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Propel Your Business with Consistency · 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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So if you put an ad in a publication like the newspaper or magazine
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or something that's printed or even on Facebook, there's going to be people
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that couldn’t even possibly buy your product because they're not your clients.
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You're just throwing your casting a wide net net out there.
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So the beautiful thing is if you walk into a real estate agency
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besides the front desk admin,
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besides a couple of other people that maybe work at marketing,
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you are going to come in contact with all of your clients.
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They could all buy something from you.
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So that is one of the nice things about our business is
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we know exactly where to go, get people, to put them into our funnel.
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Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
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Managing your real estate photography and videography business
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with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
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and Craig Magrum
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Hi, and welcome to the Spiro podcast,
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Managing your real estate photography and videography Business.
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Spiro is a software platform.
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It's designed to help you manage your day to day
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real estate, media business and really help you grow it and scale it as well.
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And we are back with another episode, the 101st episode of the Spiro podcast.
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We had a great, great episode last week with Shannon Landers
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as we kind of reminisced a little bit and talked about the values and standards
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of building a business and growth and things like that.
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And again, we just can't say
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thank you enough to all of you watching and listening and entrusting us
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to speak into your life and into your business as well.
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So let me introduce our Spiro founder
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and owner and co-host of the podcast Todd Kivimaki
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Welcome back to another week, Todd.
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Thank you, Craig.
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It's great to be here. And we are early October.
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Things are beginning
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to shift a bit and change, at least in our real estate media company.
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And this is an exciting time.
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We've got a great topic today and wow, a 100 episodes.
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This is the 101st.
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I can't believe it, Craig.
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Yeah, I know it.
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The time has flown by.
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So again, yeah, just thank you to all of you watching and
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and being a part of this community. So.
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All right, well, this week, Todd, we are going to be talking about
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consistency and how critically important
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that is to the success of your business.
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And we're going to get into some kind of examples and and what to do
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when things seem not consistent when your schedule changes,
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strategies and
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ways of of staying consistent to grow
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But before we get to that,
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let's talk about real quick.
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It's conference season.
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So what conferences do we have coming up and are we going to be a part of?
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Yes, Craig. So we have two coming up
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and they are both in Las Vegas and they are both the same week.
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So a fabulous opportunity
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to expand your thinking, expand some ideas,
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look at strategy, and also connect with the community, your community.
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So we're going to be at both of these.
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The first in the timeline is PMRE.
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I'm looking over my giant calendar here.
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That is the 13th, 14th and 15th.
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So PMRE and we are going to be there.
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Shannon Landers, our VP of product, and Nick Kellis, who you all speak
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to when you sign up a good buddy of mine, we're going to be there
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and happy to see you come find us.
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We have a booth there and all that fun stuff.
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And then right after PMRE on the 15th
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and the 16th is the REPP conference and that's Eli Jones and his team
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love this conference was a part of it for the first time last year
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and that is
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they've just released their full lineup and their timeline.
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So you can find out more.
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We'll put the links below. But those are great times.
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Book a ticket coming out and see us and my team with Wow will be there as well.
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So Steve Musser,
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our director, are our director of sales and marketing excuse me here.
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And then Jess Paxson, our Head of Operations at Wow.
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So those two run the company for me.
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We have a large company, 12, 13,000 shoots a year and they'll be there as well.
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So come say hello to all of us.
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We'd love to meet you and we're excited for this time here.
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The it's actually the third week in
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and November, but the 13th through the 16th.
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Come see us in Vegas?
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Yep.
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If you want more information, more details on those conferences
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in the show notes so that you can check that out.
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It's a great time, even if you're not really like a big city,
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you know, Vegas type of personality, which I've been totally I am not.
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It's kind of nice to change your surroundings and connect
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with new people and it just kind of gives you a breath
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of fresh air and new inspiration, new ideas.
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So yeah, definitely check it out.
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We'd love for for you to stop by and say hi as well.
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I won't be there, but I'll be holding down the fort here in the studio area
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for us, and I'm okay with that. So.
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All right, Todd, Spiro updates.
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Our heads are just down, down, working hard on all
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the updates that we've been talking about.
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So really not not much of an update there.
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However, you did just do a like an educational
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online streaming video on tasks and workflows.
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You want to talk about that real quick and how people can find out more about this.
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So task and workflows are one of the
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probably the most powerful portion of the system.
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This is the part after the shoot,
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this is where we're really not making money anymore.
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This is the part that I always saw
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as let me automate and streamline as much as possible.
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This is creating Dropbox folders, getting those to your editors,
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making sure the editors know what they should do, getting it back to you.
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Quality control and all of that.
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Making sure that all of those items on your to do list are done.
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We've built it out.
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It's going to manage all of it for you,
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going to give you a beautiful dashboard to see what's going on.
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It's difficult to set up.
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I'll just admit it.
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There are a lot of options because there needs to be, unfortunately.
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But fortunately and and we just did a webinar on it on how to set it up.
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So you can you can find that online.
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You can also search our knowledge base.
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So that is a good thing.
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If you're like, I'm ready,
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I'm ready to streamline that,
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now's a good time in the year for me to work on systems,
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and that is a portion that I waste so much time creating those folders.
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I do it differently every time.
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I'm not consistent with what it is.
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My editors are confused and I just I don't like the QC in the morning,
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all that stuff.
