May 7, 2025 • 50 mins
This week we're excited to talk with our very first international real estate media company owner, Simon Caya, of Caya Media! Simon shares his insights on having a positive owner mindset, decisiveness, fitness for owners and some of the minor cultural differences of real estate media outside the U.S.
Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Episode open
01:56 Some Encouragement for You
04:51 Spiro Updates
07:14 International Owner Spotlight – Simon Caya - Quebec
09:51 Caya Media’s Story
16:03 Decisiveness in Business
19:44 The Importance of Fitness
23:33 Tackling Small Goals
27:56 The Importance of Continuing Education
33:31 Cultural Differences in Real Estate Media?
38:38 Getting Realtors Comfortable with your Team
44:51 Follow Up with Prospects!
47:00 Simon’s Book Recommendations
48:56 Episode Wrap-up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
If you ever look to say, hey,I'm at the bottom of the mountain,
how do I get to the top?
And you're like, how do I jump to the top?
You're not going to jump to the top.
You might have periods in your lifewhere you leap,
but most of your life is goingto be one foot in front of the other.
(00:34):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing your real estate,
photography and videography business.Spiro.
It's a software platform.
It's designed to help you really manageyour day to day real estate media business
and ultimatelyhelp it grow in scale as well.
Welcome to a new episode.
I'm your host, Craig Magrum.
Thanks for, all of youthat, had some patience with us.
(00:55):
We did not have an episode last week.
It is Spring Market, and, Todd,it has gone
absolutely bonkers,at least in our markets.
Sure has.
It sure has.
Yeah, we broke a recordthis month at Wow.
So our largest month ever.
So we're so excited about that.
Craig, you had some nice recordsthat you broke in your area.
(01:15):
Yeah, yeah, it was it was amazing.
Our our market not known for really,a lot of high end listings.
And we had four,
four, $1 million or more propertiesin the space of three weeks that we shot.
And there's only 6 millionplus houses in your whole area.
No, I'm just kidding.
A few more than that.
(01:35):
But we're lower in Lima.
We're lower in the Toledo.So I'm not, like, making fun of you.
I'm making, but I'm here at the same time.
So. Yeah.
And let me introduce Todd Kivimaki
Spiro,founder and owner, co-host of the podcast.
Good to be.
Thank you. Craig.
You know I just butt in. Thank you.
Just make room for myself.
But it's great. It's great to be here.
(01:55):
And I do want to say that if you are like,hey, I didn't have my best month
ever last month, that's okay.
I, I really cautionsaying numbers from Wow and what we do.
Y'all need to remember
I've done this for 21 yearsand I have a fabulous team around me.
I have screwedso many things up over the years
(02:16):
and I try to take screw
ups or gapslike I like to call them, as opportunities
to figure outwhat went wrong and learn from it.
And I've tried to nurture that culturearound here,
that we look at mistakes as a good thingand we learn from and we grow.
So if you didn't have your best monthever,
there was plenty of timeswhere I didn't have my best month ever
(02:38):
and I was listening, or I read onlineof someone having this fantastic thing.
I think the natural thing to do
is to want to beat yourself up a bit,so I do.
Please do not do that.
Please knowthat you are building something.
And there's
there was plenty of bad thingsthat happened to us over this last month.
(02:59):
Okay.
It's a mindset shift and it's a an ideathat you're going to push through.
I call it my dumb stupidity.
Again, I started a real estate media.
I started a real estatevideo business video only
back in 2004.
When you can't even streamvideo on the internet, it was too slow.
(03:23):
So that was a really dumb thing to do.
But I had this just intuition.
I had this drivethat I was going to make it work.
So please do not be like,well, Wow had their best month.
And you know, they probably shot morehouses in one month than I do in a year.
But it took me 21 years to get here.
So please don't taketake it with a grain of salt.
(03:43):
Look, in your business,
the, who are the guests?
We have on the day is going to sharesome fabulous things with you all.
I'm super excited about that.
I think is going to connect with youat a different level that I think
will get you asking some good questionsabout your own business.
So that was my longwinded way to say, please,
I'm not trying to pressure youto think that you're not worthy.
(04:04):
You're not doing well.
You are.
You're an overachieverbecause you started your own business.
And it's tough.
It's tough to do hard things.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't don't be discouraged.
I had a challenging last yearwhere I didn't there were months.
I was not hitting my goals.
There were months I exceeded goalsand I never beat myself up emotionally.
(04:26):
I just, you know, just push luck, right?
You sure do. Yeah. And never know.
I never beat myself up.
Yeah, yeah, I swear, I swear our team hasmore grace for me than I have for myself.
But, it's good to have people around youthat will encourage you
and speak life into you and helpyou get beyond beating yourself up.
(04:47):
So let us be that voice for you,this week.
All right.
So, Todd,
yeah, we do have a guest this week,and I'm really excited to talk to him.
Our first international guest,on the podcast.
And, we'll introduce him in just a minute.
And his business,but before we do that, Spiro updates.
What do we have going on?
Yeah, literally.
(05:07):
Give me a minute,because I want to save time for our guest.
So cycle 11 is going to launch May 20th.
That's a Tuesday.
And you will get a brand new marketingkit.
It's going to do everything you wanted todo. I won't spend time on it now.
We've talked about this a lotand I've heard we've heard you.
The changes are coming.The new updates coming.
(05:27):
Propertywebsite analytics, a beautiful report
that your agents can emailtheir homeowners.
We're hoping to squeeze in a new propertywebsite template
and then subsequent and future releases.
There's some other goodies coming as well,
but the big one is the marketing content.
So excited about that.
And, we're going to get itinto your hands.
It's going to be flat media but also MP4.
(05:50):
So taking real type of or,you know, a real orientation
and using photos to animate, animate textand things like that.
So that is all coming excited about that.
And that will be a great wayfor you to really that's a reason for you
to call your clients.
Hey, did you know thatwe have a new marketing content
where you can do X, Y, and Zand so a reason to reach out?
(06:14):
Sometimes you need a reason to reach out
because you just are like,hey, I talked to many of you.
And it's like, hey, you need to buildrelationships with your clients.
It's like, okay, well,I don't like the idea of calling,
but I will call and it's like, well,what the heck do I say?
So that's kind of agive me that's a lay up.
And I have a lot of other ideasfor reasons you can reach out.
Promotions.We're doing a promotion. Craig.
(06:34):
We talked about this,
morning meeting today.
We're doing 30 bucks off a drone.
That's a reason to call your clients.
So, all that and more is coming.
And a few other goodiesI didn't mention on there.
I did a Facebook Live last night.
I do tech talks on Thursdays, so,it would be this Thursday
if you're listening to it,the date of this podcast launch.
(06:57):
So it's May 8th.
I have another tech talk.
I go much more in the detail there,and you can ask me
whatever questions you want,
but you can find that on the SpiroSuper User Facebook group.
Perfect.
59 seconds, Craig.
you are a pro.
You are a pro.
All right.
Well we're just going to dive into it.
For those of you that have watchedor listen for any amount of time,
(07:18):
you know that we have certain episodesthat we call our owner Spotlight series.
And the whole idea of this of the Spiro
podcast is really to talkabout the business of real estate media.
There's we've said this a bazillion times.
There's a ton of great resourceson the creative side of what we do
as photographers and videographers,but we wanted to to, launch
a podcast that talked about the businessand help you build a strong business,
(07:41):
not just from our viewpointin, in our background, of,
you know, Wow video tours being aroundfor 20 years, but also to hear
other real estate media owners, companyowners stories and learn from them.
This is a community.
So we canwe want to learn from each other.
So I'm really excited this weekto, introduce
(08:01):
and welcome to the podcast,Simon Caya of Caya Medias.
Is it Caya or Caya. Yeah, yeah.
Caya okay, okay.It's French a little bit so.
Right from, Quebec, Canada,our first international guest.
Simon, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much guys.
Yeah, so happy to be here.
I was watching a couple episodesin the last year, and,
(08:23):
just being here is humbling to me.
And thank you so much.
We're just
a couple of guys in the cornfieldsin northwest Ohio, right, Todd?
We sure are.
Yeah, we are.
Yeah, yeah.
So excited. Simon.Thanks for making the time.
Simon shared with methis was kind of a we we've been trying
to schedule a time,and we had to reschedule a couple times,
(08:43):
and then I hadwe had an opening, the day before.
Because part of my fault,the day before recording.
And so I reached back out to Simonsaid, I know this is last minute.
Can you come on the on the podcast?
If not totally understand? He's like,this works out perfect.
I had a cancellation.
So thisthis was meant to be Simon. Exactly.
(09:03):
So, here the weather is pretty crazy.
It's it changes a lot.
And we have super harshwinters and super hot summers.
So we're just in between right now.
And, you know, last Sunday it was snowing.
And, you know, two days ago was like 27°C.
So the range is extreme.
(09:24):
And, just today, was actually raining
when it said a week agothat it was going to be a sunny day.
So it was just the perfect timing.
Yeah.
The joys of trying to do real estate media
and those kind of weather conditions, man.
Yeah, yeah.
So, Simon, I, we have a ton
(09:45):
of topics and you have fabulous thingsthat we talked about in the pre-show.
But I think to start off,could you just give us a background?
I think that will helpbring everybody up to speed. What?
How long have you been doing it?
What got you into it?
About what volume are you doing?
Just give us a little insightinto your company, if you can.
Sure.
So, I'm about an hour from Montreal.
(10:07):
More in the countryside,and, it's a city called Drummond Ville.
And so I started out my business there.
Just to give you more of a background, Iwent to university in marketing and sales.
So, I started out as a,
I was working in a marketing agency, and,just after school
(10:30):
and did the 9 to 5 was just getting to me,you know, I was
I had to punch in all my hourswhat I was doing.
And it was just stopping mefrom being focused on, on something.
And I just really wanted to startmy own thing.
