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Techniques Don't Build Businesses · 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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Why did I not have my best month ever?
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Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
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Or even if you have had your best month ever, great.
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Exciting.
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How do you make next month your best month ever?
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Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast, managing
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your real estate, photography and videography business.
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Spiro, we said each week of course, if you're a new listener, you don't know
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that we say this every week, but Spiro is a software platform.
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It's designed to help you manage your day to day real estate, media business,
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and ultimately to help it grow in scale as well.
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Welcome back.
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For those of you that have been watching or listening on an ongoing basis,
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for those of you that might be new to the podcast, we welcome you.
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I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
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In this whole, this, this whole podcast idea
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is to help you build a strong,
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real estate media business.
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We've said it in the past,
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but there's lots of incredible resources out there,
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for you on the creative side of what we do as real estate
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photographers and videographers, you know, equipment suggestions,
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you know, style, techniques, things like that.
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But we really want to help you build just, a strong business
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model, a strong business foundation to help you,
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ultimately scale your business up and make this a lifelong, career
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long, endeavor for you that you really enjoy doing.
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So, welcome to the podcast.
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Our owner and founder cohost of the podcast, Todd Kivimaki
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Welcome back, Todd
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Craig, It's a great week here.
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Great to be on with you all.
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You know, I we say we're always excited to say it, but
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you and I had some great conversation before we even started the podcast.
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We're like, hey, let's just do this online.
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So yeah, this is this is a good one to think about this week.
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Again, our goal here is, is to get you to think about turning your,
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your love of what you're doing right now into a business.
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And honestly, if it's real estate, photography
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or anything else, our niche is real estate photography.
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But I'm using a lot of these
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same techniques with other businesses that I've started.
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So business as business, we're trying to give you some of that now.
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We're trying to get you a little bit uncomfortable.
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So excuse us for that to push you further along to get your goals right.
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Exactly. Yeah.
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Like like Todd just said we were having just a really good discussion
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before we started recording. And I thought, you know what?
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I used to work in Radio
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Todd and a long time ago, and when we would have guests on the air,
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sometimes we'd, we'd be tempted to start having just
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a really good off air discussion and then realize, hey,
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now we have to kind of recreate that discussion on the air.
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And so I told Todd, I said, you know what?
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Let's save this for the actual recording.
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But I find it easy to talk about Todd
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because I really enjoy what I do now.
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Having kind of almost stumbled into this, this career in industry,
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it's just easy to talk about, and I can I can look a client in the eye and say,
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I really love what I do. And clients.
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I know this is a little off topic, but clients will respond to that.
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If you truly enjoy your work, they will notice that,
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and they'll want you as a partner
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because they know that you're going to bat for them
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because you really love what you do and you want to do the best job you can.
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So, just I would encourage you to take some time,
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you know, whenever you're watching
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or listening, this, think about why do you love what you do
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and just kind of maybe write some thoughts down about that and just think about it.
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And, you can then share that with your, with your clients,
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new clients, prospects and that kind of energy.
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They will respond to you.
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I wasn't planning on saying that, but I just thought I'd start that off.
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Being grateful for
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things and your day is an amazing thing to start your day with.
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I just started doing that.
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I did my devotion this morning was a think about what I'm grateful for.
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You know, I'm getting these Tony Robbins ads right now.
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He has this 10 to 15 minute routine.
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It's got some breathing in it, and it's got the idea of gratitude in it.
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I, I think whenever I'm feeling really angry or bad
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or something about Todd and I'm focused on myself,
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I've learned that I just have have to focus on what I'm grateful for and.
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And who can I help?
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Why are you focus so much on yourself, Todd, right now?
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Why is it such a big deal to you?
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Go focus on someone else.
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Yeah, yeah, I I've admittedly the past probably six months,
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I've kind of fallen into that trap and realizing that the other day I,
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I jumped in a Facebook group that I haven't posted in a long time and,
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just got my focus off of myself and tried to encourage others in that group.
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So anyway,
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love that good way to start.
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Let's, talk about real quick.
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Todd, what's going on with Spiro? What are the updates?
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Yeah, really quickly here.
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So we are about a month away from our next launch.
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So early September of 2025, we will launch Los
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with Titus property website mobile optimization.
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It's going to feel it's not going to be an app.
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It's going to feel just like an app.
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It's going to be optimized the way you all are using it
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on the road and your, you know, on your phone in the road.
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So that is coming in a few other goodies as well.
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Wanted to quickly switch here and then get to the topic of,
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look at your calendars, invest in your business.
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There's two conferences there. Fabulous.
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The REPP conference has Eli Jones and the team.
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I will be out there.
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I'm having the pleasure of being the host of the conference
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this year, so my team is going to be there.
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Jess and Steve will be there.
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Shannon will be there. So we're going to be there.
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Come and spend some time with us.
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That is early November.
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We'll post the links below then.
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Also, PMRE is two weeks later.
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The Spiro team. We will be there.
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Would love to connect with you on, either of those or both of those.
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And, you know, if you're like, which one do I pick?
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I love them both.
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I'm going to pick one for you just because you've asked me.
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Well, I've you were.
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Nobody really asked me.
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I'm kind of just Bantry with myself, but,
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picked a REPP conference.
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That's that's my favorite. That's where I'm at.
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Just to be transparent, I coach an orbit that's part of REPP.
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PMRE is great as well to different conference.
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Read both websites, see which one you think you enjoy more.
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And you know, worst case, if you can't pick on the both,
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there you go.
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You'll get something different out of both of those.
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In a good way.
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Yep. Excellent.
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Well shall we dive into that.
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Yeah. Let's do this Craig.
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All right.
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So the month of July unexpectedly
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at least a meet out I don't know if it was for you.
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Wow video tours, our real estate media company, we had the
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and this is please understand, guys, this is not to brag.
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Okay.
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There's a purpose in sharing this,
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and it's going to be a great topic that Todd even has me thinking on this.
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But we had the best month historically we've ever had
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in the history of wow video tours.
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It was it was amazing to me.
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Unexpected.
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I took vacation
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during the month of July, expecting it to be down around the 4th of July
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because it always has been right, and it ended up being
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that we were just as busy as, and if not more than we we usually are.
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And, the question is, Todd, is that accidental
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or was there a method to getting to that point.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So to we're going to dive into that.
