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Ethics & Integrity in Business: The Impact · 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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what are my values?
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What are my principles?
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What am I willing to negotiate?
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What am I not willing to negotiate?
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What are what are nonstarters? you know, what am I committed to?
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And you have to answer those big questions so that you know how to handle
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the very specific individual situations you might find yourself in
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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 and Craig Magrum.
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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 it's a software platform.
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It's designed to help you manage your day to day business, but ultimately
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really to help you grow in scale as well.
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Lots of amazing features in the software.
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And, we're going to talk a little bit about those updates in just a minute.
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But, before we we do that, let me introduce our Spiro
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owner and founder and co-host of the podcast, Todd Kivimaki.
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Welcome back.
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another week, Todd.
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Another week. Craig.
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It's a fast year.
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It's past the end of May also.
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Just putting it on your radar because I looked at the calendar,
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I'm like, Holy cow, we're done with May, right?
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Yeah. And the older you get.
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The faster it goes.
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For those of you that are a little bit younger,
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it doesn't take much to be younger than me.
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It goes it goes fast.
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I looked at the picture.
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I looked at the picture.
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My goatee.
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Only like four years ago.
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It was a whole lot darker.
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All right, let's dive into this.
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We got a great topic this week.
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Something we have.
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We've kind of danced around in past episodes.
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But we're we're going to dive into.
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Well, save it.
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It's an interesting topic, Todd.
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Let's first dive into, Spiro updates this week.
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What's going on with, with Spiro software?
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Yeah. Spiro updates. I'll give be real quick.
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I've talked about this a little bit on the Spiro Super User Facebook group.
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So if you're not a member, please join.
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You'll get these updates before anyone.
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You'll get access to knowing what's coming before anyone else.
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Also, we've been active on the feature based app.
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That's where you can suggest updates.
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Log in to Spiro, click
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the button in the upper right hand corner to get the feature base.
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Just real quickly, some higher ideas that we're working on.
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A new property website. It's going to be great.
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I show a preview of it in the super user group.
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Also just at a high level.
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We're going to give you some CRM functions.
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Excited about those and a way to build a beautiful add on page.
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So those are all coming.
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All great tools for you going to streamline.
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Oh Craig also admin overrides on the order page.
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So I know everybody's celebrating now because they wanted to do that.
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But that is coming. Awesome.
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Good stuff.
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All right.
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Oh Craig, looking ahead in a year because I always I have a giant calendar
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in my in my office. And now it's time to start planning.
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You know, sometimes as business owners, it's like, what am I doing right now?
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What am I doing in an hour.
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We have to look ahead into the future.
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One thing I believe in wholeheartedly is education.
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There's great conferences in the industry.
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The REPP conferences coming up.
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Just visit REPPlaunch.com.
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You can find more information about. It's out in Vegas.
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And then PMRE is a couple of weeks after.
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So if you don't know about them search them. You'll find them.
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But please plan for it now because November will be here before we know it.
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Yeah, great.
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Great conferences to, visit at least once in your career and, a chance to connect
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with others in the industry, exchange ideas, build some friendships, and, Yeah.
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Hope to see you there.
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Yeah. Awesome.
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It's.
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It's hard to believe
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we're talking about that already, but, yeah, we're we're in June, and, it's crazy
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anyway, in the fast pace of business and life. Todd
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a lot of
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times we, we face situations and questions and dilemmas
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and whatnot that can cause us to wrestle a little bit with,
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I would say, ethical and, questions of ethics and integrity.
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And so that's kind of what we want to talk about this week, is ethics
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and integrity in your business and the importance of that,
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the importance of thinking through what are my values, what are my ethics
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in business, what's what's good, what's not so good,
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and how does how do these questions impact what I'm doing day
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to day in my interactions with with my clients?
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So, Todd, it's this is kind of a very broad topic,
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but we've all run into situations and questions of
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how do I deal with this exactly?
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And I'm sure you've run into a lot of those things over what is a 22 years now?
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This is year 22. Yes. Yeah.
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Yeah. So, you know, it
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is we were brainstorming this idea.
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I mean, I immediately thought of many situations
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where I'm at a house shooting the photos, shooting the video tour.
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The the agent is there.
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The the sellers might be there.
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They might not be.
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And I overhear a lot of conversations
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I hear over here, a lot of conversations and,
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some things that I probably shouldn't be hearing.
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I can't help it.
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I'm there doing my job right.
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I'm not doing anything wrong.
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I'm not trying to eavesdrop or anything like that.
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Some agents are just kind of loud.
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There's there's yeah, they're a little bit loud,
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but they're having conversations on the phone, you know,
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they're talking with their sellers at the table.
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I'm hearing price, you know, pricing discussions.
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I'm hearing,
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you know,
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watercooler talk about what such and such realtor is doing.