And so I just,
went to
my boss and I told him,I don't know where I'm going right now,
(10:52):
but I know this is not my place,and I'm just going to cut it right here
and I'll give you my two weeks and,you know, I don't know where I'm going,
but I'm just burning the shipsas, many say.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, when when you're
getting desperate like that,sometimes you get creative.
(11:14):
And so that's what I had to do,
to, to get it out, to get out of there.
So, you know, I knew I had a passionfor for photography,
and I really wanted to becomea, real estate investor.
Okay.
And I knew I had a pretty good marketing,background as well.
So I was like,maybe I can merge all of those
(11:37):
and try to find somethingin real estate photography.
And so, I just reached out to a, an agency
that is, right around the corner here,and they just said, yeah, sure.
Why not?
We're going to tryyou out. And they actually,
gave me a contract
that I signed that,you know, we're going to talk about this.
(12:00):
And I had an exclusivity, contractwith them.
And, you know, there were,
maybe ten realtors in that team.
So they had a fairly good volume, but,
you know, a couple, a couple of monthsin, you know, when the market went
a little bit down,I was just stuck in that contract.
(12:23):
I couldn't help anyone else.
And, you know,I had to talk to the owner of that agency
and tell him that I just had to
to break it there and just, part our ways
because they really wanted to,keep all their, photographers in-house.
And so we just started there,
(12:45):
and I started out my own thing,
and, you know, I had my portfolio
and, I built my website, my Facebook,and then just the branding altogether
was, making me more, appeasing, appealing.
Sorry to, other realtors.
And I had a couple callsand just went went from there.
(13:06):
So, actually a pretty,
intense story when I just started out,
you know,I lost all my clients, at that moment.
And so I went, to Montreal
to do a,to to do a photo shoot for our house.
And the when I got there,I just stopped at a restaurant to eat.
(13:27):
When I got outside,my car got broken into, and,
so they broke my, you know, my door, my,
the window
your gear was gone.
All my gear.
And I had everything,you know, my computer, my hard drives,
Drone, all this stuff that I had.
Simon.
So that was getting to the rock bottom.
(13:51):
I could say I actually went to,
to restaurants and gave my,
job application to to go back to,
to, you know, to working somewherebecause I just,
couldn't pay my rent.
But, yeah, I had a
I hired a coach back then.
(14:13):
He was a friend of mine, and he justhelped me out, and he was like, dude,
you got to promise yourselfthat you're not ever going back
to working for someone else.
I know you got it inside of you,
and you got your good visionand your good mission.
So just go for itand it's going to work out.
So that's what I did.
And the rest is history.
So okay, so after all of that segmentI mean you're yeah you're at rock bottom.
(14:36):
You've you've got nothing.
So you built after having your gear stolen
and burying,you know, barely being able to pay rent.
So how do you build from there.
I mean did did you wait tables.
What did you do to get back going tothen really launch your your business.
So the only portfolio I had leftwas on my Facebook page,
(14:59):
my Instagram and on my website, stuffthat I, you know, had downloaded there.
Now I got the Dropbox, Dropboxand everything is in the cloud,
so we're good with that.
And I also did not have business insuranceat that point
because I was just starting outand, you know, rookie mistakes.
So I made a,
(15:22):
so somebody
that is close to melend me money to buy a new camera
and out of, you know, such a sweetheart.
And I just went and bought a new camera,new new gear
and just went, you know, 12, 12 hoursa day.
Just client acquisition.
(15:42):
I was going to every,realtor office, calling
every realtor that I had in my, city.
And I just went crazy on it.
And, you know, three, three months outafter that, I was booked out.
And so everything was good.
Good for you. Love to hear that.
(16:03):
Love to hear that. Simon.
Some things that I'm getting fromfrom your story is,
one, you're very desire of decision maker.
And I,I can actually tend to be the opposite.
And it's somethingthat I have to consciously
get myself out ofbecause I love to look for options.
I love the what if game,and you had a couple points in your story.
(16:26):
You're like, you know,you're working a 9 to 5 and you just have
this feeling inside of youthat it's not right
and you know that to get beyond that,you just have to make the decision.
And that gets you further.
It's kind of like a give you an analogy.
So, kind of the same idea, backwhen I, you know, back in school
when I was playing basketball,and I'm, I'm a large human being, y'all.
(16:50):
I think many of you know that.
So, like, for me to run around,we would run, you know, in conditioning.
We would run a mile or two
and I would run itand I'd start to slow down and
there was another individual on the teamthat just would sprint through it.
And I'm like, why did you sprint like,you know, what's up with that?
And he's just like,I just want to get it done.
It was too hard.
Like I figured I'd just go throughand I'm like,
(17:11):
that is such an incredible abilityto have to want to go in the pain.
And that's that's what you possess.
Simon is like the pain of the unknown,which can be very scary.
But you you had this intuitioninside of you that it just wasn't correct.
And also, along with the exclusivitywith your first, you know, that first gig
(17:32):
you had, you again,I think the same thing kind of popped up.
Do you know this is a quality of yoursor do you you like?
Because I think that'san incredible quality
to have that intuition be like,I need to make a change.
I'm going to make it.Then I'm going to go figure it out.
I think this is something that you canit's like a muscle.
So being decisive,I read a book about that
(17:53):
and it's something you can, absolutely
get better at making,you know, a white and black decision.
You know, not staying in a relationship.
Maybe that you're not hundredpercent fulfilled in,
quitting your joband starting to to build your dream
(18:13):
and just going forwardwith all of those stuff is,
is actually somethingyou can get better at this for sure.
Todd Todd.
It ties into something I learned at the
the, the mission I workedin, in Toledo doing donor development.
Our, our CEO saidpeople will not change until the,
(18:34):
the pain of staying the same is greaterthan the pain of change.
Yeah. And that just stuck with me.
And it sounds like that'skind of what you live by, Simon.
Sure. And, you know, I.
I did not do this all by myself.
I got amazing people around meand I just started to listen
(18:54):
to podcasts, mindset,podcasts on my Spotify.
And, I just startedreading books about that.
And it's just a muscle that like, likeeverything, you know, your willpower to do
somethingis something you can get better at
just by doing more repetition. And,
(19:16):
it's just going to work out
if you stay on it and go through it.
Todd, Simon and I were talkingbefore the show, and, he
he was sharing with mehow fitness is, an important value to him.
And I, I like how you brought thatin, Simon, with, you know,
the mindset is it's just a musclethat you exercise, that decisiveness.
I like how you tied in the fitnessanalogy.
(19:38):
There.
Yeah.
So join me to go in and yeah that let's,let's let's dive into that.
Yeah.
The importance of fitnessand being a business owner. Yeah.
So just to put you in perspective,a year and a half ago,
I was still, just a solo photographer
and with an editor and,
(19:59):
you know, now,I just lost two photographers, actually.
But, we're a team of four.
It got our editors, our a VAand all that stuff.
And I built that.
Business, while
getting, a lot of physics,
activity. How do you say that's physical?
(20:21):
Like physical activity?
Yeah. Yeah.
So so I, I left to run marathons.
I do ultramarathons in, in mountains
and, you know, last yearI did a half ironman.
Then the week after I did a full Ironmanin, down in Maryland and,
all of that as well, I, I bought a house.
(20:42):
My wife is just about to give birthto our first,
little girl in, like, a week or two.
So, so it was a pretty crazy year.
And, you know, when you'rewhen you prioritize
your time to, to doing the right thing,
you can do incredible,
(21:04):
achievementsjust by, you know, managing your time.
Yeah. And
and investing it in yourself physically,which helps your mental game as well.
I've noticedwhen I, when I do actually buckle down
and start to take care of myselfphysically and get the exercise
and get the blood flowingand the heart beating, it releases
hormones and chemicalsthat are good for your brain
(21:26):
and just give youa much better mental state as well.
So you know,now I've, I've shared this, Todd, before
and in past episodes I've, I've dealtwith periods of depression or anxiety.
And when I start exercising,it does help lift you up out of that.
So Simon, thanks for sharing that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm a big fan of longevity.
(21:46):
And, I don't know if you guysheard about the book outlive.
It's a book about, you know,
the guy is he wants to live to 100and still be able to, you know,
pick up his grandkids, being ableto go upstairs and, all that stuff.
And he's talkingabout the most important thing to, to
(22:07):
to get tothat age is actually your VO2 max.
It's your in, capacity to,
get oxygen to your system.
And so, exercising is, absolutely,
absolutely the best way to do thatto, to, to manage that.
Incredible. Live to a hundred.
I'm hearing Ironman and marathon.
(22:29):
I'm just good, good. Good for you.
Yeah. I’m thinking the same thing.
Yeah.
Running.
Running is not my favorite activity.
Yeah, but I don't do it because I like it.
Do it guess. Yeah.
Know.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's it'ssomething that I do like every day.
I don't do marathons every day.
Now, I,
I just took a step back because I,I'm just about to have a, baby in my life.
(22:53):
But, you know, every morningI just do a little 15 minute
workout in my gym,and then I go for a run and,
a little 20 minute runjust to get the blood flowing. And,
I listen to another podcast,
a couple weeks ago about a guythat is, that went, on the, on the show,
and he was talking about,
you know, when he's got a big decisionto make or a call to make,
(23:16):
just go to the gym and,you know, get the blood
flowing and the energy going,and then you make the call.
It's going to bea whole different, energy,
that you're going to bring to the game
for sure.
And, and all of these things are if you'resaying, hey, I can never do that.
Like, I'm not a runner either.
Again, I'm a I'm a very large human being.
(23:36):
Like, maybe one day I'll run more,but just start off small.
That's the biggest thing. It'sjust a small step.
You know, Simon mentioned 15 minutes.
Like, if that seems undoable, just do doplanks for three minute, you know,
do a plank for a minute or, you know,just start small with where you're at.
I love the scene around here.
And I use itand we chuckle about the at the office.
(23:57):
By the saying of how do you eat a whale?
Well, you eat a whale.
Just one bite at a time.