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Just to give you some figures.
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This is year 22 of Wow. And
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June of 2025 was our best month ever.
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July has a holiday.
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It still had four full weeks afterwards.
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That was a little bit of a of an asterisks there
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that we knew we had a chance.
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July was up 19%
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in revenue over June, like, you know, just incredible.
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Oh, no, I'm sorry, 19% over last June or
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last July, last July.
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Okay.
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So we we bested June,
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but we were up 19% over last July.
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To give you an idea.
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And the cool thing that we're seeing a trend right now
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and it's not I don't think it's by luck because of some of the things
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that we'll get to that I'll talk about some of these methods,
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but we are doing less shoots to make more money,
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which naturally means our AOV
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or our average order value is going up.
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If you don't know what these figures are like, Todd, what are these?
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That's okay. You have to start somewhere.
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I hired Shannon Landers
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as our head of sales many years ago, and she's like, Todd, what's your AOV?
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It's like, I have no clue.
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I thought she was calling me a bad name.
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And we figured it out.
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It was 158 at the time.
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158, which is not that healthy, but that was a long time ago.
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We made it work.
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But understanding what it was was the first step.
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If you use Spiro, there's a beautiful dashboard
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with metrics that show you all these.
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In fact, I'm looking at these right now and I know what these numbers are.
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I've done no calculation.
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And it's up right in front of me. So
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just wanted to set
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that up to tell you about how the numbers look.
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And, July versus a June and a year over year last July.
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So Craig, you asked you know, were those numbers.
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Was that result, was it luck, was it an accident or was an intentional.
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And I'll have to say, to be transparent,
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there's always a little bit of luck involved in everything we do sometimes.
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And it's good and sometimes it's bad.
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Like I said, the Asterix point in this was even though we had the July 4th
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holiday, there was there are still four, almost four, four weeks of business days.
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That's something that we always look at is how many business days are in the month.
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So the month ended on a Thursday, so we almost
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got another 20 business days in the month.
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So we understood that we knew the month could be big.
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And there was a couple of factors in the in that market that came together.
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Days on market are increasing.
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That's good for us.
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Shannon talked about that a couple podcast ago.
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But we are very strategic and we're very consistent.
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And what we do,
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we have a sales team.
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We have Steve A, our head of sales and marketing,
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Chris, our director of sales, and then we have a fabulous sales team
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that focuses on building relationships.
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And we have looked at what we've done, we've perfected
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it, we've broken it, and we've changed it many times over the years.
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But we are intentional about getting those numbers
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and we look to achieve those goals.
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So it's a mentality of a system versus techniques
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like individual techniques, like I'm going to try this method
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and do that until it doesn't work.
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And then I'm going to try this method.
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Is that accurate?
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It is.
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And you know the idea of kind of technique jumping
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is something that I find that I can do at times.
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I mean, Craig, there's so much out there, the good and the bad about the internet
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and the way we communicate in 2025 is you will always find more.
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I think
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maybe I told this story a few a few podcasts ago, but,
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my son and I, my oldest son and I, he we do basketball.
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I love basketball, played basketball.
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So does he.
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And he is committed that he wants to play at a very high level.
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And so some of that comes through a lot of just training.
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And then the basket world has a ton of people that train.
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And so we looked at some of these trainings and I do some with them.
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We have a trainer and then we got some other courses online.
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I think it's kind of a natural thing we all do.
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We all go get some courses or we watch some YouTube videos and
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and then you start to do it and you're like, wow,
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one video had this one thing and that looked really cool.
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I was like, well, maybe we should have done that video.
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And so you go look at it again.
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You're like, oh, well, we already spent the money on the first one,
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but this one looks really great.
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And I had to stop myself in doing that
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because I'm just technique jumping.
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It's like, stick to the first video.
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Like in this particular instance, this person trains NBA players.
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If he can train NBA players and get them from A
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to Z, then he can help my son get better.
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And it's just like, stick to the plan we've already committed.
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Let's move forward and not start over again.
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So you just said something that kind of jumped out at me.
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So when I had my own real estate media business,
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I found a technique that worked for me.
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It was coffee meetings.
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I like the one on one relationship building.
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I'm an introvert, blah blah blah.
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But I did kind of build it into a platform where it was ongoing.
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I was constantly looking for new clients, getting referrals.
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You know, there was a method and a technique.
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But the one thing I didn't think about this was, what is this technique costing me?
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And what you just said was,
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you know, finding a video online and the money that you paid for it.
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So I think what we can kind of drive
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dive down into in technique versus system
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is the, the cost of that technique
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or the cost of acquiring a new client.
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And admittedly, I had more of the mentality
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of a boutique real estate photography company.
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I wasn't thinking scaling, but if you're going to think scaling
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your business,
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you've got to think about the cost of acquiring new clients, correct?
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For sure.
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And this is, and this is a common thing I happened to.
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I listened to Alex Hormozi.
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I think I just connect with the way he teaches.
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I like he's very straightforward.
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This is not an Alex Hormozi thing.
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Like, if you you watch anything.
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Anything, a shark tank. I love Shark Tank. It's talked about there.
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But there's this idea of what is your customer acquisition cost.
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They call it CAC CAC customer acquisition cost.
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And that is what does it cost to get a
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new customer?
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Okay.
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So let's just let's keep this very simple.
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I'll use the same example that Alex Hormozi used
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in his and his podcast.
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He, he basically said he had this gym launch item
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where he had this offer to people and,
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it cost him $5
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to get someone to look at his offer.
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Okay.
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It took five people
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to look at the offer for one of them to say yes.
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Okay, so if one person says yes, he spent $5, had to get five people.
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Five times five is 25.
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His customer acquisition cost was $25.
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To get one person to say yes.
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Now I will say that this is a little that this is a little bit different,
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because I'm not saying
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that you all should just go and pour a ton of money into online marketing.
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We do it.
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We can talk about it.
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It's it's part of the overall method and strategy.
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But we are a relationship business.
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If you've listened to us before, we say it every week, probably
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100 times, about building relationships with your client.
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And the important thing that I want you to understand is tracking your customer.
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Acquisition cost is important, but the first step is committing
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to doing that, committing to spending the time with your clients.
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You know, I think so,
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Craig, let's just go back to your example of of the coffee meetings.
