August 6, 2025 • 57 mins
It's easy to get caught up with the latest technique or method to try and win new clients. But is the latest fad in how to do so a sustainable sales and business development effort? Or is a more consistent system the way to go? What's the difference between techniques and systems when it comes to your business development effort? Todd and Craig discuss the differences and the advantages/disadvantages, and how you can develop and grow a consistent system for your new client acquisition efforts!
Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Episode Open
02:58 Do you Enjoy What You Do?
03:56 - The Power of Gratitude
04:57 Spiro Updates
05:27 Real Estate Media Conferences
06:42 Techniques Don't Build Business
53:16 Spiro Sync Event 55:59 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):
Why did I not have my best month ever?
Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
Or even if you have had your best monthever, great.
Exciting.
How do you make next monthyour best month ever?
(00:31):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing
your real estate, photographyand videography business.
Spiro, we said each week of course,if you're a new listener, you don't know
that we say this every week,but Spiro is a software platform.
It's designed to help you manage your dayto day real estate, media business,
and ultimatelyto help it grow in scale as well.
(00:53):
Welcome back.
For those of you that have been watchingor listening on an ongoing basis,
for those of you that might be newto the podcast, we welcome you.
I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
In this whole, this,this whole podcast idea
is to help you build a strong,
real estate media business.
We've said it in the past,
(01:14):
but there's lots of incredible resourcesout there,
for you on the creative sideof what we do as real estate
photographers and videographers,you know, equipment suggestions,
you know, style,techniques, things like that.
But we really want to help you build just,a strong business
model,a strong business foundation to help you,
(01:36):
ultimately scale your business upand make this a lifelong, career
long, endeavor for youthat you really enjoy doing.
So, welcome to the podcast.
Our owner and foundercohost of the podcast, Todd Kivimaki
Welcome back, Todd
Craig, It's a great week here.
Great to be on with you all.
You know, Iwe say we're always excited to say it, but
(01:57):
you and I had some great conversationbefore we even started the podcast.
We're like,hey, let's just do this online.
So yeah, this is this is a good oneto think about this week.
Again, our goal here is,is to get you to think about turning your,
your love of what you're doing right nowinto a business.
And honestly,if it's real estate, photography
or anything else,our niche is real estate photography.
(02:17):
But I'm using a lot of these
same techniques with other businessesthat I've started.
So business as business,we're trying to give you some of that now.
We're trying to get youa little bit uncomfortable.
So excuse us for that to push you furtheralong to get your goals right.
Exactly. Yeah.
Like like Todd just said we were havingjust a really good discussion
before we started recording.And I thought, you know what?
(02:39):
I used to work in Radio
Todd and a long time ago,and when we would have guests on the air,
sometimes we'd, we'd be tempted to starthaving just
a really good off air discussionand then realize, hey,
now we have to kind of recreatethat discussion on the air.
And so I told Todd, I said, you know what?
Let's save this for the actual recording.
But I find it easy to talk about Todd
(03:00):
because I really enjoy what I do now.
Having kind of almost stumbledinto this, this career in industry,
it's just easy to talk about, and I canI can look a client in the eye and say,
I really love what I do. And clients.
I know this is a little off topic,but clients will respond to that.
If you truly enjoy your work,they will notice that,
(03:23):
and they'll want you as a partner
because they knowthat you're going to bat for them
because you really love what you doand you want to do the best job you can.
So, justI would encourage you to take some time,
you know, whenever you're watching
or listening, this, think aboutwhy do you love what you do
and just kind of maybe write some thoughtsdown about that and just think about it.
And, you can then share that with your,with your clients,
(03:46):
new clients, prospectsand that kind of energy.
They will respond to you.
I wasn't planning on saying that,but I just thought I'd start that off.
Being grateful for
things and your day is an amazing thingto start your day with.
I just started doing that.
I did my devotion this morning was athink about what I'm grateful for.
(04:07):
You know, I'm getting these TonyRobbins ads right now.
He has this 10 to 15 minute routine.
It's got some breathing in it,and it's got the idea of gratitude in it.
I, I think whenever I'm feelingreally angry or bad
or something about Toddand I'm focused on myself,
I've learned that I just have haveto focus on what I'm grateful for and.
(04:27):
And who can I help?
Why are you focus so much on yourself,Todd, right now?
Why is it such a big deal to you?
Go focus on someone else.
Yeah, yeah, I I've admittedly the pastprobably six months,
I've kind of fallen into that trapand realizing that the other day I,
I jumped in a Facebook groupthat I haven't posted in a long time and,
just got my focus off of myself and triedto encourage others in that group.
(04:51):
So anyway,
love that good way to start.
Let's, talk about real quick.
Todd, what's going on with Spiro?What are the updates?
Yeah, really quickly here.
So we are about a monthaway from our next launch.
So early September of 2025,we will launch Los
with Titus propertywebsite mobile optimization.
(05:12):
It's going to feelit's not going to be an app.
It's going to feel just like an app.
It's going to be optimizedthe way you all are using it
on the road and your,you know, on your phone in the road.
So that is coming in a few othergoodies as well.
Wanted to quickly switch hereand then get to the topic of,
look at your calendars,invest in your business.
There's two conferences there. Fabulous.
(05:34):
The REPP conference has Eli Jonesand the team.
I will be out there.
I'm having the pleasureof being the host of the conference
this year,so my team is going to be there.
Jess and Steve will be there.
Shannon will be there.So we're going to be there.
Come and spend some time with us.
That is early November.
We'll post the links below then.
Also, PMRE is two weeks later.
(05:57):
The Spiro team. We will be there.
Would love to connect with youon, either of those or both of those.
And, you know, if you're like,which one do I pick?
I love them both.
I'm going to pick one for youjust because you've asked me.
Well, I've you were.
Nobody really asked me.
I'm kind of just Bantry with myself, but,
picked a REPP conference.
(06:18):
That's that's my favorite.That's where I'm at.
Just to be transparent,I coach an orbit that's part of REPP.
PMRE is great as wellto different conference.
Read both websites, see which oneyou think you enjoy more.
And you know, worst case,if you can't pick on the both,
there you go.
You'll get something differentout of both of those.
(06:38):
In a good way.
Yep. Excellent.
Well shall we dive into that.
Yeah. Let's do this Craig.
All right.
So the month of July unexpectedly
at least a meet outI don't know if it was for you.
Wow video tours,our real estate media company, we had the
and this is please understand,guys, this is not to brag.
(07:01):
Okay.
There's a purpose in sharing this,
and it's going to be a great topicthat Todd even has me thinking on this.
But we had the best monthhistorically we've ever had
in the history of wow video tours.
It was it was amazing to me.
Unexpected.
I took vacation
during the month of July, expecting itto be down around the 4th of July
(07:24):
because it always has been right,and it ended up being
that we were just as busy as,and if not more than we we usually are.
And, the questionis, Todd, is that accidental
or was there a methodto getting to that point.
Yeah, yeah.
So to we're going to dive into that.
(07:44):
Just to give you some figures.
This is year 22 of Wow. And
June of 2025 was our best month ever.
July has a holiday.
It still had four full weeks afterwards.
That was a little bit of aof an asterisks there
that we knew we had a chance.
(08:06):
July was up 19%
in revenue over June, like,you know, just incredible.
Oh, no, I'm sorry, 19% over last June or
last July, last July.
Okay.
So we we bested June,
but we were up 19% over last July.
(08:28):
To give you an idea.
And the cool thingthat we're seeing a trend right now
and it's not I don't think it's by luckbecause of some of the things
that we'll get to thatI'll talk about some of these methods,
but we are doing lessshoots to make more money,
which naturally means our AOV
or our average order value is going up.
(08:50):
If you don't know what these figures arelike, Todd, what are these?
That's okay. You have to start somewhere.
I hired Shannon Landers
as our head of sales many years ago,and she's like, Todd, what's your AOV?
It's like, I have no clue.
I thought she was calling me a bad name.
And we figured it out.
It was 158 at the time.
158, which is not that healthy,but that was a long time ago.
(09:13):
We made it work.
But understanding what it waswas the first step.
If you use Spiro,there's a beautiful dashboard
with metrics that show you all these.
In fact, I'm looking at these right nowand I know what these numbers are.
I've done no calculation.
And it's up right in front of me. So
just wanted to set
that up to tell youabout how the numbers look.
(09:34):
And, July versusa June and a year over year last July.
So Craig,you asked you know, were those numbers.
Was that result, was it luck,was it an accident or was an intentional.
And I'll have to say, to be transparent,
there's always a little bit of luckinvolved in everything we do sometimes.
And it's good and sometimes it's bad.
Like I said, the Asterix point inthis was even though we had the July 4th
(09:57):
holiday, there was there are still four,almost four, four weeks of business days.
That's something that we always look at ishow many business days are in the month.
So the month ended on a Thursday,so we almost
got another 20 business days in the month.
So we understood that we knewthe month could be big.
And there was a couple of factors in thein that market that came together.
(10:20):
Days on market are increasing.
That's good for us.
Shannon talked about thata couple podcast ago.