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So if you want to find out
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more in the pink chat bubble and Spiro, just send us a quick message.
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We'll send you a link to the webinar.
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You can also find it on our Spiro Super User Facebook group.
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While I'm speaking about the group, the first and the third
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Thursday, I do a tech talk with y'all and you can come on in.
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We talk tech about Spiro or anything else in the real estate media
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kind of industry, so come and join me.
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That's in the users group.
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Spiro Super User Group.
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And that's the first and the third Thursday at 4:30 Eastern time.
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Eastern. Yep.
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Good deal.
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Good deal is you were talking about automation, Todd.
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Just something kind of popped into my mind
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that related to a conversation
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we had this week between myself and our customer care team.
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Automation provides efficiency.
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Efficiency equals
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how do I want to put it making more money because you have more time
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to spend on income generating activities.
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You know, revenue generating activities.
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The more efficient you can get in your day, the better.
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Because I hate boiling it down to this, but time is money, right?
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Your time is valuable.
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And what you do with that time.
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And just as an example, I got a message from our C3 team yesterday.
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A client that wanted a same day
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rush, which we don't really do a whole lot of,
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and wanted it for the price
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of a next day rush because we charge more for the same day rush.
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and this person is a VIP
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that we take very good care of.
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And I you know, they're like, should we should we give it to him for that price?
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And I just I thought about it. I'm like, you know what?
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We take really good care of them already.
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And when we get the same day rush, that stops
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like stops our activities for our our C3 team, our editing team.
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And the photographer has to stop what they're doing
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to upload that shoot right away.
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That time is valuable.
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And I said, You know what?
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We already take really good care of them and they need to understand that
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when they do something, request a same day rush
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Our time is valuable.
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It's worth something.
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So, no, we're not we're not going to give them a break on this.
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They need to pay the full, full price for that.
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If you don't value your time and you don't value yourself
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in your business, no one else is going to either.
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Yes, for sure.
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Value your time.
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Look at how can you make your processes and your your day more efficient
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because ultimately we want you to succeed.
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This this is all important.
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So you got to look at every part of your day.
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Yeah.
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And remember, Craig, what are all of our clients?
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Realtors are what they're salespeople, right?
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So they are programed to ask.
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That was one adjustment that I had to make when we built a sales team at Wow.
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Is I had to understand that our sales team
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was always going to ask me for something.
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That's why I hired them to come on to the company.
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I want them to ask our clients for the business.
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Right?
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If you don't ask for the business, how are you going to get it
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You'll get some of it because people like you
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and they just naturally will connect in my order.
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But you need to ask people for their business
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and that is what a salesperson does.
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And there are a lot of times that I would get these requests.
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I'm like, why's he asked one of our salespeople?
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Why is he asking?
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Like, I was almost offended and
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and our head of sales, it was like, No, they're salespeople.
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They're going to ask you, just tell him no.
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And I did. And it was that easy.
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It was just like, Oh, yeah, okay, no problem.
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And then salespeople will go and they'll pivot
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and they will find a way when you tell them no.
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So don't.
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If you're a high C personality, I'm a I'm a I and a C
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and C means that you want everybody to be okay.
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Well, it's not if you tell people no as a C personality,
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your mind's going to tell you that that person's not okay.
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It's important to understand
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the personality type of the other individual, D personality.
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They're going to be fine.
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They ask for everything.
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D Dominant personality. They're fine.
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They expect to have 15 no's before they get a yes.
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It's just a numbers game to them.
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It's black and white, to a D personality.
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So now Craig did bring up a good point about giving,
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So now Craig did bring up a good point about giving,
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and we're taking a little bit of a tangent here,
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but I think this is so worth talking about this because you all
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I see these questions online and you all are processing these every day.
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You know, what should I do in these situations?
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Now, we had a VIP come in and a VIP that's a top 5% of our clients.
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So these are people that are doing a lot of business with us and many of them
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historically for many years have done that business with us.
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So we have a VIP program.
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It's a fabulous thing where they are recognized.
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They get certain things from our company because they're VIPs.
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We celebrate them, we give them a plaque, we give them social media graphics,
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we do things for them, special promotions.
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If you don't have a VIP program, go back and listen to the podcast we did.
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You need to have a VIP program.
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Craig is
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distinguished that this individual was a VIP and there was some
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some factors in your mind, Craig, that you weighed,
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because I think many of us, especially a C personality
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and you are a C personality too, Craig. Where you want everybody to be,
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okay, you're a higher C than I am.
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Yeah, you're a much better person.
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- And I and - I wouldn't say that,
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but I do kind of top out the S in the C and in the disc profile.
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Yeah, Yeah.
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So you have the personality that, Hey, I just want this VIP to be okay.
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And this is a VIP in your area and you made what I would say was
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probably the opposite decision of what I would have guessed you would have done.
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I'm not saying this incorrect.
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In fact, I think you are correct.
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But just as a generalization, if you ask a C or S personality, for some,
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they're going to be okay. Yes, you can have it. Yeah.
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And you did the opposite. Can you explain that a little bit?
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Because I
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think we have a lot of C personalities and people that want to please others.
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Yeah.
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And you hit the nail on the head.
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I don't like confrontation.
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So in my personality is such
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that I really like to serve people and yeah, I don't know how else to put it.
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I like to serve people. I like people to be okay.