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So the coffee meetings you would get people to show
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sometimes show sometimes not.
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I'm sure that's not the point I want to make.
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But people would say yes eventually.
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And then that would yield more shoots.
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So you would go out and that's the goal.
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So you would go out and do those shoots, and then you got very busy.
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Correct?
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Yeah, yeah, extremely busy to the point
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happened to those coffee meetings when you were extremely busy.
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They dropped off.
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I didn't I didn't have time for them.
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Yeah.
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And rightfully so. Right.
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I mean, you had to service the client.
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But how many more clients said
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yes to you when you weren't doing those coffee meetings?
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Yeah.
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Zero, because, I wasn't I wasn't out there consistently,
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prospecting that new business and developing those new relationships.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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And and I think that's that's a fine line in the sand.
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And there's not I'm not saying one ways. Right.
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Or the other.
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Craig had different goals and what I had.
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But if you're listening to us today and you're saying, hey,
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I want my why was my July not up
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20% from last July?
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Why did I not have my best month ever?
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Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
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Or even if you have had your best month ever, great.
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Exciting.
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How do you make next month your best month ever?
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If you're listening and you have that idea,
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then this consistency becomes very important.
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But I think it's I think it's good
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for us to come back, to take a step back and understand your goals.
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As a rule, when you started your business, Craig.
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So your goals as a photographer, it was it to have 20 photographers or what?
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What was your goal?
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What was in your brain at that time?
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Yeah.
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Boy, there's a whole story behind that and I don't want to drag it out too long,
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but I, I wanted for myself a mix of both creating something with my hands,
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because I really, respect tradespeople,
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electricians, carpenters, you know, pipefitters, whatever.
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I really respect those those people
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because I don't have that talent in most areas.
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But I saw the practicality of the skills that they had
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in providing something of value to others. And I literally prayed
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the start of my real estate
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industry or real estate media business was actually the result of prayer.
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I'm just going to put that out there.
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And it was, God, would you give me the ability
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to create something with my hands that's of value to somebody else
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that I can sell with a clear conscience, knowing that this is an actual need?
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I'm not trying to hock something to somebody
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that might not be needed, and that I can provide for my family with.
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And so my approach to it was,
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I had just come from a management position
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and realized that I don't necessarily,
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always enjoy having to manage people.
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I would rather personally do the work of, of the creation,
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and work shoulder to shoulder with people rather than lead them, as,
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you know, an out front manager leader. What?
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You know what, however you want to state that.
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So my mentality in my business was I want a mix of both
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owning the company, but also doing a majority of the work, the
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the actual creation of the media, because I love media.
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That's that's been my background.
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So I kind of kept myself in terms of growth,
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versus your mentality of growing a business.
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And trying to get as many shoots as possible.
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My goal was different, so I thought about things differently.
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Yeah.
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And in comparison,
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if you haven't heard before, my mentality was completely different.
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Craig is by far a much better human being than me, so.
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Oh come on, the flips.
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On the flip side, my mentality was I wanted to do as many shoots as possible
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because I wanted to make as much money as possible,
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and that I wanted to figure out a way to have to not do anything.
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Okay, I am naturally a lazy person.
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How can I build this to do as much as possible?
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And I don't mind grinding it out. There's a difference.
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I will grind like I'll push.
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I have no problem pushing.
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But then how can I not push anymore?
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And how can I get that thing running so that not only it makes me money,
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but continues to make me more money?
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And that was honestly
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something that I struggle with from a human perspective for a lot of years.
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Like, why am I so driven by money?
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And then I had some close people to me.
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We are in a small group and they said, well, no,
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it's not that you if you covet money, money's a problem.
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But then what are you doing with that money?
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And then I saw how we could and I didn't know this at first.
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I saw how I could use that money in growth to bring people up
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underneath me and get them to reach their goals.
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It's been nothing more fabulous than helping people
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connect dots and finding win wins throughout life.
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Craig, you and I came up with what's a
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what's a great win win, right, with your story.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So yeah, when I first started my business, I was doing everything by myself.
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The shooting, the scheduling, the, the sales, even the editing.
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And I realized very quickly, I can't I can't make a living out of this
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doing two shoots a day,
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because that's all I have time for, because I have to go home.
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And now edit and Todd and I connected and talked about the system.
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Spiro, the software system and outsourcing editing that would allow me to scale.
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Still doing most of the work myself, but scale in terms of the number of shoots and
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I figure I forget exactly what your question was.
21:51
Todd.
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Yeah, just the win win as to where like, oh, yeah.
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Yeah, you help beta test us and give us feedback, right?
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And it allowed me to then build my business to the point
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where I could support my family and enjoy the work that I was doing,
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because I still get to do the creative.
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And now, even in the role that I have at Wow, I'm still kind of
22:08
in that same type of mentality where I still get to go out and shoot
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and and build the business in our in the market that I'm responsible for.
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So I still get to do the same thing and it works out because now I'm teamed up
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with Wow Video Tours.
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That handles a lot of that business and systems type of approach
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that I just wasn't able to do and didn't have as much interest in.
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So yeah, it's been a fantastic, relationship.
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So Todd's mentality of of helping,
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bring
22:40
people up and their dreams and aspirations,
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and then my personal goals of
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being basically a tradesperson creating with my hands,
22:50
but also the challenge of the relationship building,
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which I really enjoy doing as well.
22:54
It's been a perfect match.
22:56
So yeah, two different mentalities, but, synchronous in,
23:01
in helping each other and and like you said, Todd, making a win win.
23:05
Yeah, yeah.
23:07
So Craig, let's take the path of
23:10
wanting to grow in scale of business just for this.
23:13
The rest of this conversation, right, right.
23:15
And again, I'm not saying there's nothing wrong
23:17
if you're a boutique photographer out there.
23:19
I honestly envy you a bit.
23:21
I know I would love to take that boutique feel and take something
23:25
to create a luxury feel around it and sell it for a very high value.
23:29
That's not.
23:30
I just haven't figured that out.
23:31
It's like I want to do 14,000 of them and I want to give,
23:34
and I'm a much lower value.
23:36
Okay. That's the game that I play.
23:38
If you're playing the other game, honestly, kudos to you
23:41
as long as you're reaching your goals and that is what you want to do.
23:45
That's what's important.