But we are very strategicand we're very consistent.
And what we do,
we have a sales team.
We have SteveA, our head of sales and marketing,
Chris, our director of sales,and then we have a fabulous sales team
(10:42):
that focuses on building relationships.
And we have looked at what we've done,we've perfected
it, we've broken it, and we've changed itmany times over the years.
But we are intentionalabout getting those numbers
and we look to achieve those goals.
So it's a mentality of a systemversus techniques
(11:03):
like individual techniques,like I'm going to try this method
and do that until it doesn't work.
And then I'm going to try this method.
Is that accurate?
It is.
And you know the idea of kind of techniquejumping
is something that I findthat I can do at times.
I mean, Craig, there's so much out there,the good and the bad about the internet
(11:26):
and the way we communicatein 2025 is you will always find more.
I think
maybe I told this storya few a few podcasts ago, but,
my son and I, my oldest sonand I, he we do basketball.
I love basketball, played basketball.
So does he.
And he is committed that he wants to playat a very high level.
(11:48):
And so some of that comes througha lot of just training.
And then the basket worldhas a ton of people that train.
And so we looked at some ofthese trainings and I do some with them.
We have a trainerand then we got some other courses online.
I think it's kind of a natural thingwe all do.
We all go get some coursesor we watch some YouTube videos and
(12:09):
and then you start to do itand you're like, wow,
one video had this one thingand that looked really cool.
I was like, well,maybe we should have done that video.
And so you go look at it again.
You're like, oh, well, we alreadyspent the money on the first one,
but this one looks really great.
And I had to stop myself in doing that
(12:30):
because I'm just technique jumping.
It's like, stick to the first video.
Like in this particular instance,this person trains NBA players.
If he can train NBA playersand get them from A
to Z, then he can help my son get better.
And it's just like, stick to the planwe've already committed.
Let's move forwardand not start over again.
(12:53):
So you just said somethingthat kind of jumped out at me.
So when I had my own real estatemedia business,
I found a technique that worked for me.
It was coffee meetings.
I like the one on one relationshipbuilding.
I'm an introvert, blah blah blah.
But I did kind of build it into a platformwhere it was ongoing.
I was constantly looking for new clients,getting referrals.
(13:14):
You know,there was a method and a technique.
But the one thing I didn't think about this was, what is this technique costing me?
And what you just said was,
you know, finding a video onlineand the money that you paid for it.
So I think what we can kind of drive
dive down into in technique versus system
(13:35):
is the, the cost of that technique
or the cost of acquiring a new client.
And admittedly,I had more of the mentality
of a boutique real estatephotography company.
I wasn't thinking scaling,but if you're going to think scaling
your business,
you've got to think about the costof acquiring new clients, correct?
(13:56):
For sure.
And this is,and this is a common thing I happened to.
I listened to Alex Hormozi.
I think I just connectwith the way he teaches.
I like he's very straightforward.
This is not an Alex Hormozi thing.
Like, if you you watch anything.
Anything, a shark tank. I love SharkTank. It's talked about there.
But there's this idea ofwhat is your customer acquisition cost.
(14:18):
They call it CACCAC customer acquisition cost.
And that is what does it cost to get a
new customer?
Okay.
So let's just let's keep this very simple.
I'll use the same examplethat Alex Hormozi used
in his and his podcast.
(14:40):
He, he basically said he had this gymlaunch item
where he had this offer to people and,
it cost him $5
to get someone to look at his offer.
Okay.
It took five people
to look at the offerfor one of them to say yes.
(15:02):
Okay, so if one person says yes,he spent $5, had to get five people.
Five times five is 25.
His customer acquisition cost was $25.
To get one person to say yes.
Now I will say that this is a littlethat this is a little bit different,
because I'm not saying
that you all should just go and poura ton of money into online marketing.
(15:26):
We do it.
We can talk about it.
It's it'spart of the overall method and strategy.
But we are a relationship business.
If you've listened to us before,we say it every week, probably
100 times, about building relationshipswith your client.
And the important thing that I want youto understand is tracking your customer.
(15:46):
Acquisition cost is important,but the first step is committing
to doing that, committingto spending the time with your clients.
You know, I think so,
Craig, let's just go back to your exampleof of the coffee meetings.
So the coffee meetingsyou would get people to show
sometimes show sometimes not.
(16:07):
I'm sure that's not the pointI want to make.
But people would say yes eventually.
And then that would yield more shoots.
So you would go out and that's the goal.
So you would go out and do those shoots,and then you got very busy.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah, extremely busy to the point
happened to those coffee meetingswhen you were extremely busy.
(16:31):
They dropped off.
I didn't I didn't have time for them.
Yeah.
And rightfully so. Right.
I mean, you had to service the client.
But how many more clients said
yes to you when you weren't doingthose coffee meetings?
Yeah.
Zero, because, I wasn'tI wasn't out there consistently,
(16:53):
prospecting that new businessand developing those new relationships.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and I think that'sthat's a fine line in the sand.
And there's not I'm not sayingone ways. Right.
Or the other.
Craig had different goals and what I had.
But if you're listening to us todayand you're saying, hey,
I want my why was my July not up
(17:15):
20% from last July?
Why did I not have my best month ever?
Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
Or even if you have had your best monthever, great.
Exciting.
How do you make next monthyour best month ever?
If you're listeningand you have that idea,
then this consistencybecomes very important.
(17:38):
But I think it's I think it's good
for us to come back, to take a step backand understand your goals.
As a rule,when you started your business, Craig.
So your goals as a photographer, it was itto have 20 photographers or what?
What was your goal?
What was in your brain at that time?
Yeah.
Boy, there's a whole story behind thatand I don't want to drag it out too long,
(18:01):
but I, I wanted for myself a mix of bothcreating something with my hands,
because I really, respect tradespeople,
electricians, carpenters,you know, pipefitters, whatever.
I really respect those those people
because I don't havethat talent in most areas.
But I saw the practicality of the skillsthat they had
(18:23):
in providing something of value to others.And I literally prayed
the start of my real estate
industry or real estate media businesswas actually the result of prayer.
I'm just going to put that out there.
And it was, God,would you give me the ability
to create something with my handsthat's of value to somebody else
that I can sell with a clear conscience,knowing that this is an actual need?
(18:44):
I'm not trying to hock somethingto somebody
that might not be needed,and that I can provide for my family with.
And so my approach to it was,
I had just come from a management position
and realized that I don't necessarily,
always enjoy having to manage people.
(19:05):
I would rather personallydo the work of, of the creation,
and work shoulder to shoulder with peoplerather than lead them, as,
you know, an out front managerleader. What?
You know what,however you want to state that.
So my mentality in my businesswas I want a mix of both
owning the company,but also doing a majority of the work, the
(19:26):
the actual creation of the media,because I love media.
That's that's been my background.
So I kind of kept myselfin terms of growth,
versusyour mentality of growing a business.
And trying to get as many shootsas possible.
My goal was different,so I thought about things differently.
Yeah.
And in comparison,
(19:47):
if you haven't heard before,my mentality was completely different.
Craig is by fara much better human being than me, so.
Oh come on, the flips.
On the flip side, my mentality wasI wanted to do as many shoots as possible
because I wantedto make as much money as possible,
and that I wanted to figure out a wayto have to not do anything.
(20:07):
Okay, I am naturally a lazy person.
How can I build this to doas much as possible?
And I don't mind grinding it out.There's a difference.
I will grind like I'll push.
I have no problem pushing.
But then how can I not push anymore?
And how can I get that thing runningso that not only it makes me money,
(20:27):
but continues to make me more money?
And that was honestly
something that I struggle with froma human perspective for a lot of years.
Like, why am I so driven by money?
And then I had some close people to me.
We are in a small groupand they said, well, no,
it's not that youif you covet money, money's a problem.
But thenwhat are you doing with that money?
(20:48):
And then I saw how we couldand I didn't know this at first.
I saw how I could use that money in growthto bring people up
underneath meand get them to reach their goals.
It's been nothing more fabulousthan helping people
connect dotsand finding win wins throughout life.
(21:09):
Craig, you and I came up with what's a
what's a great winwin, right, with your story.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, when I first started my business,I was doing everything by myself.
The shooting, the scheduling, the,the sales, even the editing.
And I realized very quickly, I can'tI can't make a living out of this
doing two shoots a day,
because that's all I have time for,because I have to go home.
(21:30):
And now edit and Todd and I connectedand talked about the system.
Spiro, the software system and outsourcingediting that would allow me to scale.
Still doing most of the work myself, butscale in terms of the number of shoots and
I figureI forget exactly what your question was.
(21:51):
Todd.
Yeah, just the win win as to where like,oh, yeah.
Yeah, you help beta test usand give us feedback, right?
And it allowed me tothen build my business to the point
where I could support my familyand enjoy the work that I was doing,
because I still get to do the creative.
And now, even in the rolethat I have at Wow, I'm still kind of
in that same type of mentalitywhere I still get to go out and shoot
(22:13):
and and build the business in ourin the market that I'm responsible for.
