in, in my market here in Toledo.
21:52
Yeah.
21:52
Todd, do you want to introduce the the question?
21:56
Yeah. So this comes from John. and John.
21:58
I didn't get your permission to say your last name,
22:00
so I'm not going to say although I don't think you care.
22:04
I know you pretty well, but this comes from John
22:06
and he asked about follow up with realtors and broker.
22:11
So this is just follow up
22:12
and I'm not specifically at any point in the in the funnel.
22:17
I think we can connect this in a few different points.
22:19
So this is either hey, I've had a brokerage presentation
22:23
for a broker, or I've had a broker deal presentation
22:26
where I'm trying to get the whole company.
22:27
But this is also a hey, I stopped in an office,
22:30
I presented in an office, I had coffee or I even called someone.
22:33
I think follow up in general is, that's where, what's the same?
22:39
Craig?
22:39
The fortunes and the follow up is what they say.
22:42
I've never heard that one, but it.
22:44
Yeah, it's a, it's a Shannonism.
22:46
Okay, okay.
22:47
Yeah. It's a Shannonism.
22:48
And she'd probably tell you
22:49
she stole it from someone, but I know I learned it from Shannon, so,
22:53
the fortunes in the follow up, one thing that I, I think sometimes I can get
22:59
so focused on
23:00
as a business owner, as a new contacts,
23:03
new new new new new like, fill the top of the funnel, right.
23:07
And there's almost at least to me, I don't know,
23:09
there's almost like a high of like, this is someone new.
23:12
Like they might buy something from us,
23:15
the new realtor. But.
23:20
That's how that puts them at the top of the funnel,
23:22
which means that you have to go through a full new life
23:25
cycle of nurturing and meetings and all of that.
23:28
And new is fun, right?
23:30
I mean, how many of you. Every one of you.
23:32
So if you're not raising your hand, you're lying.
23:34
But how many of you bought something because you're like,
23:36
I want that new thing.
23:39
And then you're like, oh, that thing's not so great.
23:41
Yeah, yeah, I do it all the time.
23:44
I had this conversation with my 12 year old son last night,
23:47
so, my 12 year old son, he plays basketball.
23:50
I think you guys know we do a ton of basketball.
23:52
He plays a ton of basketball, and I coach him in a lot of different leagues. And
23:57
he, like most 12 year old,
24:01
became emotionally upset about his bookbag,
24:04
say, okay, all of a sudden he does not like his basketball bookbag.
24:07
Things been fine.
24:09
We got it for him two Christmases ago.
24:11
It holds a shoe that holds his bag or holds his basketball.
24:15
It holds his towel.
24:17
He's got a knee brace. Like, what are you put into a basket?
24:19
You don't you don't put much in a bag.
24:21
But all of a sudden he sees some other kids bags.
24:24
Now we're transitioning to AU
24:25
and some of his AU buddies have this new Nike bag
24:29
and he cannot live with his bag anymore.
24:32
Like this thing.
24:33
How could any company even make a bag like this and make me carry it?
24:37
You know, like it?
24:39
And and I don't mean to poke fun.
24:42
I mean, because I this is me doing this as well.
24:44
But like, we talked through this last night,
24:46
you know, we read devotions sitting in bed
24:47
and I'm talking to him about this because he's upset about this.
24:50
So he he is on me for a week and a half to order this new Nike bag.
24:56
It's what he wants it.
24:57
It's color, all that good stuff, I order it, we wait a week for it to come.
25:03
He anticipates it coming.
25:04
Dad's. When's it going?
25:05
It's coming today. No, B, it's coming on Thursday.
25:08
Today's Wednesday like it's not here yet.
25:10
And like UPS hasn't come the day I finally get here.
25:13
It's like,
25:14
the bag has arrived.
25:16
The glow around it, the Hallelujah chorus.
25:18
He gets the bag in the car.
25:21
We're we're driving the practice yesterday.
25:23
He's like, hey, can I switch it in the car?
25:24
I'm like, yeah, go ahead man.
25:25
And so he's switching his old bag which is just this atrocious old bag.