And that is true with anything you do.
If you ever look to say, hey,I'm at the bottom of the mountain,
how do I get to the top?
And you're like, how do I jump to the top?
You're not going to jump to the top.
You might have periods in your lifewhere you leap,
(24:20):
but most of your life is goingto be one foot in front of the other.
And then there might be a step back,but most of your life
is going to be very just at that pace.
And then as you start to addthat pace up, you'll begin to leap
and you'll find those exponential gains.
But it can be just impossible to think,how am I going to do that?
(24:42):
You know, if I was thinking,if I was in a go train
for something like that, like,how would I do that?
Like, I think, I think I would die at milethree, like mile one.
I'm going to be complaining morethan anybody and that I'm dead at three.
So it's like, you know, how do you get thehow many is it for you?
And it's 32 miles.
Tony Simon,you know, kilometers or 26 miles.
Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
I mean yeah, I mean kilometers.
(25:03):
Yeah. Right. So.
Well, cool.
Well that's great.
Now let's,let's let me transition a little bit.
Yeah.
Because I know you have so much to give,
but let's talk aboutyou have a natural instinct in you to go
and ask for businessto a network, to talk to people.
We are all about the humanto human connection.
And people will order photosand video from you.
(25:27):
They'll buy from peoplethey know, like and trust.
So can you share some insight as to,maybe some tips and tricks?
I know you have some thingswith sales or brokerages.
What what did you findallows you to take some of those big
or substantial gains through your clientacquisition techniques.
Yeah.
So, one one of my best tricks
(25:50):
that I,that I learned in the last year was,
trying to be, like the master in
to the eye of your clients.
You got to be the master marketer.
So you got to be the master at showingoff the house, getting the right angles
and just, helping themsell the house faster and make more money.
(26:14):
So, what I do is I go to,
realtor congresses,and I just meet with people,
and I go to every presentation there.
Is there. Right.
And I just takes tons of notes,and I build my brokerage
presentations, based on notesthat I took from congresses.
(26:36):
And, you know, a couple of weeks agowas, was,
exp con it was right here in Montreal.
So it was a four, four day, Congress.
I was there for, four days straightand from the, from the first,
to the last presentation, try to go there,
take notes, and I adjust my presentationbased on that.
(26:59):
And then, that gives me an actually,
an actual leverage when I go to,talk to new people, I just tell them,
you know, hey, do you want to havea brokerage presentation?
I've learned, a ton of stuffin the last years as,
doing thousands of houses and how to sell,and I can just do it, do this
for free to 20 minutes.
(27:21):
And, I'm going to bring a lunch in, whichis going to talk about it and have fun.
So that worked really well for,for me just being, you know,
as a, a,
good. Yeah.
An expert marketer and just,I look like I know everything,
but I just learn from othersand just speak it to, to more people.
(27:44):
So that's one of the waysI do brokerage presentations.
So, Todd,I what's, what's jumped out to me
about Simon and him building his businessis that there's two things you mentioned.
One, very early in in his start in thishe invested in coaching.
You've talked about coaching. Yes.
Even even when it's financially difficult.
(28:05):
The value of that. Simon,
you've gained dividends from that.
You invested in education.
You're going to these conferences,these these congresses and, and, learning.
And you're taking time awayfrom your daily shoot activity.
So you're not out shooting.
And a lot of people might be saying, well,I'm losing money, but you're really not
(28:25):
because you've invested in your education,which then you applied
to your presentations at brokerages,which then ultimately gets you,
gives you more clients, more business.
Yeah.
That makes me think of your, story, Todd,
that you, talked about the,you know, the the two lumberjacks.
So one of them is just going homeand, sharpening his ax,
(28:48):
and the other guy's like, how do youhow do you cut more?
Would then I, and you work less.
And, you know, the guy's just like,I just go home,
sharpen and come backand it's it's much easier.
So the same thing has to be appliedto your business.
My calendar is full of,you know, the conferences I go, I book
(29:09):
them, you know, in advance so that I justdon't have the choice to go.
And, these days,
that I go to these
conferences are so packedwith knowledge and,
yeah, it's just, it'sit's steps like that, you know.
Yeah.
And it's, it's really a secret weapon.
(29:30):
We talked about this a little bitlast podcast when Shannon gave her
market update, the idea of we used a termthat isn't a common term unless you're
a realtor is how many days of inventoryare do we have right now.
And that's a questionyou could ask an agent.
And that means is it a buying?
(29:52):
Is it a buyer's market a seller's market?
Is it neutral.
But that is a term that you're goingto say to a realtor and they're going to
look at you like,this person really understands me.
And the same thing with Simon,
he's going to exp con and there'sa ton of conferences out there.
And even if you're like, hey,I it's exp Con or KW the home,
(30:12):
whatever they call it, or CB whateverthe Coldwell Bankers Conference is like.
It didn't come to my city.
What? Take one step down.
Just join your local boardof Realtors, MLS, the local organization.
It's called something differentwherever you're at.
But there is an organization where all therealtors go and they get continuing ed
(30:33):
and they have conferences,they have different committees,
and they have many thingsthat you can get involved with.
And you can gain that information rightthere.
Begin to put that in your head,and then you begin thinking like a client.
And when you think like your client,
that'swhat allows you to really understand
what your client needsbecause you think like them.
(30:57):
So I know when I
started, there is many timeswhere I would think like a photographer,
and that is good because
it's going to make your images creative.
But we see this a lotwith our new photographers.
If we don't give them any training,they go take these creative angles
and, right Craig, and they are nothingthat you need to sell a house
(31:21):
like a realtor is going to look at itand go, that's
not what I need,because that's not how I sell a house.
So that is really a key to doing thatwith learning, with educating.
Simon, talk about a little bit.
And you briefly mentioned this,
but I'm a firm proponent and believerin organizing a calendar.
You mentionedyou put these things on your calendar.
How big is an importanthow big of a aspect is,
(31:43):
organization in your calendar,in your day to day activities?
Yeah.
So building the systems in my,
company was the absolute foundationof where I am today because,
you know, I'm not at the top yet.
I'm just saying that,from where I was, I'm so much better
with my organization, and it,you know, I'm a I love to,
(32:07):
do stuff and be all over the placebecause I'm kind of hyperactive.
And so having a calendar that is,
set in advance for me is an absolute must.
I would, I would be absolutely lostwithout my calendar.
So I use Google calendar, and, you know,everything is on there.
You know, my,
(32:28):
I, I was talking about life balance,
the other day, so I got my training.
Is I right there every every time.
And, you know, every Wednesday night,I have a sacred night that I call.
It's just me and my girlfriend.
No TVs, no cell phone. We just take time.
We read a book together,and we just talk and just grab some time.
(32:50):
Because if you if you don't write itdown, it's just going to slip away.
And, you know, we'll do it tomorrow,and then you just forget about it
and you just finishby never doing it at all.
So having a calendar is the best.
And actually I've been usingSpiro for like a year now,
and it changed my business.
I, I learned about metrics.
(33:12):
And you know,now I look at that every day.
And it's just so helpful to see,how the analytics of your business
is changing throughout the time,throughout the season.
You know, it's the best for sure.
Yeah. Having a system like that.
Well, thank you for that.
Yeah.
Todd, I want to kind of shiftgears a little bit,
(33:34):
with with Simonbeing our first international guest. Yes.
Our first real estatemedia business owner outside of the US.
I love learning about different cultures.
And if if I had time,I would try and learn multiple languages.
And I just.
I'm fascinated by different waysof living throughout the world.
And that crosses over into business.
(33:54):
Now, Simon,a lot of what you've already talked
about todayis that's common across the board.
No matter where in the worldwe are as real estate media professionals,
business principles are pretty muchthe same in how we connect
with people, how we sell, you know, thethe media that we're providing.
But I'm kind of curious and I don't knowexactly how to phrase the question,
or orknow if, if you can encapsulate this, but
(34:18):
what are some of the cultural differences,you know, say, between,
you and Quebec and usin the United States, internationally,
what cultural differenceshave you noticed in business
and or the real estate media,
industry?
Yeah.
So there's a couple things for sure.
It's still pretty similar becausewe're still in, you know, North America.
(34:41):
But, you know, here in Quebec,there's actually laws
to, that,
you got to speak French.
Your website needs to be in French.
If you, do, you know,
publicity, it has to be mainly in French.
Then in English.
So there's a couple things like that,because, there's lots of people
(35:02):
that are trying to keep this languagealive here.
And it's slowly, slowlydeclining and, Yeah.
So that's maybe somethingthat I could talk about or,
there's not many, 3D tours here.
Okay.
Not as much as,you know, there's no, Zillow.
Zillow is not a part of my market.
(35:22):
So, you know, I know you guys have 3Dtours on Zillow and, and,
you know, they get boosted stuff on there.
So it's not something that we have here.
So there's not many, 3D tours.
So it's more about pictures, dronesand and doing stuff like that.
But yeah. And also sorry.
(35:43):
Go on.
Yeah.
But it's something that was not popular.
Really really, really not popular.
So, almost every client that I,
get here don't know about it,and or they're barely hearing about it.
(36:03):
So somethingthat I would bring into the game.
But they love it.
And I think it's awesome, for sure.
And, I love to do them.
So yeah, I think it's the best.
And it's a good added value to them.
(36:32):
Yeah.
So here Centris is our Zillow.
So every propertyis pretty much on Centris
And you got to have the, floor type,
you know, things like that.
And it's draw to,get the, measurements as well.
Yeah. Okay.
So, so another thing that I can talkabout this on another
(36:53):
topic, but,you know, winter, winter is hard here.
So, when winter kicks in,
we do a bunch of, you know,
just exterior listingsand stuff like that.
And so then when summer comes,it's it's a super hot summer as well.
So the market is always demanding
(37:14):
new pictures. And,
remodeling our picturesfor, for the properties that didn't sell.
So, yeah,from a business relationship standpoint.