23:47
That your business is serving you right.
23:49
But but let's take the other approach of
23:52
we've set this up a bit of understanding like hey let's not technique jump.
23:57
We have to come up with a, with a method.
24:00
And some of that we introduce customer acquisition cost.
24:05
You know I want to go back to Alex
24:07
Hormozi and I'll give you a couple quotes here.
24:11
And I think they were they at least resonated with me.
24:14
He said the best model
24:16
will win, not the best method.
24:20
Methods always expire.
24:22
Models last forever.
24:24
Okay, so I listen.
24:27
I read that a couple.
24:28
Yeah, I read that a couple times.
24:29
I was like, let me think about that.
24:32
Yeah.
24:32
What's what's the difference between a model and a method.
24:35
Good. Couldn't a method to a model.
24:38
Well, a
24:38
model is basically just in my opinion, a collection of methods.
24:42
And there's consistency behind that.
24:45
Okay okay.
24:46
So yeah, an example here, a very simple example
24:50
that we used already is the idea of the coffee shop
24:54
acquisition technique.
24:56
Right.
24:56
That was a bit
25:01
and I I'll say this carefully, I don't mean anything by
25:03
but it was more reactive for you Craig, because it's like when I have time. Yes.
25:09
I'm going to I'm going to do this
25:12
method, this technique of acquiring clients.
25:16
And then it would it would work.
25:19
Clients would come in, you didn't have time to do it.
25:22
And then there became another point in time where it's like, well,
25:26
I need to have more people call my phone at my booking page.
25:31
So it's like, well, let me go back to the thing that I did before
25:35
and let me set these meetings.
25:37
Is that fair? Craig? Totally, totally.
25:41
But it was
25:42
it wasn't a consistent model because it was seasonal.
25:45
When I was busy shooting, I couldn't I couldn't invest the time and money
25:48
into those meetings.
25:50
And so yeah, it kind of ebbs and flows.
25:53
Yeah.
25:54
I loved one thing that you said there Craig, because this is the big difference.
25:57
Invest the money into that.
26:00
I think that's so key.
26:03
So Alex also says
26:08
the the question really is can you afford
26:12
to get more customers than your competition can.
26:19
That's an interesting take.
26:22
I wouldn't yeah.
26:24
Okay.
26:26
So how do you play that out.
26:28
How what set up a budget.
26:31
Yeah. What do. Yeah.
26:32
So it's a great question Craig.
26:35
It's I took a leap of faith many years ago at Wow
26:39
where I went through the progression of doing everything myself,
26:43
hiring some photographers and doing all the admin work myself.
26:47
Became overwhelmed, hired an admin.
26:50
She helped a lot that I grew
26:53
the company and there was bigger things I needed help with.
26:56
I hired a helper.
26:57
We talked about that in a couple, I talked about that on a YouTube live
27:01
with Eli Jones that my first main hire was a helper to take care of that,
27:05
take things off my plate, a lot of billing and some technical things.
27:10
And then I put on the builder hat
27:14
and I built the company.
27:17
We I sold a ton of brokered deals.
27:19
I, I, I stumbled into this stupid knack of being able to sell these brokered deals
27:24
and it exploded.
27:27
The company and I got really busy.
27:30
I ran on that,
27:31
and then the company was big enough that I was pulled 15 other directions.
27:35
I didn't know how to say no to things,
27:38
and but I but I knew I needed help.
27:43
And I
27:44
was willing reluctantly to invest
27:48
some of the little money I had made to that point.
27:53
Still wasn't
27:54
making, you know, we were paying our bills,
27:57
but it still wasn't like this thing's just printing money.
28:02
So I hired on ahead of sales to focus on sales.
28:08
So I think that's the big difference when I've hired on
28:11
Shannon and Shannon's at Spiro now doing the same thing with me.
28:15
With Spiro, we hit this with, we didn't really hit a plat..
28:18
It's neither here nor there, but I wanted to take a higher
28:22
trajectory curve on a hockey stick going up and growth.
28:25
I'd done it before with Shannon.
28:27
Pass is a good prediction.
28:29
The future, like, hey, she helped me blow up. Wow
28:31
Video tours like scale, blow up, knock blow up.
28:35
And I wanted to do the same with the next company.
28:39
So it's just this repeatable process.
28:41
But at the end of the day, I knew it was going to take
28:44
I was going to have to spend money to make money.
28:46
Yes. That's what I, you know,
28:49
a much more simplified example is a I'm
28:53
fiscally conservative other than hobbies where I spend too much money on hobbies.
28:57
Some days
28:59
there's a little, little transparency there.
29:01
Well, I have a confession at the end of the podcast, Craig, for that,
29:04
if you can see the amount of ham radio stuff.
29:06
Anyway,
29:08
no. When I first started by my business, I was looking.
29:11
Okay, I know I need to get a drone at some point because drone
29:14
is becoming a thing, but for me, buying a drone was that was a lot of money.
29:19
And I'm like, I don't know if I can afford to spend that money,
29:23
but I, I bit the bullet, I bought the drone.
29:26
And then I very quickly realized after booking a number of jobs with drone,
29:31
as an add on, that this was paying for itself
29:34
a lot more quickly than I expected.
29:37
And that exact thing that you just said I had to spend money to make money.
29:41
And then after that drone was paid for, after a certain number of shoots,
29:45
that was pure profit, you know.
29:48
So it's the
29:48
same with, with our business system.
29:51
Yeah.
29:51
You're spending money to, to build your, your sales, process.
29:57
But you probably you have to look at the cost.
30:00
Don't you have to look at the cost of, of investing in that system versus then,
30:05
say, the lifetime value of that client
30:07
is that something Alex goes into it is. Yes.
30:10
I'm so happy you said that, because those are the two big things he said.
30:13
That's the lifeblood of a business.
30:15
What does it cost to acquire a customer and what they
30:18
what do they bring in to you? Okay.
30:21
And these are the customer acquisition costs a lifetime value.
30:23
This is something that we measure a while.
30:25
And this is something that we know and we haven't actually done this forever.
30:28
So if you're like Todd I have no clue where to start.
30:30
I'm going to help you out and help you understand where to start.
30:33
And don't feel bad if you're like, not right now, because we we somewhat
30:37
in the recent past have started doing this and measuring this.