25:30
Like, how could anybody ever carry this bag?
25:32
And he's put it on the new bag and he's he's like showing me.
25:35
He's like, God, look at zips here.
25:36
Like he's like, do you like the color?
25:38
I'm like, it's fabulous, Bob.
25:39
I'm like, I love it. And we get to practice.
25:42
He shows his buddies there's something about
25:44
the tag on the bags and they're like, oh, be careful because people steal those.
25:49
Okay,
25:49
so yeah, so we have this high of the bag.
25:53
Yeah.
25:53
And then
25:54
it comes that like I made him pay for the bag.
25:57
Oh okay. Yeah.
25:59
That’s great.
25:59
It was, this was a him paid for bag.
26:02
We had purchased the bag I just bought him shoes
26:05
and I'm okay buying him shoes.
26:08
For basketball.
26:09
We we paid for a you.
26:11
Actually, his grandmother pays for his AU
26:13
Which is fabulous.
26:14
And, I was like, hey, but, you know, you can wait for Easter.
26:19
You can wait for your birthday.
26:20
But that's August. And he's like, no, I want it.
26:22
I have some money.
26:23
I'm going to spend it with a bag was like $87.
26:27
And he
26:30
and I was getting ready for bed.
26:33
And Jessica's my wife is like, hey, B wants to talk to you.
26:35
I'm like, oh, he's okay. She's like, yeah, he just has his money.
26:38
So I go in and he's got he's got his money there and he's,
26:42
he's saying that like, this is the full on buyer's remorse.
26:48
And he.
26:50
Yeah, we just talk through talk talking
26:52
through that situation of like, hey, you know, it's this shiny object.
26:57
And I'm like, but I do it all the time.
26:59
I get caught on some things that I think that's the next best and great thing.
27:04
And then you get it and you're like, whoa, I didn't really.
27:06
And it's really not like that's just, I mean, that's consumerism,
27:11
that's marketing.
27:12
I fall to it all the time, but it's
27:14
just this idea of this shiny object syndrome.
27:18
And I think we as owners get that.
27:20
At least I get it.
27:21
I don't know if you all get it, but I get it.
27:22
I'm like, oh, a new client, but you forgot that the bag you have is perfect.
27:29
You forgot that you were super excited when you got that bag two Christmases ago.
27:34
It was exactly what you picked out that bag.
27:37
That was the perfect bag for what you needed.
27:39
And nothing has changed.
27:41
It still does what it needs to do, but it's not the new bag.
27:45
So that's what it is.
27:46
And sorry for the long story there, but
27:49
that is the correlation to why the fortunes in the follow up.
27:53
Because you have a fortune inside of that old bag, that old backpack of yours,
27:59
those clients that you've spent time with and that aren't purchasing from you,
28:02
or that might purchase more of that, might refer you.
28:07
- So the fortunes in the follow up, - and I think there's something
28:10
to be said about longevity, longevity, longevity
28:14
What's the right word there?
28:14
longevity in the market and in the business.
28:18
So if you've been in your market for a number of years, you're building up
28:21
a reputation of, of, trustworthiness,
28:25
of, delivering good product, good service.
28:28
And even if you have not had a breakthrough with a client
28:31
or a prospective client that you've been trying to get and trying to win,
28:36
I think the longer you're in the market and people are familiar
28:39
with you, eventually they're going to look at you again.
28:44
So example this morning, Pam shared during during our staff
28:48
meeting that a certain brokerage that she has talked
28:52
with, we've talked with for how many years now, Todd is about,
28:57
probably eight, eight years, literally eight years of the conversation started.
29:02
Yeah, right.
29:03
That we've done some work here
29:04
and there for them, but never had that big breakthrough.
29:08
Well, that that happened.
29:10
What, just this, this past week.
29:12
Yes. Where all of a sudden a door opened
29:16
because we've been faithfully serving them in the limited way that we have.
29:21
But we've built a reputation of being able to be trusted with the work,
29:24
the little bit of work that they did give us, and suddenly a need
29:28
presented itself to them, and they knew we would be able to help them with that.
29:33
Eight years.
