February 19, 2025 • 42 mins
Todd shares an introduction to coaching techniques for you to start implementing in the leadership of your team. Connecting with the people on your team in a real, human level can pay dividends...not just literally, but also in the relationships you have with your employees and contractors.
Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Episode Open
01:43 Coaching Techniques Intro
03:17 Spiro Academy Info
05:34 Spiro Updates
07:31 Main Topic: Coaching Techniques
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):
When I started to realizehow important feelings were,
that's when it allowed me
to really connect with my teamand get those feelings back.
When I shared, they would share,and that's when we made progress.
Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Managing your real estate photographyand videography business
(00:27):
with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
and Craig Magrum
Hello and welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Spiro is our real estate software platform
that will help you manage runand scale your real estate media business.
It was designedby real estate photographers for you,
(00:49):
the real estate photographer,and we have used it at our real estate
media companysince inception for over 21 years here.
Now, it's looked a lot different,
but we have great features in there foryou and many more coming up soon.
So welcome to the podcast.
My name is Todd Kivimaki
I am the owner and the founder of Spiroand unfortunately.
(01:12):
My co-host, Craig is not with metoday, Craig Magrum.
He is my partner in crime
and he had to take a few shoots todaywith wow video tours.
Our real estate media company.
He works there.
If you don't know him, he has our hybridrole in sales and also photography.
So just metoday, excited to be here with you today.
(01:35):
Craig will be back on next weekand we will continue on with him together
this week.
I have an exciting topic.What I did yours.
I went back into the archivesof my coaching notes.
I've got them printed off hereand over the years
I have hired various different coaches.
(01:56):
I truly believe thata coach having a guide, this is a mentor.
A guide can
exponentially increase
the trajectory of your businessand the growth.
And I always when I saygrowth, growth is what you want it to be.
For us, Wow video tours,we do over 12,000 jobs a year.
(02:19):
We are growing.
We have 30 some photographersand we have defined growth to be number of
jobs, revenue, average order value growthdoesn't have to mean that for you.
It's actually taken a little bit of atransition in growth for me at Wow growth.
For me at Wow, that I was ableto step outside of the business.
I have two fabulous leadersthat run the company
(02:42):
and they are able to grow the companywithout me.
I'm there to
I'm there when they need me.
I'm there to helpbuild a sense of community,
but they are doing all the heavy liftingand they're putting people underneath them
that help them growand take things off their plate.
Coincidentally, that's kind ofwhat we're going to talk about today
on the podcastI'm excited to share my notes from.
(03:05):
His name was Dennis,one of my early coaches,
and we're going to talk abouta few things,
a few things that we're doing atWow that connect all of these.
But before I do so, I wanted to take
just a quick minute here to let you knowabout two exciting things coming up.
One is
we have some exciting classes
for you Spiro users out there.
(03:28):
We call it our Spiro Academy and myselfand Shannon Landers,
our VP of product at Spiro,who also helped me grow and scale Wow.
Our media company is going to be teaching,so we're going to do a couple three
different classes right nowand we're happy to add more
and we're going to be doing these monthly
and some of thema couple of times a month.
(03:48):
So the first class we're callingSpiro 201,
and that is going to be myselfteaching you
all the day to daytips and tricks of how to use Spiro.
So are you using all of the functionality?
What happens?
How do I quickly reschedule atI quickly place in order?
How do I do the day to daytask of what are
(04:09):
and what tips and tricks doI have to share with you then?
And Spiro 202, Shannon and myself,when available,
she is going to be teaching youpricing strategies.
So this is going to be fabulous.
This is going to behow to think about your services,
how to think about what's involvedwith the cost of goods, with overhead,
(04:31):
with pricing to your clients competitions.
What should I price,what should I sell before
we see this question asked all the time?
And it's a question that weI had very early on too.
So we're going to solve those thingsfor you.
Tell you about how we strategizeand what we do
to make sure that you're pricing thingscorrectly.
(04:51):
Then finally,our third class is going to be Spiro 203
and that's going to be task and workflows.
So this is the engine,the powerful engine inside Spiro
that can automate the after shoot process,
dropbox folders, sharing with editors,
adding in task all of your to do listauto importing back into the property
(05:14):
website, automatically sendingdelivery emails if you want that,
whatever it may be,we are going to show you how to automate
that engine for you so that you can getyour time back to focus on
what growth isand what steps you need to do
to grow your business.
Finally, the second thing that I want to
mentionwere up and coming Spiro updates.
(05:37):
So we are looking at an early March 2025
release dateand we are going to give you some goodies.
We're going to give you the abilityto send feedback forms after the shoot.
This could be afterthe photographer leaves the house.
This could be afteryou deliver the media hack.
This could be after the order is placed.
How was the ordering process?
(05:57):
Do you have any questions for us?
You can set expectations in thatand we also have a mechanism
to help you understand how that wentfor your client
one through five starsand you can send them
to get Google reviews, Facebook reviewsand to build your profiles there.
So we're excited about that.
We are also looking at the order pages
(06:20):
and how you can sell better your AOV
or your average order valueis incredibly important.
It's one of the three
most important metricsat your real estate media business.
We track it.
We know what it is at ours,and we know what the goal of our AOV is,
and so does everyone else at the company.
So we are going to look at howyou can sell better on that order page.
(06:44):
Then finally, we are givingor we're creating and launching
what we call landing pages.
So this is a collectionof different order pages so
your clients can go to this landing pageand they can go to the appropriate
order page.
Maybe they have an Airbnb that needs doneand they're not going to order.
From your residential order page.
(07:05):
You can display your Airbnb,commercial lifestyle, headshots,
whatever segments you want to advertise,you can do it on there.
You put your brand colors,you put your brand messaging on there,
and you make it easy for your clientsto get to the appropriate order page.
So excited about those updates coming upand like I said,
(07:25):
early March 2025,those will be live inside your system.
So I dug into the vault for you all.
I literally went and I have
paper notebooks that I have written on.
And keep in mind, I kept my day to daynotes and journals in,
and I kept notebooks during
my coaching callswith my coaches over the years.
(07:49):
And this is somethingthat was fun to go back through.
And so I went back years ago,I think this was 2018
of these coaching notes, and it was funjust to read them and just to kind of see
what was in my head at the timeand to see what my coach was teaching me.
So one thing that I learnedas you transition in your business
(08:14):
and grow your businessand you step out of the singular role
of photographer into business owner,
one thing that is incredibly important
is that you continue to tell everyone why.
Why are you doing
what you are doing?
(08:34):
Why are you asking themto do what they're doing?
I think early in my career
I minimize this ideaof telling everyone why.
And as I look back, it's probably because
I knew why in my own head, right?
I mean, think about it.
(08:56):
Why are you doing what you're doing?
You don't have to say it to yourself,right?
You just know instinctivelybecause your brain works like that.
So I found out in some negative ways
that not telling people why
a lot, they would conclude why.
(09:18):
So a saying I love and useall the time is you're for employees.
Perception is their reality
and if they perceive somethingin the wrong way, that's their reality.
And you know what?
They're going to go tell other employeesor other contractors.
Heck, maybe even some of your clients,some of these things
(09:41):
that are simply not true.
And you all it's not because they're beingand negatively intentional.
They're really not.
It's not like they want to undermine you.
It's not likethey want to hurt your business.
They just need to know why.
And they're trying to give thatto your employees, your clients,
(10:04):
whatever it may be.
So it's incredibly important
that you set this Why
For your company, for your clientsand for your employees.
Now, one thing that we just did,
and in fact we just did it this morning,we did a company kickoff.
(10:24):
And what that was, was we got everybodyinto a virtual meeting room.
If you can do it
live and in person, get everybodyin the same room, rent out a room,
get a board room
somewhere, have them into your houseor have them into your office,
have some food, some beveragesnonalcoholic.