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I am, you know, and in isn't sometimes
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you're hearing things about other realtors that are also your clients
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and I mean, I think most of us are smart enough to figure out,
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just keep your mouth shut.
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Yeah, yeah, for sure.
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I, I agree with you.
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You know, I was I was, I was talking to my boys last night.
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So many of you all know I have a 12 year old and a ten year old
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and, brothers being brothers and being close.
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You know, we talked about the idea of the importance of listening.
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And I also shared, I think a week or two ago, I've been in
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the book of James quite a bit, and James talks a lot about listening.
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And one thing that,
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and I can't remember the pastor that said it, it was an and my devotion.
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But, the the media gets really good
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when we listen to others.
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We need to listen to understand and not to respond.
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So you need to understand what's coming into your brain from your ears.
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And then you need to parse that and understand.
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Do you even need to respond?
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Because and sometimes you have to be careful because I'm
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Craig, you know, you and I are of, of some of the same personality type.
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We're we're both high C personalities.
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Meaning like I, I and you feel okay if the other person is okay.
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So there might be pressure on us
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when a realtor says something and maybe it's
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gossip about another realtor or another person.
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Another, it doesn't matter another person.
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And there might just be the idea to kind of a knowing nod
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and smile or a yes or a oh, I like that.
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You have to be careful because that could that could confirm
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what that person is saying, or they could use it as you're confirming them.
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I don't know, what do you think about that, Craig.
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Yeah.
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I just a lot of times I just, I just
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stay silent.
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I try not to react because here's, here's what can happen if that unintended
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confirmation happens and that realtors talk, they all talk to each other.
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And if you are seen somehow is,
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affirming some sort of gossip about another realtor,
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and it might not even get back to that other realtor, but
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it might get to their friends or their colleagues in their brokerage
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that could sink your business like that.
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Yeah.
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I think it's as simple as
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interest.
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You know, I might I might just say interesting,
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you know, and and move on with the shoot.
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I just, I try to avoid those now, it doesn't happen every shoot, you know,
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but there's going to be times
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where you've developed a really good relationship with the client
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that you've shot
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and shot with now for a couple of years, and they've gotten very comfortable
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with you, which is good.
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But in that comfort, they might start talking with you more,
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more than maybe is appropriate in a professional setting.
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Yeah.
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So at that point you just
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you got to flip your switch from, you know, friend client slash friend
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that you've built that relationship with to this
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this is a professional business transaction.
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And I'm not touching that with a 20ft pole.
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Yeah.
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It's just the right thing to do for for multiple reasons.
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Yeah.
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And you can be kind about saying it, you know, the idea of like, interesting
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or, you know, if you're shooting in that you, they address you as something
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like, oh, I'm sorry, I was focused on I was focused on what's in the camera.
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You know, you can do that even if you heard it. That's true.
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You were focused on that.
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The more that you can just deflect it
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and move on with it, the easier it is to be done with it.
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The other person, they might push once or twice pending their personality,
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but if you deflect it once or twice, they're going to understand
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real quick that you're not feeding into it.
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And you are.
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You're going to be kind of out of the out of the water,
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if you will, as to where like,
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they'll understand they're not getting what they want
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from you, so they're not going to continue to try. Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean that specific situations, it's pretty much a no brainer.
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I think most of us would, would know just to keep our mouths shut.
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But, you know,
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sometimes you get caught up in the moment and you're like, wait, what?
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H it's easy to get caught up and do so just really guard against that.
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You know, overhearing conversations and and gossip and whatnot.
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Yeah. Craig, you know, let me ask you a question about this.
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Will take we'll pivot on this topic. Yeah.
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The the the person in the topic a little bit.
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And I think it's I think most of us out there, most of our listeners are okay.
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Yeah. I'm not really going to feed into it.
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Maybe just it's a good to analyze it one more time.
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Like, am I feeding into it?
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I think it's always good to ask that question, but let's go one more step.
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That is going to be more on the home front of all of you out there.
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Let's bring this inside your business so not your clients,
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but let's bring this inside your business and your employees, your contractors,
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vendors, people that are close to you, that you work with every day.
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You know, how does this
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how does this change when you take it into that environment? Craig,
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I think from a
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leadership perspective, you know, speaking to other owners,
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you're going to hear a lot of things from employees or through,
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you know, through the grapevine of, of your staff.
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And there's a lot of,
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a lot of trust that is built
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if, you know, if an employee confides something in you,
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I Todd, I think you're probably better,
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better suited to,
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to kind of address this and situations you've dealt with with employees
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and things that you hear around the office and how you guard that information,
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you know, with your leadership team or just keeping it to yourself,
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I'm going to flip it back to you.