29:36
Maybe you have some more commentary on that.
29:38
Well, yeah.
29:39
They started off as off limits.
29:43
They were the company that had the in the house
29:46
free photos, dun dun dun and
29:52
- I'm - I can't compete with that.
29:54
Yeah. I'm never going to work for them.
29:56
They've got it in-house program and but they and let me just set this up.
30:02
So these were, these are the big dogs in this city.
30:04
So they're they're tied for the market share leader.
30:07
They have 15 to 18% market
30:11
share around maybe 15 to 17.
30:14
But that's a lot for a major city.
30:16
That's that's a huge amount
30:17
to have in a major city as a as a single real estate company.
30:22
And we just kept the relationship up.
30:27
Now a lot of you ask, like, how often do I go back for follow ups?
30:31
So if they're off limits, we're not going back in three months.
30:34
It might be an email to a manager if we have something new.
30:37
We're always looking for new ways and new and different ways we could serve them.
30:43
But probably
30:45
five years ago, it came up that this company was expanding
30:49
and they purchased some other offices, and it was outside
30:53
of their serviceable area for their in-house company.
30:58
And because we had kept up with this relationship,
31:01
we found out that information which allowed us
31:05
to get that business than the far outlying business.
31:10
And we covered those areas
31:11
because we cover both cities that they had expanded into.
31:14
And so we began doing business, and we were just there consistently for them.
31:19
We continue to meet more people in their company.
31:22
And honestly, Craig, we ran that for about for four and a half years.
31:26
Pam just started this maybe six, eight months ago.
31:29
This conversation, she so during that time, that time
31:33
of working for these outlying offices, we
31:38
one I met with the owner.
31:39
I had the ability I had I had the opportunity to sit with the owner.
31:44
Shannon, actually, Spiro did some coaching for their recruitment
31:48
director and connected me and so I met with the owner.
31:52
I didn't get business right after that,
31:55
you know?
31:55
You think, oh, it's the owner.
31:56
Like, no, it's just it was just me connecting with him
32:00
just on a human to human level. And,
32:04
I kept up with him.
32:06
Then Pam kept up, and then we found out.
32:09
Well, one thing I forgot to mention. One thing.
32:11
With their in-house, we realized that one of their in-house
32:14
photographers was just not,
32:18
happy in the position that she was in.
32:21
And we, in fact, hired her with their blessing.
32:25
It's not like we poached her.
32:26
We hired her with their blessing.
32:28
And she's a phenomenal photographer for us.
32:31
You know,
32:31
we found out what her pain points were, and that's a whole nother podcast.
32:34
But we we got a great photographer from them,
32:37
and we understood what she needed, and we adapted to that.
32:40
She fit our model better
32:42
then a couple of years from there again, just continuing
32:45
to build relationships, continuing to work hard.
32:47
And we groom clients.
32:49
It came up earlier in this year, Craig,
32:51
that they were doing away with the in-house team.
32:55
and I fill them in.
32:55
And so when I sat with the owner,
32:59
he anticipated that down the road, when such and such was
33:04
when such and such was ready to retire,
33:09
they would probably close the in-house company down.
33:12
Interesting.
33:13
So I knew it was a timeline of.
33:18
Until we could get the business.
33:20
And so,
33:20
because we knew that there could be a good possibility
33:24
that that business could be available to us, we kept up with them.
33:29
And Pam worked really hard,
33:32
and we secured a broker pay deal with one office.
33:37
And they anticipate that it's going to spread to all the offices.
33:41
And they agreed actually to an amount to pay
33:43
for their agents higher than what our ASP is right now.
33:46
Our AOP is right now.
33:48
So that is super exciting.
33:50
And I think just a good point that just like the old bag for my son,
33:57
this account became the old bag like it was eight years.
34:01
And think of how much money and opportunity was in that bag.
34:06
And if I would have forgotten about it and said, oh, give me the new bag,
34:10
then we would have let this opportunity go away.
34:13
And this might be our biggest deal.
34:17
It's easily our second or third biggest deal that we've ever signed.
34:21
So that's super exciting.
