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Business Goals Checkup · 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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if you're not making time for what you enjoy
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and what you like,
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then you're doing business wrong.
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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, Tod Kivimaki
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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 a software package, a software platform designed
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to help you manage your day to day business in real estate,
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photography and video and really help you grow it and scale it as well.
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Welcome to the podcast.
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I'm your host, Craig Magrum, and with me each and every week,
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our co-host and Spiro, founder and owner and fellow smoking
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connoisseur, meat smoking connoisseur, Todd Kivimaki.
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How's it going, Todd?
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What an introduction, Craig.
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Thank you for that.
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Yes, I it's good to be back here and with all of you. had some fun
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podcast lately
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you know, had a great guest with Colleen
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and then shared some of our workflow issues.
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And we love hearing your feedback on that.
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So that's exciting.
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But the more exciting is, is the me smoking, right?
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Craig. Now you, you share with the team this morning that you, you smoked
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a couple of pork butts this last week and then I did
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a couple of pork butts this last week and then - I did
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I you know for me for me smoking meat
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is it's like a Zen like experience because I know
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I have to clear my day to pay attention to what
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I'm doing, so I can't have anything else going on, really.
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So for me, it's relaxing.
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It's like I've got nothing else to do.
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I'm concentrating on smoking some really delicious flavor.
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Bowl flavor. Yeah. Flavorful.
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Good meat and I haven't smoked anything for quite a while.
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I just haven't had time, so it's kind of nice to block out a day.
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Do that.
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I smoked it out at our campsite and invited
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some of our camping neighbors that are fellow seasonal campers.
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And who's going to say no to free barbecue, Right?
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So. Right.
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We have some new good friends that
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I have to say, I try not to pat myself on the back too much.
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But Todd, the pulled pork turned out really good.
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Really good.
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- nothing better than that. - Yeah, Yeah.
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It's kind of like it's kind of like feeding the neighborhood cat.
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When you feed your campground, neighbors grilled barbecue.
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It's like you just once you feed the neighborhood cats like that,
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you are the cat people in the caption, Just keep coming to your house. So.
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And that's not me. That's some of my neighbors.
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they did say that they would come again for barbecue.
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So yeah,
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but there's there's a group of them that they do this almost every weekend.
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They all get together and they they share a meal, you know, over the weekend.
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And everybody brings something like, Hey, come on, you can come any time.
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Join us.
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So we're on the in-crowd now.
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You're in the and that's great. Craig That's awesome.
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Just one good barbecue.
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Yeah, but it can get you right, you know?
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And honestly, you know,
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so this is your kind of thing of why this is this the small talk before the podcast
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and it's somewhat is but it's serving a purpose as well in the fact that
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and we'll get to the
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main topic but if you're not making time for what you enjoy
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and what you like,
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then you're doing business wrong.
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Because remember, we all started our business.
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And again, let me define business.
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I've done this once or twice,
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but a commercial profitable enterprise that works for you.
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So you didn't start business to get a job.
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Okay. Is the business running you?
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Are you running the business?
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All these questions.
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And it's important that you don't let the business run you.
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I kind of had somewhat the same thing this week, Craig, as my wife asked me,
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and she's so intelligent and so just.
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She knows what I need and she knows a bump in the right direction.
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But she was like, you know, what can we do?
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So when you come home, like, you can let work go
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That’s awesome
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Yeah, I was like, wow, like that.
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So you know that that set at home for me because that means one
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that's a little bit of a realign for me.
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That one.
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I'm getting home way too late.
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And two, when I get home, I'm so wired for work that I am just not even there.
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So that is that was like a come to Jesus moment for me.
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And it's like, wait a minute. Like,
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wow, Todd, Like, you just made yourself a job
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and you are getting worked by the business
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and you need to be a little bit smarter and diligent in what you're doing.
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So we're going to talk about that today.
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I'm excited to dig in to it and just have some questions for you.
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And we do because we care for you all
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and there are questions that we ask ourselves.
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So there was Craig and I's example
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of how we're doing this in our own lives and own business.
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So we're excited to get to those today.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Well, before we do dive into that, we always like to give you
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an update on Spiro software updates and what might become.
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And so.
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Todd, hat do we have on, on the agenda today?
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Yeah. Craig So we have some exciting things.
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So we are looking at a lot of, a lot of the infrastructure
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of the upload, the download the optimizing.
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So we're creating larger and bigger and faster gears in the background.
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So we're doing this
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because we've heard from many of you these items and optimization.
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And the idea is that as we optimize your guys's flows the way that you use
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the system, we are going to give you back more of your time.
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So we are looking at that right now, have another very large integration
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coming in with a third party vendor that we're excited
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about and a couple other goodies along the way.
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So I'm not sharing too much because
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I don't have
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release dates, but the gears are getting bigger and better
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and we're putting in those finesses that you all have asked us for.
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So excited to get those out to you all.
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Excellent. Excellent.