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But I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
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Yeah, along the same lines, Craig. So I,
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I always
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have to remind myself and, and remind, you know, you would need to remind
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yourself as the owner that you know everything
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about your business.
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And don't put that responsibility on everyone.
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You should be very careful with information that you have in your head.
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You should respect that.
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You know, sometimes as owners, we want to feel,
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try and think of how to phrase this.
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Craig.
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We feel a bit out on it, like left out on an island.
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It's kind of.
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It's lonely. It's lonely as the owner.
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Yeah, because there's some things that you have to deal with and some things
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that, you know, that maybe nobody in your company knows.
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And that can be heavy.
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That can be difficult.
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I can think of quite a few situations where that was the case.
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Now. Also, I can think of situations as we grew over the years
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and as I empowered more people at my company, that I was able
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to give that information to them because they were set up
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to be able to do something with that information.
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So just a couple of examples that, you know, off the top of my head
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that I can think about over the years,
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as you hire employees and
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especially if you're all in the same building,
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which I know isn't as common nowadays.
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Craig.
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But for us at Wow, we sometimes here in the building,
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we had 15 people that showed up every day.
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This is years ago.
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But people talk whether it's an email or slack conversations,
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private emails, their own cell phone.
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Hey, and don't be naive to think
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that your staff's not talking, that there's not chatter
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outside of company communication.
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I think I made that mistake a couple times in my life, and I assume the good
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because I, I think it's a admirable thing to assume good in people,
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but I was kind of blind to some chatter that was happening.
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So some things I've learned over the years about that is one, don't assume it.
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Two, you need to really hit hit it head on if it gets back to you.
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Yeah.
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These are this goes back to a podcast we did it was maybe a year ago Craig.
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But I really love the series.
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It talked about critical communication and confrontational communication.
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Yep yep.
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And how we deal with it.
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So if you're in a meeting and something
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gets back to you from an employee,
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one everybody probably knows about it,
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I. I've learned that as I get
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chatter back to me, I'm the last one to know about it.
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Say just because naturally the chatter, it's like,
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let's not go tell the boss the chatter about what's going on.
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So one probably everybody knows about it.
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So that's why it's more important to to be proactive with what you do about it.
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Now just going back to that podcast and if you want to search, it was
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I think it was called critical Communication.
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I think we actually did two parts on that. Craig.
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Yeah, the the first thing is, is
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I never like to hold those conversations separately.
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If there is hearsay, if there is gossip,
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I like to put two adults in the same room, and I like to talk through it.
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And I you'll need to be the mediator.
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And that's something that you get better at doing.
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But you just ask questions, don't take sides, bring up points and try to get
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everybody to open up their thinking and actually understand the other party.
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So that is the first thing that I would do.
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And I'm telling you what, the first time I did it, I had a coach recommended to me.
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I was like, this is what I heard.
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It was like, okay, this is what you need to do.
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I'm like,
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I got to put both of these people in the same room, and I have to be in there with,
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like, that is not high on my list of,
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like, desires to do on a Tuesday.
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Right.
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Or a Wednesday.
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All right.
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Yeah.
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or any day of the week.
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Agreed.
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But I did it, and it was awkward at some points,
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but I got resolve and we got it was a perfect thing.
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You're never gonna work out.
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Walk out of there. Perfect.
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But we got somewhere with it.
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And don't just don't be the messenger at your company.
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Please don't.
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What do they say about shooting the messenger?
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Like you know
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you don't want to be the in between.
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You don't want to sit with a with employee A
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and hear gossip about employee B,
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and then go sit with employee B because they're going to have their side.
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And then you don't know how to respond because you weren't there.
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So just put both employees into the same room and ask questions and ask how?
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What did you think about that?
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Okay. Is, is this the feelings that you had?
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Is that what you said?
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Could that be have taken a little bit differently?
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Could you see how this person could assume that that's what you meant?
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Yeah.
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Ask some of those questions and get to the bottom of it.
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So that's what I've learned to do when I hear chatter.
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And and then when you hit it head on, you are really stopping that chatter.
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And then those mediator conversations, you can set those expectations.
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Hey, thank you so much, both of you, for having this open conversation.
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I know it's not easy.
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I really appreciate what you shared today, the feelings,
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the thoughts that you shared.
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One thing that I just want to state going forward is I want this to be done.
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I don't want this to go outside of this room.
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We have resolve.
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This is our action plan A, B, and C if you have an action plan
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and I expect this to be done, I don't expect you to talk to
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other employees about this.
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It's only going to restart this whole cycle of chit chat.
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And we can see how that's not productive for anyone,
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not only in the company, but for our personal lives as well.
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So I would say that, and then I would just follow that
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same thing up with an email to both of them.
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You need to document it, because what's going to happen
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if if something comes back to you, they're going to say, you never said that.
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You never told us not to tell anyone else.