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I don't like confrontation and I'm just I'm here to serve right.
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But I think is I've grown just in life, in maturity, in business,
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and seeing how
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good of care that we provide for our clients.
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And I truly believe we do.
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When I I've started to notice that there are other personalities,
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like you said, like D personalities that will ask for everything.
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And yeah,
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I have to look for the good at the business, right?
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We still we're a business.
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We still need to make money.
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And part of my job as a business development
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specialist is I need to make money for this company and I'm happy to do so.
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So in the role that I have in doing that,
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I've got I've got to fight my tendency to say yes to everything and say,
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you know what,
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we really appreciate working with you, but unfortunately we're just not going to
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be able to do that.
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I might provide an explanation.
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I might not.
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And in this case, actually, we didn't to the client, we just say,
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Yeah, I'm sorry, this is our rate for this.
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My job is to look out for the company.
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And I know that we already take really, really good care of them
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and I need to
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help them understand that
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they need to value us as well.
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And so I think I've just I've grown a little bit in being able
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to say no at certain times.
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I don't know if that explains that or
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I think that's so great.
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You said something so interesting, Craig, that
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the client needs to value us as well.
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Yeah,
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it's just certain personalities.
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We'll just ask and ask and ask and push.
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And I hate to put it this way, but beat you down on price
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to the point
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where it's like, do you even really value what we're doing for you?
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Because we do a really good job for you and I think I've gotten to the point
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where it's like, No, I'm I'm going to fight for us and help you understand that
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it's we're part of your team and we're providing a great service.
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And we were in this to make some money, too.
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Yeah, I want my client to win, but we need to win as well.
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This needs to be a win win situation.
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So at some point you got to stand up for yourself
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in your business, in the service that you're providing and value yourself.
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I value this company.
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I think we do a fantastic job. Is there room to grow?
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There's always room to grow.
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Yeah, that's. Craig, that Segways into.
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I mean this really is the topic of the day about consistency.
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It's important that you're consistent with those decisions
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and that you are consistently understanding and trumpeting.
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If you, if you have to, if it's your personality that you need
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to make sure that you affirm with yourself that you bring good value.
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You know, those words of affirmation are different for everyone.
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And if you typically beat yourself up a lot, you need to affirm that yourself,
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that we bring a lot of value.
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we help a lot of people.
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We go above beyond our clients love us.
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And because what's going to happen is you're going to get that one client
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that sends you into that downward spiral.
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I've been there and you go, and then your brain, what it does
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is it jumps off the ledge and it tells you
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that one client out of 6000 or 600
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or however many you have, even 1 out of 100 clients is 1%
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that your business is terrible.
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And so just that consistent thinking and and even I love what Craig did there.
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He's just using the correct verbiage to keep that thinking high.
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You know, we bring good value telling yourself, and that's true.
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That's not lying to yourselves.
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That's not
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it's not it's just simply
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a mechanism of Craig understanding his personality and saying, you know what?
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No, this is not right.
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We bring a lot of value and we're consistent and you know,
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one thing I thought of, Craig was I went right back to the pumpkin plan.
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Oh, yeah, it's been a while since we talked about that.
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Yeah.
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So the Pumpkin Plan is a book by Mike Michalowicz.
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and he talks about how do you grow the world's largest pumpkin?
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And you do that basically by cutting the pumpkins off the vine
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that are withered, that are disease,
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that are not going to be the world's biggest pumpkin,
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which means you're going to cut some pumpkins off the vine that
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are okay looking pumpkins.
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They might actually you might carve and put them on your front porch.
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But if you want to grow the world's largest,
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that pumpkin, every pumpkin
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that's not going that does not have the potential to be the world's
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largest is sucking nutrients from what could be the world's largest.
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Yeah.
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I'll give you a quick example of and I do this because I just want to show you
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it aligns with consistency within our real estate
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media company and this again.
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So we talked about Craig
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as I, I would have guessed Craig would have made the opposite decision.
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And again, I think he made the correct decision.
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But here's another example where
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even I went, Oh, holy crap, like that.
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I like that was a crazy decision.
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So we were we work with a company and they were in
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two very large cities in Ohio.
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And in those markets they were either the
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market place leader.
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So by market share, the largest real estate company in the city,
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or they were just neck and neck with the other largest company.
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So huge volumes.
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And we were in a program with them where we did
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their kind of sponsored photography
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and this program became very difficult for us.
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We went above and beyond.
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We did everything they asked.
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We gave them a fabulous deal.
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We got we got support from them at the beginning.
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And then the support dwindled a little bit. Yeah.
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And then there was a couple
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other things that came in, and then they changed the system
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and they asked us to do 12 things that they never asked us to do before.
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And it became very difficult and they weren’t open to the idea
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that we had a better way or a more streamlined way
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with systems and processes, but they just had to have it their way.
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And we felt as though this company
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just overstepped and did not appreciate us anymore and
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that we were basically just getting used and we were going above and beyond.
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And we
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made the decision to end the contract and the relationship with this company.
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that's hard.
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We were doing 1100
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shoots a year for them
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Yes. Yeah, do the math.
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Okay, Real quick, 1100
20:48
our ASP is around 250 AOV is around 250.
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Guy just a quick math.
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A thousand times 250 is a quarter of $1,000,000.
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Okay.
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Yeah, I heard from my team.
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I heard how much time we were spending, how frustrated they were,
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how the process is just a long wait.