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Already?
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Well, should we should we dive in?
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Yeah. Let's. Let's get started here.
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All right. Good deal.
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All right, So we are about halfway through the year,
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just a little bit after, you know, just over halfway through the year.
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And that's always a good time, Todd, to kind of check in with yourself
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and check in with your business and find out where am I in
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terms of the goals that I set at the beginning of the year.
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So if you go back to the beginning of this year
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and go go to or some earlier podcast, we talked about goal setting.
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So this is kind of a good check in moment.
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So let's let's talk about that a little bit.
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Yeah.
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So halfway through the year it's a great thing and for me at least,
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it's unbelievable that we're already halfway through the year.
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And the thing that we find is, at least for me, is the second
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half of the year actually goes faster than the first half
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because we are in our summer months, that always flies by.
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And then you have the beginning of school, you have a couple of holidays
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and there is like, boom, it's Christmas and New Year's and it's January one.
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So it's important to pause a little bit here.
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And that pause might seem impossible for you at this moment
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because you're just hustling like I see you guys post on Facebook.
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I know you're working all the time
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and you might be saying, Todd, there's no way that I can slow down right now.
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And I'm not asking you to halt the train.
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I'm just asking you to pause and think about this,
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just to give some thought and clarity to it.
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Because if you don't, I'm afraid that you might be
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headed off course in the wrong direction.
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And you're going so fast, you're going to steer the ship and drive it.
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So far off course that by the time you realize
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you're off course, you can't make an adjustment
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or it takes you exponentially longer to adjust to get back on course.
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So. So the first question is,
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you know, what Craig hinted at is this Where are you at with your goals
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for 2024?
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Do you do you know where you're at?
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Did you set goals to begin with?
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That's kind of important.
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Yeah, that's kind of important if you didn't set goals.
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Here's just a real easy thing to do.
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Is how do you feel right now?
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Do you feel at ease?
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Do you feel like everything's going well?
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Do you feel like, Oh, I just feel
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I have this unsettling feeling
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your gut.
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A lot of times, you know, the idea of trust, your gut is true.
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If you have an unsettling feeling, then you probably have set
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some goals in your mind and even subconsciously in your mind.
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And you just know there's some loose ends
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or some things hanging out there that you need to attend to.
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And if
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you generally your gut feeling is everything's going okay
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then, and there's exceptions to this, I'll just admit that this is a very,
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just rough estimate.
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If you didn't set goals,
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if you feel everything's going okay, just ask yourself a couple of these
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following questions because sometimes our feelings get the best of us,
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and that could be either way.
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Sometimes you might be a glass half empty person
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and you think everything's going bad,
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so you're never going to have this great feeling.
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That's when you that's when you need to use the facts
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and data to tell you if you're wrong.
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And if you're a glass half full type person, you might think the world's great,
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but it could be literally burning up underneath your feet and you don't know.
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So pluses and minuses in, you know, your personality
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and you know how you assess the situation.
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But if you have set goals, where you at, here's an easy thing
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you all have these are these
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just pertain to business goals, which is not the most important in my mind,
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but you all have in Spiro a metric section.
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It's a beautiful dashboard that has a ton of metrics in it,
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and it has things like revenue,
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number of jobs,
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clients, unique clients, revenue per client
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market share.
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Now you do have to interact and give us data for us to give you
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the percentage for market share, but you could simply just click on that.
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So in one mouse click you could see where you're at
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and what you've done.
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Now, if you have not set revenue goals,
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you can set revenue goals and those and click the settings and set your goals.
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Now, if you're not in Spiro, that's okay.
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You can set these goals.
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You just need to know what your revenue is
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and you need to know where you wanted it to be.
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So just for our business,
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our real estate media business, I can see I clicked here and these
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this is a number that I look at every day, so I know what these numbers are,
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but I can see very quickly that we are up
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29% above our goal month to date.
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And then for a year we're up 20%.
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So that's a good thing.
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And that is a good kind
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of barometer of where we're at now.
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We've had to work really hard
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and there are some other things that have that we need to fix
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because we ran so hard.
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But from a standpoint, if you just want to get a baseline
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for your goals, you can click that metrics section
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and that will show you where you're at every time you click it.
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Can I give you a personal example?
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Yeah, the glass half full, half, half empty.
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So part of what I've been dealing with the last couple of months is
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I've been a half glass half empty type of mindset.
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So I've been working with Steve and Chris are director
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and director of Sales and sales manager,
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telling them guys things feel really slow because I've had some days
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with a very low number of shoots for this time of year
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and I'm not used to that.
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So I've been panicking a little bit and then looking at it is glass half empty.
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And what Steve has pointed me to is exactly what you just
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shared, is that market share number.
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He said, Craig, there's going to be ups and downs and with
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with your market being our northernmost, you've had some weather issues.
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You know, there's just been some different things
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that while number of shoots maybe isn't where it should be overall
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looking at year to date, our market share up here is actually up.