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You say, well, I sent you an email on May 29th and, can you see
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in my bullet points here that I asked you not to say anything to anyone else? So,
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yeah, particularly if
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they're on staff and not a contractor.
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Yeah. Because you,
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you might have to follow up with, unfortunately with discipline,
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you know, some sort of staff discipline if things are met because that's
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that kind of situation turn a work culture toxic just in a heartbeat.
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Yeah. And that will affect morale.
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And so just yeah, leading with integrity and ethics and,
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and mediation.
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Good, good. Good idea.
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Yeah I remember, I remember years where it went toxic and
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and and it was bad
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and my first instinct wasn't to hit it head on.
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My first instinct was to hope that it would change.
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And I,
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there's a lot of sayings
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about hope, and, you can you insert your favorite one?
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But it didn’t happen and it became worse.
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And like, just crazy things.
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And like, we had one of our past billing people,
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positions like, share what everyone made,
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like, just, yeah, crazy things
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like sharing salaries of everyone and wow, it's.
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And I actually Craig I didn't get that information.
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It was like four years later, this person had transitioned.
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Everybody in the company knew it.
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This knew that this had happened.
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And the crazy thing was it actually took place at a company sponsored event.
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We paid for bowling one night.
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I couldn't make it.
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And we all some of the team went bowling, showed up.
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This individual was there was like, oh,
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this person makes this, this person makes this is like had what everybody made.
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For those of you listening like my face is just like, what?
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What? Yeah, yeah.
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Wow. And I didn't I was told
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by one of my leaders 4 or 5 years later, I was like, wait a minute.
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Hey, what are you.
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What happened?
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And my immediate response is, why?
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Why are you telling me this now? Now?
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Yeah. Why?
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Why did you not tell this to me right after it happened?
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And so I made adjustments with that.
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And, you know, we use we use a phrase around here that you need
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to be generous with your information.
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It's okay to be a little bit upset that an employee
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isn't generous with your information, especially a leader of your company.
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This is someone that I leaned on.
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So don't
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hope that your culture, you can't hope that your culture is going to be good.
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It's very intentional.
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So, you know, maybe this is for another podcast to talk about how
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we built, how you build culture, things of how you crumble culture.
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But you have to be intentional to build it.
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And that really starts with the idea of you need to hold people
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to be ethical in your company, and you need to state those things right?
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Right.
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Okay. Can I shift gears because I yeah.
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Craig let’s
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Yeah, I think that's good for I have another
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just very practical thing out in the field
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that I've seen, discussed in the various like Facebook groups and things like that.
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And, and that's the question of when a realtor asks you to edit something out
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or you or things that you know
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your local MLS doesn't allow.
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Now, Todd, I've seen two different responses to this,
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and I very strongly lead.
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And, and I'm not going to apologize for it.
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I very strongly lean to one of these two positions.
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But the first position and you're going to guess which one I lean towards is
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it's not my problem that, you know,
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if the if the client says to do it, that's what I need to do.
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That's, that's the client's responsibility to know the rules.
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That's that's their problem.
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I'm going to do what they asked me to do.
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And I'm going to ask you for your thoughts on this.
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The other the other position is,
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you know the rules.
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You know what's allowed in the editing for your local MLS or board
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and what's not, what is allowed and what isn't allowed.
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So what how do you respond to that realtor
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that asks you to do some sort of editing
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that, you know, breaks the rules of your local MLS?
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Yeah, we've had this plenty of times over the years that, wow.
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And what we do, Craig, is
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we respond to that client and we let them know that
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this is in violation, that we don't take things
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out of photos, that we don't add things that aren't there.
23:18
This is the reason why, you know, we don't want to misrepresent the property.
23:23
We just want to protect you and bring this to your attention
23:28
that potentially, this could lead to a fine or a lot.
23:32
You know, this could lead to problems.
23:33
Basically, we don't get to be in the weeds there.
23:36
I you always want to spin it
23:37
that you're protecting the clients because that's really what you're doing.
23:40
You know, actually in this situation, like you're saying no
23:43
to potential income because they might pay you for that change.
23:47
Oh yeah.
23:47
You're saying you're saying no to that, to help them.
23:50
So just make sure that they understand that.
23:53
I will tell you though, Craig, is
23:55
we do have times where an agent insist on it.
23:57
An agent might say, hey, this is the way I'm going to use the photo.
24:01
I understand about misrepresenting a property.
24:05
You know, I take responsibility for it.
24:07
And at the end of the day, another saying we use around
24:10
Wow is we give the people what they want.
24:14
We've said that for many years.
24:16
And I love to get your opinion on this, Craig,
24:18
because we haven't we actually didn't discuss this offline. But yeah.
24:21
No we haven't. Yeah.