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I looked at the numbers
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and they actually were under 250 because they were getting a fabulous deal.
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But nonetheless, we gave up hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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And this is a relationship that I, I targeted.
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I courted this individual long for four years,
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four years.
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I emailed her, called her,
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stopped in till finally she's like, Hey, yo, why don't you come on in?
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I'm four freakin years.
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And I was so happy when I got this account.
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Sure.
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And I
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listen to the team
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and this wasn't just a me decision.
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Like, I pulled the entire team in
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and I took the information and we walked away from this relationship.
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Man that's hard.
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It was hard.
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But you know what it did for us?
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It allowed us to grow.
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It allowed us to grow.
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And I'm just pulling up some numbers here.
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I did some digging for some numbers with Wow.
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So looking at my numbers
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that year, we, the revenue we did,
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we the next year we grew 35%. Wow.
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Wow.
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with ending that relationship.
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Correct.
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Taking all of that take, taking that revenue out.
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So we took out all of that revenue grew 35% the next year.
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But then look at this, the next three years after that, we grew 60%,
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67% and 58%.
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Wow.
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So that is and it was a lot of work.
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But what that did is that opened up the capacity for us to cut a dying
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pumpkin off the vine and go find clients that appreciated what we did.
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There are plenty of them out there.
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And I want to remind you,
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if you're the photographer out there saying, but I live in a small city.
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I live in a small city, Lima, Ohio.
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Lima, like the bean. Okay.
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Craig lives in a small city, smaller markets.
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He's attached to a little bit of a bigger but not a huge market.
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so there's a limited.
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Craig, pull out a number.
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So how many new listings did you see?
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Let's let's take BG for example.
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There was times last year that BG would get 12 new listings a month.
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- Oh, if that, - if that
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No, seriously, I was talking, I was talking with one of the one of the
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main two brokers here in Bowling Green, Ohio, where I live.
23:39
And I think there was one point that in Bowling Green
23:42
we had, I believe it was like six active listings
23:46
in the entire city in in surrounding Bowling Green area.
23:50
Yeah. That yeah. It's, it was small.
23:53
Yeah. That's a small. So
23:56
and I give you that example because it's just
23:58
as filling somewhat
24:01
as see myself do this
24:03
someone's got to hold you accountable just to say, hey, that's a lie.
24:06
Like, that's just a thought air.
24:07
You know, that's your city's not too small or you're
24:10
you're not too specific or this thing is not the factor.
24:14
There's always going to be gaps and things that you have to get around.
24:17
That's just business.
24:19
So don't allow yourself to tell yourself a lie.
24:22
You just have to push yourself beyond that, right?
24:24
Yeah.
24:25
Yeah, that's that.
24:26
Yeah.
24:27
Had to cut that kind of business that
24:30
that's really challenging. After you've poured
24:32
four years of your life into trying to earn that business.
24:35
But let me bring in one other point
24:38
of the positive of ending that relationship.
24:40
Todd.
24:41
You said that the staff had brought to you a lot of concern
24:44
over this program that we were trying to be a part of and go above and beyond.
24:48
And they were the staff was frustrated.
24:50
The team was frustrated when when your team
24:53
gets frustrated, morale drops.
24:56
Now, I understand work is not always fun.
24:58
It's work, right? It's labor.
25:00
But you can find joy in your work.
25:03
And when you have that mean you've got everything.
25:05
So if work is suddenly not a joy and you're just you're dreading
25:10
having to deal with this client or whoever and your morale drops,
25:14
that could be a death spiral of a spiral for a company.
25:17
So what let me ask you, Todd, what happened on in terms of the staff of
25:23
of Wow video tours when that relationship ended?
25:26
I'm so glad you asked this question.
25:28
We didn't talk about this off air.
25:30
And Craig, you are in the building.
25:32
You know, of course,
25:33
you know, we're related through marriage, so we knew each other around this time.
25:36
I don't think we ever talked about it.
25:38
It's so interesting when I announce that morning meeting out at the table,
25:41
I'm pointing at the table here because I'm sitting in the office today.
25:44
The staff cheered.
25:46
They seriously.
25:48
They yes, they clap, they cheered, they high fived each other.
25:53
They were excited.
25:54
The blood came back to their face.
25:57
They like it was this weight, lifted off their shoulders.
26:03
And and I'll tell you that I was this was a roller coaster moment for me.
26:07
So I am I can ride roller coasters, but I'm not like, let me go ride this thing.
26:12
We don't go to a lot of amusement parks.
26:14
When I do, I ride them with my boys
26:19
And I'm always like, okay, I'm going to ride it because they want to ride.
26:23
I have a 12 year old and a nine year old, and so I'm not going to be the dad
26:26
that's like, I can't send them on the roller coaster by themselves,
26:29
so someone's got to go with them.
26:31
My wife, because she's she sometimes goes, but it's usually me.
26:34
And on a roller coaster for those you that don't love them
26:38
when you're when you are standing in line like, okay, this is great.
26:42
And you're kind of a little freaked out because you hear the noise
26:45
and people screaming
26:47
and then you get up in there and then, you know,
26:49
there's you're in the fun of a theme park
26:51
and you're getting on to the ride and you strap in.
26:56
And if you're 6’7”, you're always like, Oh, this,
26:58
you know, you're not going to find in this roller coaster, but it's good.