So what I'm a lot of what I dowhen I'm trying to build relationships,
in my market with potential clientsis I'll take them up to coffee
(37:34):
and just get to know them.
You know, relationshipbuilding is is hugely important.
What does that look like in Quebec?
You know, versus say, Ohio?
Even Ohio to New York can be differenttoday, I'm
guessing, in how people interactwith each other.
So when you're building,client relationships,
Simon, whatwhat does that look like for you?
(37:54):
How how do you best do that?
Well, I don't
exactly know how it is in Ohio,to be honest.
But, you know,there's conference conferences everywhere.
There's meetings.
I just do client acquisitionthrough Instagram, and I send them videos
(38:16):
and I just meet with them sometimes to geta coffee or, so pretty much the same.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much the same onevery first shoot with a realtor.
I try to be the one on, on site,and then I just,
you know, talk to them about the culture,who we are, how to use our system.
And usually that's that's how we do it.
(38:38):
Todd, here's a good question.
Just keying off that.
So, Simon, you've got nowyou just lost a couple of photographers,
but you have other photographers.
So this is a common question.
I still deal with this today and I see itall the time in the Facebook groups.
So when you're out on that first shootwith, with a new client
with a new realtor,and you're the one that they're used to,
(38:59):
and you,you introduce another photographer and
do you find that they're
resistant and they don't want to workwith another photographer.
They just want to work with youand have you shoot.
And if that's the case, how do you handlethat?
as the owner.
So if I feel like the photographeris not bringing up the value
as much as I am or better,
(39:21):
I'm a bit hard on that.
So I did fire photographers in the past,
and I try to get like, peoplethat are creating an experience,
you know, and it's a people business,you know, what about that?
So it's you got to be a magnet.
You know, people need to,to like to talk to you.
And I think, when I introducenew photographers,
(39:46):
I really brag about the realtor
in front of them and just trying to
make them feel super confidentabout the new guy.
And, you know, thatthat this person is absolutely,
that is absolutely.
You know how you say that
they know everythingthat that this realtor needs and wants.
(40:09):
So we just put emphasis on that and,yeah, yeah,
I think that's a that's that's a greattechnique and, and a great thing to do.
And kind of a term that I've learnedis it's called managing people up.
And it's when you would give,you know, you would talk
good about someone in front of a colleagueor in front of a client.
And it gives them the confidence, like
(40:32):
if you're confident in them
and that client is confident in you, it'sjust psychologically
connecting the idea that the clientshould be confident and your new hire.
So and that can go a long way,not only in the cycle psychological
aspect of the client, your your agentswanting someone other than you.
But it also can go a long waywith that photographer of thinking,
(40:56):
oh well, oh, Simon thinks that about me.
Like, oh that's. And then sometimes
was just thinking, you can do it
allows you to do it.
You know, likesometimes we get so down on ourselves,
like my 12 year old, my oldest son,he I think you guys know
we play he plays a ton of basketball,I coach a ton of basketball.
And he is a really,really good basketball player.
(41:17):
But he is super hard on himself.
He works hard.
He has the skills.
He's put in the work,
but he will beat himself upfrom a psychological standpoint,
and it's building him upto think that he can do it.
And when he thinks he can do it,he goes out there and he does it
at a very high level.
And I think that's the same.
Not only it's the same
with everyone in life,like if you're beating yourself up, stop.
(41:39):
But if you begin managing upyour employees,
that's going to do so many thingsfrom a company standpoint,
and it will help you get over that humpof like and Craig, I agree with you.
We see it all the time.
Like,how can someone get someone other than me?
And that is a big that could be a big gap.
(42:00):
And there's athere's some good ways to do it.
But being on site, managing your people,making sure that your agents know
what your company's about,
if they know you want to grow and you'regrowing to serve them better, that's
way different than like, hey, I justI don't really want to shoot anymore.
And I'm going to try to get some peoplethat do a half as good as me,
like, you know, which one is the agentgoing to be comfortable with?
(42:20):
Yeah.
So yeah, I love that technique,Simon, of managing those individuals up.
Yeah.
You phrased it much better than me,but that that's pretty much the idea.
And, Yeah.
So so these individuals, are,
you know, in target cities around,where I'm from.
(42:40):
So, I don't have a, another photographerin my city.
I have, one that is an hour away
from Drummond ville that sideand an hour from that side.
So I call it the Golden Triangle.
So they are expert in their, market,in their market.
And that's how I really put it outto the realtors.
And, yeah, it works really well. See.
(43:03):
Excellent.
Well, Todd, we're kind of getting closeto the end of the podcast here.
So, Simon,what we always like to do is ask our guest
if there was one parting piece of advicethat you would give to listeners and,
viewers of the podcast,especially those outside of the US.
I would love for you to speak toto others in our industry outside the US.
(43:26):
What would your best piece of advicebe that you would give?
Well, absolutely.
Be prepared to fail.
It's absolutely part of itand in every aspect of your life.
But, in business it's always, you know,
repeating that processof not starting over but getting over
(43:50):
things that don't work out because it'salways going to happen as well.
So for me, it was pretty hardat first of not giving up on myself
and just going all the way and just,
you know, try to get a thousandno's or a thousand maybes is is a lot.
But when I do client acquisition,I love to, to get no's and just,
(44:14):
you know,
going forward and it is going to work outfor sure if you just stay consistent.
It's a lot about consistency in thein the long term.
It's a numbers game.
Yeah. It's a challenge to you right Simon.
Because it's not.
No it's no not right now.
That's a psychological.
They tell me no okay. No problem.
(44:35):
Not right nowI'm going to get you in three months.
Six months I might get you in 12 months.
It might be four years later.
But I'm going to get you.
So you're going back on my list,and you'll hear from me again.
Absolutely.
And the follow upsare extremely important.
So many times, in the past,I just send a message to a realtor as a,
(44:56):
you know, for client acquisition.
Didn't get a response,and I just dumped it, you know,
but you got to do a feedback.
Yeah, I follow up, and there'sso much value in those follow ups.
And realtors are busy.
They don't always have the time as, as usbusiness owners and usually, you know,
(45:17):
the third or the second or the thirdfollow up is actually going to work out.
And in many cases it does.
Yeah. That's so true.
The fortunes and the follow up.
That's what I think.
Shannon Shannon that's a Shannonism.
I she didn't create it.But the fortune is in the follow up.
So you know, and think about you've laidall that hard work.
If you've called someone one, two three,four times, you've gotten them
(45:40):
so much closer to a yes,
or you've gotten them closer to a no, butat least you understand where they're at.
And maybe you just need one more contactto make that person feel special.
Maybe you've learned a new thingat a conference.
You can use it as an opening line.
Maybe you can call themwith your promotion,
the new marketing toolkit, whatever it maybe, it's a reason to reach out.
(46:01):
And that's one step closerto getting that.
Yes, absolutely.
And sometimes, one,
free shootis going to get you many more shoots.
You know, we did a, a new recordat our business last, last month,
also at 31K,but we're super happy about it. And,
(46:23):
yes, so much
compounding of effort and we're not done.
And we are going to go,all the way with this.
And I'm super stoked to to be a part of,you know, all this community
that that's here to help.
And, it's it brings so much valueto have people around.
Yeah, yeah. Todd, I love his energy.
(46:45):
I just I was just going to sayI love his mindset.
Yeah. And he has energy.Is this incredible?
I, I think it's it's it is something forus all to learn from is just that mindset.
It is so much in our mind.
Simon,any any books off the top of your head?
You talked about books about mindset.
Anything come to your mind, comesto your mind using the same word a lot.
(47:06):
But if someone's like, hey,what book was it that you read?
Or where should I start?
Do you have a title recommendation? Sure.
So I got a couple for sure. I,I love to read.
I read, pretty much every day,only a 15 minute gap,
but it I get through books,through the months
and, you know, right nowI'm reading a book that is called The Gap.
(47:27):
And again,I don't know if you know about that.
So it's, it's talking about,
the gap between
where you are and where you want to be.
That's the trap.
If you look at the gap,you're you're going to be depressed.
You ain't going to be, you know, feel downbecause you're not there yet.
But if you look at the gain,which is the other part where you're from,
(47:51):
the historically, what have you beenthrough to get where you are?
If you think about that,you're going to be
super energized about,you know, looking at what you achieved
and all the, the, the knows thatyou've been through to get where you are.
And it's super powerful to do that.
The gap in the game.
(48:11):
Okay.
Awesome, awesome.
Well, Todd,any final questions that you have?
Simon, if someone has a question for youor wants to,
reach out to you, ishow could someone get in contact with you?
Sure. Just reach out.
I love toto help other people and bring value.
(48:31):
I actually,
give free,sales, teaching in schools here.
And that's where the idea came fromto do brokerage presentations
and actually gain from frombeing in front of people and giving value.
So just reach out to me on Facebook.
Instagram.
I'm super open to, to talk than that.
(48:53):
I love to help people.
Awesome.
Our guest this week, Simon Cayafrom Caya Medias in Quebec, Canada.
Simon, thank you againso much for taking time out of your day
and in spending itwith us here on the Spiro Podcast.
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
Yeah, Todd, it's been a great week.
Good to see you again. And,
(49:14):
we've got a great episode next week.
We're going to be speakingwith some realtors and getting their take
on what they're looking forin a real estate media partner.
So hearing right from our clients whatthey're looking for I'm really excited.
They're they're great team of ladies,that are very high energy.
(49:34):
They're they'rethey're a hoot to shoot for.
I love working with them.
So it's going to be a fun podcast.
So make sure you, come backnext week for that episode and, Yeah.
Simon, again, thank you so much.
It was a pleasuregetting to know you and talking to you.
And thank you again for making the time.
Yeah. Thanks so much.
I'm all I'm I'm all jacked up energized.
Now I'm going to go conquersomething. Yeah. There we go.
(49:57):
All right.
Well, guys, that's going to wrap it upfor this week on, on the Spiro podcast.