34:23
You know what it is when you have to wait for things as humans, at least for me,
34:28
it's difficult, like think eight years to get a deal.
34:32
And of course, we pursued other deals and we did our client acquisition
34:36
and we continued to build relationships, but we didn't forget about people
34:40
that said, no, they didn't really say no.
34:43
They said no, not right now.
34:46
That's that's all we know is is just no,
34:50
not right now.
34:53
So I want to go over a few tools here
34:55
with with following up and some things that we do.
34:58
I don't know if any of you have heard of, doing the database to.
35:02
So this is a technique as to where, how that strategy for contacting your clients.
35:07
But it's a 13 week cycle.
35:10
And, you contact the clients
35:14
that have the last name in week one, beginning with A and W.
35:20
So this is
35:21
ten, about 10.5% of of the population.
35:25
And then week two is B and E that's 9.46% of the population.
35:30
So this is a strategy of you that you can work, that you make sure
35:33
you contact all of your clients.
35:37
We do things we make sure we contact all of our clients at Wow.
35:41
We do it a little bit differently than the database, too.
35:43
That will get you all of your clients.
35:44
And I think right now, if you have,
35:46
a smaller database of clients that will work really well for you.
35:51
So search the database too,
35:52
or just find some way to make sure that you get to your clients,
35:56
you know, once every 13 weeks
35:59
what we do is and, at Wow.
36:02
And we all have about the same clients.
36:04
You have really small, medium and large clients.
36:08
Our large we call VIP's, and we look at those clients
36:11
and we have things that take care of our VIPs.
36:14
So you don't want to.
36:15
You don't want to lose a VIP. Those.
36:17
Those people bring in a their typically 20% of your and size of your business.
36:22
So usually the top 20% of your business do 80% of your revenue.
36:29
So you need to keep your VIP happy VIPs happy.
36:32
We have a VIP program.
36:33
We have a contact procedure, a cadence that we do
36:37
where our salespeople, Steve,
36:40
maybe our sales director, our, director of sales and marketing.
36:44
He contacts them.
36:45
I even contact them about once a year.
36:48
So we have a way that we keep up with those individuals
36:50
to make sure that they know that they're very important.
36:52
We put them in a program, we give them awards,
36:54
we give them discounts, we give them a special newsletter,
36:57
and we make sure that our VIPs are taken care of.
37:00
They get things that other clients don't get.
37:03
And then
37:04
from there you have your your small and medium clients.
37:08
And the goal is, is that they feel as though
37:12
you are taking good care of them, right?
37:14
That's the goal. And follow up.
37:16
So for those we have in our CRM, we have a cadence of how quickly
37:21
and and how often we talk to them, a tool that we use that we've learned.
37:26
And this is this is all Steve at Wow.
37:29
But when you have a contact with someone, so when you contact them
37:34
a call or text, an email or a meeting, you need to log that.
37:38
Okay. So you need to log that in CRM.
37:41
So something that's keeping track of that for you.
37:44
And when you log that you want to put in some information,
37:48
some notes about what it was.
37:49
And also from that you need to log your next task.
37:56
So when do you need to follow up with that person.
37:58
It might be by Monday.
38:01
It might be a month from now or it might be next year.
38:04
We take those cadences with our clients and, you know, maybe
38:08
clients that are just starting out, agents that have just gotten their license.
38:12
We might contact them a couple times
38:14
at the beginning to make sure they have a few touch points.
38:16
We can build a relationship,
38:18
but then it might be six months before we contact them again and check in.
38:22
You know, they might take a year to get a listing.
38:25
You know, we want to remain top of line but top of mind.
38:29
But calling that new agent
38:32
once a week is just simply going to exhaust them.
38:35
And they'd be like, why are you calling me?
38:37
It's going to be a little weird.
38:39
So putting that follow up and say, you talk to a medium sized client,
38:42
you know, this is a client that you might want to talk to once a quarter.
38:47
So three months from now, you might put down
38:49
that you need to follow back up with the client.
38:53
And again this is pending that you've given
38:54
the client everything that they need. So that's the first thing.
38:57
Is there anything actionable.