27:02
The boys are happy.
27:03
You're looking over at your kids, everything's good.
27:05
And then you get out there and you start, you know, you start to go a little bit
27:09
and the breeze hits you.
27:10
It feels good.
27:11
Music's playing, whatever the theme is.
27:13
But then you start to climb that frickin hill.
27:19
Okay?
27:20
Yes. Because you're saying at least I'm saying explicit, as in my head.
27:24
And I don't swear like it's like, Oh, holy crap.
27:27
What did I just do?
27:30
You know, you're back in your seat and you're climbing that thing and you're
27:33
looking straight up and you're like, What did I just do?
27:39
What?
27:40
And there's no turning back, right?
27:43
How many of you all have gotten off
27:44
a roller coaster as it's climbing up the first you know, the first hill?
27:48
Nobody there.
27:49
There is no stopping it.
27:50
Even if you wanted to stop it.
27:53
I'm envisioning when I quit my day job and started my business full time.
27:57
Yes, that's yes, yes, that's that feeling.
28:00
It is.
28:02
But then what happens? You get up to the top
28:06
and you
28:06
still are anxious and you can feel it.
28:09
And then you start to go
28:12
and you're still like, Oh, holy crap,
28:14
I have not felt this feeling in a while.
28:19
But then, at least for me,
28:22
and if you're the one puking, then this is not a great example for you,
28:25
but for me, because that defeats the whole purpose of this story,
28:30
Because if you actually get to a better point, yeah, I start to enjoy it.
28:36
I realize that I'm going to be okay.
28:38
I look over, my boys are smiling
28:41
and they're okay, and then I enjoy it.
28:44
And that's exactly those decisions are difficult to make.
28:48
That's what happened in my story.
28:50
And I'll tell you, just to be transparent, they'll be times
28:53
that you're actually puking as you come down.
28:56
- Sorry for the sorry for that. - I was going to say.
28:58
I was going to say. Let let me jump in here.
29:01
Yeah.
29:01
The climb of the hill is that panic
29:03
and then the drop is the exhilaration and the, you know, type of thing.
29:07
And I'm good for a while, so, you know.
29:09
Yeah, you got you're scared to death, you got your fun,
29:12
and then I'm good on roller coasters until you hit a barrel roll.
29:17
Then I start to get that freak out moment again.
29:20
You're going to have those ebbs and flows in your business
29:23
where there's highs, there's lows, there's freak out moments, there's highs again.
29:28
It's going to come.
29:30
So that's perfect.
29:31
So let's, so let's jump right in to that to our main topic for today,
29:35
which is all connected to what we've talked about,
29:38
but that's consistency so the highs and the lows so I would say
29:42
probably a low for us is
29:45
when we don't have shoots on the day, right.
29:48
I mean that's that's how a lot of us judge our business as to what's on the day
29:53
because that's money coming in or potential coming in.
29:57
I still
29:58
at Wow our media company
30:02
I don't do a lot every day I check our metrics in Spiro
30:06
and I check the on site
30:07
tracker in Spiro the on site trackers like the air traffic control today.
30:11
And I look at the number of shoots you can quickly understand
30:15
the health of your business or it's a metric to give you an idea.
30:19
But we all want more shoots on the day right
30:23
now, maybe, maybe not in April
30:26
or May or June when it's crazy.
30:29
But my point is, is there is going to be a day
30:31
where you're going to have less shoots on the day that you want.
30:35
Craig, you had this this week, right?
30:37
Yeah.
30:37
So normally Mondays and Tuesdays are extremely busy days for me.
30:41
Or if it's the slow season, there's still the days that I have the most shoots on.
30:46
So I was watching my my calendar over the weekend
30:50
and I'm seeing one shoot on Monday, you know, Saturday morning.
30:54
I'm like, okay, there's still weekend.
30:56
You know, realtors are going to be out there.
30:57
They're there listing presentations.
31:00
Something more will come.
31:03
And, you know, by end of day Saturday and or on Sunday.
31:05
So I get to Sunday, check my schedule Sunday morning.
31:08
Still only one shoot on Monday night.
31:10
Mm hmm.
31:12
This is weird.
31:13
I mean, yes, it's October, but
31:16
it's not usually this slow.
31:18
Get to the end of day. Sunday.
31:20
Still only one shoot on my day.
31:22
And within 24 hours, you really
31:24
our system doesn't allowed scheduling within that 24 hour period?
31:28
I think so I'm like, what is going on?
31:32
Because September was a fantastic month for my market.
31:36
And I'm like, well, what is Monday?
31:39
This is no somebody turn the switch off and like real estate
31:43
stopped in my Oh, yeah.
31:46
So there's that sinking feeling of the freak out moment right.
31:50
And yeah.
31:51
So Monday and Tuesday I think I only had two shoots on Tuesday
31:55
and I'm like it's too early in the season for it to be hitting this hard this fast.
32:02
So yeah,
32:02
I there was a little bit of a freak out moment there.
32:05
Now Wednesday and Thursday I was super busy again.
32:10
So the question is,
32:11
what's the question, Todd?
32:13
And the question, so what do you do?
32:17
How can we be consistent?
32:19
How can we see Monday and Tuesday as an opportunity?
32:24
Okay.
32:25
And how can we build on that opportunity, take advantage of that opportunity?
32:29
Sure.