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He's like, you're doing what you need to do.
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You're just you're going to have days or weeks where things are just weird.
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But keep doing what you're doing.
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You know, I just made a presentation to a brokerage yesterday.
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At the time of this recording,
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I had
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a I blocked out some time, got up to this brokerage and already
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have one or two people that have responded from that presentation.
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Nice.
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You know, had had a couple of new clients, three or four new clients
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this week alone, because one of our raving fans
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at a certain brokerage has really just been going to bat
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for us in recruiting more agents within that brokerage.
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I can't explain that other than the relationship that
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that we've built with these various, you know, realtors that we shoot for.
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So, yeah, look at the hard data
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because I overanalyze and I get inside my own head too much.
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And I'm sure a lot of business owners do.
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You start to fret and worry about some things,
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but you got to anchor yourself to the actual data.
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So good point of looking at things like market share and whatnot.
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Yeah.
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And, and you have to give yourself some time as well.
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You can't expect that you do a brokerage presentation and you're always
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going to get that instant gratification that you get orders, you get calls.
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It doesn't mean that it's not working.
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I can think about some deals that that
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I had signed many years ago
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that took me four years to get literally four years from.
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I went back to emails and the first time I'd contacted this individual, it took me
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four years to sign the deal
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and you're going to have a variance of instant
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to four or more years to make something happen.
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So don't be too hard on yourself, right?
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Just keep going with the correct actions, guys, that sales is not that difficult
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and if sales is a bad word for you, you're just serving your clients.
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But just like Craig said, you're just building
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relationships, that's all you're doing.
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what helps too is
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stay consistent, keep at it, stay in the market.
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Your name will get familiar with realtors.
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I know a lot of realtors, and because they know that
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I've been pretty consistent and I've stuck with this for a long time,
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more referrals start to build over the years
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and the business will naturally grow
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like Todd said, give it time.
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hang in there.
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Yeah, yeah. And phrase I just love.
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I use it all the time as if it was easy.
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Everybody would do it right.
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It's just so true.
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It's just most people and not you all that are listening.
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You are the you are the high achievers.
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You're the overachievers
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because you're listening to this podcast, you're listening, you're putting in
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to your to your mindset, to your knowledge.
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So it's not you guys, but most people.
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And this is a good thing for all, all of you that are listening.
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Most people are going to hit a little resistance and they go, Oh,
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oh, that's this is uncomfortable.
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I don't know how to I don't know how to push through that.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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You know, just a funny or a funny example.
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So my kids, they wanted to start a freeze drying business.
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So this is all the way, you know, people freeze dried candy
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and you can preserve anything with a freeze dryer.
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But candy is the thing right now.
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And so I've run them through this entire kind of business, starting
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just kind of
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methodology, if you will.
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It's really not that great.
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I just the only word I could think of, but
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I've run them through starting a business.
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So we started with Market Research and we learned about what was out there.
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We learned about how it was done.
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We listened to other people that had a business.
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Anyways, long story short, we have a they have a freeze dryer now
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and they had to take out a loan for the freeze dryer that was from me.
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So I'm not yeah, I'm not charging them any interest.
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- So I was. - Well that's good.
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Yeah.
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I didn't charge my own kids interest but they have a loan
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and they know what that payment is.
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And anyways, long story short, they have their first batch, they have
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the bags, they have the packaging, everything they want,
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and they went out to go sell some and they went around our neighborhood.
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Well, our neighborhood, the people that were home just so happened
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to be mostly retired people.
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Okay?
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The kids weren't home, their baseball and things like that.
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And my kids came back defeated because nobody bought anything from them.
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okay.
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So I was like, okay, so what they say, well, one of them was diabetic.
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I think two of them are diabetic.
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That could be a problem.
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Yeah, another one doesn't eat sugar.
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And then a third one, I forget what it was.
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So I'm just like, okay, that's, that's okay.
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You are you we've hit.
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And at this point they are like, well,
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we just we're this is never going to work.
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No one's ever going to buy
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freeze dried candy from us like this just isn't going to work.
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And that was just a cool opportunity because it's like, No,
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this is going to work.
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You just have the wrong demographic of people.
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You can't sell freeze dried candy to a bunch of diabetics.
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It just it just won't work. So
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I think you can take a situation like that, though,
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with a market that you think isn't the right market
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and you can still find the need within that market.
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How many of those how many of those retired people
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that are diabetic have grandkids that come over to visit them?
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you just look at it from a different angle,
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get another set of eyes on your business or on the challenge or on the know that
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you got get a different set of eyes on it and look at a different angle.
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You can come at it from.
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Yeah, that's, that's a perfect example, Craig.
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And yeah, no that's exactly.
18:50
And then I kind of went down the line of, Okay,
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so who do you typically think eats freeze dried candy?
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And we looked at that.
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Did you go to those people?
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Okay, None of your friends were home to begin with.