38:58
Do they need something from you.
39:00
Get it to them but also then put them back in your calendar.
39:04
Add an appropriate date, you know, three months from now
39:07
for a medium sized client so that they feel enough touch points.
39:10
And then our VIP clients, they hear from us monthly
39:13
and those are all in the CRM, all in the calendar.
39:17
And if you're like, Todd, what CRM do you use?
39:19
What is a CRM?
39:21
Just to let you know, we use Pipedrive right now
39:24
we're looking at switching outside of Pipedrive.
39:26
A good friend of the podcast, Pete Stegall,
39:29
he has a CRM, pixelCRM, and I know many of you are using that.
39:34
A CRM could be as simple
39:35
as just keeping a spreadsheet.
39:39
So inside of Spiro, you can export all of your clients, export them,
39:43
and then just keep an an Excel spreadsheet or a Google doc.
39:47
The last time you've called them,
39:48
and then put in another the next column, next contact date.
39:52
And then you could sort by that descending.
39:54
And then you can call those clients.
39:55
You can put notes in a fourth column, whatever you want to do.
39:58
But please just keep it simple.
40:00
When we over complicate things,
40:03
that's when we are focused on the wrong thing.
40:06
I, I have a little bit of a confession here.
40:08
I, I can't tell you how many hours
40:12
that I've spent looking for CRMs,
40:16
literally, like I've searched them all.
40:19
I've done demos, I've done demos multiple times, I've taken trial accounts.
40:24
I've loaded things in, I've researched beyond research,
40:28
and it's like all that time I spent just pick one and use it.
40:32
Just something simple, like a spreadsheet.
40:34
So don't get caught in the details there.
40:36
I know I can get caught in the details.
40:38
I love all the features and the benefits, and I love the grids and the comparisons
40:42
and all.
40:42
And I love the read reviews.
40:43
Anyone else love to do that?
40:46
Are you all sometimes on Amazon like reading reviews for eight days?
40:49
You're like, wow, like this is a spatula for my kitchen.
40:54
Why am I reading so many reviews?
40:58
Like I and worst case, I'm just going to send the spatula back.
41:01
Like, Todd, you've run, you've read 42 reviews.
41:05
Just decide if you want the spatula
41:07
to flip your pancakes or not.
41:11
Goodness.
41:13
So progress over perfection.
41:16
Something to keep focused on there.
41:18
One more thing if you're a little bit, if you're still saying, hey,
41:23
I don't know when I need to contact a client, worst case, just ask them.
41:28
I'll do that a lot.
41:29
And sometimes I, I don't necessarily I haven't won the client.
41:33
I mean they haven't committed to using us.
41:36
But they might be a big client or even a client that I want to get.
41:40
And I'll just ask them like, hey, how can I help you?
41:43
When would it be best to follow back up with you?
41:47
If you ask those questions?
41:50
The cool thing is, is you can't lose their
41:53
they're going to tell you like, hey, I'm I've got a busy couple of weeks
41:56
coming up, but
41:57
can you call me back in two weeks or hey, I don't have time for this right now.
42:01
I'll call you back.
42:03
Or can you call me back in a month
42:04
or at the end of a busy season, whatever it may be, or one year from now?
42:08
The great thing is, is you have an opportunity now
42:11
to show them that you are good on your word.
42:14
So when I always ask that question, you know, when would what would be best?
42:19
How can I best help you with this decision?
42:21
What can I get you and when would it be best to contact you again about this?
42:27
And I do what they say.
42:29
And if they say, hey, call me back next Wednesday,
42:33
I put in my calendar on Wednesday,
42:36
to do, an appointment, to do item.
42:40
And I put it for a date and time.
42:42
If they didn't tell me a time
42:43
I do it earlier rather than later, I don't want to call them back at 5:00.
42:47
Then they feel like, well, great.
42:49
I got them on Wednesday, but I got them at the very end of the day.
42:52
I call them earlier rather than later or email them,
42:55
and I make sure that that gets done.
42:58
I know that when it goes on my calendar, it's going to get done.
43:01
And again, back to the CRM question.