So I still get to do the same thingand it works out because now I'm teamed up
with Wow Video Tours.
That handles a lot of that businessand systems type of approach
that I just wasn't able to doand didn't have as much interest in.
So yeah, it's been a fantastic,relationship.
(22:35):
So Todd's mentality of of helping,
bring
peopleup and their dreams and aspirations,
and then my personal goals of
being basically a tradespersoncreating with my hands,
but also the challengeof the relationship building,
which I really enjoy doing as well.
It's been a perfect match.
(22:56):
So yeah, two different mentalities, but,synchronous in,
in helping each other andand like you said, Todd, making a win win.
Yeah, yeah.
So Craig, let's take the path of
wanting to grow in scale of businessjust for this.
The rest of this conversation,right, right.
And again,I'm not saying there's nothing wrong
(23:17):
if you're a boutique photographer outthere.
I honestly envy you a bit.
I know I would love to take that boutiquefeel and take something
to create a luxury feel around itand sell it for a very high value.
That's not.
I just haven't figured that out.
It's like I want to do 14,000 of themand I want to give,
and I'm a much lower value.
Okay. That's the game that I play.
(23:38):
If you're playing the other game,honestly, kudos to you
as long as you're reaching your goalsand that is what you want to do.
That's what's important.
That your business is serving you right.
But but let's take the other approach of
we've set this up a bit of understandinglike hey let's not technique jump.
We have to come up with a, with a method.
(24:00):
And some of that we introducecustomer acquisition cost.
You know I want to go back to Alex
Hormoziand I'll give you a couple quotes here.
And I think they werethey at least resonated with me.
He said the best model
will win, not the best method.
Methods always expire.
(24:22):
Models last forever.
Okay, so I listen.
I read that a couple.
Yeah, I read that a couple times.
I was like, let me think about that.
Yeah.
What's what's the differencebetween a model and a method.
Good. Couldn't a method to a model.
Well, a
model is basically just in my opinion,a collection of methods.
(24:42):
And there's consistency behind that.
Okay okay.
So yeah, an example here,a very simple example
that we used alreadyis the idea of the coffee shop
acquisition technique.
Right.
That was a bit
and I I'll say this carefully,I don't mean anything by
(25:03):
but it was more reactive for you Craig,because it's like when I have time. Yes.
I'm going to I'm going to do this
method, this techniqueof acquiring clients.
And then it would it would work.
Clients would comein, you didn't have time to do it.
And then there became another pointin time where it's like, well,
(25:26):
I need to have more people call my phoneat my booking page.
So it's like, well, let me goback to the thing that I did before
and let me set these meetings.
Is that fair? Craig? Totally, totally.
But it was
it wasn't a consistent modelbecause it was seasonal.
When I was busy shooting, I couldn'tI couldn't invest the time and money
(25:48):
into those meetings.
And so yeah, it kind of ebbs and flows.
Yeah.
I loved one thing that you said thereCraig, because this is the big difference.
Invest the money into that.
I think that's so key.
So Alex also says
the the question really is can you afford
(26:12):
to get more customersthan your competition can.
That's an interesting take.
I wouldn't yeah.
Okay.
So how do you play that out.
How what set up a budget.
Yeah. What do. Yeah.
(26:32):
So it's a great question Craig.
It's I took a leap of faithmany years ago at Wow
where I went through the progressionof doing everything myself,
hiring some photographersand doing all the admin work myself.
Became overwhelmed, hired an admin.
She helped a lot that I grew
(26:53):
the company and there was bigger thingsI needed help with.
I hired a helper.
We talked about that in a couple,I talked about that on a YouTube live
with Eli Jones that my first main hirewas a helper to take care of that,
take things off my plate, a lot of billingand some technical things.
And then I put on the builder hat
(27:14):
and I built the company.
We I sold a ton of brokered deals.
I, I, I stumbled into this stupid knackof being able to sell these brokered deals
and it exploded.
The company and I got really busy.
I ran on that,
and then the company was big enoughthat I was pulled 15 other directions.
(27:35):
I didn't know how to say no to things,
and but I but I knew I needed help.
And I
was willing reluctantly to invest
some of the little moneyI had made to that point.
Still wasn't
making,you know, we were paying our bills,
(27:57):
but it still wasn't like this thing'sjust printing money.
So I hired on ahead of salesto focus on sales.
So I think that's the big differencewhen I've hired on
Shannon and Shannon's at Spironow doing the same thing with me.
With Spiro, we hit this with,we didn't really hit a plat..
(28:18):
It's neither here nor there,but I wanted to take a higher
trajectory curve on a hockey stickgoing up and growth.
I'd done it before with Shannon.
Pass is a good prediction.
The future, like, hey,she helped me blow up. Wow
Video tourslike scale, blow up, knock blow up.
And I wanted to do the samewith the next company.
(28:39):
So it's just this repeatable process.
But at the end of the day,I knew it was going to take
I was going to have to spend moneyto make money.
Yes. That's what I, you know,
a much more simplified example is a I'm
fiscally conservative other than hobbieswhere I spend too much money on hobbies.
Some days
there's a little, little transparencythere.
(29:01):
Well, I have a confession at the endof the podcast, Craig, for that,
if you can see the amount of hamradio stuff.
Anyway,
no. When I first started by my business,I was looking.
Okay, I know I need to get a droneat some point because drone
is becoming a thing, but for me, buyinga drone was that was a lot of money.
And I'm like, I don't know if I can affordto spend that money,
(29:23):
but I, I bit the bullet,I bought the drone.
And then I very quickly realizedafter booking a number of jobs with drone,
as an addon, that this was paying for itself
a lot more quickly than I expected.
And that exact thing that you just saidI had to spend money to make money.
And then after that drone was paid for,after a certain number of shoots,
(29:45):
that was pure profit, you know.
So it's the
same with, with our business system.
Yeah.
You're spending moneyto, to build your, your sales, process.
But you probably you have tolook at the cost.
Don't you have to look at the cost of,of investing in that system versus then,
(30:05):
say, the lifetime value of that client
is that something Alex goes into itis. Yes.
I'm so happy you said that, because thoseare the two big things he said.
That's the lifeblood of a business.
What does it cost to acquire a customerand what they
what do they bring in to you? Okay.
And these are the customeracquisition costs a lifetime value.
This is something that we measure a while.
And this is something that we knowand we haven't actually done this forever.
(30:28):
So if you're like ToddI have no clue where to start.
I'm going to help you out and helpyou understand where to start.
And don't feel bad if you're like,not right now, because we we somewhat
in the recent past have started doing thisand measuring this.
But let's break it down real quick.
Just so we're on the same page.
We talked about customer acquisition cost.
In his example,he says that he had to spend
$5 to get one personto look at his product.
(30:54):
It took
five people to look at the productfor one to say yes.
Okay, so $25 to get one. Yes.
That one. Yes.
Then spent $500 with him.
Okay. And now it wasn't all profit.
He had a high margin.
It cost him $100 and he he had a margin,
or he profited $400 on that one. Yes.
(31:18):
Okay.
So customer acquisition cost of $25lifetime value.
And let's just say the client only buysonce for the sense of this example.
But the lifetime value would be 400.
So the idea there is will you spend
$25 to make 400?
Yes, every day of the weekand even on Sunday.
(31:39):
And I'll do a thousand times a day.
You know, my my oldest brother,he always has.
He was he was in sales and he he did it.
He was great at it.
Like,would you spend a dollar to make $2? Yes.
Every day of the week.
I mean, I'd spend a dollar to makea dollar, 50 to make a dollar or 25.
As long as you're spending moneyto make money, you're good
(32:01):
generally.
Let's don't dig it.
Don't don't dive into that too much,other than the fact I'm trying
to make the point that
you are going to have to spend money, andthe goal is to get more money back out.
And that's essentiallywhat we did with the sales team.
I had no clueI was doing it at the beginning.
It was honestly very nerve racking me,
(32:21):
nerve racking for me to make that hire.
The company was still small.
We were doing, I think, probablyabout 4000 shoots a year,
you know, a low average order value and
I was bringing ona large salary of a person.
And it was a big commit.
It was scary to me.
(32:42):
And I know
I talked to a lot of you out thereand you're like, should I hire the VA?
Should I hire the photographer?
Should I hire the admin?
Like, again, I think and I encourage youguys, you guys have this owner intuition.
You all have it.
Your left brainjust beats it down so much that sometimes
you just have to pull the triggerand say yes.
(33:02):
Because the better question is,can you afford not to?
Not to? Yes.
Yeah.
Well, that kind of relates to whatwe talked a little bit about last week.
The catch 22 of when when you dosay you have a down month,
you're tempted to cutyour marketing budget because there's not
a tangible necessarily if especiallyif you're not looking at the numbers,
(33:23):
you're tempted, cut that marketing budget,which then gets you less views
or less exposure.
And less exposure means less jobs.
And you just you get in this downwardcycle.
Doesn't Alexhave some sort of quote about,
about marketing
budget and getting pasteven the idea of a marketing budget?