30:40
But let's break it down real quick.
30:42
Just so we're on the same page.
30:43
We talked about customer acquisition cost.
30:46
In his example, he says that he had to spend
30:48
$5 to get one person to look at his product.
30:54
It took
30:54
five people to look at the product for one to say yes.
30:58
Okay, so $25 to get one. Yes.
31:01
That one. Yes.
31:02
Then spent $500 with him.
31:06
Okay. And now it wasn't all profit.
31:07
He had a high margin.
31:09
It cost him $100 and he he had a margin,
31:13
or he profited $400 on that one. Yes.
31:18
Okay.
31:19
So customer acquisition cost of $25 lifetime value.
31:23
And let's just say the client only buys once for the sense of this example.
31:26
But the lifetime value would be 400.
31:29
So the idea there is will you spend
31:32
$25 to make 400?
31:36
Yes, every day of the week and even on Sunday.
31:39
And I'll do a thousand times a day.
31:42
You know, my my oldest brother, he always has.
31:44
He was he was in sales and he he did it.
31:46
He was great at it.
31:48
Like, would you spend a dollar to make $2? Yes.
31:52
Every day of the week.
31:53
I mean, I'd spend a dollar to make a dollar, 50 to make a dollar or 25.
31:57
As long as you're spending money to make money, you're good
32:01
generally.
32:02
Let's don't dig it.
32:03
Don't don't dive into that too much, other than the fact I'm trying
32:06
to make the point that
32:07
you are going to have to spend money, and the goal is to get more money back out.
32:12
And that's essentially what we did with the sales team.
32:15
I had no clue I was doing it at the beginning.
32:19
It was honestly very nerve racking me,
32:21
nerve racking for me to make that hire.
32:25
The company was still small.
32:26
We were doing, I think, probably about 4000 shoots a year,
32:30
you know, a low average order value and
32:35
I was bringing on a large salary of a person.
32:40
And it was a big commit.
32:41
It was scary to me.
32:42
And I know
32:43
I talked to a lot of you out there and you're like, should I hire the VA?
32:45
Should I hire the photographer?
32:46
Should I hire the admin?
32:49
Like, again, I think and I encourage you guys, you guys have this owner intuition.
32:55
You all have it.
32:56
Your left brain just beats it down so much that sometimes
32:59
you just have to pull the trigger and say yes.
33:02
Because the better question is, can you afford not to?
33:05
Not to? Yes.
33:06
Yeah.
33:07
Well, that kind of relates to what we talked a little bit about last week.
33:10
The catch 22 of when when you do say you have a down month,
33:14
you're tempted to cut your marketing budget because there's not
33:17
a tangible necessarily if especially if you're not looking at the numbers,
33:23
you're tempted, cut that marketing budget, which then gets you less views
33:26
or less exposure.
33:28
And less exposure means less jobs.
33:30
And you just you get in this downward cycle.
33:34
Doesn't Alex have some sort of quote about,
33:39
about marketing
33:40
budget and getting past even the idea of a marketing budget?
33:44
Yeah, yeah, he did it in that podcast he talked about,
33:47
he said the only people who talk about marketing budgets are people
33:51
who aren't good marketers, who, yeah, the marketing.
33:57
But the marketing budget is spend as much
34:00
as you possibly can and then wait
34:03
till something else in your business breaks him.
34:09
Okay, okay.
34:10
I mean, explain that a little bit more.
34:13
I need to know something. Yeah.
34:15
So my take on it is
34:17
if you can have a positive
34:20
customer acquisition cost, lifetime value ratio,
34:24
meaning that it costs less to acquire a customer
34:28
than what you're going to profit and make on that customer,
34:32
you should infinitely spend into the customer acquisition bucket,
34:37
because the life you're always going to be making money, the ratio is positive.
34:42
Okay?
34:44
And then I love it.
34:45
He adds in until something else in your business breaks.
34:49
So let's just. Yeah. What's that part? Yeah.
34:51
So what that means is I hired Shannon on
34:56
and she built a sales program,
34:58
a sales engine for us that ran,
35:02
and she was running it, and she hired people into it.
35:06
And we started getting people to say yes.
35:10
Imagine that.
35:11
Right. Come up with some processes.
35:14
You build this plan and people say, yes,
35:18
you know what the next problem was?
35:21
We had to service those yeses.
35:23
Yeah, I was going to say having enough people to to do those jobs.
35:27
Right.
35:27
Okay.
35:28
Well, we are out of inventory, if you will.
35:33
What did we need?
35:34
Well, we needed more photographers.
35:36
That was the pinch point.
35:39
She brought the she brought the answer to me.
35:41
Hey, Todd, you need to bring this person off the field so that he can train
35:45
all of the new photographers
35:47
we're going to need, because I have people saying, yes,
35:50
okay. Slowed everything down. Boom. Did it.
35:52
I didn't think about it. It was scary.
35:55
I was getting a little bit better
35:56
at not thinking about or not thinking as much about these scary things.
36:01
And you will too.
36:03
You'll analyze it, you'll overthink it.
36:06
You'll think, no, no, no, no, something.
36:08
And you eventually get you to say yes.
36:11
Hopefully that's the goal.
36:13
You say yes and you see what that did?
36:15
It was positive for me the next time.
36:19
And a suggestion like that for growth was brought to me.
36:24
I analyze the information.
36:25
You always should.
36:26
As the business owner, I didn't overthink it.
36:30
The past was a good prediction of the future.
36:32
It work.
36:33
Last time we brought high level people in, we executed a method and a plan
36:38
and we got more business and we made more money.
36:41
So the more you do that, the easier it gets.
36:46
I was sweating, I was like, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this.
36:51
And thank goodness Shannon was such a good salesperson
36:53
that she sold me on the idea of hiring her.
36:56
Like, I feel bad.
36:58
Like the amount of pitching
36:59
she had to pitch me on my company to grow with her was crazy.
37:03
If I think about it.
37:07
But that's
37:07
that flow you'll get into and that will be easier.
37:11
And back to us. Quote.
37:12
Then something broke.
37:13
We fixed it,
37:14
and then we poured more money into it so that we could grow something else.
37:18
Broke, needed admins, needed the schedule.
37:21
Hey, we had to write a scheduling software
37:23
and then we kept doing that consistently over the years.