I mean, you do what you want,but you know, this is professional
(10:47):
and gather with them face to face.
Now, for our team,we spanned many different states.
We span across the world.
And yes, we have our VAs in here as well.
So we have team members in Kosovo,we have team members in the Philippines,
and we want to make surethat they are in this meeting.
They're a huge part of our business.
(11:08):
We could not operatewithout those team members,
so they need to know why as welland we include them.
So we did this kick off meetingand what we did is
we looked back at 2024what happened last year.
We happened to send a survey out toour clients at the very beginning of 2025.
And in it we asked a typical questions.
(11:30):
It's the same survey we send every year,so we ask them about quality,
quality of the customer service
call, quality of the schedulingand ordering process,
quality of their mediaoverall satisfaction.
We're asking them those questionsand we're having them rate them based on
a scale of
(11:52):
extremely satisfied,
satisfied, neutral,
dissatisfied, extremely dissatisfied.
And then we have a not applicable.
So we rate them on that scaleor we ask them to rate us on that scale,
and then we look at that feedback.
So we had collected thatat our media company
and we had that data to share.
(12:13):
Now one thing is, is all of our employeesknew that we sent that survey out.
So we're always communicating this.
And we just once I found over the yearsthat the more transparent
you can be as a business owner,the better.
Again, remember,some of these things live in your head.
You know everything about your business.
So it seems like a waste of time,or at least to me
(12:36):
it seemed like a waste of timeto actually slow down
and tell everybodywhat I already knew, right?
I mean, think about it.
How busy are all we?
This is what was going on in my headby the way, how busy are all we?
We have way too much to do.I'm way too busy.
Why would I stopand tell them something that I know?
(12:59):
It sounds
kind of crazy even saying it,
that that wasn't aware that
I was not awarethat that needed to be done.
Like, why would I just assume
that they knew everythingthat was in my head?
But I've learned from it.
So if you have that assumption,please take time, slow down
(13:21):
and tell your team what is happening.
So our employees knew thatthis survey went out
and we needed to closethat loop of communication,
meaningthey needed to know what the survey said.
Heck, they're directly involvedwith this overall satisfaction
and the growth of our company.
So we took the first halfof the presentation today to go
(13:44):
over those numbers.
And for us, those numbers were great.
We were excited about them.
They were really about what we
received the last time we did
the survey and nothing more to knowother than that
we just were still very high,you know, an overall net promoter score.
(14:05):
And this is somethingthat Steve tracks for us
and we can go intowhat a Net Promoter Score is
and maybe another podcastor maybe one of my coaching calls.
But we had an overall netpromoter score of 84%, 84.6%.
So 85 if you round up, which we feeland from an industry
standard is an incredible netpromoter score,
(14:26):
that is someone who is extremely satisfiedwith your services, meaning
they're giving you referrals,they're raving fans
and we wanted to celebrate thatwith our employees.
It's they're the reason whywe got such a great score.
So we
took timeto do that and then at the end of that
(14:46):
or we transition excuse me, we transition
in the next segment of telling themwhat's ahead.
So we're looking back to 24and we're looking ahead to 25, right?
Everybody wants to know where we're going.
Think about it.
If you were in the car going somewhere
and you have no cluewhere their driver is going,
(15:06):
doesn't it get a little unnerving, like,why am I in here?
Why am I doing this?
So your employees
and your teamwant to know where you're going again,
I'm going to say it againand this is going to become redundant.
I'm sorry, y'all,but just because it's in your head
does not meanthat your team knows about it.
(15:28):
And when they don't know about something,they're going to make up
a conclusion to it.
And that sometimes might be crazy,
right?
You're like, Remember the telephone game?
We used to play an elementary school
telephone game where you start
was saying something with the first personand then you whispered in that person,
(15:50):
whispers it into the ear of the secondperson, into the ear of the third, fourth.
Well, by the time you get to the 20thperson, that is nowhere even close.
That statement or that idea is nowhereeven close to the way it started.
So please, you have a great opportunity
as the business ownerto make sure that everybody is clear.
Don't play the telephone game.
(16:11):
Just get over the loudspeakerin announcements. Okay?
Why did they do announcements?
The Pledge of Allegianceon the loudspeaker?
Because everybody heard the same message.
Okay, So that needs to be you.
You are the principal of your business.
Okay, So the second
portion of this kickoff meeting,we looked at 2025.
(16:31):
And for us at our company,we are focused on a two prong approach.
In 2025, we want to look at the foundationof our business
and just fill in anything
that is a little bit weak, any gaps.
So this is systems, processes,this is personnel.
(16:53):
We're hiring six photographers,we're hiring an admin and two Vas.
Right now.
This is filling in all of those gaps.
Okay.
Looking at our hiring process,we know if we want to grow,
we've got to be able to hire and trainquickly and effectively.
This is the system where in the systemwe have some old tasks hanging out.
Do we have old pricing?
(17:14):
So this is the foundationalbase of your business.
Now, as the
business owner, you might be sitting theresaying, Hey, well, Todd, how do I know?
This seems like a lot of work to do.
Like I need to go back and I need toI got to figure out what's wrong with it.
I'm just so busy right now
trying to keep up with the added shootsthat are coming in.
(17:37):
And it's awesomethat your business is growing.
But I would say, no,this doesn't need to take up in a time.
How do we figure out those gaps?
It's really simple.
We ask our employees, we ask our clients.
That's one thing over the yearsthat I've learned
that if I don't ever know something,I used to sit and try real hard to think
(18:02):
like, Let me
thinkabout what's wrong with my business. Hmm.
You know,maybe one or two things come to mind.
And those are probably the the most recentproblems you've had at your company.
It doesn't actually mean it'sa problem, though.
It means it might be a very small thingthat you don't need to turn attention to.
So we ask our employees,we track these things.
(18:24):
We look at the metricsof how frequently these things come in.
So we ask our employees, andwe've done this over the last three months
and we've been collecting thatso we know where these gaps exist.
So we are letting everybody knowabout those gaps.
Also,the thing that we've been doing at Wow
is we've been empowering our,our, our employees.
(18:47):
So one really neat thing that we've done,
you know, I think about ten years agoor 15 years ago,
I personally posted, created
and posted job descriptionsfor new employees.
I would personally call those people.
I would personally set upthose different rounds of interviews.
(19:07):
I would arrange all of that.
I would look at, you know, feedback,
I would call references.
And then as we grew,
the managers at Wow Begin doing that,and there was a segment
where I would do it with themand they would do it with me,
and then they would do it by themselvesand I would review
(19:29):
and now the managers all do thaton their own.
Well, one neat thing that we've done
early in this year iswe have passed that hiring, that sourcing
and hiring down to the peopleand the division.
So we've had people at Wow that have beenhere five, six, seven, eight years
and they are
(19:49):
doing their job all day, every day.
So really they're the best personto understand who the correct teammate is.
So we had trumpeted this.
We talked about this at this team meeting.
And one thing that we did is
we made sure that we were intentionalabout saying the growth
(20:09):
of every employee in the meetingand this was the bulk of the meeting, and
I think it was actuallythe most important thing in the meeting
because we got to saythank you to everybody.
We got to talk abouthow the person who used to do head shots
now has a different person in the companydoing head shots.
How fabulous troubleshootingand who stepped up to be
(20:33):
a very good teacher who is doing thathiring and onboarding process?
We looked at sales and statsfrom our sales team.
We looked at one ofour salespeople stepped up
and now they're one of ouror they're our sales manager right below.
Steve So we looked at all of these itemsand we celebrated the team.
(20:55):
And some of that is because
we understand that belongingis incredibly important to human beings.
That was one of my notes.
I rode down here and I am really gettingto my notes, y'all.
They, they fit together.