Thanks for making time.We know it's busy season.
So the fact that you're spendingtime to either watch us or listen
is not lost on us.
We appreciate that. We're humbled by it.
Make sure you take time this weekto just be thankful.
Have that great mindset that Simon talkedabout this thing on this episode.
Be thankful for the things that
(50:17):
that you've been blessedwith in your life,
and make sure you take some timeto breathe.
Have a great week. Take care.
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
If you ever look to say, hey,I'm at the bottom of the mountain,
how do I get to the top?
And you're like, how do I jump to the top?
You're not going to jump to the top.
You might have periods in your lifewhere you leap,
but most of your life is goingto be one foot in front of the other.
(00:34):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing your real estate,
photography and videography business.Spiro.
It's a software platform.
It's designed to help you really manageyour day to day real estate media business
and ultimatelyhelp it grow in scale as well.
Welcome to a new episode.
I'm your host, Craig Magrum.
Thanks for, all of youthat, had some patience with us.
(00:55):
We did not have an episode last week.
It is Spring Market, and, Todd,it has gone
absolutely bonkers,at least in our markets.
Sure has.
It sure has.
Yeah, we broke a recordthis month at Wow.
So our largest month ever.
So we're so excited about that.
Craig, you had some nice recordsthat you broke in your area.
(01:15):
Yeah, yeah, it was it was amazing.
Our our market not known for really,a lot of high end listings.
And we had four,
four, $1 million or more propertiesin the space of three weeks that we shot.
And there's only 6 millionplus houses in your whole area.
No, I'm just kidding.
A few more than that.
(01:35):
But we're lower in Lima.
We're lower in the Toledo.So I'm not, like, making fun of you.
I'm making, but I'm here at the same time.
So. Yeah.
And let me introduce Todd Kivimaki
Spiro,founder and owner, co-host of the podcast.
Good to be.
Thank you. Craig.
You know I just butt in. Thank you.
Just make room for myself.
But it's great. It's great to be here.
(01:55):
And I do want to say that if you are like,hey, I didn't have my best month
ever last month, that's okay.
I, I really cautionsaying numbers from Wow and what we do.
Y'all need to remember
I've done this for 21 yearsand I have a fabulous team around me.
I have screwedso many things up over the years
(02:16):
and I try to take screw
ups or gapslike I like to call them, as opportunities
to figure outwhat went wrong and learn from it.
And I've tried to nurture that culturearound here,
that we look at mistakes as a good thingand we learn from and we grow.
So if you didn't have your best monthever,
there was plenty of timeswhere I didn't have my best month ever
(02:38):
and I was listening, or I read onlineof someone having this fantastic thing.
I think the natural thing to do
is to want to beat yourself up a bit,so I do.
Please do not do that.
Please knowthat you are building something.
And there's
there was plenty of bad thingsthat happened to us over this last month.
(02:59):
Okay.
It's a mindset shift and it's a an ideathat you're going to push through.
I call it my dumb stupidity.
Again, I started a real estate media.
I started a real estatevideo business video only
back in 2004.
When you can't even streamvideo on the internet, it was too slow.
(03:23):
So that was a really dumb thing to do.
But I had this just intuition.
I had this drivethat I was going to make it work.
So please do not be like,well, Wow had their best month.
And you know, they probably shot morehouses in one month than I do in a year.
But it took me 21 years to get here.
So please don't taketake it with a grain of salt.
(03:43):
Look, in your business,
the, who are the guests?
We have on the day is going to sharesome fabulous things with you all.
I'm super excited about that.
I think is going to connect with youat a different level that I think
will get you asking some good questionsabout your own business.
So that was my longwinded way to say, please,
I'm not trying to pressure youto think that you're not worthy.
(04:04):
You're not doing well.
You are.
You're an overachieverbecause you started your own business.
And it's tough.
It's tough to do hard things.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't don't be discouraged.
I had a challenging last yearwhere I didn't there were months.
I was not hitting my goals.
There were months I exceeded goalsand I never beat myself up emotionally.
(04:26):
I just, you know, just push luck, right?
You sure do. Yeah. And never know.
I never beat myself up.
Yeah, yeah, I swear, I swear our team hasmore grace for me than I have for myself.
But, it's good to have people around youthat will encourage you
and speak life into you and helpyou get beyond beating yourself up.
(04:47):
So let us be that voice for you,this week.
All right.
So, Todd,
yeah, we do have a guest this week,and I'm really excited to talk to him.
Our first international guest,on the podcast.
And, we'll introduce him in just a minute.
And his business,but before we do that, Spiro updates.
What do we have going on?
Yeah, literally.
(05:07):
Give me a minute,because I want to save time for our guest.
So cycle 11 is going to launch May 20th.
That's a Tuesday.
And you will get a brand new marketingkit.
It's going to do everything you wanted todo. I won't spend time on it now.
We've talked about this a lotand I've heard we've heard you.
The changes are coming.The new updates coming.
(05:27):
Propertywebsite analytics, a beautiful report
that your agents can emailtheir homeowners.
We're hoping to squeeze in a new propertywebsite template
and then subsequent and future releases.
There's some other goodies coming as well,
but the big one is the marketing content.
So excited about that.
And, we're going to get itinto your hands.
It's going to be flat media but also MP4.
(05:50):
So taking real type of or,you know, a real orientation
and using photos to animate, animate textand things like that.
So that is all coming excited about that.
And that will be a great wayfor you to really that's a reason for you
to call your clients.
Hey, did you know thatwe have a new marketing content
where you can do X, Y, and Zand so a reason to reach out?
(06:14):
Sometimes you need a reason to reach out
because you just are like,hey, I talked to many of you.
And it's like, hey, you need to buildrelationships with your clients.
It's like, okay, well,I don't like the idea of calling,
but I will call and it's like, well,what the heck do I say?
So that's kind of agive me that's a lay up.
And I have a lot of other ideasfor reasons you can reach out.
Promotions.We're doing a promotion. Craig.
(06:34):
We talked about this,
morning meeting today.
We're doing 30 bucks off a drone.
That's a reason to call your clients.
So, all that and more is coming.
And a few other goodiesI didn't mention on there.
I did a Facebook Live last night.
I do tech talks on Thursdays, so,it would be this Thursday
if you're listening to it,the date of this podcast launch.
(06:57):
So it's May 8th.
I have another tech talk.
I go much more in the detail there,and you can ask me
whatever questions you want,
but you can find that on the SpiroSuper User Facebook group.
Perfect.
59 seconds, Craig.
you are a pro.
You are a pro.
All right.
Well we're just going to dive into it.
For those of you that have watchedor listen for any amount of time,
(07:18):
you know that we have certain episodesthat we call our owner Spotlight series.
And the whole idea of this of the Spiro
podcast is really to talkabout the business of real estate media.
There's we've said this a bazillion times.
There's a ton of great resourceson the creative side of what we do
as photographers and videographers,but we wanted to to, launch
a podcast that talked about the businessand help you build a strong business,
(07:41):
not just from our viewpointin, in our background, of,
you know, Wow video tours being aroundfor 20 years, but also to hear
other real estate media owners, companyowners stories and learn from them.
This is a community.
So we canwe want to learn from each other.
So I'm really excited this weekto, introduce
(08:01):
and welcome to the podcast,Simon Caya of Caya Medias.
Is it Caya or Caya. Yeah, yeah.
Caya okay, okay.It's French a little bit so.
Right from, Quebec, Canada,our first international guest.
Simon, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much guys.
Yeah, so happy to be here.
I was watching a couple episodesin the last year, and,
(08:23):
just being here is humbling to me.
And thank you so much.
We're just
a couple of guys in the cornfieldsin northwest Ohio, right, Todd?
We sure are.
Yeah, we are.
Yeah, yeah.
So excited. Simon.Thanks for making the time.
Simon shared with methis was kind of a we we've been trying
to schedule a time,and we had to reschedule a couple times,
(08:43):
and then I hadwe had an opening, the day before.
Because part of my fault,the day before recording.
And so I reached back out to Simonsaid, I know this is last minute.
Can you come on the on the podcast?
If not totally understand? He's like,this works out perfect.
I had a cancellation.
So thisthis was meant to be Simon. Exactly.
(09:03):
So, here the weather is pretty crazy.
It's it changes a lot.
And we have super harshwinters and super hot summers.
So we're just in between right now.
And, you know, last Sunday it was snowing.
And, you know, two days ago was like 27°C.
So the range is extreme.
(09:24):
And, just today, was actually raining
when it said a week agothat it was going to be a sunny day.
So it was just the perfect timing.
Yeah.
The joys of trying to do real estate media
and those kind of weather conditions, man.
Yeah, yeah.
So, Simon, I, we have a ton
(09:45):
of topics and you have fabulous thingsthat we talked about in the pre-show.
But I think to start off,could you just give us a background?
I think that will helpbring everybody up to speed. What?
How long have you been doing it?
What got you into it?
About what volume are you doing?
Just give us a little insightinto your company, if you can.
Sure.
So, I'm about an hour from Montreal.
(10:07):
More in the countryside,and, it's a city called Drummond Ville.
And so I started out my business there.
Just to give you more of a background, Iwent to university in marketing and sales.
So, I started out as a,
I was working in a marketing agency, and,just after school
(10:30):
and did the 9 to 5 was just getting to me,you know, I was
I had to punch in all my hourswhat I was doing.
And it was just stopping mefrom being focused on, on something.
And I just really wanted to startmy own thing.
And so I just,
went to
my boss and I told him,I don't know where I'm going right now,
(10:52):
but I know this is not my place,and I'm just going to cut it right here
and I'll give you my two weeks and,you know, I don't know where I'm going,
but I'm just burning the shipsas, many say.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, when when you're
getting desperate like that,sometimes you get creative.
(11:14):
And so that's what I had to do,
to, to get it out, to get out of there.
So, you know, I knew I had a passionfor for photography,
and I really wanted to becomea, real estate investor.