24:22
Oh I, I what we're doing is if the agent says, hey, just give me that thing.
24:27
I understand I'm cool with whatever's going to happen, then we do it for him.
24:32
Let me let me add a qualifier to this.
24:36
Does it does your answer change
24:39
if if your company is an affiliate member
24:42
of that board.
24:47
Because he let me give you my answer in
24:50
and I'll tell you which folks this Todd.
24:53
No I've actually never discussed this.
24:55
So this is this should play out interesting.
24:57
I might get corrected for this.
24:58
I don't know, I'm okay with that.
25:00
But as an affiliate member of the board in the market, that that we have
25:04
that I take care of, my response is,
25:08
hey, this is the rule,
25:11
you know, yes, you're the client.
25:14
However, we are a paying affiliate member of the board, and the board knows that.
25:19
I know the rules.
25:21
So I can't put our company
25:23
at, risk of violating those rules when we are actually
25:28
a member of that local realtor board as well.
25:31
I don't want to put our business at risk.
25:33
So it's not only
25:34
wanting to protect the realtor, but I, I have my responsibility,
25:38
at least in my mind, as a member of, of the the board that we're,
25:43
that we have
25:45
that didn't come out right.
25:47
Is I have to protect Wow video tours
25:50
is our business as well because I don't want a violation from the board.
25:54
Also interesting.
25:57
Would you would you argue it'd be different
25:59
if you're not actually an affiliate member of the board?
26:01
Because not every photographer is.
26:04
Craig is there is there verbiage in the board?
26:07
Or if we've been told by the board that we it's our responsibility
26:12
to limit those type of actions?
26:15
Not that I know of.
26:17
I would have to dig deeper.
26:20
But my my gut reaction,
26:22
not knowing that is knowing that we are affiliate members and we try to be
26:28
a business in good standing, and they know that I know the rules.
26:31
I wouldn't want to ruin our reputation.
26:36
Again, especially when they know
26:38
I've asked very specific questions and they've provided the rules to me.
26:42
And I actually got the comment from from one of the staff members at the board
26:46
is we've never had a photographer ask us what the rules are.
26:50
I'm very impressed by this, and it built a good rapport
26:54
at the board, local realtor, board level that we're a professional company.
26:58
We've done our due diligence of understanding what the rules
27:01
are as photographers and visual marketing professionals and
27:07
I guess I kind of painted myself in a corner
27:11
from one view of,
27:13
okay, we know that he knows the rules, but now if our company breaks those rules,
27:18
how does that look to the board on a professional level?
27:22
Yeah, it's a great point.
27:23
I think at the end of the day, because these
27:25
rules and regulations are pretty much the same in the and the US,
27:29
but they're a little bit different because every board is a governing body.
27:32
They have their own rules.
27:34
Two things I can think of to take away Craig,
27:36
because these are going to be unique to your location out there.
27:39
One asked the board for their rules.
27:43
Craig did it. The ladies like, are you kidding me?
27:45
Like, if you want some brownie points, if you want the lady to remember you.
27:49
Yeah, like ask her for the rules and tell her why.
27:52
And then you can just simply ask the question. So
27:57
Mr. and Mrs.
27:58
Board Member, you know, a,
28:01
admin or head of the board, could you tell me
28:04
how you feel would be best for me to respond
28:07
if an agent would ask me to remove or add something to a photo?
28:12
Are there any expectations set by my my membership with the board? And,
28:17
I'm sure they've never been asked that, but it's worth
28:20
at least getting that opinion.
28:22
Yeah, I mean that there was even a point,
28:26
maybe about five years ago, virtual staging was not allowed,
28:31
in the market that I was in.
28:33
And, so I actually approached the
28:37
I approached the board with the question of that and explaining why
28:41
we offered this service to other realtors in other markets. And,
28:46
so we we talked through it, the board discussed it, and they came
28:49
they actually ended up approving virtual staging with a couple of parameters.
28:54
And so, you know,
28:56
there was definitely an ethical we don't want to misrepresent, okay.
29:00
Here's how we get around that. Just put some text on.
29:02
Make sure you put text on the photos.
29:04
It says virtually staged.
29:06
That way the the potential buyer understands.
29:09
So you know just talk through those those questions.
29:11
Because again, as an industry as as professionals, we do want to do things
29:16
with ethics and integrity, not misrepresent properties.
29:19
But there's ways to to work around that and work through that.
29:23
In a very,
29:26
just in a very honest way for sure.
29:29
Yeah. Craig.
29:31
And saying that, let's, let's look at the idea of just
29:33
pivoting a little bit here.
29:40
Let's talk about doing the right thing
29:42
since and doing the right thing like it is, is a little white lie.
29:47
Okay.
29:50
You know, no one's going to notice it.
29:52
I don't know that it would benefit me and benefit the company.