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None of your friends know you're doing this.
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And so that you're probably doing the same thing.
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You're going out there
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and you might go to the one realtor that doesn't want to pay for anything or,
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you know, they take their own photos, whatever it may be.
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There's a million examples.
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But just because you hit a little resistance
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like just keep pushing through that, you will find where it breaks
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and then you actually it gets easier.
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You get momentum going forward, right?
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So, okay, my question number two for you all here is
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what do you need to
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say no to?
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So in thinking about question number one is where are you at with your goals?
19:37
Halfway through the year?
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Now what do you need to say no to?
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What opportunities do you have
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on your plate that you need to get rid of?
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Wait wait.
19:52
Todd Yeah, we should get rid of opportunities.
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Let me play devil's advocate on that one.
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I have an analogy for that, Craig.
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Okay, All right.
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if you are in the circus
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and your act is you are the plate spinner,
20:09
okay, Okay.
20:10
So you're the guy that your act is.
20:12
You put Yes, you have a bunch of poles and you're spinning plates on poles.
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You're going to spin one, two, three.
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You know, if you're a good plate spinner, you're going to do ten,
20:24
and then
20:27
you're going to hit a point to where your first plates are going
20:30
to stop spinning and you're going to keep setting up plates.
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But the problem with that is your plates are going to fall off
20:39
much quicker because they're there.
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It's takes
20:43
you longer to spin up a new plate because you have to put momentum force.
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You have to get that thing spinning so that it's going to spin for a while.
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They're going to fall off so much quicker than what you can start
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a new plate that you're eventually going to have less done because you're
21:01
just not trying to spin three plates and watching those three plates.
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So my answer to that, Craig, is yes, we need to say
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no honestly to more than we say yes to.
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And if if you're under the mentality that, hey, I'm just going to push through, I'm
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going to work more. And I think that's a little bit
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I think you're fooling yourself or you're cheating.
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But if you say, I don't have to say no
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to anybody, you really are saying no to a lot of people.
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because you're just not getting it done
21:32
right.
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So let's go back to what you talked about at the very beginning of this episode.
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And Jess, your wife asking, what can we do to help you
21:41
basically unplug when you get home from work?
21:44
Yeah,
21:45
I, I had this flashback of when I was working in radio in manager
21:50
of a station in taking work home when you own something.
21:54
Okay, I didn't own the radio station, but I was responsible for it.
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Same thing with
21:58
the real estate media business I had initially.
22:01
When you own something, you feel a personal responsibility to that.
22:05
There's a sense of pride, of ownership, right?
22:08
You you run it different than when you're
22:12
in a lot of cases.
22:13
I shouldn't generalize.
22:14
You run it differently than when you're just an employee of a business.
22:18
For sure.
22:19
The employee doesn't necessarily have the same passion and buy in
22:23
unless there's been a great culture built that the owner does.
22:27
Okay.
22:28
So when you take when you come home, you've got everything
22:31
you know you still need to get done and do and invest in and
22:36
when when I was doing that, especially with the radio station,
22:40
I learned a little bit after that with the business that I had.
22:45
You lose your family
22:47
because you're not mentally there for them.
22:49
Yeah, and that's dangerous.
22:52
So let's tie it back in then.
22:56
Yeah.
22:57
You're saying no to something and it could be your family.
23:00
It could be.
23:02
It could be that, that I'll loop back around to that.
23:05
And that's a perfect segway, Craig.
23:06
And my third question is, what do you need to focus on right now?
23:09
Yeah, and this is what I have written down here.
23:12
You know what? I you know, I have top of my list.
23:14
Do you need to focus on your family right now?
23:16
Yeah, you need to focus on your marriage.
23:19
Maybe it's falling apart.
23:21
Maybe your children, maybe you don't.
23:23
Maybe you just need to spend more time with your children.
23:25
You're becoming disconnect it.
23:27
Yeah.
23:27
Maybe you need to focus on your financials.
23:31
Maybe to focus on innovating.
23:34
Maybe you need to focus on your business.
23:35
I mean, business was the last thing that I said There,
23:40
because, again, if you
23:46
are broken and have some parts that you need to focus on,
23:50
you're not going to work.
23:52
It's not going to work in your business.
23:54
You're just only going to be able to will yourself through it so much
23:57
before you go.
23:59
Whatever. Start this thing. This thing's not going to work.
24:01
I'm never going to make any money.
24:02
I've invested all this in my equipment.
24:05
Nobody likes my photography. Everybody has a problem.
24:07
I don't like working with realtor and I can't find anybody to hire.
24:11
And the list is going to go on and on and on.
24:13
You're going to dig yourself this deep hole of sorrow because I've done it.
24:17
I have done it.
24:18
And it's tough to get out of, you know,
24:21
self burnout.
24:22
Focus on it. It is it's called burnout.
24:24
And you have to realize that and you have to focus on what you need
24:28
as a human being to make sure
24:30
that you can walk into your business and you can be effective.