But in my notes here from Dennis,
I have number one biggest motivation
(21:17):
and equal sign is belonging.
When people feel like they belong,
they will run through walls for you.
They will make your life easier.
They will solve problems.
They won't just come to you with problems.
(21:37):
They will come to you
and tell you a problemand they will tell you how they solved it.
Oh, how fabulous is that for
you as the business owner?
You know, stepping back real quick
and looking at the way I ran my companyvery early on,
I felt like I needed to be involvedin everything.
(21:58):
I felt like I was the only onethat could make the right decision.
I was the only one that really caredenough to make the right decision.
Literally.
What copy paper do you want?
Like, Oh, well, probably Todd'sthe only one qualified to decide
if we get the £27 or the £31 copy paper.
(22:19):
Right. It's crazy.
It's crazy talk in my brain.
Like I want to make sure I pick outthe copy paper that we get the 98
brightness or the 100 brightness.
And that's a silly example,but I say it to make fun of myself.
And so you all can laugh at mebecause those were things
that slowed me down,not empowering the team.
(22:41):
Why would I spend my timethinking about copy
paper?
So empoweringyour team is incredibly important
and the way you empower themand you get decisions that you would make
or even better is that they feel likethey belong at your company.
So we felt as though taking timeout of this meeting to highlight
(23:04):
and give kudos and to cheer for everyonewas incredibly important.
Last year was our best year ever at Wow.
And when you grow to a company and we did
12,253 shoots,that was our best year ever.
And it's tough to continue to grow.
There's a lot of moving pieces.
(23:24):
And not only did we grow,
but we felt like everyone at the companygrew and was taking steps up,
so we wanted to make sure that they feltlike they belonged.
And taking timeto do so was important to us.
Finally, we wrapped up the presentation.
We're just looking ahead at 2025.
What the rest of it looked like.
It was those foundational pieces,making sure everybody could step up
(23:48):
and continueto feel like they were growing, that wow,
that they were doing things
that they felt motivated to doand they felt belonging and doing.
And then we looked athow we were going to grow.
And this is basically just thatwe were going to evaluate
these opportunities, look to see wherethe team saw the most growth,
and we were going tothen focus on those activities.
(24:11):
So that'swhat our presentation looked like.
We took a outer space theme.
Steve did a great job with it.We took an outer space thing.
This was getting ready to launch.
And the thing about this was, isyour company
is going to go throughall of these things.
And Steve made a great pointat the end of the presentation
that as your company grows,you're always going to create more gaps.
(24:33):
You're always going to figure outhow to fill those in.
People are always going to step upand help you fill those in,
and then you're going going to pour somegasoline on the fire and grow some more,
and you're going to growtill you create some cracks.
And when you create those cracks,you're going to fill them back in.
And this it's this continuous
(24:53):
cycle of patchingand then growing and patching and growing.
So that was an exciting time.
The overall meeting was about 60 minutes.
It was probably a little bit long.
I'll tell you all in person,it might have been okay,
but we did it in the early morning before.
Well, as the day got started.
(25:14):
And I think
some of our especially customer serviceteam was maybe a little distracted
or feeling anxious about what was comingin on the phone lines and emails.
So ideally,if you can get the whole team together
outside of business hours
and if you can get somewhereand feed them dinner
or you can do something like that,I think that's a great use of time.
(25:34):
So I wanted to hita few more notes here and
and then I'm going to wrap up for today.
But I want to stay at a high leveland kind of the touchy feely,
you know, overall, or this is after all,this is Valentine's Day.
I know it's not when you'relistening to it, but I'm recording
on Valentine's Day.
And I think that touchy feely
(25:57):
has gottenme so much further along in life
and businessbeing in touch with those emotions.
I know some of you out there,
especially some of you males, are like,Oh, Todd, I'm turning you off.
Please don't.
Please don't.
When I started to realizehow important feelings were,
(26:17):
that's when it allowed me
to really connect with my teamand get those feelings back.
When I shared, they would share,and that's when we made progress.
So one thing that I have written down herefrom Dennis
is that everything you do becomessymbolic.
(26:39):
Let me read that one more time.
Everything you do becomes symbolicas you grow
to be the leader of your company.
You should try to move your team alongin a way
that they are remembering these thingsthat you say, these motivational terms,
(26:59):
and then they
begin using these motivational terms.
Okay, You know, just some silly things.
Over the years, I would say,
look at Wowwe say we give the people what they want,
give them what they want,and people will repeat that at, wow,
you know, a client callsand they want something like,
that's a little crazy,but hey, we give them what way they want.
(27:20):
It doesn't mean it's what we want,but we want our clients to be important.
Clients are our number one priority.
Another thing I can't tell youhow many times I hear repeated
throughout the companyare one of our five core values.
Core value number one isclients are our number one.
Priority.
Number two is hard work.
(27:41):
It takes hard work.
If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Number three is we are family.
We talk about family a lot.
Number fouris be a disturbance in the force.
We want to do things differently.
We want to continue to give our clientsnew and better and pioneer things.
And number five is think growth.
We want to grow. That's important.
(28:03):
It's important for our clientsto feel like we're growing.
It's important for our employeesto feel like they are growing.
So we havea lot of employees that use those phrases
and tie core values backin, and that would only be possible.
Or that is only possible because we do
think symbolic about what we say.
(28:26):
And now you're not going to say, you know,they're not gonna quote everything
you say.
Sometimesyou just need to get some work done in.
You're talking normal conversation.
But if you can always tie that back in,
remember the why
Why are you doing this?
It's for a bigger reason.
And if you can tie people in to that,then they feel that sense of belonging.
(28:47):
Okay, I've got two more things for you.
All that I've highlighted here on my notesfrom my one of my calls with Dennis,
a coach of mine from several yearsago, this is a funny one.
He said the number one tax a businesspays.
Does anybody know what that is?
What's your number one tax that you pay?
(29:09):
The number one taxthat you pay as a business
is the stupid tax
man.
I have paid a lot of taxin stupidness over the years.
I don't know about you guys,but I can think
back over things of,Wow, I really did that.
Aw man, we really spent that money.
Heck, one year we are.
(29:31):
We met with our largest clientand she decided to do upgrade
into our what we call our social six.
It was five more videosand a landing page of social media videos
that they could use at various stagesof the of the listing lifecycle.
So coming soon just listed soldpending things like that.
(29:53):
See it today and she did
she does 100 with us a year100 videos with us a year.
We realized towards the end of one yearwe didn't have a miller for any of those.
Okay.
Yeah. 100 times 100 bucks.
We lost ten grand there.
All right.
That was the stupid tax guy.
We flipped it on side.
We made sure that she knew, like, Hey,we're going to take care of this.
(30:14):
We're not going to expect it back.
Bill, you we use it as good.
So when you do something stupid,you got to find out
how you can get the good from it.
A lot of times if you do something stupid,
you just have to go tellthat person and be genuine with them.
But man, I've paida lot of stupid tax over the years
and when you do it, it's no fun.
But if you harp on itand if you beat yourself up over it,
(30:39):
you're going to continue to pay that tax.
Okay, find
the good in it,there's always good in everything.
I truly believe it.
I love the live that way.
I much prefer to live that wayto find the good in something than the bad
and move on from there.
Another term we use hereis that's a badge of failure.
(31:00):
So we wear that badge of failure.
You know, I'm wearing it proudlybecause I've learned from it.
And you know, also sometimes we saythat's just the cost of education.
So, you know,how many of you went to school
and got your degreeand running a real estate media business?
Right.
Not nobody. Right. I'm being silly.
(31:22):
So you haven't learned this?
It's not.
We're learning as we go.
And some things,no matter how much you read or listen
to people or study, you just have to learnsome things by making mistakes.
And mistakescan be really good things for you.
They hurt, but man, if you can findhow you can turn things around
(31:44):
in the good in that,then that stupid tax is worth paying.