32:29
Well, we've we've kind of touched on this before.
32:32
I mean, there's the temptation of, okay, I don't have a lot to do.
32:35
I've been working hard.
32:37
I'm going to take a little bit of a break, you know, maybe go run some errands,
32:40
just whatever.
32:43
So but you can do that.
32:45
And once in a while that might be okay if you've just been really stressed.
32:49
But the consistency argument is, okay, I go back to prospecting new business
32:56
and or checking in on clients, providing that care,
33:00
staying, you know, front of mind to your clients
33:04
in case they do get a listing
33:06
that they're going to call you or you know, or schedule online.
33:10
So I, I have that dual role of
33:12
of both photographer and business development specialist.
33:15
So if I only have one shoot that day, I'm going to be spending the rest of my day
33:20
concentrating on the business development side of things.
33:22
You know, we talked about our VIP program.
33:25
Part of my day, I took all of the VIP certificates
33:28
that we're going to be giving our our VIPs and our various markets.
33:31
Got them in the frames, got that all prepped.
33:34
And you just you find things to continue to invest in your business, to grow it.
33:40
Because if I'm not spending the time prospecting new business and or
33:44
checking in on on current clients,
33:48
that's going to be I get a death spiral
33:50
where things just keep dropping off, keep dropping off, keep dropping off.
33:54
I have to stay consistent in
33:58
finding new business and taking care of the business I have.
34:01
Yeah.
34:01
The thing that our brains want to do is on that Monday,
34:08
we have. so it’s on a day where there's less day.
34:11
So on Craig’s example, the Monday comes and he's checking it throughout the week
34:15
and realize that the day's just not going to take off.
34:17
We're not going to get the day off the ground.
34:19
It's just going to do.
34:21
What we want to do is what our brains do
34:23
is exactly what Craig said is we go, Oh, no, okay, there's a problem.
34:26
There's a problem, and then there's a point our brains
34:29
that we might go, Oh, last month was actually really good.
34:31
So I just really owe it to myself that I'm going to enjoy this day.
34:36
And there's nothing wrong with that.
34:40
And enjoying a day off, like in a vacuum.
34:43
Like one day off. Yeah.
34:46
However, if
34:48
you make that into a habit
34:51
and you're always justifying the lack of you
34:56
filling the funnel,
34:58
continuing to do business development,
35:01
you will see the impact of that
35:05
in a negative fashion in your business, in
35:09
three weeks, three months, six months,
35:12
you will see it down the road,
35:14
Yeah.
35:15
You use the word funnel.
35:17
I think we should explore that more
35:19
It's a numbers game right.
35:21
Yeah.
35:22
I mean any, any sales type of role or consulting role
35:25
or whatever.
35:28
I've, I've heard this idea this concept
35:31
in every type of role that's sales related that I've been in.
35:36
If you're not putting in the work to get a large number of prospects
35:40
or make a large number of phone calls or office visits or whatever,
35:44
you're not going to have at the bottom of the funnel, the output, it's
35:48
say say you want to make five sales in a week
35:51
or get five new five new clients or even a month.
35:56
You have to extrapolate those numbers up of, well, how many touch points
36:00
or contacts do I need to make to get five at the end of that?
36:04
And it's usually a exponential number of, you know, contacts that you have to make.
36:10
You know, so for every 25 contacts that I make,
36:13
I've discovered I get five sales out of it.
36:16
So you got to you got to learn your numbers.
36:18
How many contacts does it make
36:20
to get a certain number of clients in a certain amount of time?
36:24
Does that make sense?
36:25
Yeah, that's, that's perfectly explained as to where you are going to have
36:31
a lot more people that you have to talk to to get people to actually say yes.
36:35
if you're not consistent with filling the funnel.
36:37
So that's client acquisition.
36:39
So that's building relationships.
36:41
We talk about this all the time, you know, calling people,
36:45
stopping by offices, all you know, board events, whatever it may be,
36:50
then you're going to have a gap in the funnel and there'll be times
36:54
as to where there's no one that's calling or no business coming in.
36:59
You know, you know, one thing one one quick thing that we have
37:02
that's beautiful, as us is real estate photographers.
37:05
We know who our target demographic is.
37:10
So that's one of the nice things that we have.
37:13
We know exactly who we serve, who can buy from us.
37:18
Okay.
37:19
The bulk of it is realtors.
37:22
Okay?
37:22
All realtors have to be licensed with a board and they have to
37:27
and a broker or company has to hold
37:29
that license and all those companies
37:33
or brokerages have a list of the agents on their website.
37:38
And inside that demographic of agents.
37:41
You have, of course, like all industries, you have a wide variance of production.
37:46
So you have some brand new people
37:50
who haven't done anything yet, and you have people that have built
37:53
fabulous businesses and do hundreds of listings a year.
37:58
Well, listings are you're potential
38:01
you can work for them when they get a listing.
38:04
What happens when an agent gets a listing?
38:07
It's all advertised online.
38:10
Okay, So the point I'm trying to make is all the data is out there.
38:14
There are some industries
38:15
that it's very hard to understand where their clients are at.
38:18
They have to try a lot of different things with ads or
38:22
many different other marketing techniques to try to find their clients.
38:26
You can market directly to your clients
38:30
and you can in doing that,
38:34
you're not wasting any time marketing the people who are not your client.
38:37
Right?