24:34
So going back again, just personal anecdote.
24:36
We try to be transparent here.
24:38
Back when I was again in radio, I was at that point of burnout.
24:42
Todd And for the first time in my life in I'm no longer doing this, but
24:47
I invested in a counselor, a
24:50
a work slash, spiritual slash
24:54
personal counselor, because I was I was at my wit's end.
24:59
I was afraid.
25:00
And the exact phrase he he said
25:03
is, Craig, you are burned crispy right now.
25:08
I will never forget those words.
25:10
I was so burned out.
25:12
And at that exact spot that you just described,
25:15
where you've lost all your passion for what your calling was,
25:19
what your passion was, and it can implode your life.
25:23
And we don't want that for you.
25:26
We've been there.
25:27
Todd has lived it. I've lived it.
25:30
It's.
25:30
Yeah.
25:30
What do you what do you need to say no to and what do you need to focus on?
25:34
What is really important?
25:36
Yes, we're in this to make the business work for us.
25:38
We need to make a living.
25:40
We need to make some money, take care of ourselves, our family.
25:43
But how much is enough?
25:45
I guess that's the question I have is is how much is enough?
25:48
And what
25:51
that.
25:52
No, that's just the question. How much is enough?
25:54
And what's really important?
25:56
At what cost?
25:57
How much is enough? At what cost?
25:59
Yeah.
26:00
It's easy to keep
26:03
just, you know,
26:05
I don't know.
26:05
I'm getting a little overwhelmed right now, I guess. Sorry.
26:08
Go ahead.
26:09
Yeah.
26:09
No, let me just tell you.
26:11
So this is by Craig. So we're transparent.
26:14
I just went through this like I had this point where my wife's like, Hey,
26:18
how can we get you to not, you know,
26:20
how can we get you to break your focus from work when you get home,
26:24
So here's what I did.
26:25
Here’s what I did. so one
26:29
I had like it was a little bit of a wake up.
26:31
Like, I noted that like, I was like, okay, wait a minute.
26:35
Like,
26:36
she supported me for the last 20 or over 20 years because she
26:40
we dated prior to me starting this business and I was running other you know,
26:44
I was photography and video and other businesses.
26:47
And so she's always supported me.
26:50
And she's not asking that because she doesn't support me.
26:53
She's asking she's actually asking me that because she supports me so much.
26:58
So it's like, whoa, Todd, wait a minute.
27:00
This is this is a very valid like red flags went off there.
27:04
It's taken me a long time to learn this.
27:06
Like I,
27:06
you know, a husband and wife situation like, I used to be pretty bullheaded.
27:10
I was like, okay, wait a minute.
27:11
She she has a lot of insight and thought and she's
27:13
probably thought about this question a long time.
27:15
So first off, I recognized it that that was the idea of,
27:20
okay, that was kind of like my question
27:22
number one, where am I halfway through this year?
27:24
Like she throws this thing in?
27:25
Like, I had the pause.
27:27
I asked you where you're at with your goals,
27:28
because if your ship is off course, then let's not keep going that direction.
27:34
When my wife asked me that question like, Wait a minute,
27:36
this doesn't align with why I started these businesses.
27:38
I started these businesses for me and the family,
27:42
and so that we could do what we wanted to do.
27:44
And the business is working for me.
27:46
So I.
27:48
I paused.
27:50
I thought about it.
27:51
And here's some actionable things that I did since then. One,
27:56
I removed all of the input off of my phone.
28:02
So I have a problem that if it's on my phone,
28:07
I will check it.
28:10
Even if I leave it in another room, I'll find a reason
28:13
to walk back through this way.
28:14
I'll check it, and then I'll become.
28:16
just completely engulfed in it again.
28:19
So I removed it from my phone.
28:21
Now what I didn't do is just
28:25
let all that go.
28:26
So prior to doing that, I had.
28:28
I had a meeting with my team and I said, Hey, this is what I'm going to do.
28:33
I have found that when these
28:36
communication channels are on my phone, I just can't focus
28:40
and I am spending too much time in it, which means I come back the next day
28:44
and I'm not as mentally focused and refreshed, so I can't actually do anything
28:49
the next day because I'm so much less efficient,
28:50
because I'm literally I'm looking at my phone 24 hours a day.
28:54
if and then I said, I am happy to help with any situation
29:00
that comes up, but this is how you need to contact me.
29:04
So the employees, they have my cell phone number, they know how to get to me.
29:08
They know how to get to me when I'm at home and I trust them with that.
29:12
I trust them that if there's these red flags situations
29:16
and for some of them I defined it for my leaders at Wow,
29:19
I just trust them that if they need to get to me, they know
29:23
like I trust that they're calling me for a good reason.
29:25
now with my team at Spiro, I said, If these things are happening,
29:29
this is when you can contact me.
29:32
So I set some ground
29:33
rules and I also told the team why.