29:55
Benefit the agent.
29:58
So it's a little white lie.
29:59
Okay. I'm.
30:02
I'm pretty black and white on it.
30:04
Todd, I just you can't.
30:08
Once you start compromising, where does it end?
30:13
And the damage
30:14
it can do to my personal reputation,
30:18
my business reputation, my reputation as a man,
30:21
being a man of my word, I.
30:24
It might cost me in the short run of saying no, I'm.
30:27
I'm just I'm not going to do that.
30:28
I'm not going to misrepresent this even in a small way.
30:34
To me, it's a black and white.
30:36
No, no, don't don't even go there.
30:40
You know, but
30:43
there's there's all sorts of justifications
30:45
that people can come up with on why it's okay.
30:49
But I've got to live with myself at the end of the day,
30:53
I agree, I Craig,
30:55
I think there's a couple things come to my brain immediately.
30:58
I think the world will tell you that it's okay to bend the rules a little bit.
31:03
The world will tell you that you have to bend the rules a little bit to get ahead.
31:07
But if you want to make a spot for yourself in this world that you need
31:10
to do this, and it's okay to do and everybody does it.
31:14
Sorry. Hey. Sorry, y'all. It's not.
31:16
That's a lie.
31:18
So I'm just starting.
31:19
And I say this with like from loving my heart.
31:23
But that is not true.
31:24
That's simply not true.
31:26
And I agree with you, Craig 100%.
31:27
It's not okay to bend the rules and tell a white lie.
31:32
It's important to always do the right thing.
31:34
It's not easy.
31:36
Let me give you a quick example of a story and the impact that it had.
31:39
And this is
31:40
this is somewhat of a silly example, but I still remember it to this day.
31:44
So I had hired my first employee
31:46
this is maybe four years into business, 3 or 4 years in the business.
31:49
And she was an admin for me, Liz.
31:53
And she was wonderful.
31:55
And she really helped me free up my time.
31:59
You know, we talk about admin, nurse and doctor levels of activities
32:04
and it allow me to get rid of the low level activities,
32:08
focus on the bigger things to grow.
32:10
She did that.
32:11
She took ownership in the business, pride in it.
32:15
And she was fabulous, a hard worker
32:17
and we were still working out of my house at this time.
32:20
I had an office out and, you know, just on the side behind the garage area.
32:25
I had a room and we worked out of there.
32:27
And, so the, the only the bathrooms were both inside the house.
32:32
Everything in my house, by the house.
32:33
So she'd she'd have to walk in and use the bathroom.
32:36
And she came out one or actually, I got back from a shoot
32:40
one day from shooting and she was like, oh, I have something to tell you.
32:44
Like we went over the the bullet points of this agent
32:47
that this, this is that this is what she look like for tomorrow.
32:50
She's like, oh, I need to tell you,
32:53
I was I used a bathroom in.
32:55
After I washed my hands, I was drying my hands on your hand towel,
32:59
and I snagged the towel.
33:03
And it has this snag, and it's a bit not perfect anymore.
33:07
And she used different terms. She's like, I'm really sorry.
33:10
I'll be happy to buy you a new one.
33:16
And I was like,
33:18
okay, a hand towel.
33:19
Like it wasn't some fine Egyptian fabric, like,
33:23
this was like a $3.99 Coles hand towel.
33:27
And it was a small little snag, like, I think
33:30
we probably just left alone, or I clipped it like I went.
33:32
It like.
33:33
This impacted me at such a high level to go
33:38
out like you are that honest, like.
33:41
Yeah. And nobody would have ever noticed it.
33:46
Your respect for her just skyrocket.
33:49
didn't it
33:50
Yes, it made such an impact.
33:52
I mean, that was 20 years ago. Craig.
33:56
18, 19 years ago.
33:57
It was a long time ago.
33:59
I don't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday,
34:02
but I remember that Liz told me that she snagged the hand towel.
34:05
Yeah,
34:08
and I'm telling you that
34:09
if you begin doing that, it will be awkward at first.
34:13
But when you go to someone and if you're honest with them
34:16
and you say, hey, I'm even if it's not your fault,
34:19
if there's times that you're like, hey, I just didn't realize this.
34:24
Like, I'll be happy.
34:25
I didn't know that you had this come upon you because of something we did.
34:28
I'll be happy to pay for.
34:29
I'll be happy to be. I'll be happy to make you whole.
34:34
Now, the thing
34:35
is, Craig, is you have to be prepared to actually do that
34:40
there.
34:41
There's a difference here between saying it
34:45
and hoping the person is like, no, it's okay,
34:48
and following through to what you said, following and following through
34:50
on what you say. Yes.
34:52
Yeah, yeah.
34:54
I think, you know, there's there's endless debate
34:58
and philosophies of of ethics and integrity.