Finally, the lastthing, it's a little bit of an activity
he left me withand I think this is a great activity.
So what he challenged me to dois to sit with one employee
and he told me,he said, Hey, blame this on me.
(32:06):
So hey, I'mworking with a coach right now.
And he told methat I needed to sit with someone.
And I really highly thinkI think highly of your opinions.
And I, I just need maybe 15 minuteswith you to ask you a few questions.
That's the way you could phrase it.
So, again, blame it on me.
Blame it on the fact that I'm asking youto do this with one of your employees.
(32:27):
I think there is valueand being transparent
and saying that you're workingwith a coach there.
There's nothing bad about that.
I think I thought that before, Hey,I'm going to hide that.
I'm working with a coach because I don'twant anybody to know how messed up I am,
right?
I mean, come on.
No, just tell them.
They're like, Oh, that's cool.
Todd's trying to get better.
(32:48):
Todd's working on building this bigger.
So tell him that.
Tell him you're working with the coach
and Dennis.
He challenged meto talk about progress and belonging.
So here's a few thingsthat you can ask them. So
first off, in any meeting,I like to start off in asking
(33:08):
what's going well, I always liketo start off on the positive.
What's going well, see where they're at.
It might beit might just be a specific situation.
I made this client happyor we fix these photos
or it might be something more,
you know, higher levelwhere they're saying, Hey, I'm progressing
towards some of these skillsor I feel good that the team is growing.
(33:31):
But I love getting started withwhat's going well.
It's just a good way to start meetings
then, You know,
the flip side of that is asking them,you know, where
there are some areas for improvementand just listen, write those down.
Don't try to solve them.
Do not try to solve them. Just listen.
I can't tell you how important it isand how much your employees
(33:52):
will appreciateif you just listen to them.
So what are areas of improvement?
And then ask them
if they have what their goals are,
personal and business wise.
One thing that I always ask isI say, you know, I really value
(34:13):
you as an employee and appreciate all thatyou do, and I want to make sure
that you feel full, feel fulfilled here
at wild video tours
and I want to knowwhat fulfilled is for you.
What does that progress look like?
(34:33):
You know,
today you are in our customer service.
You're leading customer service.
What would you like to be doing?
What would you like that to look likein one year or three years or five years
and then let them talk again?
Some things that I didis I brought some of that terminology in,
okay, how can you be fulfilled?
(34:55):
What are your goals?
This makes them feel connected to you.
And again, remember,we're trying to have them feel
like they belong at your companyand just let them talk.
You're not going to try to guide themhere.
You're not going to try to do anythingbut just write this down, okay?
(35:19):
Write down what they say.
So you know, and you don't forget it.
They will find valuein the fact that you ask them
and they will find value in the factthat you are writing it down.
Then finally,
you know where they want to grow.
And for me, when I used to do this
(35:41):
and without the last questionI'm going to give you,
it felt very heavy for me because I feltnow they told me what they wanted
and I'd have to figure out howthey would get that.
And again, that's just a thought erethat was putting it all myself.
Why would why would Todd needto figure out how they grow?
Just ask him.
Todd again, I paid stupid tax here.
(36:05):
So the next question I want you to
ask is and say, Hey, thank you so much.
I love to hear your definition of growthand where you want to grow here.
And I'm so honoredthat you want to grow at our company.
Now, looking at where you're
at today and understandingwhere you want to grow in one year,
(36:26):
three years, five yearsif you are here today.
And I always put my hand up,
you know, my left hand up, you know,I put it around my chin and then I say,
if growth is up hereand I put my other hand up higher.
And for those of you watching on YouTube,this is going to make sense.
But I have one hand lower,one hand higher.
The hand higher is growth
(36:49):
and there is gaps in the middle.
I say if you are here todayand you're trying to get there
in this middle, what do you need to learn?
What do you need from me to be
successful at your growth?
And then just listen.
I can tell you the things
(37:10):
that I've gotten fromthis question have been,
hey, I probably need to shadowphotographers.
I need to learnwhat the photographers are doing better.
I'm going to help our customersand I and I'm going to build relationships
with our photographers.
I truly need to know what they're goingthrough.
A customer serviceperson told me that I've had
(37:32):
other people tell me that they needto learn more about personalities.
They want to manage,
and in order to manage, they feel likethey need to understand personality types
and how to help motivate and set goals
for those personality types,how to communicate more properly.
So you will find gold in thiswhen you ask them if you're here to get
(37:53):
there, which is your goal in between,what do you need to know?
And then just write that down
and then
finallyask them one more question and say,
what makes them feel likethey belong here?
Now This is a little bit of a touchyfeely question.
Again, here's my feelings clock.
I know a nosey on YouTube.
(38:14):
You're seeing my feelings clock right now,but those you that are listening
only I have a clockand it has a whole bunch of different
feelings written on itand they're in colors
and they're everything from feelingsof astonished to worried,
to violated, to loathing, ignored, loving,
(38:34):
hopeful, sensitive, peaceful, powerful.
This is what you're asking forin this case,
asking themwhat makes them feel like they belong.
And this might be a hard one.
They might not have something to sayif they don't just say,
Hey, I just want to make sure that you dofeel like you belong here
and I highly valueyou and all the work you bring.
(38:56):
I want to grow with you.
So if there's ever anything in the futurethat you think of
that makes you feel like you belong,I want to make sure that I know.
So again,those are the things that I like to ask
that you that I'm challenging you to askin this meeting.
So what's going well?
What needs improvementto stay very high level and quick there?
(39:19):
Then get to goals.
If you are here and your goal isthey're up higher, what's in between?
What do you need to know?
And then ask them, Hey,I really appreciate you and I want you
to make surethat you can achieve your goals here.
What makes you feel like you belong here?
At Wow Video tours.
So that is a challenge to you all.
(39:40):
I mean, some of you are saying,hey, this is this is a little weird, Todd.
This is pretty touchy feely,
but I can't tell you how symbolic.
Again, I'm going to use one of my words.
This will be in the eyes of your employee
that you took time to sit with them.
You don't want
(40:00):
to be the boss that's too busyto care about their employees,
that's too busy and unapproachableto come ask questions.
You don't want to be that.
I've been thatpeople make up their own reality.
They make up their own things.
They feel like they're on an islandand then they leave your company.
Please take the timeto care about your people
and it will come back to you tenfold.
(40:22):
And again, you're not doing itbecause you hope it comes back tenfold,
but you're simply doing itbecause it's the right thing to do
to serve them.
Well,
that's going to wrap us up herefor another week of the Spiro podcast.
Hey, thank you for sticking with me.
Let me know how these conversations went.
I'd love to know what responses you getwhen you ask an employee,
(40:45):
Hey, if you are here now
and your goals are up here,what do you need to know in between?
Were you shocked at what they said?
Did you ever think about that or was itwhat you expected?
Please share with me.
You can contact us here at Spiro.
hello@spiro.media.
Also you can reach us in the pinkchat bubble if you have a tech question
(41:07):
in with Spiro bottom right hand corner
the pink chat bubbleyou can get the team in there.
And if you're like, Hey,
I love the sign up for Spiro,you can visit spiro.media,
you can sign up for free,you can create an account instantly.
There's no payment required.
No, no adding a credit card.
Also, if you are wanting to get geared up
(41:27):
and systematizefor 2025 here early in the year, yet
we do have a free onboardingwhere our team will do the setup for you.
So if you're interested in that, pleasemessage us in the pink chat bubble
or email us.
hello@spiro.media and ask the teamabout the onboarding sessions
and we'll be happy to give yousome more information.
(41:49):
Hey, have a fabulous rest of your day.
Thank you for spending time with meand we will see you in a week.
And be sure to take time to take a breath.