37:28
We still do that to this day.
37:31
We 2022, 20 and of 22 throughout 23.
37:34
We 2022, end of 22 throughout 23.
37:35
Worst year ever.
37:37
We said no to a lot of things.
37:39
We cut a lot of things we talked about this last week,
37:41
so I won't harp on it, but we did not cut any sales and marketing.
37:46
We spent just
37:47
as much, if not more, because you can't
37:50
turn off your sales engine if you want to grow again.
37:53
Core value number five think growth.
37:55
How can I say cut?
37:57
The sales team would have made the year a much better,
38:00
but I'm literally cutting off my ability to grow.
38:05
Yeah. What? What's happened?
38:07
Even if you say you have a down market, Todd, where there's less
38:10
inventory to shoot, which we've experienced
38:14
if you continue to invest in your sales system versus an individual
38:18
marketing technique, you're going to capture
38:19
what we've talked about before is you're going to capture more of that market.
38:24
And so even if your your total number of shoots is down,
38:27
you have a higher market share, which when the market bounces back
38:31
and you've maintained those relationships, you're going to be to the plus.
38:35
So yeah, you might be down in terms of actual number of shoots,
38:38
but you're up in your market share.
38:40
And then when the market recovers you're that much further ahead
38:44
during that next cycle.
38:46
Yeah.
38:46
And that's how you're able to say and everything lined up in that store and that,
38:51
synopsis that Craig gave that we can say
38:54
July of 25 was our best month ever after 22 years.
38:58
Right?
38:59
And that beat the previous month, which was the best month ever.
39:03
So, Craig, let's let's get more.
39:05
Okay. So we covered the high level.
39:07
Let's get down to the, the nuts and bolts of this.
39:09
And I want to make sure I'm going to try to just break it
39:11
because this can be overwhelming because we've talked about some big topics
39:15
and the idea of a sales manager than a training manager,
39:18
you know, and then a head of training and that, you know,
39:21
director, coach and all this stuff, it gets to be overwhelming.
39:24
Let's we have to start somewhere.
39:26
And that's the important thing is you have to start somewhere.
39:31
Craig, you had a great, a great technique
39:35
of the coffee meetings.
39:40
You know what would just be a simple change?
39:43
That if you were on my strategy of wanting to grow to infinite or grow to,
39:47
you know, large goals and not be a boutique, you know
39:51
what would be the simple change of in the coffee technique?
39:55
Meeting?
39:57
Well, for me, it would be investing in another photographer
40:01
to take on more of those shoots and free up my time.
40:04
Yeah.
40:04
To to to sell more or work more on the business
40:08
rather than in the business as, as you've said before.
40:12
Yeah.
40:12
So it's just a simple thing of protecting your time to make sure
40:16
that you put that on your calendar
40:19
and nothing gets booked over that.
40:24
That one hour once a week, whatever it may
40:27
be, is on your calendar because you can't shut that engine off right.
40:33
And in the weeks where you have it, where no one shows
40:35
up, you can't turn it off for the next week because you feel bad.
40:38
No one showed up.
40:41
Okay, don't spend your time at the coffee shop
40:45
looking for new techniques and not do the technique that you're
40:48
that is proven that it can work. In the past.
40:51
Look for ways to make it better.
40:53
You're always going to have to pivot.
40:54
You're always going to have to look to improve.
40:56
We do it every day at Wow. we analyze what we do, but
40:59
we do not jump from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next.
41:04
Right.
41:06
Would you be would it be fair to say, though,
41:07
that you can employ techniques just as a part of an overall strategy?
41:12
It's not about the technique necessarily, but you're you're
41:17
executing different techniques just as an ongoing strategy
41:21
to engage your clients and new clients.
41:24
Oh for sure.
41:24
I think it's as simple as that.
41:26
Craig, I really do. I think
41:28
when you put that with consistency, that's how you get your method.
41:33
Fair enough.
41:34
And then consistency means I, I do it,
41:37
but you do the technique, but then you have to measure it as well, right.
41:41
And through that measurement,
41:43
when a technique needs to be more efficient or convert more,
41:47
how can I help this technique convert more.
41:49
How is it a is it a top a funnel thing?
41:51
Is it a is it a bottom of funnel thing?
41:53
Meaning do I need to get more people to know about my coffee meeting,
41:58
or am I just not really building good enough relationships
42:01
with people at the coffee meeting to get them to say yes?
42:04
Or maybe my my offering is not as good or, you know, there's many different ways,
42:08
but we would analyze that top of funnel, bottom of funnel,
42:11
and how can we get more people to say yes, and we would pivot.
42:14
And then when a technique grew old, we would go into the next thing.
42:18
But I can tell you
42:18
there's we're still using the same techniques that we've used forever.
42:22
They look a lot different. They feel different.
42:25
But it's what we've done. When I was selling.
42:27
Okay. Todd.
42:28
So this can sound a little overwhelming.
42:31
Just this big picture stuff for a, say, a currently a solo operator.
42:37
So what would be the first tangible steps then that someone can take
42:42
that's listening right now from, moving from techniques to to strategy?
42:48
Yeah.
42:49
One analyze what techniques you're currently doing time.
42:54
Even if you're like, hey, I'm not using a technique.
42:56
You probably are.
42:56
When are you talking to Agent real estate agents?
42:59
Okay, that's a technique.
43:01
And I ask and I want you to start with that technique
43:04
because that's what you're comfortable with.
43:07
I don't want to say use these techniques
43:10
because if they don't align with what you're comfortable with,
43:14
I'm never going to get you consistent with doing these techniques.
43:18
And that's a strategy that we use with the sales team at Wow.
43:21
We understand how they like to sell.
43:24
Some of them love the call.
43:25
Some of them love the stop buy some of them love the hold events. Yes.
43:32
And then some of them go, oh, and I could never hold the event.
43:34
Or the one that holds the events.
43:36
Like I could never build individuals with these people because I like a big group.
43:41
Be comfortable with what you are comfortable with.
43:44
That's how you're going to be consistent with it.
43:46
If you hate cold calling and everybody in the world hates cold calling,
43:51
if you try to force yourself into cold calling,
43:54
you're going to do this for two days and it's going to be so uncomfortable
43:59
that there's going to be a shiny object and you're going to go do that
44:02
in your business.