35:01
And I mean, there's entire courses on it and debate over, you know,
35:05
what's right, what's wrong.
35:06
And ultimately you've got to find.
35:11
A foundation for your life
35:13
that you, you build off of, of what are my values?
35:17
What are my principles?
35:18
What am I willing to negotiate?
35:21
What am I not willing to negotiate?
35:22
What are what are nonstarters you know, what am I committed to?
35:27
And you have to answer those big questions so that you know how to handle
35:32
the very specific individual situations you might find yourself
35:36
in, or things that you hear, things that you're asked to do. And,
35:42
if you don't have that, that bedrock
35:45
for your life of what are my principles,
35:48
I think you just you're in a world of hurt
35:51
for your business, for your personal life and whatnot on,
35:55
caving on things that maybe you shouldn't be caving on.
35:59
Integrity in business is critical.
36:01
And it might cut to, you know, we're we're discussing this.
36:04
This might be a good place to, to wrap up, but
36:08
you might be asked to do something that you're,
36:11
you're not in good conscience able to do, and it's going to cost you money.
36:17
But what's the
36:18
what's the farther reaching impact of short term loss?
36:22
Do you think?
36:25
Yeah.
36:25
I mean, it could be detrimental for your business.
36:28
So a simple example that I can think of over the years that has happened
36:33
at Wow is as we were building Spiro, and this is before it was called Spiro.
36:38
This is a whole nother system.
36:39
But we we did billing in this system,
36:42
and there was times where we either billed incorrectly.
36:49
Or too much.
36:50
Too little, or we didn't bill at all.
36:52
And what we had to do.
36:57
To know what
36:58
we should act, the actions we should take.
37:01
We had to go back to our core values.
37:04
You mentioned this at the top of the show, Craig and I.
37:07
I can't tell you all how important it's been
37:10
for us to have core values at Wow, we've had them for many years.
37:14
We speak these, we talk, we onboard people with these.
37:17
We let people in our core values.
37:20
We had to go back to our core values and core value.
37:23
Number one is clients are our number one priority.
37:27
So what.
37:29
And that's a pretty powerful that's a that's a heavy core value.
37:32
Number one Craig.
37:34
Because what it does is when you
37:37
don't send an invoice to a client
37:39
and say it was six months ago, three months ago,
37:44
you have to put yourself in their shoes
37:46
and you have to say, if I was the client
37:49
and I had this listing six months ago
37:52
and it's closed now for four months, I've been paid for it.
37:56
I've moved on.
37:57
I actually kind of forgot about.
37:59
I even had that listing.
38:01
How would I feel if I got that invoice?
38:06
And and we set at our company, like,
38:09
we we'd be pretty like we'd be taken back a little bit.
38:13
Yeah.
38:13
You know, might be okay with paying it, but probably might lead us to thinking
38:17
about finding a different provider.
38:22
And I can tell you guys, over the years,
38:24
there has been times that we wrote off ten, $15,000.
38:32
Because we screwed up.
38:34
I feel like we screwed up.
38:35
Ultimately, does the agent,
38:37
does the agent owe us the money?
38:39
Yes. With the agent pay, probably.
38:41
But I clients are number one priority.
38:43
That's a pretty heavy core value.
38:45
Number one. And we took care of them.
38:48
And I think that's important.
38:49
Now one small little point on this.
38:51
And this isn't the point of the podcast, but we let them know that that took place.
38:55
We let them know the amount,
38:56
and we let them know that they didn't have to worry about it.
38:59
We, you know, so we we used it to let them know about it.
39:04
but we let them know that
39:07
there are number one priority and we don't feel
39:10
right about making them pay this bill that's passed to do for this long.
39:15
So those are all things that you could decide a different answer,
39:20
but it all has a tie back to what you believe in your core
39:24
values, your foundation, your beliefs, whatever you want to put, insert their
39:29
and you have to let people in your company know those as well.
39:33
So we have them posted on the wall back here.
39:35
They're on our brochures. They're on our onboarding guides.
39:38
Like I feel like most of our employees
39:40
at Wow would know.
39:44
At least would know two, three, four, maybe all five of the core values.
39:48
They definitely know core value number one.
39:50
And what we tell them is and we're going to train you
39:54
to a lot of situations, but when you get in a situation that you might
39:57
have not been trained in, or maybe we've encountered for the first time,
40:02
we trust you to make a decision.
40:04
Go back to your core values.
40:06
Go back to our core values. Excuse me.
40:08
And if they align with those core values,
40:11
we want to empower you to make that decision.
40:15
And then let's talk about it afterwards.
40:17
If you feel like there's feedback or something of the sort. So
40:22
that's the way we've handled it, Craig.
40:23
And they're not easy, I can tell you.