Okay.
And I knew I had a pretty good marketing,background as well.
So I was like,maybe I can merge all of those
(11:37):
and try to find somethingin real estate photography.
And so, I just reached out to a, an agency
that is, right around the corner here,and they just said, yeah, sure.
Why not?
We're going to tryyou out. And they actually,
gave me a contract
that I signed that,you know, we're going to talk about this.
(12:00):
And I had an exclusivity, contractwith them.
And, you know, there were,
maybe ten realtors in that team.
So they had a fairly good volume, but,
you know, a couple, a couple of monthsin, you know, when the market went
a little bit down,I was just stuck in that contract.
(12:23):
I couldn't help anyone else.
And, you know,I had to talk to the owner of that agency
and tell him that I just had to
to break it there and just, part our ways
because they really wanted to,keep all their, photographers in-house.
And so we just started there,
(12:45):
and I started out my own thing,
and, you know, I had my portfolio
and, I built my website, my Facebook,and then just the branding altogether
was, making me more, appeasing, appealing.
Sorry to, other realtors.
And I had a couple callsand just went went from there.
(13:06):
So, actually a pretty,
intense story when I just started out,
you know,I lost all my clients, at that moment.
And so I went, to Montreal
to do a,to to do a photo shoot for our house.
And the when I got there,I just stopped at a restaurant to eat.
(13:27):
When I got outside,my car got broken into, and,
so they broke my, you know, my door, my,
the window
your gear was gone.
All my gear.
And I had everything,you know, my computer, my hard drives,
Drone, all this stuff that I had.
Simon.
So that was getting to the rock bottom.
(13:51):
I could say I actually went to,
to restaurants and gave my,
job application to to go back to,
to, you know, to working somewherebecause I just,
couldn't pay my rent.
But, yeah, I had a
I hired a coach back then.
(14:13):
He was a friend of mine, and he justhelped me out, and he was like, dude,
you got to promise yourselfthat you're not ever going back
to working for someone else.
I know you got it inside of you,
and you got your good visionand your good mission.
So just go for itand it's going to work out.
So that's what I did.
And the rest is history.
So okay, so after all of that segmentI mean you're yeah you're at rock bottom.
(14:36):
You've you've got nothing.
So you built after having your gear stolen
and burying,you know, barely being able to pay rent.
So how do you build from there.
I mean did did you wait tables.
What did you do to get back going tothen really launch your your business.
So the only portfolio I had leftwas on my Facebook page,
(14:59):
my Instagram and on my website, stuffthat I, you know, had downloaded there.
Now I got the Dropbox, Dropboxand everything is in the cloud,
so we're good with that.
And I also did not have business insuranceat that point
because I was just starting outand, you know, rookie mistakes.
So I made a,
(15:22):
so somebody
that is close to melend me money to buy a new camera
and out of, you know, such a sweetheart.
And I just went and bought a new camera,new new gear
and just went, you know, 12, 12 hoursa day.
Just client acquisition.
(15:42):
I was going to every,realtor office, calling
every realtor that I had in my, city.
And I just went crazy on it.
And, you know, three, three months outafter that, I was booked out.
And so everything was good.
Good for you. Love to hear that.
(16:03):
Love to hear that. Simon.
Some things that I'm getting fromfrom your story is,
one, you're very desire of decision maker.
And I,I can actually tend to be the opposite.
And it's somethingthat I have to consciously
get myself out ofbecause I love to look for options.
I love the what if game,and you had a couple points in your story.
(16:26):
You're like, you know,you're working a 9 to 5 and you just have
this feeling inside of youthat it's not right
and you know that to get beyond that,you just have to make the decision.
And that gets you further.
It's kind of like a give you an analogy.
So, kind of the same idea, backwhen I, you know, back in school
when I was playing basketball,and I'm, I'm a large human being, y'all.
(16:50):
I think many of you know that.
So, like, for me to run around,we would run, you know, in conditioning.
We would run a mile or two
and I would run itand I'd start to slow down and
there was another individual on the teamthat just would sprint through it.
And I'm like, why did you sprint like,you know, what's up with that?
And he's just like,I just want to get it done.
It was too hard.
Like I figured I'd just go throughand I'm like,
(17:11):
that is such an incredible abilityto have to want to go in the pain.
And that's that's what you possess.
Simon is like the pain of the unknown,which can be very scary.
But you you had this intuitioninside of you that it just wasn't correct.
And also, along with the exclusivitywith your first, you know, that first gig
(17:32):
you had, you again,I think the same thing kind of popped up.
Do you know this is a quality of yoursor do you you like?
Because I think that'san incredible quality
to have that intuition be like,I need to make a change.
I'm going to make it.Then I'm going to go figure it out.
I think this is something that you canit's like a muscle.
So being decisive,I read a book about that
(17:53):
and it's something you can, absolutely
get better at making,you know, a white and black decision.
You know, not staying in a relationship.
Maybe that you're not hundredpercent fulfilled in,
quitting your joband starting to to build your dream
(18:13):
and just going forwardwith all of those stuff is,
is actually somethingyou can get better at this for sure.
Todd Todd.
It ties into something I learned at the
the, the mission I workedin, in Toledo doing donor development.
Our, our CEO saidpeople will not change until the,
(18:34):
the pain of staying the same is greaterthan the pain of change.
Yeah. And that just stuck with me.
And it sounds like that'skind of what you live by, Simon.
Sure. And, you know, I.
I did not do this all by myself.
I got amazing people around meand I just started to listen
(18:54):
to podcasts, mindset,podcasts on my Spotify.
And, I just startedreading books about that.
And it's just a muscle that like, likeeverything, you know, your willpower to do
somethingis something you can get better at
just by doing more repetition. And,
(19:16):
it's just going to work out
if you stay on it and go through it.
Todd, Simon and I were talkingbefore the show, and, he
he was sharing with mehow fitness is, an important value to him.
And I, I like how you brought thatin, Simon, with, you know,
the mindset is it's just a musclethat you exercise, that decisiveness.
I like how you tied in the fitnessanalogy.
(19:38):
There.
Yeah.
So join me to go in and yeah that let's,let's let's dive into that.
Yeah.
The importance of fitnessand being a business owner. Yeah.
So just to put you in perspective,a year and a half ago,
I was still, just a solo photographer
and with an editor and,
(19:59):
you know, now,I just lost two photographers, actually.
But, we're a team of four.
It got our editors, our a VAand all that stuff.
And I built that.
Business, while
getting, a lot of physics,
activity. How do you say that's physical?
(20:21):
Like physical activity?
Yeah. Yeah.
So so I, I left to run marathons.
I do ultramarathons in, in mountains
and, you know, last yearI did a half ironman.
Then the week after I did a full Ironmanin, down in Maryland and,
all of that as well, I, I bought a house.
(20:42):
My wife is just about to give birthto our first,
little girl in, like, a week or two.
So, so it was a pretty crazy year.
And, you know, when you'rewhen you prioritize
your time to, to doing the right thing,
you can do incredible,
(21:04):
achievementsjust by, you know, managing your time.
Yeah. And
and investing it in yourself physically,which helps your mental game as well.
I've noticedwhen I, when I do actually buckle down
and start to take care of myselfphysically and get the exercise
and get the blood flowingand the heart beating, it releases
hormones and chemicalsthat are good for your brain
(21:26):
and just give youa much better mental state as well.
So you know,now I've, I've shared this, Todd, before
and in past episodes I've, I've dealtwith periods of depression or anxiety.
And when I start exercising,it does help lift you up out of that.
So Simon, thanks for sharing that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm a big fan of longevity.
(21:46):
And, I don't know if you guysheard about the book outlive.
It's a book about, you know,
the guy is he wants to live to 100and still be able to, you know,
pick up his grandkids, being ableto go upstairs and, all that stuff.
And he's talkingabout the most important thing to, to
(22:07):
to get tothat age is actually your VO2 max.
It's your in, capacity to,
get oxygen to your system.
And so, exercising is, absolutely,
absolutely the best way to do thatto, to, to manage that.
Incredible. Live to a hundred.
I'm hearing Ironman and marathon.
(22:29):
I'm just good, good. Good for you.
Yeah. I’m thinking the same thing.
Yeah.
Running.
Running is not my favorite activity.
Yeah, but I don't do it because I like it.
Do it guess. Yeah.
Know.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's it'ssomething that I do like every day.
I don't do marathons every day.
Now, I,
I just took a step back because I,I'm just about to have a, baby in my life.
(22:53):
But, you know, every morningI just do a little 15 minute
workout in my gym,and then I go for a run and,
a little 20 minute runjust to get the blood flowing. And,
I listen to another podcast,
a couple weeks ago about a guythat is, that went, on the, on the show,
and he was talking about,
you know, when he's got a big decisionto make or a call to make,
(23:16):
just go to the gym and,you know, get the blood
flowing and the energy going,and then you make the call.
It's going to bea whole different, energy,
that you're going to bring to the game
for sure.
And, and all of these things are if you'resaying, hey, I can never do that.
Like, I'm not a runner either.
Again, I'm a I'm a very large human being.
(23:36):
Like, maybe one day I'll run more,but just start off small.
That's the biggest thing. It'sjust a small step.
You know, Simon mentioned 15 minutes.
Like, if that seems undoable, just do doplanks for three minute, you know,
do a plank for a minute or, you know,just start small with where you're at.
I love the scene around here.
And I use itand we chuckle about the at the office.
(23:57):
By the saying of how do you eat a whale?
Well, you eat a whale.
Just one bite at a time.
And that is true with anything you do.
If you ever look to say, hey,I'm at the bottom of the mountain,
how do I get to the top?
And you're like, how do I jump to the top?
You're not going to jump to the top.
You might have periods in your lifewhere you leap,
(24:20):
but most of your life is goingto be one foot in front of the other.
And then there might be a step back,but most of your life
is going to be very just at that pace.
And then as you start to addthat pace up, you'll begin to leap
and you'll find those exponential gains.