Thank you for joining usfor the Spiro podcast, managing
your real estate photographyand videography business.
This is a production of Spiroand wow video tours.
You can find out more about Spirois real estate, media, business management
(42:12):
software at our Web site, Spiro.media.
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
When I started to realizehow important feelings were,
that's when it allowed me
to really connect with my teamand get those feelings back.
When I shared, they would share,and that's when we made progress.
Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Managing your real estate photographyand videography business
(00:27):
with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
and Craig Magrum
Hello and welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Spiro is our real estate software platform
that will help you manage runand scale your real estate media business.
It was designedby real estate photographers for you,
(00:49):
the real estate photographer,and we have used it at our real estate
media companysince inception for over 21 years here.
Now, it's looked a lot different,
but we have great features in there foryou and many more coming up soon.
So welcome to the podcast.
My name is Todd Kivimaki
I am the owner and the founder of Spiroand unfortunately.
(01:12):
My co-host, Craig is not with metoday, Craig Magrum.
He is my partner in crime
and he had to take a few shoots todaywith wow video tours.
Our real estate media company.
He works there.
If you don't know him, he has our hybridrole in sales and also photography.
So just metoday, excited to be here with you today.
(01:35):
Craig will be back on next weekand we will continue on with him together
this week.
I have an exciting topic.What I did yours.
I went back into the archivesof my coaching notes.
I've got them printed off hereand over the years
I have hired various different coaches.
(01:56):
I truly believe thata coach having a guide, this is a mentor.
A guide can
exponentially increase
the trajectory of your businessand the growth.
And I always when I saygrowth, growth is what you want it to be.
For us, Wow video tours,we do over 12,000 jobs a year.
(02:19):
We are growing.
We have 30 some photographersand we have defined growth to be number of
jobs, revenue, average order value growthdoesn't have to mean that for you.
It's actually taken a little bit of atransition in growth for me at Wow growth.
For me at Wow, that I was ableto step outside of the business.
I have two fabulous leadersthat run the company
(02:42):
and they are able to grow the companywithout me.
I'm there to
I'm there when they need me.
I'm there to helpbuild a sense of community,
but they are doing all the heavy liftingand they're putting people underneath them
that help them growand take things off their plate.
Coincidentally, that's kind ofwhat we're going to talk about today
on the podcastI'm excited to share my notes from.
(03:05):
His name was Dennis,one of my early coaches,
and we're going to talk abouta few things,
a few things that we're doing atWow that connect all of these.
But before I do so, I wanted to take
just a quick minute here to let you knowabout two exciting things coming up.
One is
we have some exciting classes
for you Spiro users out there.
(03:28):
We call it our Spiro Academy and myselfand Shannon Landers,
our VP of product at Spiro,who also helped me grow and scale Wow.
Our media company is going to be teaching,so we're going to do a couple three
different classes right nowand we're happy to add more
and we're going to be doing these monthly
and some of thema couple of times a month.
(03:48):
So the first class we're callingSpiro 201,
and that is going to be myselfteaching you
all the day to daytips and tricks of how to use Spiro.
So are you using all of the functionality?
What happens?
How do I quickly reschedule atI quickly place in order?
How do I do the day to daytask of what are
(04:09):
and what tips and tricks doI have to share with you then?
And Spiro 202, Shannon and myself,when available,
she is going to be teaching youpricing strategies.
So this is going to be fabulous.
This is going to behow to think about your services,
how to think about what's involvedwith the cost of goods, with overhead,
(04:31):
with pricing to your clients competitions.
What should I price,what should I sell before
we see this question asked all the time?
And it's a question that weI had very early on too.
So we're going to solve those thingsfor you.
Tell you about how we strategizeand what we do
to make sure that you're pricing thingscorrectly.
(04:51):
Then finally,our third class is going to be Spiro 203
and that's going to be task and workflows.
So this is the engine,the powerful engine inside Spiro
that can automate the after shoot process,
dropbox folders, sharing with editors,
adding in task all of your to do listauto importing back into the property
(05:14):
website, automatically sendingdelivery emails if you want that,
whatever it may be,we are going to show you how to automate
that engine for you so that you can getyour time back to focus on
what growth isand what steps you need to do
to grow your business.
Finally, the second thing that I want to
mentionwere up and coming Spiro updates.
(05:37):
So we are looking at an early March 2025
release dateand we are going to give you some goodies.
We're going to give you the abilityto send feedback forms after the shoot.
This could be afterthe photographer leaves the house.
This could be afteryou deliver the media hack.
This could be after the order is placed.
How was the ordering process?
(05:57):
Do you have any questions for us?
You can set expectations in thatand we also have a mechanism
to help you understand how that wentfor your client
one through five starsand you can send them
to get Google reviews, Facebook reviewsand to build your profiles there.
So we're excited about that.
We are also looking at the order pages
(06:20):
and how you can sell better your AOV
or your average order valueis incredibly important.
It's one of the three
most important metricsat your real estate media business.
We track it.
We know what it is at ours,and we know what the goal of our AOV is,
and so does everyone else at the company.
So we are going to look at howyou can sell better on that order page.
(06:44):
Then finally, we are givingor we're creating and launching
what we call landing pages.
So this is a collectionof different order pages so
your clients can go to this landing pageand they can go to the appropriate
order page.
Maybe they have an Airbnb that needs doneand they're not going to order.
From your residential order page.
(07:05):
You can display your Airbnb,commercial lifestyle, headshots,
whatever segments you want to advertise,you can do it on there.
You put your brand colors,you put your brand messaging on there,
and you make it easy for your clientsto get to the appropriate order page.
So excited about those updates coming upand like I said,
(07:25):
early March 2025,those will be live inside your system.
So I dug into the vault for you all.
I literally went and I have
paper notebooks that I have written on.
And keep in mind, I kept my day to daynotes and journals in,
and I kept notebooks during
my coaching callswith my coaches over the years.
(07:49):
And this is somethingthat was fun to go back through.
And so I went back years ago,I think this was 2018
of these coaching notes, and it was funjust to read them and just to kind of see
what was in my head at the timeand to see what my coach was teaching me.
So one thing that I learnedas you transition in your business
(08:14):
and grow your businessand you step out of the singular role
of photographer into business owner,
one thing that is incredibly important
is that you continue to tell everyone why.
Why are you doing
what you are doing?
(08:34):
Why are you asking themto do what they're doing?
I think early in my career
I minimize this ideaof telling everyone why.
And as I look back, it's probably because
I knew why in my own head, right?
I mean, think about it.
(08:56):
Why are you doing what you're doing?
You don't have to say it to yourself,right?
You just know instinctivelybecause your brain works like that.
So I found out in some negative ways
that not telling people why
a lot, they would conclude why.
(09:18):
So a saying I love and useall the time is you're for employees.
Perception is their reality
and if they perceive somethingin the wrong way, that's their reality.
And you know what?
They're going to go tell other employeesor other contractors.
Heck, maybe even some of your clients,some of these things
(09:41):
that are simply not true.
And you all it's not because they're beingand negatively intentional.
They're really not.
It's not like they want to undermine you.
It's not likethey want to hurt your business.
They just need to know why.
And they're trying to give thatto your employees, your clients,
(10:04):
whatever it may be.
So it's incredibly important
that you set this Why
For your company, for your clientsand for your employees.
Now, one thing that we just did,
and in fact we just did it this morning,we did a company kickoff.
(10:24):
And what that was, was we got everybodyinto a virtual meeting room.
If you can do it
live and in person, get everybodyin the same room, rent out a room,
get a board room
somewhere, have them into your houseor have them into your office,
have some food, some beveragesnonalcoholic.
I mean, you do what you want,but you know, this is professional
(10:47):
and gather with them face to face.
Now, for our team,we spanned many different states.
We span across the world.
And yes, we have our VAs in here as well.