(33:44):
Yeah, yeah,he did it in that podcast he talked about,
he said the only people who talk aboutmarketing budgets are people
who aren't good marketers, who,yeah, the marketing.
But the marketing budget is spend as much
as you possibly can and then wait
till something else in your businessbreaks him.
(34:09):
Okay, okay.
I mean, explain that a little bit more.
I need to know something. Yeah.
So my take on it is
if you can have a positive
customer acquisition cost,lifetime value ratio,
meaning that it costs lessto acquire a customer
than what you're going to profitand make on that customer,
(34:32):
you should infinitely spendinto the customer acquisition bucket,
because the life you're always going to bemaking money, the ratio is positive.
Okay?
And then I love it.
He adds in until something elsein your business breaks.
So let's just. Yeah.What's that part? Yeah.
So what that means is I hired Shannon on
(34:56):
and she built a sales program,
a sales engine for us that ran,
and she was running it,and she hired people into it.
And we started getting people to say yes.
Imagine that.
Right. Come up with some processes.
You build this plan and people say, yes,
(35:18):
you know what the next problem was?
We had to service those yeses.
Yeah, I was going to sayhaving enough people to to do those jobs.
Right.
Okay.
Well,we are out of inventory, if you will.
What did we need?
Well, we needed more photographers.
That was the pinch point.
(35:39):
She broughtthe she brought the answer to me.
Hey, Todd, you need to bring this personoff the field so that he can train
all of the new photographers
we're going to need,because I have people saying, yes,
okay. Slowed everythingdown. Boom. Did it.
I didn't think about it. It was scary.
I was getting a little bit better
at not thinking about or not thinkingas much about these scary things.
(36:01):
And you will too.
You'll analyze it, you'll overthink it.
You'll think, no, no, no, no, something.
And you eventually get you to say yes.
Hopefully that's the goal.
You say yes and you see what that did?
It was positive for me the next time.
And a suggestion like thatfor growth was brought to me.
(36:24):
I analyze the information.
You always should.
As the business owner,I didn't overthink it.
The past was a good predictionof the future.
It work.
Last time we brought high level peoplein, we executed a method and a plan
and we got more businessand we made more money.
So the more you do that, the easierit gets.
(36:46):
I was sweating, I was like, I can't dothis, I can't do this, I can't do this.
And thank goodnessShannon was such a good salesperson
that she soldme on the idea of hiring her.
Like, I feel bad.
Like the amount of pitching
she had to pitch me on my companyto grow with her was crazy.
If I think about it.
(37:07):
But that's
that flow you'll get intoand that will be easier.
And back to us. Quote.
Then something broke.
We fixed it,
and then we poured more money into itso that we could grow something else.
Broke, needed admins, needed the schedule.
Hey, we had to write a scheduling software
and then we kept doing thatconsistently over the years.
(37:28):
We still do that to this day.
We 2022, 20 and of 22 throughout 23.
We 2022, end of 22 throughout 23.
Worst year ever.
We said no to a lot of things.
We cut a lot of thingswe talked about this last week,
so I won't harp on it, but we did notcut any sales and marketing.
We spent just
as much, if not more, because you can't
(37:50):
turn off your sales engineif you want to grow again.
Core value number five think growth.
How can I say cut?
The sales team would have made the yeara much better,
but I'm literally cutting off my abilityto grow.
Yeah. What? What's happened?
Even if you say you have a downmarket, Todd, where there's less
(38:10):
inventory to shoot,which we've experienced
if you continue to invest in your salessystem versus an individual
marketing technique,you're going to capture
what we've talked about before is you'regoing to capture more of that market.
And so even if youryour total number of shoots is down,
you have a higher market share,which when the market bounces back
(38:31):
and you've maintained those relationships,you're going to be to the plus.
So yeah, you might be downin terms of actual number of shoots,
but you're up in your market share.
And then when the market recoversyou're that much further ahead
during that next cycle.
Yeah.
And that's how you're able to say and everything lined up in that store and that,
(38:51):
synopsis that Craig gave that we can say
July of 25 was our best monthever after 22 years.
Right?
And that beat the previous month,which was the best month ever.
So, Craig, let's let's get more.
Okay. So we covered the high level.
Let's get down to the,the nuts and bolts of this.
And I want to make sureI'm going to try to just break it
because this can be overwhelmingbecause we've talked about some big topics
(39:15):
and the idea of a sales managerthan a training manager,
you know, and then a head of trainingand that, you know,
director, coach and all this stuff,it gets to be overwhelming.
Let's we have to start somewhere.
And that's the important thingis you have to start somewhere.
Craig, you had a great, a great technique
(39:35):
of the coffee meetings.
You know whatwould just be a simple change?
That if you were on my strategyof wanting to grow to infinite or grow to,
you know, large goalsand not be a boutique, you know
what would be the simple change ofin the coffee technique?
Meeting?
(39:57):
Well, for me, it would be investingin another photographer
to take on more of those shootsand free up my time.
Yeah.
To to to sell more or workmore on the business
rather than in the businessas, as you've said before.
Yeah.
So it's just a simple thingof protecting your time to make sure
that you put that on your calendar
(40:19):
and nothing gets booked over that.
That one hour once a week, whatever it may
be, is on your calendar because you can'tshut that engine off right.
And in the weekswhere you have it, where no one shows
up, you can't turn it offfor the next week because you feel bad.
No one showed up.
(40:41):
Okay,don't spend your time at the coffee shop
looking for new techniquesand not do the technique that you're
that is proventhat it can work. In the past.
Look for ways to make it better.
You're always going to have to pivot.
You'realways going to have to look to improve.
We do it every dayat Wow. we analyze what we do, but
we do not jump from one thingto the next, to the next, to the next.
(41:04):
Right.
Would you be would it be fairto say, though,
that you can employ techniquesjust as a part of an overall strategy?
It's not about the technique necessarily,but you're you're
executing different techniquesjust as an ongoing strategy
to engage your clients and new clients.
Oh for sure.
(41:24):
I think it's as simple as that.
Craig, I really do. I think
when you put that with consistency,that's how you get your method.
Fair enough.
And then consistency means I, I do it,
but you do the technique, but thenyou have to measure it as well, right.
And through that measurement,
when a technique needsto be more efficient or convert more,
(41:47):
how can I help this techniqueconvert more.
How is it a is it a top a funnel thing?
Is it a is it a bottom of funnel thing?
Meaning do I need to get more peopleto know about my coffee meeting,
or am I just not really buildinggood enough relationships
with people at the coffeemeeting to get them to say yes?
Or maybe my my offering is not as good or,you know, there's many different ways,
(42:08):
but we would analyze that top of funnel,bottom of funnel,
and how can we get more people to say yes,and we would pivot.
And then when a technique grew old,we would go into the next thing.
But I can tell you
there's we're still using the sametechniques that we've used forever.
They look a lot different.They feel different.
But it's whatwe've done. When I was selling.
Okay. Todd.
(42:28):
So this can sound a little overwhelming.
Just this big picture stufffor a, say, a currently a solo operator.
So what would be the first tangible stepsthen that someone can take
that's listening right now from,moving from techniques to to strategy?
Yeah.
(42:49):
One analyze what techniquesyou're currently doing time.
Even if you're like,hey, I'm not using a technique.
You probably are.
When are you talking to Agent real estateagents?
Okay, that's a technique.
And I ask and I want you to startwith that technique
because that'swhat you're comfortable with.
I don't want to say use these techniques
(43:10):
because if they don't alignwith what you're comfortable with,
I'm never going to get you consistentwith doing these techniques.
And that's a strategy that we usewith the sales team at Wow.
We understand how they like to sell.
Some of them love the call.
Some of them love the stop buysome of them love the hold events. Yes.
(43:32):
And then some of them go,oh, and I could never hold the event.
Or the one that holds the events.
Like I could never build individuals withthese people because I like a big group.
Be comfortablewith what you are comfortable with.
That'show you're going to be consistent with it.
If you hate cold calling and everybodyin the world hates cold calling,
if you try to force yourselfinto cold calling,
(43:54):
you're going to do this for two daysand it's going to be so uncomfortable
that there's going to be a shiny objectand you're going to go do that
in your business.
It's probably going to be QC photos.
So one start
analyze what techniques you're using rightnow. Two.
(44:16):
Stick with that technique okay.
And let's measure some time.
So whatever that technique is let's
go back to Craig'scoffee meeting technique okay.
Are you doing that once a week.
All right.
What what time are you spending on it?
You're probably spending a little bit oftime to post to let people know you're.
They're advertising that coffee meeting.
(44:37):
Then your time to get to the coffeemeeting.
You have costs involved inbuying some coffee and then any follow up
that you do about the coffee meeting,just track that time.
Okay. Time tracking we're doingI'm doing it right now.
I'm doing it with a lot of y'all.
I've done it for the last two weeks,and we've done up episodes in the past.
On the importance of time tracking.
(44:57):
Yes. So track that time and
that is the time that you're spendingacquiring customers.
All right.
So to get customer acquisition cost,
we just need to know what, you knowput a value on that okay.