40:25
Like I was crying over when we wrote off $14,000, and I knew we did
40:30
10,000 a couple years previous, and it was not it was not a great day.
40:35
I was, I, I remember I told I don't know who it was at the time.
40:39
I was like,
40:40
I wish I just had those dollar bills and we could have had a campfire
40:43
with $14,000 $1 bill, so it would have been a lot more fun.
40:47
Yeah, yeah, it
40:51
when I think about it, if I'm in a situation
40:54
and I and I do the right thing and it cost me in the moment.
41:00
I'm trying to be an optimist here.
41:02
I think that when you demonstrate that honesty and integrity
41:06
and that level of ethics to your client, say it's
41:09
a client situation, I would hope.
41:13
I would hope that they would respect me
41:16
for making the right decision, doing the right thing
41:19
and building that trust level, because trust takes a while to build.
41:23
Right.
41:23
But it can be destroyed in, you know, just a blink of an eye. Yes.
41:28
But building that trust, which leads to a long term let's let's just spoil it.
41:32
I hate to do this, but let's boil it down to dollars and cents,
41:36
making the tough call in the moment of doing the right thing
41:39
and it costing me in the short term.
41:42
But developing the relationship of trust and a long term
41:45
business contract, or a relationship with them,
41:48
that ultimately will make me a whole lot more money
41:52
just because I made the right call.
41:53
That cost me in the moment.
41:56
But long term is is much, much more profitable.
42:00
And ultimately it's not even about the dollars and cents.
42:04
But when you put your head on the pillow at night,
42:06
you can rest with a clear conscience that you know you did the right thing.
42:09
And I think if you want peace in your life,
42:13
just do the right thing.
42:17
Agree a 100% Craig.
42:19
Well said.
42:20
It's not easy though, but it it needs to be done.
42:23
Yep, yep I mean there's there's all sorts of situations
42:26
we could talk through and, you know, debate and whatnot.
42:29
But we wanted to do this episode just to kind of recenter
42:33
and think about, you know, situations that we face.
42:36
And how do you handle that?
42:37
You know,
42:38
building that foundation of what your principles are, what your values are.
42:42
And it might be different.
42:43
We have different faith backgrounds.
42:44
We have different upbringings.
42:46
But find, you know, for for Todd, nine, you know, we're we're Christians
42:51
where we base our, our worldview on the Bible, what we call the Bible.
42:58
And, you know, the, the Ten Commandments.
43:00
We've all heard those things, you know,
43:02
but building, having that as a foundation to build from
43:05
and then make decisions based on of what aligns with what my values and principles
43:09
are as a human being, as a man, as a woman in running a business.
43:14
So I would encourage you
43:17
go back to the basics, figure out what are my principles
43:19
and values and how am I going to live my life and run my business.
43:22
And I it's going to pay huge dividends for you in multiple ways.
43:27
Yeah.
43:28
It's challenging.
43:29
Hey, if you have a situation post it below, let us know.
43:33
So you know, if you cried over $14,000 $1 bills, you and I, what?
43:39
We'll, we'll get lunch in Vegas and we'll cry together.
43:42
So, hey, let's share this.
43:44
That's the beautiful thing about this community is we are a community.
43:47
Hey, I'm happy that you guys laugh at me, cry with me.
43:50
Whatever it is, let's do it together. Participate in.
43:52
And if you have a comment below, put it down there.
43:55
We'd love to interact and communicate with you.
43:58
And, let's all share in this together.
44:01
You've said it before, Todd.
44:02
Learn from our mistakes.
44:04
Yes, learn from our mistakes.
44:07
But, yeah, we.
44:09
Yeah. We'd love your comments.
44:10
Make sure you leave a like if you found value in this.
44:13
And feel free to share it.
44:15
And, those of you that are new subscribers, we really appreciate it.
44:18
We hope this, this podcast is, is a value to you and your business
44:22
and that you're able to build a strong a strong business because of it.
44:25
Part of what we're trying to pass on to you.
44:28
All right.
44:28
That's good to wrap it I think I think we're good this week.
44:31
Yeah, I think so.
44:32
Hey, let's just give him the email address in case email is easier.
44:35
hello@spiro.media.
44:38
Send us an email. Got a show idea question.
44:40
We would love to cover it on here.
44:43
Just send us an email.
44:44
hello@spiro.media.
44:46
All right June is rolling strong.
44:49
Stay busy,
44:50
but make sure you also take some time to be thankful
44:53
for the blessings in your life. And be sure to take a breath.
44:56
You guys have a great week.
44:57
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro Podcast,
45:00
managing your Real estate, photography and videography business.
45:04
This is a production of Spiro and Wow video tours.
45:08
You can find out more about Spiro is Real Estate Media Business management
45:12
software at our website, Spiro.media