So we have team members in Kosovo,we have team members in the Philippines,
and we want to make surethat they are in this meeting.
They're a huge part of our business.
(11:08):
We could not operatewithout those team members,
so they need to know why as welland we include them.
So we did this kick off meetingand what we did is
we looked back at 2024what happened last year.
We happened to send a survey out toour clients at the very beginning of 2025.
And in it we asked a typical questions.
(11:30):
It's the same survey we send every year,so we ask them about quality,
quality of the customer service
call, quality of the schedulingand ordering process,
quality of their mediaoverall satisfaction.
We're asking them those questionsand we're having them rate them based on
a scale of
(11:52):
extremely satisfied,
satisfied, neutral,
dissatisfied, extremely dissatisfied.
And then we have a not applicable.
So we rate them on that scaleor we ask them to rate us on that scale,
and then we look at that feedback.
So we had collected thatat our media company
and we had that data to share.
(12:13):
Now one thing is, is all of our employeesknew that we sent that survey out.
So we're always communicating this.
And we just once I found over the yearsthat the more transparent
you can be as a business owner,the better.
Again, remember,some of these things live in your head.
You know everything about your business.
So it seems like a waste of time,or at least to me
(12:36):
it seemed like a waste of timeto actually slow down
and tell everybodywhat I already knew, right?
I mean, think about it.
How busy are all we?
This is what was going on in my headby the way, how busy are all we?
We have way too much to do.I'm way too busy.
Why would I stopand tell them something that I know?
(12:59):
It sounds
kind of crazy even saying it,
that that wasn't aware that
I was not awarethat that needed to be done.
Like, why would I just assume
that they knew everythingthat was in my head?
But I've learned from it.
So if you have that assumption,please take time, slow down
(13:21):
and tell your team what is happening.
So our employees knew thatthis survey went out
and we needed to closethat loop of communication,
meaningthey needed to know what the survey said.
Heck, they're directly involvedwith this overall satisfaction
and the growth of our company.
So we took the first halfof the presentation today to go
(13:44):
over those numbers.
And for us, those numbers were great.
We were excited about them.
They were really about what we
received the last time we did
the survey and nothing more to knowother than that
we just were still very high,you know, an overall net promoter score.
(14:05):
And this is somethingthat Steve tracks for us
and we can go intowhat a Net Promoter Score is
and maybe another podcastor maybe one of my coaching calls.
But we had an overall netpromoter score of 84%, 84.6%.
So 85 if you round up, which we feeland from an industry
standard is an incredible netpromoter score,
(14:26):
that is someone who is extremely satisfiedwith your services, meaning
they're giving you referrals,they're raving fans
and we wanted to celebrate thatwith our employees.
It's they're the reason whywe got such a great score.
So we
took timeto do that and then at the end of that
(14:46):
or we transition excuse me, we transition
in the next segment of telling themwhat's ahead.
So we're looking back to 24and we're looking ahead to 25, right?
Everybody wants to know where we're going.
Think about it.
If you were in the car going somewhere
and you have no cluewhere their driver is going,
(15:06):
doesn't it get a little unnerving, like,why am I in here?
Why am I doing this?
So your employees
and your teamwant to know where you're going again,
I'm going to say it againand this is going to become redundant.
I'm sorry, y'all,but just because it's in your head
does not meanthat your team knows about it.
(15:28):
And when they don't know about something,they're going to make up
a conclusion to it.
And that sometimes might be crazy,
right?
You're like, Remember the telephone game?
We used to play an elementary school
telephone game where you start
was saying something with the first personand then you whispered in that person,
(15:50):
whispers it into the ear of the secondperson, into the ear of the third, fourth.
Well, by the time you get to the 20thperson, that is nowhere even close.
That statement or that idea is nowhereeven close to the way it started.
So please, you have a great opportunity
as the business ownerto make sure that everybody is clear.
Don't play the telephone game.
(16:11):
Just get over the loudspeakerin announcements. Okay?
Why did they do announcements?
The Pledge of Allegianceon the loudspeaker?
Because everybody heard the same message.
Okay, So that needs to be you.
You are the principal of your business.
Okay, So the second
portion of this kickoff meeting,we looked at 2025.
(16:31):
And for us at our company,we are focused on a two prong approach.
In 2025, we want to look at the foundationof our business
and just fill in anything
that is a little bit weak, any gaps.
So this is systems, processes,this is personnel.
(16:53):
We're hiring six photographers,we're hiring an admin and two Vas.
Right now.
This is filling in all of those gaps.
Okay.
Looking at our hiring process,we know if we want to grow,
we've got to be able to hire and trainquickly and effectively.
This is the system where in the systemwe have some old tasks hanging out.
Do we have old pricing?
(17:14):
So this is the foundationalbase of your business.
Now, as the
business owner, you might be sitting theresaying, Hey, well, Todd, how do I know?
This seems like a lot of work to do.
Like I need to go back and I need toI got to figure out what's wrong with it.
I'm just so busy right now
trying to keep up with the added shootsthat are coming in.
(17:37):
And it's awesomethat your business is growing.
But I would say, no,this doesn't need to take up in a time.
How do we figure out those gaps?
It's really simple.
We ask our employees, we ask our clients.
That's one thing over the yearsthat I've learned
that if I don't ever know something,I used to sit and try real hard to think
(18:02):
like, Let me
thinkabout what's wrong with my business. Hmm.
You know,maybe one or two things come to mind.
And those are probably the the most recentproblems you've had at your company.
It doesn't actually mean it'sa problem, though.
It means it might be a very small thingthat you don't need to turn attention to.
So we ask our employees,we track these things.
(18:24):
We look at the metricsof how frequently these things come in.
So we ask our employees, andwe've done this over the last three months
and we've been collecting thatso we know where these gaps exist.
So we are letting everybody knowabout those gaps.
Also,the thing that we've been doing at Wow
is we've been empowering our,our, our employees.
(18:47):
So one really neat thing that we've done,
you know, I think about ten years agoor 15 years ago,
I personally posted, created
and posted job descriptionsfor new employees.
I would personally call those people.
I would personally set upthose different rounds of interviews.
(19:07):
I would arrange all of that.
I would look at, you know, feedback,
I would call references.
And then as we grew,
the managers at Wow Begin doing that,and there was a segment
where I would do it with themand they would do it with me,
and then they would do it by themselvesand I would review
(19:29):
and now the managers all do thaton their own.
Well, one neat thing that we've done
early in this year iswe have passed that hiring, that sourcing
and hiring down to the peopleand the division.
So we've had people at Wow that have beenhere five, six, seven, eight years
and they are
(19:49):
doing their job all day, every day.
So really they're the best personto understand who the correct teammate is.
So we had trumpeted this.
We talked about this at this team meeting.
And one thing that we did is
we made sure that we were intentionalabout saying the growth
(20:09):
of every employee in the meetingand this was the bulk of the meeting, and
I think it was actuallythe most important thing in the meeting
because we got to saythank you to everybody.
We got to talk abouthow the person who used to do head shots
now has a different person in the companydoing head shots.
How fabulous troubleshootingand who stepped up to be
(20:33):
a very good teacher who is doing thathiring and onboarding process?
We looked at sales and statsfrom our sales team.
We looked at one ofour salespeople stepped up
and now they're one of ouror they're our sales manager right below.
Steve So we looked at all of these itemsand we celebrated the team.
(20:55):
And some of that is because
we understand that belongingis incredibly important to human beings.
That was one of my notes.
I rode down here and I am really gettingto my notes, y'all.
They, they fit together.
But in my notes here from Dennis,
I have number one biggest motivation
(21:17):
and equal sign is belonging.
When people feel like they belong,
they will run through walls for you.
They will make your life easier.
They will solve problems.
They won't just come to you with problems.