44:04
It's probably going to be QC photos.
44:10
So one start
44:11
analyze what techniques you're using right now. Two.
44:16
Stick with that technique okay.
44:19
And let's measure some time.
44:20
So whatever that technique is let's
44:22
go back to Craig's coffee meeting technique okay.
44:25
Are you doing that once a week.
44:28
All right.
44:28
What what time are you spending on it?
44:30
You're probably spending a little bit of time to post to let people know you're.
44:34
They're advertising that coffee meeting.
44:37
Then your time to get to the coffee meeting.
44:41
You have costs involved in buying some coffee and then any follow up
44:45
that you do about the coffee meeting, just track that time.
44:48
Okay. Time tracking we're doing I'm doing it right now.
44:50
I'm doing it with a lot of y'all.
44:52
I've done it for the last two weeks, and we've done up episodes in the past.
44:55
On the importance of time tracking.
44:57
Yes. So track that time and
45:02
that is the time that you're spending acquiring customers.
45:06
All right.
45:07
So to get customer acquisition cost,
45:10
we just need to know what, you know put a value on that okay.
45:14
So if you spend say there's three hours weekly for your coffee meeting,
45:17
say it's 50 bucks an hour is what is is what you're paying yourself.
45:21
Okay.
45:22
You're probably if you're going to hire someone,
45:24
you're probably gonna pay him maybe 50 bucks an hour or less to do this.
45:27
So it's a fair estimate for 150 bucks a week.
45:32
You had that coffee meeting?
45:36
Four times a month.
45:37
That's 600 bucks.
45:38
Okay.
45:39
And say that gets you just one client to be.
45:42
Just to be simple with this equation
45:45
at that point, then you spent $600 and mainly of your time.
45:50
But let's assume
45:50
you're going to put someone in that place 600 bucks to get one client.
45:54
Okay.
45:55
Now what does a client on average spend with you?
45:59
All right.
45:59
So this is what you have to understand what your lifetime value is as a client.
46:04
Typically our clients at Wow they do like 5.3 shoots a year with us,
46:09
our average client, okay, 5.3
46:12
shoot times your average order value, okay.
46:15
260, 300.
46:17
Whatever it is, some of you have a $1,000 average order.
46:19
That's great.
46:20
Multiply that together
46:22
and that's what you're going to make off them in a year.
46:25
Just to keep things simple, I would just take that yearly number right now
46:29
and know that clients
46:30
stay with you longer than one year, but at least you have an idea.
46:34
It cost you $600 to get this client on average in the next 12 months
46:39
that they're with you, they're going to do five shoots
46:42
at, say, $200 for easy math.
46:45
That's $1,200.
46:48
No, no, five shoots.
46:49
I said times $200
46:51
$1000
46:52
Yeah. Sorry, my math wasn't math.
46:55
Okay, 1000 bucks.
46:57
You're going to make off that client.
46:59
It cost you 600 to get them. Now you have to figure out your cost.
47:01
A good. But at least you have these ratios here.
47:04
Okay? So take out your cost of goods.
47:05
And what do you make on that?
47:07
But at least we're starting some point.
47:09
We know what a customer acquisition cost is.
47:11
We have an idea of what a lifetime value is or at least a yearly value.
47:15
And then from there, what we can do is
47:18
we can begin to do that more.
47:22
Okay.
47:22
So what's the next technique?
47:23
Can you make that technique better? Can you convert more?
47:26
Can you get more people to your coffee meeting?
47:28
Okay, if not, then what's the next thing you can do?
47:31
I've challenged I've challenged you all to make five,
47:35
to have five meaningful conversations four times a week.
47:39
That's another technique again.
47:42
But when you're when you coupled consistency with techniques,
47:46
that's how you get these systems and you build your sales engine.
47:50
Okay.
47:50
Have five meaningful two minute conversations with clients a week.
47:54
Super simple.
47:55
That's one hour a day, four times a week.
47:58
That's four hours, 50 bucks, 200 bucks to do that.
48:02
Customer acquisition.
48:03
How many can you get to say yes from those conversations?
48:06
How many clients a year acquire
48:09
that's going to
48:10
get you the top line date of understanding your customer acquisition cost
48:14
and how we're going to get to a very rough lifetime value.
48:17
Okay.
48:18
Todd.
48:18
So I think the overarching point that we've been kind of hammering home
48:21
is, is stop asking, what's the trick to get clients?
48:25
What's the method?
48:26
You know, and there's 20 bazillion different
48:27
methods that we've talked about and others have talked about
48:30
and start asking, how can I build a repeatable system, a repeatable,
48:38
yeah, system is the best.
48:39
That's word I can think of to acquire client, to acquire clients.
48:44
Yeah.
48:45
And and the idea of that, it sounds maybe too technical to a lot of you system.
48:51
Like how do I build a system?
48:52
It seems like I need to know how to write code.
48:55
You don't.
48:56
At the end of the day, pick 1 or 2 things that you are comfortable with
49:02
that are helping you acquire clients,
49:05
and then be consistent with them.
49:08
That is how you build your system.
49:11
And all the while, while you're doing those techniques,
49:15
you remember that this is just your next best draft,
49:19
so you don't feel like those techniques have to be perfect.
49:23
The biggest you're going to gain the most
49:26
by just consistently doing them.
49:30
We can always make them better.
49:31
We can always understand more metrics about them.
49:34
I'm sorry if I overloaded you on some of these metrics today.
49:38
If you're not doing anything, the next best step is to do something
49:42
consistently.
49:45
And when you do that, what you focus on will expand.
49:48
You'll eventually say, hey, I actually am doing
49:51
this technique and I have an idea,
49:55
or I've stumbled into this, or a client
49:57
suggested that I do this thing, or they invited me to a brokerage meeting.
50:01
Boom, there's your new technique. Get more.
50:04
Have technique one lead to technique two coffee meetings to brokerage meetings.
50:09
Those lead to building relationships leads a brokerage deals.
50:12
It leads to you building out your system.
50:15
But consistency is honestly the thing
50:18
that you have to start with, right?
50:21
And having the courage to spend the money to invest in those systems
50:26
to help them grow and continue to build your business.
50:30
Right? Right.
50:31
And just my mindset has shifted throughout the years.