43:04
That is a form of a CRM.
43:07
So I know there's so much technology out there.
43:09
And I was talking to, we had dinner at a friend's house last night.
43:13
I was talking to their oldest son, who's a, a junior in high school,
43:17
and he loves all of the new AI items with Google.
43:22
And then, you know, he's we were talking about Google
43:25
and the gems and Obsidian and Notebook alum, and he was going on and on.
43:28
He had tried a morning, tried art.
43:30
This new browser,
43:31
and I was like, wow, he just really knows, like, that's really cool.
43:34
I was like, man, maybe I need to look at those.
43:36
It's like, no, I have a I have a process for these.
43:39
I have a very simple system that works for me,
43:43
and my system's not broken right now.
43:47
So, Todd, don't focus on something that's not broken and focus where you have gaps.
43:52
Again, shiny object syndrome.
43:54
For us owners, it's very easy to get into that.
43:57
You know, you're looking like, well,
43:58
what's that next new thing like, oh I don't need that.
44:00
Like I feel good about the way I manage my calendar in my time.
44:04
So I'm going to focus on other items that I feel like I'm not so great at.
44:07
And I need to improve on.
44:10
So be careful of those those time bandits there,
44:12
because there's so much out there to take our attention.
44:17
But yeah, just put that calendar event
44:19
and a date and time and if it's next Wednesday, put it in at 10 a.m.
44:23
and call that individual and even if you don't get that individual,
44:27
like say, they kind of just brushed you off
44:30
and they didn't want to tell, you know, in person.
44:33
And they said, I'll call me back in a couple weeks
44:35
when you call them back in a couple weeks, you might get their voicemail.
44:38
But I would just say, hey, just following back up.
44:41
Wanted to make sure I was good on my promise.
44:44
You asked me
44:44
to call you back in two weeks, and, I just want to follow back up with you.
44:48
I really enjoyed our lunch together.
44:51
I'm hoping that we can, you know, do X, Y, and Z for you.
44:54
I'm hoping that we can earn your business.
44:57
I'll put you back on my calendar for next week if you need me.
45:00
In the meantime, call me or text me, whatever the follow up is.
45:04
And then once you're done with that phone call, go.
45:07
One week from today.
45:09
Whatever you told that individual on the phone and put it on your calendar.
45:14
So and I know many of you are saying, hey Todd,
45:16
why do you even type anything on a calendar anymore?
45:18
Because you can just ask AI to do that.
45:21
And that is awesome.
45:22
That's what the junior in high school did.
45:23
And he just says, hey, go to the calendar again.
45:26
It works for him. Like, oh, that's kind of cool.
45:28
I might just start talking to Gemini or asking ChatGPT to do it,
45:31
but there's always going to be ways to become more efficient.
45:34
But just make sure you have a system that works for you
45:37
and do what you say you're going to do.
45:40
So that is going to do it for us today.
45:42
Hey thank you everybody. We lost Craig.
45:43
We had a little technical difficulty here.
45:45
But he is with us in spirit.
45:47
So sorry about the glitch here, but we appreciate all of you.
45:51
If you need to contact us.
45:53
hello@spiro.media
45:56
or click down in the little pink chat bubble.
45:58
If this is, this is the 14th of March right now.
46:01
If you my team is all on if you need me, I am taking a
46:06
quick vacation for the next week and a half.
46:08
So if you need me immediate reach out to my team.
46:11
If it's for me and you say, hey, send this to Todd,
46:13
just know I'm going to get you in a couple of weeks from the day.
46:15
So if it's not urgent, if it's urgent, ask for the team.
46:19
If it's not urgent, you need me. Just give me a couple of weeks.
46:21
go on vacation. I'll be back to you.
46:23
So. Thanks, everybody.
46:24
Hey, please make time to take a breath.
46:28
Thanks and have a great day.
46:29
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro Podcast,
46:32
managing your real estate, photography and videography business.
46:36
This is a production of Spiro and Wow video Tours.
46:39
You can find out more about Spiro is Real Estate Media Business management
46:43
software at our website, Spiro.media.