(21:37):
They will come to you
and tell you a problemand they will tell you how they solved it.
Oh, how fabulous is that for
you as the business owner?
You know, stepping back real quick
and looking at the way I ran my companyvery early on,
I felt like I needed to be involvedin everything.
(21:58):
I felt like I was the only onethat could make the right decision.
I was the only one that really caredenough to make the right decision.
Literally.
What copy paper do you want?
Like, Oh, well, probably Todd'sthe only one qualified to decide
if we get the £27 or the £31 copy paper.
(22:19):
Right. It's crazy.
It's crazy talk in my brain.
Like I want to make sure I pick outthe copy paper that we get the 98
brightness or the 100 brightness.
And that's a silly example,but I say it to make fun of myself.
And so you all can laugh at mebecause those were things
that slowed me down,not empowering the team.
(22:41):
Why would I spend my timethinking about copy
paper?
So empoweringyour team is incredibly important
and the way you empower themand you get decisions that you would make
or even better is that they feel likethey belong at your company.
So we felt as though taking timeout of this meeting to highlight
(23:04):
and give kudos and to cheer for everyonewas incredibly important.
Last year was our best year ever at Wow.
And when you grow to a company and we did
12,253 shoots,that was our best year ever.
And it's tough to continue to grow.
There's a lot of moving pieces.
(23:24):
And not only did we grow,
but we felt like everyone at the companygrew and was taking steps up,
so we wanted to make sure that they feltlike they belonged.
And taking timeto do so was important to us.
Finally, we wrapped up the presentation.
We're just looking ahead at 2025.
What the rest of it looked like.
It was those foundational pieces,making sure everybody could step up
(23:48):
and continueto feel like they were growing, that wow,
that they were doing things
that they felt motivated to doand they felt belonging and doing.
And then we looked athow we were going to grow.
And this is basically just thatwe were going to evaluate
these opportunities, look to see wherethe team saw the most growth,
and we were going tothen focus on those activities.
(24:11):
So that'swhat our presentation looked like.
We took a outer space theme.
Steve did a great job with it.We took an outer space thing.
This was getting ready to launch.
And the thing about this was, isyour company
is going to go throughall of these things.
And Steve made a great pointat the end of the presentation
that as your company grows,you're always going to create more gaps.
(24:33):
You're always going to figure outhow to fill those in.
People are always going to step upand help you fill those in,
and then you're going going to pour somegasoline on the fire and grow some more,
and you're going to growtill you create some cracks.
And when you create those cracks,you're going to fill them back in.
And this it's this continuous
(24:53):
cycle of patchingand then growing and patching and growing.
So that was an exciting time.
The overall meeting was about 60 minutes.
It was probably a little bit long.
I'll tell you all in person,it might have been okay,
but we did it in the early morning before.
Well, as the day got started.
(25:14):
And I think
some of our especially customer serviceteam was maybe a little distracted
or feeling anxious about what was comingin on the phone lines and emails.
So ideally,if you can get the whole team together
outside of business hours
and if you can get somewhereand feed them dinner
or you can do something like that,I think that's a great use of time.
(25:34):
So I wanted to hita few more notes here and
and then I'm going to wrap up for today.
But I want to stay at a high leveland kind of the touchy feely,
you know, overall, or this is after all,this is Valentine's Day.
I know it's not when you'relistening to it, but I'm recording
on Valentine's Day.
And I think that touchy feely
(25:57):
has gottenme so much further along in life
and businessbeing in touch with those emotions.
I know some of you out there,
especially some of you males, are like,Oh, Todd, I'm turning you off.
Please don't.
Please don't.
When I started to realizehow important feelings were,
(26:17):
that's when it allowed me
to really connect with my teamand get those feelings back.
When I shared, they would share,and that's when we made progress.
So one thing that I have written down herefrom Dennis
is that everything you do becomessymbolic.
(26:39):
Let me read that one more time.
Everything you do becomes symbolicas you grow
to be the leader of your company.
You should try to move your team alongin a way
that they are remembering these thingsthat you say, these motivational terms,
(26:59):
and then they
begin using these motivational terms.
Okay, You know, just some silly things.
Over the years, I would say,
look at Wowwe say we give the people what they want,
give them what they want,and people will repeat that at, wow,
you know, a client callsand they want something like,
that's a little crazy,but hey, we give them what way they want.
(27:20):
It doesn't mean it's what we want,but we want our clients to be important.
Clients are our number one priority.
Another thing I can't tell youhow many times I hear repeated
throughout the companyare one of our five core values.
Core value number one isclients are our number one.
Priority.
Number two is hard work.
(27:41):
It takes hard work.
If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Number three is we are family.
We talk about family a lot.
Number fouris be a disturbance in the force.
We want to do things differently.
We want to continue to give our clientsnew and better and pioneer things.
And number five is think growth.
We want to grow. That's important.
(28:03):
It's important for our clientsto feel like we're growing.
It's important for our employeesto feel like they are growing.
So we havea lot of employees that use those phrases
and tie core values backin, and that would only be possible.
Or that is only possible because we do
think symbolic about what we say.
(28:26):
And now you're not going to say, you know,they're not gonna quote everything
you say.
Sometimesyou just need to get some work done in.
You're talking normal conversation.
But if you can always tie that back in,
remember the why
Why are you doing this?
It's for a bigger reason.
And if you can tie people in to that,then they feel that sense of belonging.
(28:47):
Okay, I've got two more things for you.
All that I've highlighted here on my notesfrom my one of my calls with Dennis,
a coach of mine from several yearsago, this is a funny one.
He said the number one tax a businesspays.
Does anybody know what that is?
What's your number one tax that you pay?
(29:09):
The number one taxthat you pay as a business
is the stupid tax
man.
I have paid a lot of taxin stupidness over the years.
I don't know about you guys,but I can think
back over things of,Wow, I really did that.
Aw man, we really spent that money.
Heck, one year we are.
(29:31):
We met with our largest clientand she decided to do upgrade
into our what we call our social six.
It was five more videosand a landing page of social media videos
that they could use at various stagesof the of the listing lifecycle.
So coming soon just listed soldpending things like that.
(29:53):
See it today and she did
she does 100 with us a year100 videos with us a year.
We realized towards the end of one yearwe didn't have a miller for any of those.
Okay.
Yeah. 100 times 100 bucks.
We lost ten grand there.
All right.
That was the stupid tax guy.
We flipped it on side.
We made sure that she knew, like, Hey,we're going to take care of this.
(30:14):
We're not going to expect it back.
Bill, you we use it as good.
So when you do something stupid,you got to find out
how you can get the good from it.
A lot of times if you do something stupid,
you just have to go tellthat person and be genuine with them.
But man, I've paida lot of stupid tax over the years
and when you do it, it's no fun.
But if you harp on itand if you beat yourself up over it,
(30:39):
you're going to continue to pay that tax.
Okay, find
the good in it,there's always good in everything.
I truly believe it.
I love the live that way.
I much prefer to live that wayto find the good in something than the bad
and move on from there.
Another term we use hereis that's a badge of failure.
(31:00):
So we wear that badge of failure.
You know, I'm wearing it proudlybecause I've learned from it.
And you know, also sometimes we saythat's just the cost of education.
So, you know,how many of you went to school
and got your degreeand running a real estate media business?
Right.
Not nobody. Right. I'm being silly.
(31:22):
So you haven't learned this?
It's not.
We're learning as we go.
And some things,no matter how much you read or listen
to people or study, you just have to learnsome things by making mistakes.
And mistakescan be really good things for you.
They hurt, but man, if you can findhow you can turn things around
(31:44):
in the good in that,then that stupid tax is worth paying.
Finally, the lastthing, it's a little bit of an activity
he left me withand I think this is a great activity.
So what he challenged me to dois to sit with one employee
and he told me,he said, Hey, blame this on me.