So if you spend say there's three hoursweekly for your coffee meeting,
(45:17):
say it's 50 bucks an hour iswhat is is what you're paying yourself.
Okay.
You'reprobably if you're going to hire someone,
you're probably gonna pay himmaybe 50 bucks an hour or less to do this.
So it's a fairestimate for 150 bucks a week.
You had that coffee meeting?
Four times a month.
That's 600 bucks.
(45:38):
Okay.
And say that gets youjust one client to be.
Just to be simple with this equation
at that point, then you spent $600and mainly of your time.
But let's assume
you're going to put someone in that place600 bucks to get one client.
Okay.
Now what does a client on averagespend with you?
(45:59):
All right.
So this is what you have to understandwhat your lifetime value is as a client.
Typically our clients at Wowthey do like 5.3 shoots a year with us,
our average client, okay, 5.3
shoottimes your average order value, okay.
260, 300.
Whatever it is,some of you have a $1,000 average order.
That's great.
(46:20):
Multiply that together
and that's what you're goingto make off them in a year.
Just to keep things simple, I would justtake that yearly number right now
and know that clients
stay with you longer than one year,but at least you have an idea.
It cost you $600 to get this clienton average in the next 12 months
that they're with you,they're going to do five shoots
(46:42):
at, say, $200 for easy math.
That's $1,200.
No, no, five shoots.
I said times $200
$1000
Yeah. Sorry, my math wasn't math.
Okay, 1000 bucks.
You're going to make off that client.
It cost you 600 to get them. Nowyou have to figure out your cost.
A good.But at least you have these ratios here.
(47:04):
Okay? So take out your cost of goods.
And what do you make on that?
But at least we're starting some point.
We know what a customer acquisitioncost is.
We have an idea of what a lifetime valueis or at least a yearly value.
And then from there, what we can do is
we can begin to do that more.
Okay.
So what's the next technique?
Can you make that technique better?Can you convert more?
(47:26):
Can you get more people to your coffeemeeting?
Okay, if not,then what's the next thing you can do?
I've challengedI've challenged you all to make five,
to have five meaningful conversationsfour times a week.
That's another technique again.
But when you're when you coupledconsistency with techniques,
that's how you get these systemsand you build your sales engine.
(47:50):
Okay.
Have five meaningful two minuteconversations with clients a week.
Super simple.
That's one hour a day, four times a week.
That's four hours, 50 bucks,200 bucks to do that.
Customer acquisition.
How many can you get to sayyes from those conversations?
How many clients a year acquire
that's going to
(48:10):
get you the top line date of understandingyour customer acquisition cost
and how we're going to get to a very roughlifetime value.
Okay.
Todd.
So I think the overarching pointthat we've been kind of hammering home
is, is stop asking,what's the trick to get clients?
What's the method?
You know,and there's 20 bazillion different
methods that we've talked aboutand others have talked about
(48:30):
and start asking, how can I builda repeatable system, a repeatable,
yeah, system is the best.
That's word I can think ofto acquire client, to acquire clients.
Yeah.
And and the idea of that, it sounds maybetoo technical to a lot of you system.
(48:51):
Like how do I build a system?
It seems likeI need to know how to write code.
You don't.
At the end of the day, pick 1 or 2things that you are comfortable with
that are helping you acquire clients,
and then be consistent with them.
That is how you build your system.
(49:11):
And all the while,while you're doing those techniques,
you remember thatthis is just your next best draft,
so you don't feel like those techniqueshave to be perfect.
The biggest you're going to gain the most
by just consistently doing them.
We can always make them better.
We can always understandmore metrics about them.
(49:34):
I'm sorry if I overloaded youon some of these metrics today.
If you're not doing anything,the next best step is to do something
consistently.
And when you do that,what you focus on will expand.
You'll eventually say, hey,I actually am doing
this technique and I have an idea,
(49:55):
or I've stumbled into this, or a client
suggested that I do this thing,or they invited me to a brokerage meeting.
Boom,there's your new technique. Get more.
Have technique one lead to techniquetwo coffee meetings to brokerage meetings.
Those lead to buildingrelationships leads a brokerage deals.
It leads to you building out your system.
(50:15):
But consistency is honestly the thing
that you have to start with, right?
And having the courage to spend the moneyto invest in those systems
to help them grow and continueto build your business.
Right? Right.
And just my mindsethas shifted throughout the years.
I was very hesitantto put the money in the build
(50:38):
sales.
Fast forward a decade later,
I'm like, how can we put as muchmoney as possible into it?
Because
you have to spend it to make it.
And I know that through the consistencyof what we learn to build
our sales engine, that makes us money,and I am, I hate even saying this,
(51:02):
but in year 22, I'm making more moneythan I ever thought I would make.
And I only say that to motivate youbecause I'm less focused on money now.
And I think that's one reason why.
But if you want to grow,you have to have money,
you have to put money into your business,
and it's going to take you somewherethat you never thought was possible.
I never thought it was possible.I look at the numbers.
(51:24):
I looked at the numbers.
Last year I had our accountantdouble check the numbers.
I'm like, no, this doesn't.
How can we clean these one more time?
I did it again this year.
I'm like, can you make sure thatthis net is correct?
So yeah, I've gone through it already.
So if you want to get to that point,just be consistent.
You got to take some risk.
You're going to get lucky along the way.
(51:45):
But the consistency will push you through.
Yeah.
And for those of youthat are very much growth minded
and building a large business,
taking Todd'stack of investing in employees
and contractors to help you buildthat business, you're investing in people.
Todd Todd's mindset has allowed meto do what I love my goals.
(52:06):
My personal goalsare not the same as Todd's,
but his mindset has allowed meto really enjoy the work
I do every day in both the shootingand the business development.
That will continue to help methen grow my market
and allow somebody else to also be ableto take care of their family.
There's just
think about your why,you know, in implementing all of this,
(52:29):
and that'll give you some really goodmeaning into your day to day work.
You'll wake up with a reasonto continue to do what you do.
Yeah.
Thanks for that perspective Craig. Yeah.
Oh well it's been a, it'sbeen a great great episode
and caused me to think a little bit morebecause, you know,
I still am out theredoing business development as well.
(52:51):
So it's challenged me.
I hope it's challenged you as well.
Guys, and ladies, guys and ladies,
just to think about yourwhy think about your systems
and not getting caught in the trapof just a method,
methods or will come and go, butconsistency will drive your business. So
(53:11):
Todd any
anythingelse, any closing thoughts from you?
Craig,I think that sums it up really well.
I do want to just pivot herereally quickly at this last
little bit of podcast, and I don't knowhow many you're still on with me, with us,
but we have an event that we are planning,your Craig, we
we had this harebrained idea of doing whatwe are calling the Spiro summit,
(53:32):
where we all get together and, you know,
as a community to grow.
And we had enough of you actually say,hey, are you going to do that?
And you consistently said, hey,are you going to do that?
That we are about 95%sure we're going to do it.
So we're going to do it in early 2026.
(53:53):
We're looking at the third weekin January.
This is called the Spiro Sync.
It's where we're going to gather.We're going to grow.
We're going to take time to take a breath
and there'll be more information about it.
It's going to be here in Ohio. It'sgoing to be cold.
Y'all will probably have a snowball fightand build snowmen.
But I'm excited about it.
We're planning it around.
Well, more information to come about itif you're still listening to this.
(54:16):
And that seems like it'd be interestingif you come out to the cornfields of Ohio,
let us know.
Send me a quick message.
Just a pink chat bubble or hello@spiro.media
be like Spiro Sync sounds good.
Want more information?
We will keep you in the loop.
We're planning this, just not as businessowners, we're hoping or we're looking to
have you bring your other key person,bring your admin that's helping you grow.
(54:39):
If you have a sales person,bring your sales person.
We're going to have all types of segments
the team from while the team from Spirothere, and we're going to connect.
We're going to do something onlinewith your VA's,
our Vas, connect with your VA's.
We just build this community.
It's important to us because we know whatit's like to be out there on the island.
It's lonely at the top.We want to connect with you.
(54:59):
We want to bring you togetherthe community.
And, we'll make surethe heat's on for you.
The third week of January here in Ohio.
You know, Todd,just a quick squirrel moment here.
You said we always talk about the fieldsof of northwest
Ohio, the corn fields some week.
Well, it's still warm.
I don't want to do this when it's cold.
We need to take our podcast outsidewith out in the cornfield
(55:23):
there at the Wow officeand in my backyard, I.
I'm right next to a soybean field.
So I could have the soybean field,which is the
to show you guys we really we're serious.
We're in the middle of these farm fieldsright?
Craig? I love that idea.
I actually think in the field behind methere is there's just an area that always
gets really saturate with waterthat doesn't grow corn or grow soybeans.
(55:46):
If it's that year, I'm going to get it.
I'm going to push the desk out there.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna have
I love that I let's see what I'm goingto fly the drone up there
and see if there's that deadspot this year. There we go
anyway.
All right.
That's going to wrap things upfor this week.
Guys, we just we appreciate you again.
I know what I say this a lot,but we really do appreciate the time
(56:07):
you take out,especially during busy season.