50:35
I was very hesitant to put the money in the build
50:38
sales.
50:42
Fast forward a decade later,
50:44
I'm like, how can we put as much money as possible into it?
50:50
Because
50:51
you have to spend it to make it.
50:54
And I know that through the consistency of what we learn to build
50:57
our sales engine, that makes us money, and I am, I hate even saying this,
51:02
but in year 22, I'm making more money than I ever thought I would make.
51:06
And I only say that to motivate you because I'm less focused on money now.
51:12
And I think that's one reason why.
51:14
But if you want to grow, you have to have money,
51:16
you have to put money into your business,
51:18
and it's going to take you somewhere that you never thought was possible.
51:21
I never thought it was possible. I look at the numbers.
51:24
I looked at the numbers.
51:25
Last year I had our accountant double check the numbers.
51:29
I'm like, no, this doesn't.
51:30
How can we clean these one more time?
51:32
I did it again this year.
51:33
I'm like, can you make sure that this net is correct?
51:36
So yeah, I've gone through it already.
51:39
So if you want to get to that point, just be consistent.
51:42
You got to take some risk.
51:44
You're going to get lucky along the way.
51:45
But the consistency will push you through.
51:48
Yeah.
51:49
And for those of you that are very much growth minded
51:52
and building a large business,
51:55
taking Todd's tack of investing in employees
51:58
and contractors to help you build that business, you're investing in people.
52:02
Todd Todd's mindset has allowed me to do what I love my goals.
52:06
My personal goals are not the same as Todd's,
52:09
but his mindset has allowed me to really enjoy the work
52:12
I do every day in both the shooting and the business development.
52:16
That will continue to help me then grow my market
52:19
and allow somebody else to also be able to take care of their family.
52:24
There's just
52:25
think about your why, you know, in implementing all of this,
52:29
and that'll give you some really good meaning into your day to day work.
52:33
You'll wake up with a reason to continue to do what you do.
52:38
Yeah.
52:38
Thanks for that perspective Craig. Yeah.
52:41
Oh well it's been a, it's been a great great episode
52:45
and caused me to think a little bit more because, you know,
52:48
I still am out there doing business development as well.
52:51
So it's challenged me.
52:52
I hope it's challenged you as well.
52:53
Guys, and ladies, guys and ladies,
52:57
just to think about your why think about your systems
53:01
and not getting caught in the trap of just a method,
53:05
methods or will come and go, but consistency will drive your business. So
53:11
Todd any
53:12
anything else, any closing thoughts from you?
53:14
Craig, I think that sums it up really well.
53:16
I do want to just pivot here really quickly at this last
53:19
little bit of podcast, and I don't know how many you're still on with me, with us,
53:23
but we have an event that we are planning, your Craig, we
53:27
we had this harebrained idea of doing what we are calling the Spiro summit,
53:32
where we all get together and, you know,
53:35
as a community to grow.
53:38
And we had enough of you actually say, hey, are you going to do that?
53:43
And you consistently said, hey, are you going to do that?
53:45
That we are about 95% sure we're going to do it.
53:49
So we're going to do it in early 2026.
53:53
We're looking at the third week in January.
53:55
This is called the Spiro Sync.
53:57
It's where we're going to gather. We're going to grow.
53:59
We're going to take time to take a breath
54:01
and there'll be more information about it.
54:03
It's going to be here in Ohio. It's going to be cold.
54:05
Y'all will probably have a snowball fight and build snowmen.
54:09
But I'm excited about it.
54:11
We're planning it around.
54:13
Well, more information to come about it if you're still listening to this.
54:16
And that seems like it'd be interesting if you come out to the cornfields of Ohio,
54:21
let us know.
54:22
Send me a quick message.
54:23
Just a pink chat bubble or hello@spiro.media
54:25
be like Spiro Sync sounds good.
54:27
Want more information?
54:28
We will keep you in the loop.
54:29
We're planning this, just not as business owners, we're hoping or we're looking to
54:34
have you bring your other key person, bring your admin that's helping you grow.
54:39
If you have a sales person, bring your sales person.
54:41
We're going to have all types of segments
54:43
the team from while the team from Spiro there, and we're going to connect.
54:46
We're going to do something online with your VA's,
54:49
our Vas, connect with your VA's.
54:50
We just build this community.
54:52
It's important to us because we know what it's like to be out there on the island.
54:56
It's lonely at the top. We want to connect with you.
54:59
We want to bring you together the community.
55:01
And, we'll make sure the heat's on for you.
55:03
The third week of January here in Ohio.
55:07
You know, Todd, just a quick squirrel moment here.
55:09
You said we always talk about the fields of of northwest
55:13
Ohio, the corn fields some week.
55:16
Well, it's still warm.
55:17
I don't want to do this when it's cold.
55:19
We need to take our podcast outside with out in the cornfield
55:23
there at the Wow office and in my backyard, I.
55:27
I'm right next to a soybean field.
55:29
So I could have the soybean field, which is the
55:32
to show you guys we really we're serious.
55:34
We're in the middle of these farm fields right?
55:37
Craig? I love that idea.
55:38
I actually think in the field behind me there is there's just an area that always
55:42
gets really saturate with water that doesn't grow corn or grow soybeans.
55:46
If it's that year, I'm going to get it.
55:48
I'm going to push the desk out there.
55:50
I'm gonna, I'm gonna have
55:52
I love that I let's see what I'm going to fly the drone up there
55:54
and see if there's that dead spot this year. There we go
55:58
anyway.
55:59
All right.
55:59
That's going to wrap things up for this week.
56:02
Guys, we just we appreciate you again.
56:04
I know what I say this a lot, but we really do appreciate the time
56:07
you take out, especially during busy season.
56:09
If it's busy season where you are at, where you're at right now, to to either
56:14
watch the podcast or listen, especially when when you share it with others.
56:18
We really appreciate that.
56:19
The, the likes and the shares just help us to be able to invest
56:22
more in other, real estate media businesses and help them grow.
56:26
So thank you for that.
56:27
We're honored and humbled by it.
56:29
And, just want to say thank you.
56:31
Make sure you take time this week to be thankful for
56:33
the things that you've been blessed with in your life.
56:36
Think about your why because that continue to drive you?
56:39
And, make sure you take a breath this week.
56:41
You have a great week. Take care.