(32:06):
So hey, I'mworking with a coach right now.
And he told methat I needed to sit with someone.
And I really highly thinkI think highly of your opinions.
And I, I just need maybe 15 minuteswith you to ask you a few questions.
That's the way you could phrase it.
So, again, blame it on me.
Blame it on the fact that I'm asking youto do this with one of your employees.
(32:27):
I think there is valueand being transparent
and saying that you're workingwith a coach there.
There's nothing bad about that.
I think I thought that before, Hey,I'm going to hide that.
I'm working with a coach because I don'twant anybody to know how messed up I am,
right?
I mean, come on.
No, just tell them.
They're like, Oh, that's cool.
Todd's trying to get better.
(32:48):
Todd's working on building this bigger.
So tell him that.
Tell him you're working with the coach
and Dennis.
He challenged meto talk about progress and belonging.
So here's a few thingsthat you can ask them. So
first off, in any meeting,I like to start off in asking
(33:08):
what's going well, I always liketo start off on the positive.
What's going well, see where they're at.
It might beit might just be a specific situation.
I made this client happyor we fix these photos
or it might be something more,
you know, higher levelwhere they're saying, Hey, I'm progressing
towards some of these skillsor I feel good that the team is growing.
(33:31):
But I love getting started withwhat's going well.
It's just a good way to start meetings
then, You know,
the flip side of that is asking them,you know, where
there are some areas for improvementand just listen, write those down.
Don't try to solve them.
Do not try to solve them. Just listen.
I can't tell you how important it isand how much your employees
(33:52):
will appreciateif you just listen to them.
So what are areas of improvement?
And then ask them
if they have what their goals are,
personal and business wise.
One thing that I always ask isI say, you know, I really value
(34:13):
you as an employee and appreciate all thatyou do, and I want to make sure
that you feel full, feel fulfilled here
at wild video tours
and I want to knowwhat fulfilled is for you.
What does that progress look like?
(34:33):
You know,
today you are in our customer service.
You're leading customer service.
What would you like to be doing?
What would you like that to look likein one year or three years or five years
and then let them talk again?
Some things that I didis I brought some of that terminology in,
okay, how can you be fulfilled?
(34:55):
What are your goals?
This makes them feel connected to you.
And again, remember,we're trying to have them feel
like they belong at your companyand just let them talk.
You're not going to try to guide themhere.
You're not going to try to do anythingbut just write this down, okay?
(35:19):
Write down what they say.
So you know, and you don't forget it.
They will find valuein the fact that you ask them
and they will find value in the factthat you are writing it down.
Then finally,
you know where they want to grow.
And for me, when I used to do this
(35:41):
and without the last questionI'm going to give you,
it felt very heavy for me because I feltnow they told me what they wanted
and I'd have to figure out howthey would get that.
And again, that's just a thought erethat was putting it all myself.
Why would why would Todd needto figure out how they grow?
Just ask him.
Todd again, I paid stupid tax here.
(36:05):
So the next question I want you to
ask is and say, Hey, thank you so much.
I love to hear your definition of growthand where you want to grow here.
And I'm so honoredthat you want to grow at our company.
Now, looking at where you're
at today and understandingwhere you want to grow in one year,
(36:26):
three years, five yearsif you are here today.
And I always put my hand up,
you know, my left hand up, you know,I put it around my chin and then I say,
if growth is up hereand I put my other hand up higher.
And for those of you watching on YouTube,this is going to make sense.
But I have one hand lower,one hand higher.
The hand higher is growth
(36:49):
and there is gaps in the middle.
I say if you are here todayand you're trying to get there
in this middle, what do you need to learn?
What do you need from me to be
successful at your growth?
And then just listen.
I can tell you the things
(37:10):
that I've gotten fromthis question have been,
hey, I probably need to shadowphotographers.
I need to learnwhat the photographers are doing better.
I'm going to help our customersand I and I'm going to build relationships
with our photographers.
I truly need to know what they're goingthrough.
A customer serviceperson told me that I've had
(37:32):
other people tell me that they needto learn more about personalities.
They want to manage,
and in order to manage, they feel likethey need to understand personality types
and how to help motivate and set goals
for those personality types,how to communicate more properly.
So you will find gold in thiswhen you ask them if you're here to get
(37:53):
there, which is your goal in between,what do you need to know?
And then just write that down
and then
finallyask them one more question and say,
what makes them feel likethey belong here?
Now This is a little bit of a touchyfeely question.
Again, here's my feelings clock.
I know a nosey on YouTube.
(38:14):
You're seeing my feelings clock right now,but those you that are listening
only I have a clockand it has a whole bunch of different
feelings written on itand they're in colors
and they're everything from feelingsof astonished to worried,
to violated, to loathing, ignored, loving,
(38:34):
hopeful, sensitive, peaceful, powerful.
This is what you're asking forin this case,
asking themwhat makes them feel like they belong.
And this might be a hard one.
They might not have something to sayif they don't just say,
Hey, I just want to make sure that you dofeel like you belong here
and I highly valueyou and all the work you bring.
(38:56):
I want to grow with you.
So if there's ever anything in the futurethat you think of
that makes you feel like you belong,I want to make sure that I know.
So again,those are the things that I like to ask
that you that I'm challenging you to askin this meeting.
So what's going well?
What needs improvementto stay very high level and quick there?
(39:19):
Then get to goals.
If you are here and your goal isthey're up higher, what's in between?
What do you need to know?
And then ask them, Hey,I really appreciate you and I want you
to make surethat you can achieve your goals here.
What makes you feel like you belong here?
At Wow Video tours.
So that is a challenge to you all.
(39:40):
I mean, some of you are saying,hey, this is this is a little weird, Todd.
This is pretty touchy feely,
but I can't tell you how symbolic.
Again, I'm going to use one of my words.
This will be in the eyes of your employee
that you took time to sit with them.
You don't want
(40:00):
to be the boss that's too busyto care about their employees,
that's too busy and unapproachableto come ask questions.
You don't want to be that.
I've been thatpeople make up their own reality.
They make up their own things.
They feel like they're on an islandand then they leave your company.
Please take the timeto care about your people
and it will come back to you tenfold.
(40:22):
And again, you're not doing itbecause you hope it comes back tenfold,
but you're simply doing itbecause it's the right thing to do
to serve them.
Well,
that's going to wrap us up herefor another week of the Spiro podcast.
Hey, thank you for sticking with me.
Let me know how these conversations went.
I'd love to know what responses you getwhen you ask an employee,
(40:45):
Hey, if you are here now
and your goals are up here,what do you need to know in between?
Were you shocked at what they said?
Did you ever think about that or was itwhat you expected?
Please share with me.
You can contact us here at Spiro.
hello@spiro.media.
Also you can reach us in the pinkchat bubble if you have a tech question
(41:07):
in with Spiro bottom right hand corner
the pink chat bubbleyou can get the team in there.
And if you're like, Hey,
I love the sign up for Spiro,you can visit spiro.media,
you can sign up for free,you can create an account instantly.
There's no payment required.
No, no adding a credit card.
Also, if you are wanting to get geared up
(41:27):
and systematizefor 2025 here early in the year, yet
we do have a free onboardingwhere our team will do the setup for you.
So if you're interested in that, pleasemessage us in the pink chat bubble
or email us.
hello@spiro.media and ask the teamabout the onboarding sessions
and we'll be happy to give yousome more information.
(41:49):
Hey, have a fabulous rest of your day.
Thank you for spending time with meand we will see you in a week.
And be sure to take time to take a breath.
Thank you for joining usfor the Spiro podcast, managing
your real estate photographyand videography business.
This is a production of Spiroand wow video tours.
You can find out more about Spirois real estate, media, business management
(42:12):
software at our Web site, Spiro.media.
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