If it's busy season where you are at,where you're at right now, to to either
watch the podcast or listen, especiallywhen when you share it with others.
We really appreciate that.
The, the likes and the sharesjust help us to be able to invest
more in other, real estatemedia businesses and help them grow.
So thank you for that.
(56:27):
We're honored and humbled by it.
And, just want to say thank you.
Make sure you take time this weekto be thankful for
the things that you've been blessedwith in your life.
Think about your why becausethat continue to drive you?
And, make sure you take a breaththis week.
You have a great week. Take care.
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
Why did I not have my best month ever?
Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
Or even if you have had your best monthever, great.
Exciting.
How do you make next monthyour best month ever?
(00:31):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing
your real estate, photographyand videography business.
Spiro, we said each week of course,if you're a new listener, you don't know
that we say this every week,but Spiro is a software platform.
It's designed to help you manage your dayto day real estate, media business,
and ultimatelyto help it grow in scale as well.
(00:53):
Welcome back.
For those of you that have been watchingor listening on an ongoing basis,
for those of you that might be newto the podcast, we welcome you.
I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
In this whole, this,this whole podcast idea
is to help you build a strong,
real estate media business.
We've said it in the past,
(01:14):
but there's lots of incredible resourcesout there,
for you on the creative sideof what we do as real estate
photographers and videographers,you know, equipment suggestions,
you know, style,techniques, things like that.
But we really want to help you build just,a strong business
model,a strong business foundation to help you,
(01:36):
ultimately scale your business upand make this a lifelong, career
long, endeavor for youthat you really enjoy doing.
So, welcome to the podcast.
Our owner and foundercohost of the podcast, Todd Kivimaki
Welcome back, Todd
Craig, It's a great week here.
Great to be on with you all.
You know, Iwe say we're always excited to say it, but
(01:57):
you and I had some great conversationbefore we even started the podcast.
We're like,hey, let's just do this online.
So yeah, this is this is a good oneto think about this week.
Again, our goal here is,is to get you to think about turning your,
your love of what you're doing right nowinto a business.
And honestly,if it's real estate, photography
or anything else,our niche is real estate photography.
(02:17):
But I'm using a lot of these
same techniques with other businessesthat I've started.
So business as business,we're trying to give you some of that now.
We're trying to get youa little bit uncomfortable.
So excuse us for that to push you furtheralong to get your goals right.
Exactly. Yeah.
Like like Todd just said we were havingjust a really good discussion
before we started recording.And I thought, you know what?
(02:39):
I used to work in Radio
Todd and a long time ago,and when we would have guests on the air,
sometimes we'd, we'd be tempted to starthaving just
a really good off air discussionand then realize, hey,
now we have to kind of recreatethat discussion on the air.
And so I told Todd, I said, you know what?
Let's save this for the actual recording.
But I find it easy to talk about Todd
(03:00):
because I really enjoy what I do now.
Having kind of almost stumbledinto this, this career in industry,
it's just easy to talk about, and I canI can look a client in the eye and say,
I really love what I do. And clients.
I know this is a little off topic,but clients will respond to that.
If you truly enjoy your work,they will notice that,
(03:23):
and they'll want you as a partner
because they knowthat you're going to bat for them
because you really love what you doand you want to do the best job you can.
So, justI would encourage you to take some time,
you know, whenever you're watching
or listening, this, think aboutwhy do you love what you do
and just kind of maybe write some thoughtsdown about that and just think about it.
And, you can then share that with your,with your clients,
(03:46):
new clients, prospectsand that kind of energy.
They will respond to you.
I wasn't planning on saying that,but I just thought I'd start that off.
Being grateful for
things and your day is an amazing thingto start your day with.
I just started doing that.
I did my devotion this morning was athink about what I'm grateful for.
(04:07):
You know, I'm getting these TonyRobbins ads right now.
He has this 10 to 15 minute routine.
It's got some breathing in it,and it's got the idea of gratitude in it.
I, I think whenever I'm feelingreally angry or bad
or something about Toddand I'm focused on myself,
I've learned that I just have haveto focus on what I'm grateful for and.
(04:27):
And who can I help?
Why are you focus so much on yourself,Todd, right now?
Why is it such a big deal to you?
Go focus on someone else.
Yeah, yeah, I I've admittedly the pastprobably six months,
I've kind of fallen into that trapand realizing that the other day I,
I jumped in a Facebook groupthat I haven't posted in a long time and,
just got my focus off of myself and triedto encourage others in that group.
(04:51):
So anyway,
love that good way to start.
Let's, talk about real quick.
Todd, what's going on with Spiro?What are the updates?
Yeah, really quickly here.
So we are about a monthaway from our next launch.
So early September of 2025,we will launch Los
with Titus propertywebsite mobile optimization.
(05:12):
It's going to feelit's not going to be an app.
It's going to feel just like an app.
It's going to be optimizedthe way you all are using it
on the road and your,you know, on your phone in the road.
So that is coming in a few othergoodies as well.
Wanted to quickly switch hereand then get to the topic of,
look at your calendars,invest in your business.
There's two conferences there. Fabulous.
(05:34):
The REPP conference has Eli Jonesand the team.
I will be out there.
I'm having the pleasureof being the host of the conference
this year,so my team is going to be there.
Jess and Steve will be there.
Shannon will be there.So we're going to be there.
Come and spend some time with us.
That is early November.
We'll post the links below then.
Also, PMRE is two weeks later.
(05:57):
The Spiro team. We will be there.
Would love to connect with youon, either of those or both of those.
And, you know, if you're like,which one do I pick?
I love them both.
I'm going to pick one for youjust because you've asked me.
Well, I've you were.
Nobody really asked me.
I'm kind of just Bantry with myself, but,
picked a REPP conference.
(06:18):
That's that's my favorite.That's where I'm at.
Just to be transparent,I coach an orbit that's part of REPP.
PMRE is great as wellto different conference.
Read both websites, see which oneyou think you enjoy more.
And you know, worst case,if you can't pick on the both,
there you go.
You'll get something differentout of both of those.
(06:38):
In a good way.
Yep. Excellent.
Well shall we dive into that.
Yeah. Let's do this Craig.
All right.
So the month of July unexpectedly
at least a meet outI don't know if it was for you.
Wow video tours,our real estate media company, we had the
and this is please understand,guys, this is not to brag.
(07:01):
Okay.
There's a purpose in sharing this,
and it's going to be a great topicthat Todd even has me thinking on this.
But we had the best monthhistorically we've ever had
in the history of wow video tours.
It was it was amazing to me.
Unexpected.
I took vacation
during the month of July, expecting itto be down around the 4th of July
(07:24):
because it always has been right,and it ended up being
that we were just as busy as,and if not more than we we usually are.
And, the questionis, Todd, is that accidental
or was there a methodto getting to that point.
Yeah, yeah.
So to we're going to dive into that.
(07:44):
Just to give you some figures.
This is year 22 of Wow. And
June of 2025 was our best month ever.
July has a holiday.
It still had four full weeks afterwards.
That was a little bit of aof an asterisks there
that we knew we had a chance.
(08:06):
July was up 19%
in revenue over June, like,you know, just incredible.
Oh, no, I'm sorry, 19% over last June or
last July, last July.
Okay.
So we we bested June,
but we were up 19% over last July.
(08:28):
To give you an idea.
And the cool thingthat we're seeing a trend right now
and it's not I don't think it's by luckbecause of some of the things
that we'll get to thatI'll talk about some of these methods,
but we are doing lessshoots to make more money,
which naturally means our AOV
or our average order value is going up.
(08:50):
If you don't know what these figures arelike, Todd, what are these?
That's okay. You have to start somewhere.
I hired Shannon Landers
as our head of sales many years ago,and she's like, Todd, what's your AOV?
It's like, I have no clue.
I thought she was calling me a bad name.
And we figured it out.
It was 158 at the time.
158, which is not that healthy,but that was a long time ago.
(09:13):
We made it work.
But understanding what it waswas the first step.
If you use Spiro,there's a beautiful dashboard
with metrics that show you all these.
In fact, I'm looking at these right nowand I know what these numbers are.
I've done no calculation.
And it's up right in front of me. So
just wanted to set
that up to tell youabout how the numbers look.
(09:34):
And, July versusa June and a year over year last July.
So Craig,you asked you know, were those numbers.
Was that result, was it luck,was it an accident or was an intentional.
And I'll have to say, to be transparent,
there's always a little bit of luckinvolved in everything we do sometimes.
And it's good and sometimes it's bad.
Like I said, the Asterix point inthis was even though we had the July 4th
(09:57):
holiday, there was there are still four,almost four, four weeks of business days.
That's something that we always look at ishow many business days are in the month.
So the month ended on a Thursday,so we almost
got another 20 business days in the month.
So we understood that we knewthe month could be big.
And there was a couple of factors in thein that market that came together.
(10:20):
Days on market are increasing.
That's good for us.
Shannon talked about thata couple podcast ago.
But we are very strategicand we're very consistent.
And what we do,
we have a sales team.