29:37
So it's yes for me, but it's for you guys and for our clients
29:41
so that I can come in and I can actually push us along.
29:45
So I took communication off my phone.
29:47
But I have a safeguard in there that my team can get me after hours
29:51
when they see something that I need to handle.
29:55
The other thing I did, and this is
29:58
this was planned out for quite some time, so don't think you just need to go
30:01
and do this.
30:02
Number two, because it could actually ruin your business.
30:05
Number two is I've brought on more people to the team.
30:09
So I had one star, a key person for Spiro.
30:12
Shannon, You’ll meet Shannon.
30:14
You're going to love her. She helped me build. Wow.
30:16
Yeah.
30:16
You'll get to know her.
30:18
She came on, started last week.
30:21
We have
30:22
another customer support person starting next week,
30:25
and we have another developer we're interviewing for a developer right now.
30:29
So I've realized that we grew and I was just
30:33
throwing it on my back and my team's back and it wasn't healthy for me.
30:37
It wasn't healthy for them.
30:38
I assessed the financials, I understood what it meant to hire
30:42
and I made the decision to hire.
30:44
So that was number two.
30:47
And again, just be careful with that.
30:48
I'm not saying
30:49
if you feel overworked right now, you need to go hire three people.
30:52
Please.
30:52
This is we're going to hiring in another podcast.
30:55
But I'm just like, don't get that sensation
30:58
that you're going to hire and everything going to be better.
31:00
You're actually going
31:00
to make more work for yourself in the intermediate time when you hire.
31:04
So you have to kind of know what you're getting into,
31:07
So that's what I've done.
31:08
And then number three, I've focused on
31:12
what's important families, the most important to me.
31:15
Okay, so
31:17
what?
31:18
We had dinner with friends last night.
31:20
So, like, that's some of the things.
31:22
Like, I realize that I needed to have some interaction
31:25
outside of work.
31:28
I love the kids, but I need to have some time with my wife
31:33
and with some other adults
31:35
so my brain can relax and that I can go back home to my kids.
31:38
I'm happy again. Piggyback rides, pickleball,
31:40
whatever they want to do, I have the energy for that.
31:42
And then because I've done that, I come back and the next morning
31:46
I'm ready to kill it in the office because I actually had
31:49
a correct balance of what my life needs.
31:53
Preach, preach time.
31:55
And it just but it's so but you know what, Craig?
31:58
I fooled myself thinking that my work was valid 7 a.m.
32:02
to 7 p.m.
32:04
in the office and then checking my phone until 10 p.m.
32:07
or 11 p.m..
32:09
Like I thought I was just doing this great thing
32:11
and I was pat myself on the back like, Look at all these hours you can work, Todd.
32:15
And I was wrong.
32:19
I was wrong.
32:20
Like, I took pride in the fact that I was in the office
32:22
12 hours a day and I put three more in at home.
32:25
No, I was just dumb.
32:26
Todd You big dummy, you are doing this wrong.
32:30
Let me let me ask you something real quick.
32:32
You've done that before.
32:34
This is going to be a big question.
32:36
you've done that before in your past and realized what you were doing
32:40
and corrected that and yet you've slipped back into that again.
32:46
Is it easy to slip in and out of that?
32:49
Oh, it is.
32:51
It is, because as an owner you get this sensation when things are going well.
32:56
And I shared some of our numbers like we're up 20%, 30% for the month at Wow.
33:00
And 20%
33:02
for the year.
33:04
And so in that percent and not bragging here, but we do a lot of revenue at Wow.
33:10
So increasing that by 20% a really good thing like that's a lot of money
33:15
and you get this sensation and and building with Spiro and growing the team
33:19
and y'all are coming in and it's great
33:20
to talk to you guys and signups and users are going up like crazy.
33:24
You get the sensation that you can do anything and you get
33:27
I don't know what it's even called.
33:29
I'm sure there's been plenty of people have written books about it.
33:31
I need to do a little research on it, but you begin fooling yourself, thinking
33:34
that what you do is the most important.
33:37
And you're this cornerstone in this pen to your business.
33:41
And if you do that, you are just
33:46
you are building yourself a disaster.
33:50
And I you know, Shannon came in and she was like, she's, you know,
33:55
right now when many of you
33:59
so our users think of Spiro, they think of me and again, I'm
34:01
the face on this podcast and a lot of you think of Craig, but you get me in chat,
34:05
you get me on on demos and tech support and things like that.
34:10
You get me on Facebook.
34:11
And right now that's a problem because I can't help all of you,
34:15
So if people think of you as you're business,
34:19
you need to begin removing yourself.
34:21
And it might not be right now, it might be down the road,
34:24
but you need to think about how can you get people to love
34:27
more than you at your business.
34:30
And I fell into that many years ago at Wow, Craig.
34:33
And I. Wow was Todd and Todd was Wow.
34:38
And I had the same problem.
34:39
And it took me a lot longer to recognize it
34:43
and almost to disaster.