38:39
So that's the beautiful thing.
38:40
If you, you know, like if you sell a product
38:46
and you put an ad in the newspaper,
38:50
if that even exists in 2024, Craig.
38:54
- you just dated yourself really bad, - why do I do that?
38:58
that was that was not smart to do
39:01
I was picturing Todd sitting at the breakfast table with this cup of coffee in the paper
39:06
open in front of them.
39:07
kick back, I got the paper in front of me.
39:11
Kids, don't interrupt Dad while he's reading the newspaper.
39:13
Oh, goodness.
39:15
Somebody put.
39:16
Somebody put me full white hair, hair, Photoshop me.
39:19
- You know, father time here because I did myself - Pipe coming out of Todd's mouth,
39:26
the half glass
39:28
half halfway down his nose here.
39:32
I wish those of you listening to the podcast could see it right now.
39:35
Check it out on YouTube.
39:39
Oh, okay.
39:41
Sorry.
39:42
We we needed a brief moment of levity there.
39:44
We did
39:46
what was okay.
39:47
So if you put an ad in a publication like the newspaper or magazine
39:52
or something that's printed or even on Facebook, there's going to be people
39:56
that could even possibly buy your product because they're not your clients.
40:00
You're just throwing your casting a wide net net out there.
40:04
So the beautiful thing is if you walk into a real estate agency
40:08
besides the front desk admin,
40:12
besides a couple of other people that maybe work at marketing,
40:16
you are going to come in contact with all of your clients.
40:19
They could all buy something from you.
40:21
So that is one of the nice things about our business is
40:24
we know exactly where to go, get people, to put them into our funnel.
40:28
And then like Craig said, it's just it's just a numbers game.
40:31
From there you have to talk to them X amount of times.
40:34
You need that many points of contact before they feel comfortable with you,
40:39
before they get a listing.
40:41
That's the other variable that's difficult in our business
40:44
is somebody might love you.
40:45
Yeah, but they just have one listing a year
40:48
and they'll use you for every listing.
40:51
But that's why the funnel so important.
40:53
It's a numbers game. You put enough in there.
40:55
The 80/20 rule always applies and you'll get enough
40:58
people that come through the funnel in the end that your business will grow.
41:01
Right?
41:01
And don't take the no's personally because of that 80%, you know, the 80/20 rule.
41:08
You're going to get a lot of no's at the top of the funnel
41:11
don't let that get you down.
41:13
And that that's hard for those of us that are, again, C personalities.
41:17
We like everybody, be happy, we like to be happy.
41:20
Nobody likes a no, but you can't take it personally.
41:24
You just you just keep plugging away.
41:26
One thing that I'm trying to start to do a little bit, Todd.
41:30
and it hasn't taken off quite yet, I'll just be honest,
41:34
is I'm trying to get a hold of clients
41:37
that are raving fans of ours and ask them if they'd be open
41:40
to doing like a coffee and informal coffee presentation with.
41:45
- New agents in their in their brokerage - love it.
41:49
Now, again, that strategy you might not want to do if
41:53
if you're just a new business because you want it you want to go after
41:56
some of the bigger fish to get business rolling.
42:00
A new agent isn't going to have a lot of listings,
42:03
but if you're established company, you've been in a market for a while
42:06
and you do have a lot of those bigger producers already tied up
42:10
and or there's bigger producers you don't have
42:12
that are just not going to work with you and at some point you're
42:16
going to run into that.
42:20
Once you're established, trying to pick up those
42:22
younger, newer agents is not I don't think it's a bad strategy.
42:26
And in asking your current clients to
42:29
to kind of host it with you,
42:33
make it worth their while somehow
42:37
I just I like helping the new people
42:39
because it's so hard to begin with for them.
42:43
But for those that persevere in in the real estate business,
42:47
they're going to grow.
42:49
And if you get in, partnered with them early,
42:52
you know, just when they're getting into the market, into the industry,
42:56
and you build that relationship that's going to pay dividends for you down
42:59
the road.
43:00
So I would say if if you're established
43:03
and you're kind of hitting a plateau, spend some time,
43:06
develop developing the relationships with the newer agents.
43:10
Yeah, I love that. And
43:12
do the established agents or the newer agents
43:15
have more time to think and work on their business and talk to you?
43:18
- The newer agents. - The newer. Yeah.
43:20
And we have found that consistently now
43:23
that the two the two demographics here that have time for
43:27
you are the new agents and then the agents in the middle.
43:31
The agents in the middle
43:32
are now a little more established, but they're not the top agents yet.
43:37
And while both the new and the and the middle agents will listen to you,
43:42
we tend to find this is a generalization that
43:46
the middle agents have potentially
43:48
listings or money to spend with you as to where the new agents.
43:52
So I think Craig suggested to do it in groups and do it as a coffee.
43:55
That's fabulous. You
43:56
you probably don't want to spend an hour or two with every new agent, Right.
44:00
That will lay some that's a that is laying a foundation.
44:03
It's just going to take longer to pay off.
44:05
So I love the coffee idea.
44:07
And we all know that when there is someone
44:11
who is where those new agents want to be, that established agent
44:15
and the established agents saying, hey, use your company,
44:19
and this is what they've done for me,
44:20
I've used them this long and look at the media they've done for me.
44:23
That is gold for you.