We have SteveA, our head of sales and marketing,
Chris, our director of sales,and then we have a fabulous sales team
(10:42):
that focuses on building relationships.
And we have looked at what we've done,we've perfected
it, we've broken it, and we've changed itmany times over the years.
But we are intentionalabout getting those numbers
and we look to achieve those goals.
So it's a mentality of a systemversus techniques
(11:03):
like individual techniques,like I'm going to try this method
and do that until it doesn't work.
And then I'm going to try this method.
Is that accurate?
It is.
And you know the idea of kind of techniquejumping
is something that I findthat I can do at times.
I mean, Craig, there's so much out there,the good and the bad about the internet
(11:26):
and the way we communicatein 2025 is you will always find more.
I think
maybe I told this storya few a few podcasts ago, but,
my son and I, my oldest sonand I, he we do basketball.
I love basketball, played basketball.
So does he.
And he is committed that he wants to playat a very high level.
(11:48):
And so some of that comes througha lot of just training.
And then the basket worldhas a ton of people that train.
And so we looked at some ofthese trainings and I do some with them.
We have a trainerand then we got some other courses online.
I think it's kind of a natural thingwe all do.
We all go get some coursesor we watch some YouTube videos and
(12:09):
and then you start to do itand you're like, wow,
one video had this one thingand that looked really cool.
I was like, well,maybe we should have done that video.
And so you go look at it again.
You're like, oh, well, we alreadyspent the money on the first one,
but this one looks really great.
And I had to stop myself in doing that
(12:30):
because I'm just technique jumping.
It's like, stick to the first video.
Like in this particular instance,this person trains NBA players.
If he can train NBA playersand get them from A
to Z, then he can help my son get better.
And it's just like, stick to the planwe've already committed.
Let's move forwardand not start over again.
(12:53):
So you just said somethingthat kind of jumped out at me.
So when I had my own real estatemedia business,
I found a technique that worked for me.
It was coffee meetings.
I like the one on one relationshipbuilding.
I'm an introvert, blah blah blah.
But I did kind of build it into a platformwhere it was ongoing.
I was constantly looking for new clients,getting referrals.
(13:14):
You know,there was a method and a technique.
But the one thing I didn't think about this was, what is this technique costing me?
And what you just said was,
you know, finding a video onlineand the money that you paid for it.
So I think what we can kind of drive
dive down into in technique versus system
(13:35):
is the, the cost of that technique
or the cost of acquiring a new client.
And admittedly,I had more of the mentality
of a boutique real estatephotography company.
I wasn't thinking scaling,but if you're going to think scaling
your business,
you've got to think about the costof acquiring new clients, correct?
(13:56):
For sure.
And this is,and this is a common thing I happened to.
I listened to Alex Hormozi.
I think I just connectwith the way he teaches.
I like he's very straightforward.
This is not an Alex Hormozi thing.
Like, if you you watch anything.
Anything, a shark tank. I love SharkTank. It's talked about there.
But there's this idea ofwhat is your customer acquisition cost.
(14:18):
They call it CACCAC customer acquisition cost.
And that is what does it cost to get a
new customer?
Okay.
So let's just let's keep this very simple.
I'll use the same examplethat Alex Hormozi used
in his and his podcast.
(14:40):
He, he basically said he had this gymlaunch item
where he had this offer to people and,
it cost him $5
to get someone to look at his offer.
Okay.
It took five people
to look at the offerfor one of them to say yes.
(15:02):
Okay, so if one person says yes,he spent $5, had to get five people.
Five times five is 25.
His customer acquisition cost was $25.
To get one person to say yes.
Now I will say that this is a littlethat this is a little bit different,
because I'm not saying
that you all should just go and poura ton of money into online marketing.
(15:26):
We do it.
We can talk about it.
It's it'spart of the overall method and strategy.
But we are a relationship business.
If you've listened to us before,we say it every week, probably
100 times, about building relationshipswith your client.
And the important thing that I want youto understand is tracking your customer.
(15:46):
Acquisition cost is important,but the first step is committing
to doing that, committingto spending the time with your clients.
You know, I think so,
Craig, let's just go back to your exampleof of the coffee meetings.
So the coffee meetingsyou would get people to show
sometimes show sometimes not.
(16:07):
I'm sure that's not the pointI want to make.
But people would say yes eventually.
And then that would yield more shoots.
So you would go out and that's the goal.
So you would go out and do those shoots,and then you got very busy.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah, extremely busy to the point
happened to those coffee meetingswhen you were extremely busy.
(16:31):
They dropped off.
I didn't I didn't have time for them.
Yeah.
And rightfully so. Right.
I mean, you had to service the client.
But how many more clients said
yes to you when you weren't doingthose coffee meetings?
Yeah.
Zero, because, I wasn'tI wasn't out there consistently,
(16:53):
prospecting that new businessand developing those new relationships.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and I think that'sthat's a fine line in the sand.
And there's not I'm not sayingone ways. Right.
Or the other.
Craig had different goals and what I had.
But if you're listening to us todayand you're saying, hey,
I want my why was my July not up
(17:15):
20% from last July?
Why did I not have my best month ever?
Why have I felt like it's I've plateaued?
Or even if you have had your best monthever, great.
Exciting.
How do you make next monthyour best month ever?
If you're listeningand you have that idea,
then this consistencybecomes very important.
(17:38):
But I think it's I think it's good
for us to come back, to take a step backand understand your goals.
As a rule,when you started your business, Craig.
So your goals as a photographer, it was itto have 20 photographers or what?
What was your goal?
What was in your brain at that time?
Yeah.
Boy, there's a whole story behind thatand I don't want to drag it out too long,
(18:01):
but I, I wanted for myself a mix of bothcreating something with my hands,
because I really, respect tradespeople,
electricians, carpenters,you know, pipefitters, whatever.
I really respect those those people
because I don't havethat talent in most areas.
But I saw the practicality of the skillsthat they had
(18:23):
in providing something of value to others.And I literally prayed
the start of my real estate
industry or real estate media businesswas actually the result of prayer.
I'm just going to put that out there.
And it was, God,would you give me the ability
to create something with my handsthat's of value to somebody else
that I can sell with a clear conscience,knowing that this is an actual need?
(18:44):
I'm not trying to hock somethingto somebody
that might not be needed,and that I can provide for my family with.
And so my approach to it was,
I had just come from a management position
and realized that I don't necessarily,
always enjoy having to manage people.
(19:05):
I would rather personallydo the work of, of the creation,
and work shoulder to shoulder with peoplerather than lead them, as,
you know, an out front managerleader. What?
You know what,however you want to state that.
So my mentality in my businesswas I want a mix of both
owning the company,but also doing a majority of the work, the
(19:26):
the actual creation of the media,because I love media.
That's that's been my background.
So I kind of kept myselfin terms of growth,
versusyour mentality of growing a business.
And trying to get as many shootsas possible.
My goal was different,so I thought about things differently.
Yeah.
And in comparison,
(19:47):
if you haven't heard before,my mentality was completely different.
Craig is by fara much better human being than me, so.
Oh come on, the flips.
On the flip side, my mentality wasI wanted to do as many shoots as possible
because I wantedto make as much money as possible,
and that I wanted to figure out a wayto have to not do anything.
(20:07):
Okay, I am naturally a lazy person.
How can I build this to doas much as possible?
And I don't mind grinding it out.There's a difference.
I will grind like I'll push.
I have no problem pushing.
But then how can I not push anymore?
And how can I get that thing runningso that not only it makes me money,
(20:27):
but continues to make me more money?
And that was honestly
something that I struggle with froma human perspective for a lot of years.
Like, why am I so driven by money?
And then I had some close people to me.
We are in a small groupand they said, well, no,
it's not that youif you covet money, money's a problem.
But thenwhat are you doing with that money?
(20:48):
And then I saw how we couldand I didn't know this at first.
I saw how I could use that money in growthto bring people up
underneath meand get them to reach their goals.
It's been nothing more fabulousthan helping people
connect dotsand finding win wins throughout life.
(21:09):
Craig, you and I came up with what's a
what's a great winwin, right, with your story.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, when I first started my business,I was doing everything by myself.
The shooting, the scheduling, the,the sales, even the editing.
And I realized very quickly, I can'tI can't make a living out of this
doing two shoots a day,
because that's all I have time for,because I have to go home.
(21:30):
And now edit and Todd and I connectedand talked about the system.
Spiro, the software system and outsourcingediting that would allow me to scale.
Still doing most of the work myself, butscale in terms of the number of shoots and
I figureI forget exactly what your question was.
(21:51):
Todd.
Yeah, just the win win as to where like,oh, yeah.
Yeah, you help beta test usand give us feedback, right?
And it allowed me tothen build my business to the point
where I could support my familyand enjoy the work that I was doing,
because I still get to do the creative.
And now, even in the rolethat I have at Wow, I'm still kind of
in that same type of mentalitywhere I still get to go out and shoot
(22:13):
and and build the business in ourin the market that I'm responsible for.
So I still get to do the same thingand it works out because now I'm teamed up
with Wow Video Tours.