34:44
Literally almost a disaster.
34:47
And then I started putting people in place
34:51
and putting processes in place and putting systems in place.
34:55
And the coolest thing is now
34:58
we had 100 new clients month to date.
35:01
So we're recording the very end of June.
35:03
We had 100 new clients come in to Wow this last month.
35:08
Not one of them even knows who I am,
35:13
not even one of them.
35:14
So that's the beautiful thing.
35:17
There's two ways you can look at that.
35:19
You can look at that from a negative standpoint
35:22
and well, what what's, what's, what's my relevance?
35:25
There might be a little bit hit to your pride of. Mm.
35:28
Well somebody else is doing this for me.
35:31
It's if you lose control or you look at it from the positive
35:34
standpoint, I'm making the business work for me
35:39
so that
35:39
Todd can go home and spend some time with his kids.
35:42
That's the more, more important part.
35:45
We got to take our ego out of this, right?
35:47
Yeah.
35:49
Yes, yes.
35:50
And I have one.
35:52
I think we all do.
35:55
I think we all do.
35:55
If for if we're honest with ourselves.
35:58
Yeah, we got to take our ego out of it
36:00
and yeah, invest in the, in the systems and in the people around you
36:06
and you know, the goals and what's, what's,
36:10
you know, systems do you have around building, hitting those goals
36:15
where you're not totally stressed out.
36:18
Can I, can I make two book suggestions.
36:20
But yeah.
36:21
Basically directly with what
36:23
with in the
36:23
we're not getting any sort of kickback
36:25
on these on these books so like we're not Amazon affiliates or anything
36:29
but you talked about I love this and this is hard to do
36:33
but you talked about taking inputs off your cell phone.
36:37
So do you mean what do you mean?
36:39
First of all, before I suggest the book, What do you mean by that?
36:42
Like, what did you remove from your phone?
36:44
Just for practical examples.
36:46
Yeah.
36:46
So email, chat support, all of the, all the things that were pinging me that were
36:53
that I was reactive to.
36:54
So any program, I literally uninstalled it and got rid of anything
36:58
that I found myself continuing to come back and check it's gone.
37:01
It's off my phone.
37:02
that sounds pretty extreme to some people probably.
37:06
you know, pressing on that app long pressing it
37:10
and going to uninstall was pretty I was like, am I really going to do this?
37:14
Because this was my friend.
37:15
I check it 300 times a day, right?
37:18
Like getting rid of that thing.
37:19
But and it, it, it and again, I
37:22
let the team know what was going to happen
37:24
I felt a little bit better because I knew that
37:26
if I had to be involved, then I would get involved.
37:29
And also I trust my team.
37:32
That's what they're there for.
37:33
I'm only stepping on their toes when I do their job.
37:37
I trust them.
37:38
So Todd, get out of that, let them take care of it and trust
37:42
that they're going to contact you when they need you.
37:45
And you know what, I'm not none of them have contacted me.
37:52
That's good.
37:53
Yeah, that's good.
37:55
Yeah, I just I think about, you know, I'm on an iPhone and those little red
37:59
dots, those notification dots, it's like, I got to clear those.
38:03
I get it. That's bugging me.
38:05
But, boy, that's.
38:06
It's hard. But the freedom you find in that.
38:09
it is so much better for your mental health.
38:13
Lower your anxiety level.
38:15
So. Okay, so the first book and I think I've mentioned this book on the podcast
38:19
before that ties directly into that, and that's actually
38:23
exactly what this author talks about.
38:24
His name's John Mark Comer, C O M E R.
38:27
It's called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
38:30
Excellent book.
38:33
It's it's really challenging.
38:36
Like, I'm not doing everything in that book
38:37
that that he talks about, but it has me thinking about what?
38:41
Yeah. What do I need to say no to?
38:43
What do I need to remove from my life
38:45
so that I can focus on going back to Todd's first few points here?
38:49
Focus on what's really important.
38:51
So, John Mark Comer The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
38:55
I'll put this in the in the show notes.
38:57
And then you talked about setting boundaries basically, right.
39:01
You have to set boundaries for yourself and for your business and for your family.
39:06
You got to protect your family.
39:07
If you assuming you have a family
39:10
or maybe you're thinking about starting one or whatever.
39:12
Yeah, Yeah.
39:12
There's a book simply called Boundaries by Dr.
39:15
by Dr. Henry Cloud.
39:17
Excellent, excellent book.
39:18
I would I would really suggest reading that one if you haven't yet.
39:22
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for those, Craig.
39:24
I'm going to pick those up and because I have not read either, I want
39:27
to, I want to get to that.
39:30
The, the first one you said the ruthless elimination of hurry.
39:34
Yeah, yeah, it'll kick your butt.
39:37
- Yeah. I'm not joking. - I need it.
39:39
I'm a whole bunch of messed up sometimes, so I need all the help I can get.