44:26
So and you have to buy a little bit of coffee
44:28
and give the new agent some or give the established agent something,
44:32
you know, throw in a free drone or whatever.
44:35
Right.
44:35
And you have that advocate for you right there.
44:39
Love that idea, Craig.
44:40
Yeah, like I said, that's something that's just kind of popped into my mind
44:43
in the last month or so.
44:45
And I've asked I think two, and I
44:47
don't have them scheduled yet, just full transparency.
44:51
This hasn't taken off, but I think the theory of this makes sense in my mind.
44:55
And again, you have to ask the agents
44:58
that have a really good relationship with you and will advocate for you.
45:01
I had something similar like that happened.
45:04
I made a presentation, I think it was about two weeks ago
45:08
in a in a brokerage that we are not
45:11
we're not part of their marketing department
45:14
and we're not their preferred vendor,
45:16
but an agent that I've got a really good relationship with that
45:20
that I've shot for for a couple of years now, invited us to their ninja group.
45:25
So I got into a ninja group meeting and there was about
45:29
about a dozen people there.
45:30
And I got the invite into this brokerage office that again,
45:35
we're not the preferred vendor, and they went to bat for us.
45:39
So two or three of them do use us and the rest were not current
45:42
clients of ours and they shared their stories. So
45:47
yeah, just find, find ways
45:50
to get the referral referral business so powerful
45:55
and that that could be a consistent thing that you work on
45:58
is asking for those referrals
46:01
in Spiro,
46:01
we have a referral program for your agents and that is in their portal.
46:05
It's very easy for them.
46:07
We make it easy for them to open up a text message on their phone
46:11
and send that send a link.
46:13
So we have the mechanisms in there that you can use,
46:16
that you can give to your good agents.
46:19
They're incentivized by it.
46:21
Who doesn't like to earn a little bit by giving a good recommendation
46:25
and you're not asking them to do something that's dishonest, like they use you.
46:28
They appreciate you.
46:30
So that referral program is fabulous.
46:32
We use it and referrals work.
46:35
That's the best way.
46:36
I mean, if you get choose
46:38
growing, by one way, I think everybody will pick referrals.
46:41
Oh yeah.
46:42
You know, because that's where your your raving fans sell for you
46:45
Yeah. It's easy. Makes you feel good.
46:47
Yeah. Yeah.
46:48
So the whole point of this episode is, is finding consistency.
46:52
You know, your shoot days are going to vary season to season.
46:55
So what you can do is, you know, create a task list of things that I can do
47:01
when I have a slow shoot day and then go back to that list.
47:04
We understand it might be the day before.
47:07
You don't know for sure what that next day is going to look like.
47:09
But when that day arrives, okay, here's my list of things I can work on
47:13
so that you can stay focused and keep working.
47:18
Not in your
47:18
business, but on your business to help it grow and develop.
47:22
Consistency, consistency, consistency.
47:25
Any final thoughts?
47:26
Todd I think we've hit this pretty good.
47:29
Yeah, I think we have the
47:30
the only word of caution that I give you is on that task list.
47:35
Keep the same task for a consistent amount of time.
47:39
So this is like, you know, this is
47:41
this is like running an infinite loop.
47:44
But don't change your task every time, every week because those are more like
47:49
your switching tactics and you just don't want to keep switching.
47:52
tactics because a good strategy is what's going to pay off in the end.
47:56
So even there's consistency and being consistent,
47:59
which maybe I'll talk myself into a loop, but
48:03
but don't don't try something new every time
48:06
because you watched a YouTube video
48:07
and now you think, I'm going to try this tactic,
48:10
just do the strategy, build relationships, stick with it,
48:13
and then an extended period of time, three months, six months,
48:16
look back and see how you convert it, how many people you talk to
48:20
at the top of the funnel, how many people use you, and then look
48:23
for how you can improve those tactics to create a better strategy.
48:28
All right, Well, Todd, I think that's going to wrap up things for this week.
48:31
We just want to encourage you don't fall into the temptation of regularly taking,
48:36
you know, kicking your feet up when things are slow, Keep working on your business.
48:40
It will pay dividends down the road.
48:43
So, again, guys, thank you.
48:46
Just for for watching for listening.
48:48
If you have a business question, don't forget you can always drop us a line.
48:52
hello@spiro.media.
48:55
We love talking about the business of real estate media.
48:58
So if you just got, Hey, I have an accounting, how do I handle
49:02
accounting or insurance or hiring, you know, how do I hire effectively?
49:07
Let us know those questions.
49:09
If we don't know the answers, we'll find someone that does
49:11
and bring them on the podcast so that we can
49:13
we can help you continue to grow in your business.
49:17
We like to every once in a while to ask you if you'll like this episode.
49:20
Give us a like that.
49:21
us get get this in front of more people and.
49:25
Feel free to subscribe as well.
49:26
That way you get notifications every time a new episode drops. So.
49:30
All right, that's going to take care of it. Guys.
49:31
Thank you so much.
49:32
Make sure you take the time, you know, when it's slow to be thankful
49:36
for your blessings and make sure you do take a breath on a regular basis.
49:41
Have a great week.
49:42
Thank you for joining us for the Spiro podcast,
49:44
managing your real estate photography and videography Business.
49:48
This is a production of Spiro and wow video tours.
49:52
You can find out more about Spiro is real estate, media, business management
49:56
software at our website spiro.media.