But it can be just impossible to think,how am I going to do that?
(24:42):
You know, if I was thinking,if I was in a go train
for something like that, like,how would I do that?
Like, I think, I think I would die at milethree, like mile one.
I'm going to be complaining morethan anybody and that I'm dead at three.
So it's like, you know, how do you get thehow many is it for you?
And it's 32 miles.
Tony Simon,you know, kilometers or 26 miles.
Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
I mean yeah, I mean kilometers.
(25:03):
Yeah. Right. So.
Well, cool.
Well that's great.
Now let's,let's let me transition a little bit.
Yeah.
Because I know you have so much to give,
but let's talk aboutyou have a natural instinct in you to go
and ask for businessto a network, to talk to people.
We are all about the humanto human connection.
And people will order photosand video from you.
(25:27):
They'll buy from peoplethey know, like and trust.
So can you share some insight as to,maybe some tips and tricks?
I know you have some thingswith sales or brokerages.
What what did you findallows you to take some of those big
or substantial gains through your clientacquisition techniques.
Yeah.
So, one one of my best tricks
(25:50):
that I,that I learned in the last year was,
trying to be, like the master in
to the eye of your clients.
You got to be the master marketer.
So you got to be the master at showingoff the house, getting the right angles
and just, helping themsell the house faster and make more money.
(26:14):
So, what I do is I go to,
realtor congresses,and I just meet with people,
and I go to every presentation there.
Is there. Right.
And I just takes tons of notes,and I build my brokerage
presentations, based on notesthat I took from congresses.
(26:36):
And, you know, a couple of weeks agowas, was,
exp con it was right here in Montreal.
So it was a four, four day, Congress.
I was there for, four days straightand from the, from the first,
to the last presentation, try to go there,
take notes, and I adjust my presentationbased on that.
(26:59):
And then, that gives me an actually,
an actual leverage when I go to,talk to new people, I just tell them,
you know, hey, do you want to havea brokerage presentation?
I've learned, a ton of stuffin the last years as,
doing thousands of houses and how to sell,and I can just do it, do this
for free to 20 minutes.
(27:21):
And, I'm going to bring a lunch in, whichis going to talk about it and have fun.
So that worked really well for,for me just being, you know,
as a, a,
good. Yeah.
An expert marketer and just,I look like I know everything,
but I just learn from othersand just speak it to, to more people.
(27:44):
So that's one of the waysI do brokerage presentations.
So, Todd,I what's, what's jumped out to me
about Simon and him building his businessis that there's two things you mentioned.
One, very early in in his start in thishe invested in coaching.
You've talked about coaching. Yes.
Even even when it's financially difficult.
(28:05):
The value of that. Simon,
you've gained dividends from that.
You invested in education.
You're going to these conferences,these these congresses and, and, learning.
And you're taking time awayfrom your daily shoot activity.
So you're not out shooting.
And a lot of people might be saying, well,I'm losing money, but you're really not
(28:25):
because you've invested in your education,which then you applied
to your presentations at brokerages,which then ultimately gets you,
gives you more clients, more business.
Yeah.
That makes me think of your, story, Todd,
that you, talked about the,you know, the the two lumberjacks.
So one of them is just going homeand, sharpening his ax,
(28:48):
and the other guy's like, how do youhow do you cut more?
Would then I, and you work less.
And, you know, the guy's just like,I just go home,
sharpen and come backand it's it's much easier.
So the same thing has to be appliedto your business.
My calendar is full of,you know, the conferences I go, I book
(29:09):
them, you know, in advance so that I justdon't have the choice to go.
And, these days,
that I go to these
conferences are so packedwith knowledge and,
yeah, it's just, it'sit's steps like that, you know.
Yeah.
And it's, it's really a secret weapon.
(29:30):
We talked about this a little bitlast podcast when Shannon gave her
market update, the idea of we used a termthat isn't a common term unless you're
a realtor is how many days of inventoryare do we have right now.
And that's a questionyou could ask an agent.
And that means is it a buying?
(29:52):
Is it a buyer's market a seller's market?
Is it neutral.
But that is a term that you're goingto say to a realtor and they're going to
look at you like,this person really understands me.
And the same thing with Simon,
he's going to exp con and there'sa ton of conferences out there.
And even if you're like, hey,I it's exp Con or KW the home,
(30:12):
whatever they call it, or CB whateverthe Coldwell Bankers Conference is like.
It didn't come to my city.
What? Take one step down.
Just join your local boardof Realtors, MLS, the local organization.
It's called something differentwherever you're at.
But there is an organization where all therealtors go and they get continuing ed
(30:33):
and they have conferences,they have different committees,
and they have many thingsthat you can get involved with.
And you can gain that information rightthere.
Begin to put that in your head,and then you begin thinking like a client.
And when you think like your client,
that'swhat allows you to really understand
what your client needsbecause you think like them.
(30:57):
So I know when I
started, there is many timeswhere I would think like a photographer,
and that is good because
it's going to make your images creative.
But we see this a lotwith our new photographers.
If we don't give them any training,they go take these creative angles
and, right Craig, and they are nothingthat you need to sell a house
(31:21):
like a realtor is going to look at itand go, that's
not what I need,because that's not how I sell a house.
So that is really a key to doing thatwith learning, with educating.
Simon, talk about a little bit.
And you briefly mentioned this,
but I'm a firm proponent and believerin organizing a calendar.
You mentionedyou put these things on your calendar.
How big is an importanthow big of a aspect is,
(31:43):
organization in your calendar,in your day to day activities?
Yeah.
So building the systems in my,
company was the absolute foundationof where I am today because,
you know, I'm not at the top yet.
I'm just saying that,from where I was, I'm so much better
with my organization, and it,you know, I'm a I love to,
(32:07):
do stuff and be all over the placebecause I'm kind of hyperactive.
And so having a calendar that is,
set in advance for me is an absolute must.
I would, I would be absolutely lostwithout my calendar.
So I use Google calendar, and, you know,everything is on there.
You know, my,
(32:28):
I, I was talking about life balance,
the other day, so I got my training.
Is I right there every every time.
And, you know, every Wednesday night,I have a sacred night that I call.
It's just me and my girlfriend.
No TVs, no cell phone. We just take time.
We read a book together,and we just talk and just grab some time.
(32:50):
Because if you if you don't write itdown, it's just going to slip away.
And, you know, we'll do it tomorrow,and then you just forget about it
and you just finishby never doing it at all.
So having a calendar is the best.
And actually I've been usingSpiro for like a year now,
and it changed my business.
I, I learned about metrics.
(33:12):
And you know,now I look at that every day.
And it's just so helpful to see,how the analytics of your business
is changing throughout the time,throughout the season.
You know, it's the best for sure.
Yeah. Having a system like that.
Well, thank you for that.
Yeah.
Todd, I want to kind of shiftgears a little bit,
(33:34):
with with Simonbeing our first international guest. Yes.
Our first real estatemedia business owner outside of the US.
I love learning about different cultures.
And if if I had time,I would try and learn multiple languages.
And I just.
I'm fascinated by different waysof living throughout the world.
And that crosses over into business.
(33:54):
Now, Simon,a lot of what you've already talked
about todayis that's common across the board.
No matter where in the worldwe are as real estate media professionals,
business principles are pretty muchthe same in how we connect
with people, how we sell, you know, thethe media that we're providing.
But I'm kind of curious and I don't knowexactly how to phrase the question,
or orknow if, if you can encapsulate this, but
(34:18):
what are some of the cultural differences,you know, say, between,
you and Quebec and usin the United States, internationally,
what cultural differenceshave you noticed in business
and or the real estate media,
industry?
Yeah.
So there's a couple things for sure.
It's still pretty similar becausewe're still in, you know, North America.
(34:41):
But, you know, here in Quebec,there's actually laws
to, that,
you got to speak French.
Your website needs to be in French.
If you, do, you know,
publicity, it has to be mainly in French.
Then in English.
So there's a couple things like that,because, there's lots of people
(35:02):
that are trying to keep this languagealive here.
And it's slowly, slowlydeclining and, Yeah.
So that's maybe somethingthat I could talk about or,
there's not many, 3D tours here.
Okay.
Not as much as,you know, there's no, Zillow.
Zillow is not a part of my market.
(35:22):
So, you know, I know you guys have 3Dtours on Zillow and, and,
you know, they get boosted stuff on there.
So it's not something that we have here.
So there's not many, 3D tours.
So it's more about pictures, dronesand and doing stuff like that.
But yeah. And also sorry.
(35:43):
Go on.
Yeah.
But it's something that was not popular.
Really really, really not popular.
So, almost every client that I,
get here don't know about it,and or they're barely hearing about it.
(36:03):
So somethingthat I would bring into the game.
But they love it.
And I think it's awesome, for sure.
And, I love to do them.
So yeah, I think it's the best.
And it's a good added value to them.
(36:32):
Yeah.
So here Centris is our Zillow.
So every propertyis pretty much on Centris
And you got to have the, floor type,
you know, things like that.
And it's draw to,get the, measurements as well.
Yeah. Okay.
So, so another thing that I can talkabout this on another
(36:53):
topic, but,you know, winter, winter is hard here.
So, when winter kicks in,
we do a bunch of, you know,
just exterior listingsand stuff like that.
And so then when summer comes,it's it's a super hot summer as well.
So the market is always demanding
(37:14):
new pictures. And,
remodeling our picturesfor, for the properties that didn't sell.
So, yeah,from a business relationship standpoint.
So what I'm a lot of what I dowhen I'm trying to build relationships,
in my market with potential clientsis I'll take them up to coffee
(37:34):
and just get to know them.
You know, relationshipbuilding is is hugely important.
What does that look like in Quebec?
You know, versus say, Ohio?
Even Ohio to New York can be differenttoday, I'm
guessing, in how people interactwith each other.
So when you're building,client relationships,
Simon, whatwhat does that look like for you?