39:43
aren’t we all
39:45
Okay, cool.
39:48
Hey, if you all need a system out there, so I'm not saying that this is
39:51
what your gap is right now, but if you need a streamline system,
39:56
we have got a system for you at Spiro.
39:58
You can find out more spiro.media.
40:00
It's taken us 20 years to build it to this point.
40:03
If that's what you're finding you're spending more time on and you're
40:07
just from ordering, you're typing in orders, your clients can't orders
40:11
your invoicing, your delivery, your why am I why do I have to email my editors?
40:15
I'm just looking to streamline this, if that is one of the things you wrote down
40:20
and you don't have a system or your system's not working for you.
40:25
spiro.media.
40:26
It's free to sign up, free to try out.
40:28
We'd love to talk to you about it.
40:30
And at the same time,
40:31
if you did not write down system, then don't let me sell you on.
40:35
Spiro. Okay?
40:37
If that's not your problem,
40:38
what I want you to focus on is the thing you wrote down.
40:42
Okay? You need to say no to something.
40:44
Then what do you want to focus on?
40:46
Don't let me add to your list.
40:48
I can do that.
40:50
I don't want to influence you to add it to your list.
40:53
So focus on what your number one is.
40:55
If you wrote down that you need systems and processes, we've got it for you,
40:59
Yeah.
40:59
Look at what your goals were at the beginning of the year.
41:02
Assess where you are now, make the course corrections that you need to
41:06
and use these as your criteria.
41:07
In summary.
41:10
So first you're recognizing what your goals are and where you're at.
41:14
Then what do I need to say no to?
41:16
So make a list of the things that are getting you off course
41:19
or taking your your focus off of what needs to be done
41:23
and what do I need to focus on right now?
41:26
So there's the three things that are your assignment this week.
41:30
Yeah.
41:31
And it's a good week to do it because when this airs,
41:34
it'll be the week of the 4th of July, which typically slows down a little bit.
41:38
So you should have some extra time to do this.
41:40
Yeah, for sure.
41:43
Awesome.
41:44
Well, Todd, thank you for basically baring your soul to us.
41:49
I think I think a lot of people are going to really identify
41:52
with what you've described.
41:53
They're feeling the pressure themselves.
41:55
But I think this is a breath of fresh air.
41:59
You know, the
42:01
the name Spiro, if you don't know, do you want to explain that real quick?
42:04
What does Spiro even mean?
42:06
Yeah, Spiro is a Latin word, and it means to breathe.
42:11
So when we are looking for names that call the software,
42:14
that one stuck out to us because it allows you to.
42:18
To breathe.
42:19
Because you know that this system's working for you.
42:22
It allows you flexibility in time.
42:25
And it it just expands what you're able to do.
42:28
And it's automated so you don't have to do a lot of it.
42:32
So we just love that word when it came out or when we when we found it
42:36
and we looked at literally a it's
42:37
so hard to name anything nowadays because every domain name is taken.
42:41
And when we saw that one, it just really stuck out to us.
42:43
We're like, That is it?
42:44
That's what it's done for us
42:46
and that's what it's done for our current users and can do for you.
42:50
That's why at the end of every episode,
42:52
I always like to remind you, take a breath.
42:55
Spiro and take some time to be thankful for the blessings in your life.
43:00
That's how we're going to end it this week.
43:02
We'd love to hear your comments, maybe experiences
43:05
things that you've learned over the years in managing stress, anxiety.
43:10
We'd love to hear from you.
43:11
You can leave a comment either in the YouTube channel or drop us an email.
43:17
Just write us at hello@spiro.media.
43:20
If you've got some topic ideas, you know things related
43:23
to running a business that you're kind of wondering about, let us know.
43:27
We'll we'll try and cover that here in the podcast.
43:31
And if we don't know the answer, we'll find somebody that does and bring them on
43:35
to share their knowledge and and pass it on
43:37
to to you and learn from them ourselves as well.
43:40
So, guys, thank you so much.
43:43
We just love this time with you.
43:45
We appreciate the fact that you've decided to to watch or listen.
43:49
If you find some value in this episode or in the podcast as a whole, we'd love
43:52
for you to subscribe.
43:53
That helps you get notifications when a new episode drops,
43:57
which is typically on Tuesdays or Wednesdays of each week
44:01
and feel free to share it with.
44:04
We'd love to just share this with others, so we appreciate you doing that.
44:07
We don't expect it, but we do appreciate it. So.
44:11
All right, you guys have a great week.
44:13
Enjoy your week of 4th of July off If you're here in the States
44:17
and to those of you worldwide, make sure you take a breath.
44:20
Be thankful for your blessings.
44:22
Have a good one.
44:23
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro podcast,
44:26
managing your real estate photography and videography Business.
44:30
This is a production of Spiro and wow video tours.
44:34
You can find out more about Spiro is real estate
44:36
media businessman agent software at our Web site.
44:40
spiro.media.