(37:54):
How how do you best do that?
Well, I don't
exactly know how it is in Ohio,to be honest.
But, you know,there's conference conferences everywhere.
There's meetings.
I just do client acquisitionthrough Instagram, and I send them videos
(38:16):
and I just meet with them sometimes to geta coffee or, so pretty much the same.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much the same onevery first shoot with a realtor.
I try to be the one on, on site,and then I just,
you know, talk to them about the culture,who we are, how to use our system.
And usually that's that's how we do it.
(38:38):
Todd, here's a good question.
Just keying off that.
So, Simon, you've got nowyou just lost a couple of photographers,
but you have other photographers.
So this is a common question.
I still deal with this today and I see itall the time in the Facebook groups.
So when you're out on that first shootwith, with a new client
with a new realtor,and you're the one that they're used to,
(38:59):
and you,you introduce another photographer and
do you find that they're
resistant and they don't want to workwith another photographer.
They just want to work with youand have you shoot.
And if that's the case, how do you handlethat?
as the owner.
So if I feel like the photographeris not bringing up the value
as much as I am or better,
(39:21):
I'm a bit hard on that.
So I did fire photographers in the past,
and I try to get like, peoplethat are creating an experience,
you know, and it's a people business,you know, what about that?
So it's you got to be a magnet.
You know, people need to,to like to talk to you.
And I think, when I introducenew photographers,
(39:46):
I really brag about the realtor
in front of them and just trying to
make them feel super confidentabout the new guy.
And, you know, thatthat this person is absolutely,
that is absolutely.
You know how you say that
they know everythingthat that this realtor needs and wants.
(40:09):
So we just put emphasis on that and,yeah, yeah,
I think that's a that's that's a greattechnique and, and a great thing to do.
And kind of a term that I've learnedis it's called managing people up.
And it's when you would give,you know, you would talk
good about someone in front of a colleagueor in front of a client.
And it gives them the confidence, like
(40:32):
if you're confident in them
and that client is confident in you, it'sjust psychologically
connecting the idea that the clientshould be confident and your new hire.
So and that can go a long way,not only in the cycle psychological
aspect of the client, your your agentswanting someone other than you.
But it also can go a long waywith that photographer of thinking,
(40:56):
oh well, oh, Simon thinks that about me.
Like, oh that's. And then sometimes
was just thinking, you can do it
allows you to do it.
You know, likesometimes we get so down on ourselves,
like my 12 year old, my oldest son,he I think you guys know
we play he plays a ton of basketball,I coach a ton of basketball.
And he is a really,really good basketball player.
(41:17):
But he is super hard on himself.
He works hard.
He has the skills.
He's put in the work,
but he will beat himself upfrom a psychological standpoint,
and it's building him upto think that he can do it.
And when he thinks he can do it,he goes out there and he does it
at a very high level.
And I think that's the same.
Not only it's the same
with everyone in life,like if you're beating yourself up, stop.
(41:39):
But if you begin managing upyour employees,
that's going to do so many thingsfrom a company standpoint,
and it will help you get over that humpof like and Craig, I agree with you.
We see it all the time.
Like,how can someone get someone other than me?
And that is a big that could be a big gap.
(42:00):
And there's athere's some good ways to do it.
But being on site, managing your people,making sure that your agents know
what your company's about,
if they know you want to grow and you'regrowing to serve them better, that's
way different than like, hey, I justI don't really want to shoot anymore.
And I'm going to try to get some peoplethat do a half as good as me,
like, you know, which one is the agentgoing to be comfortable with?
(42:20):
Yeah.
So yeah, I love that technique,Simon, of managing those individuals up.
Yeah.
You phrased it much better than me,but that that's pretty much the idea.
And, Yeah.
So so these individuals, are,
you know, in target cities around,where I'm from.
(42:40):
So, I don't have a, another photographerin my city.
I have, one that is an hour away
from Drummond ville that sideand an hour from that side.
So I call it the Golden Triangle.
So they are expert in their, market,in their market.
And that's how I really put it outto the realtors.
And, yeah, it works really well. See.
(43:03):
Excellent.
Well, Todd, we're kind of getting closeto the end of the podcast here.
So, Simon,what we always like to do is ask our guest
if there was one parting piece of advicethat you would give to listeners and,
viewers of the podcast,especially those outside of the US.
I would love for you to speak toto others in our industry outside the US.
(43:26):
What would your best piece of advicebe that you would give?
Well, absolutely.
Be prepared to fail.
It's absolutely part of itand in every aspect of your life.
But, in business it's always, you know,
repeating that processof not starting over but getting over
(43:50):
things that don't work out because it'salways going to happen as well.
So for me, it was pretty hardat first of not giving up on myself
and just going all the way and just,
you know, try to get a thousandno's or a thousand maybes is is a lot.
But when I do client acquisition,I love to, to get no's and just,
(44:14):
you know,
going forward and it is going to work outfor sure if you just stay consistent.
It's a lot about consistency in thein the long term.
It's a numbers game.
Yeah. It's a challenge to you right Simon.
Because it's not.
No it's no not right now.
That's a psychological.
They tell me no okay. No problem.
(44:35):
Not right nowI'm going to get you in three months.
Six months I might get you in 12 months.
It might be four years later.
But I'm going to get you.
So you're going back on my list,and you'll hear from me again.
Absolutely.
And the follow upsare extremely important.
So many times, in the past,I just send a message to a realtor as a,
(44:56):
you know, for client acquisition.
Didn't get a response,and I just dumped it, you know,
but you got to do a feedback.
Yeah, I follow up, and there'sso much value in those follow ups.
And realtors are busy.
They don't always have the time as, as usbusiness owners and usually, you know,
(45:17):
the third or the second or the thirdfollow up is actually going to work out.
And in many cases it does.
Yeah. That's so true.
The fortunes and the follow up.
That's what I think.
Shannon Shannon that's a Shannonism.
I she didn't create it.But the fortune is in the follow up.
So you know, and think about you've laidall that hard work.
If you've called someone one, two three,four times, you've gotten them
(45:40):
so much closer to a yes,
or you've gotten them closer to a no, butat least you understand where they're at.
And maybe you just need one more contactto make that person feel special.
Maybe you've learned a new thingat a conference.
You can use it as an opening line.
Maybe you can call themwith your promotion,
the new marketing toolkit, whatever it maybe, it's a reason to reach out.
(46:01):
And that's one step closerto getting that.
Yes, absolutely.
And sometimes, one,
free shootis going to get you many more shoots.
You know, we did a, a new recordat our business last, last month,
also at 31K,but we're super happy about it. And,
(46:23):
yes, so much
compounding of effort and we're not done.
And we are going to go,all the way with this.
And I'm super stoked to to be a part of,you know, all this community
that that's here to help.
And, it's it brings so much valueto have people around.
Yeah, yeah. Todd, I love his energy.
(46:45):
I just I was just going to sayI love his mindset.
Yeah. And he has energy.Is this incredible?
I, I think it's it's it is something forus all to learn from is just that mindset.
It is so much in our mind.
Simon,any any books off the top of your head?
You talked about books about mindset.
Anything come to your mind, comesto your mind using the same word a lot.
(47:06):
But if someone's like, hey,what book was it that you read?
Or where should I start?
Do you have a title recommendation? Sure.
So I got a couple for sure. I,I love to read.
I read, pretty much every day,only a 15 minute gap,
but it I get through books,through the months
and, you know, right nowI'm reading a book that is called The Gap.
(47:27):
And again,I don't know if you know about that.
So it's, it's talking about,
the gap between
where you are and where you want to be.
That's the trap.
If you look at the gap,you're you're going to be depressed.
You ain't going to be, you know, feel downbecause you're not there yet.
But if you look at the gain,which is the other part where you're from,
(47:51):
the historically, what have you beenthrough to get where you are?
If you think about that,you're going to be
super energized about,you know, looking at what you achieved
and all the, the, the knows thatyou've been through to get where you are.
And it's super powerful to do that.
The gap in the game.
(48:11):
Okay.
Awesome, awesome.
Well, Todd,any final questions that you have?
Simon, if someone has a question for youor wants to,
reach out to you, ishow could someone get in contact with you?
Sure. Just reach out.
I love toto help other people and bring value.
(48:31):
I actually,
give free,sales, teaching in schools here.
And that's where the idea came fromto do brokerage presentations
and actually gain from frombeing in front of people and giving value.
So just reach out to me on Facebook.
Instagram.
I'm super open to, to talk than that.
(48:53):
I love to help people.
Awesome.
Our guest this week, Simon Cayafrom Caya Medias in Quebec, Canada.
Simon, thank you againso much for taking time out of your day
and in spending itwith us here on the Spiro Podcast.
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
Yeah, Todd, it's been a great week.
Good to see you again. And,
(49:14):
we've got a great episode next week.
We're going to be speakingwith some realtors and getting their take
on what they're looking forin a real estate media partner.
So hearing right from our clients whatthey're looking for I'm really excited.
They're they're great team of ladies,that are very high energy.
(49:34):
They're they'rethey're a hoot to shoot for.
I love working with them.
So it's going to be a fun podcast.
So make sure you, come backnext week for that episode and, Yeah.
Simon, again, thank you so much.
It was a pleasuregetting to know you and talking to you.
And thank you again for making the time.
Yeah. Thanks so much.
I'm all I'm I'm all jacked up energized.
Now I'm going to go conquersomething. Yeah. There we go.
(49:57):
All right.
Well, guys, that's going to wrap it upfor this week on, on the Spiro podcast.
Thanks for making time.We know it's busy season.
So the fact that you're spendingtime to either watch us or listen
is not lost on us.
We appreciate that. We're humbled by it.
Make sure you take time this weekto just be thankful.
Have that great mindset that Simon talkedabout this thing on this episode.
Be thankful for the things that
(50:17):
that you've been blessedwith in your life,
and make sure you take some timeto breathe.
Have a great week. Take care.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.