That handles a lot of that businessand systems type of approach
that I just wasn't able to doand didn't have as much interest in.
So yeah, it's been a fantastic,relationship.
(22:35):
So Todd's mentality of of helping,
bring
peopleup and their dreams and aspirations,
and then my personal goals of
being basically a tradespersoncreating with my hands,
but also the challengeof the relationship building,
which I really enjoy doing as well.
It's been a perfect match.
(22:56):
So yeah, two different mentalities, but,synchronous in,
in helping each other andand like you said, Todd, making a win win.
Yeah, yeah.
So Craig, let's take the path of
wanting to grow in scale of businessjust for this.
The rest of this conversation,right, right.
And again,I'm not saying there's nothing wrong
(23:17):
if you're a boutique photographer outthere.
I honestly envy you a bit.
I know I would love to take that boutiquefeel and take something
to create a luxury feel around itand sell it for a very high value.
That's not.
I just haven't figured that out.
It's like I want to do 14,000 of themand I want to give,
and I'm a much lower value.
Okay. That's the game that I play.
(23:38):
If you're playing the other game,honestly, kudos to you
as long as you're reaching your goalsand that is what you want to do.
That's what's important.
That your business is serving you right.
But but let's take the other approach of
we've set this up a bit of understandinglike hey let's not technique jump.
We have to come up with a, with a method.
(24:00):
And some of that we introducecustomer acquisition cost.
You know I want to go back to Alex
Hormoziand I'll give you a couple quotes here.
And I think they werethey at least resonated with me.
He said the best model
will win, not the best method.
Methods always expire.
(24:22):
Models last forever.
Okay, so I listen.
I read that a couple.
Yeah, I read that a couple times.
I was like, let me think about that.
Yeah.
What's what's the differencebetween a model and a method.
Good. Couldn't a method to a model.
Well, a
model is basically just in my opinion,a collection of methods.
(24:42):
And there's consistency behind that.
Okay okay.
So yeah, an example here,a very simple example
that we used alreadyis the idea of the coffee shop
acquisition technique.
Right.
That was a bit
and I I'll say this carefully,I don't mean anything by
(25:03):
but it was more reactive for you Craig,because it's like when I have time. Yes.
I'm going to I'm going to do this
method, this techniqueof acquiring clients.
And then it would it would work.
Clients would comein, you didn't have time to do it.
And then there became another pointin time where it's like, well,
(25:26):
I need to have more people call my phoneat my booking page.
So it's like, well, let me goback to the thing that I did before
and let me set these meetings.
Is that fair? Craig? Totally, totally.
But it was
it wasn't a consistent modelbecause it was seasonal.
When I was busy shooting, I couldn'tI couldn't invest the time and money
(25:48):
into those meetings.
And so yeah, it kind of ebbs and flows.
Yeah.
I loved one thing that you said thereCraig, because this is the big difference.
Invest the money into that.
I think that's so key.
So Alex also says
the the question really is can you afford
(26:12):
to get more customersthan your competition can.
That's an interesting take.
I wouldn't yeah.
Okay.
So how do you play that out.
How what set up a budget.
Yeah. What do. Yeah.
(26:32):
So it's a great question Craig.
It's I took a leap of faithmany years ago at Wow
where I went through the progressionof doing everything myself,
hiring some photographersand doing all the admin work myself.
Became overwhelmed, hired an admin.
She helped a lot that I grew
(26:53):
the company and there was bigger thingsI needed help with.
I hired a helper.
We talked about that in a couple,I talked about that on a YouTube live
with Eli Jones that my first main hirewas a helper to take care of that,
take things off my plate, a lot of billingand some technical things.
And then I put on the builder hat
(27:14):
and I built the company.
We I sold a ton of brokered deals.
I, I, I stumbled into this stupid knackof being able to sell these brokered deals
and it exploded.
The company and I got really busy.
I ran on that,
and then the company was big enoughthat I was pulled 15 other directions.
(27:35):
I didn't know how to say no to things,
and but I but I knew I needed help.
And I
was willing reluctantly to invest
some of the little moneyI had made to that point.
Still wasn't
making,you know, we were paying our bills,
(27:57):
but it still wasn't like this thing'sjust printing money.
So I hired on ahead of salesto focus on sales.
So I think that's the big differencewhen I've hired on
Shannon and Shannon's at Spironow doing the same thing with me.
With Spiro, we hit this with,we didn't really hit a plat..
(28:18):
It's neither here nor there,but I wanted to take a higher
trajectory curve on a hockey stickgoing up and growth.
I'd done it before with Shannon.
Pass is a good prediction.
The future, like, hey,she helped me blow up. Wow
Video tourslike scale, blow up, knock blow up.
And I wanted to do the samewith the next company.
(28:39):
So it's just this repeatable process.
But at the end of the day,I knew it was going to take
I was going to have to spend moneyto make money.
Yes. That's what I, you know,
a much more simplified example is a I'm
fiscally conservative other than hobbieswhere I spend too much money on hobbies.
Some days
there's a little, little transparencythere.
(29:01):
Well, I have a confession at the endof the podcast, Craig, for that,
if you can see the amount of hamradio stuff.
Anyway,
no. When I first started by my business,I was looking.
Okay, I know I need to get a droneat some point because drone
is becoming a thing, but for me, buyinga drone was that was a lot of money.
And I'm like, I don't know if I can affordto spend that money,
(29:23):
but I, I bit the bullet,I bought the drone.
And then I very quickly realizedafter booking a number of jobs with drone,
as an addon, that this was paying for itself
a lot more quickly than I expected.
And that exact thing that you just saidI had to spend money to make money.
And then after that drone was paid for,after a certain number of shoots,
(29:45):
that was pure profit, you know.
So it's the
same with, with our business system.
Yeah.
You're spending moneyto, to build your, your sales, process.
But you probably you have tolook at the cost.
Don't you have to look at the cost of,of investing in that system versus then,
(30:05):
say, the lifetime value of that client
is that something Alex goes into itis. Yes.
I'm so happy you said that, because thoseare the two big things he said.
That's the lifeblood of a business.
What does it cost to acquire a customerand what they
what do they bring in to you? Okay.
And these are the customeracquisition costs a lifetime value.
This is something that we measure a while.
And this is something that we knowand we haven't actually done this forever.
(30:28):
So if you're like ToddI have no clue where to start.
I'm going to help you out and helpyou understand where to start.
And don't feel bad if you're like,not right now, because we we somewhat
in the recent past have started doing thisand measuring this.
But let's break it down real quick.
Just so we're on the same page.
We talked about customer acquisition cost.
In his example,he says that he had to spend
$5 to get one personto look at his product.
(30:54):
It took
five people to look at the productfor one to say yes.
Okay, so $25 to get one. Yes.
That one. Yes.
Then spent $500 with him.
Okay. And now it wasn't all profit.
He had a high margin.
It cost him $100 and he he had a margin,
or he profited $400 on that one. Yes.
(31:18):
Okay.
So customer acquisition cost of $25lifetime value.
And let's just say the client only buysonce for the sense of this example.
But the lifetime value would be 400.
So the idea there is will you spend
$25 to make 400?
Yes, every day of the weekand even on Sunday.
(31:39):
And I'll do a thousand times a day.
You know, my my oldest brother,he always has.
He was he was in sales and he he did it.
He was great at it.
Like,would you spend a dollar to make $2? Yes.
Every day of the week.
I mean, I'd spend a dollar to makea dollar, 50 to make a dollar or 25.
As long as you're spending moneyto make money, you're good
(32:01):
generally.
Let's don't dig it.
Don't don't dive into that too much,other than the fact I'm trying
to make the point that
you are going to have to spend money, andthe goal is to get more money back out.
And that's essentiallywhat we did with the sales team.
I had no clueI was doing it at the beginning.
It was honestly very nerve racking me,
(32:21):
nerve racking for me to make that hire.
The company was still small.
We were doing, I think, probablyabout 4000 shoots a year,
you know, a low average order value and
I was bringing ona large salary of a person.
And it was a big commit.
It was scary to me.
(32:42):
And I know
I talked to a lot of you out thereand you're like, should I hire the VA?
Should I hire the photographer?
Should I hire the admin?
Like, again, I think and I encourage youguys, you guys have this owner intuition.
You all have it.
Your left brainjust beats it down so much that sometimes
you just have to pull the triggerand say yes.
(33:02):
Because the better question is,can you afford not to?
Not to? Yes.
Yeah.
Well, that kind of relates to whatwe talked a little bit about last week.
The catch 22 of when when you dosay you have a down month,
you're tempted to cutyour marketing budget because there's not
a tangible necessarily if especiallyif you're not looking at the numbers,
(33:23):
you're tempted, cut that marketing budget,which then gets you less views
or less exposure.
And less exposure means less jobs.
And you just you get in this downwardcycle.
Doesn't Alexhave some sort of quote about,
about marketing
budget and getting pasteven the idea of a marketing budget?
(33:44):
Yeah, yeah,he did it in that podcast he talked about,
he said the only people who talk aboutmarketing budgets are people
who aren't good marketers, who,yeah, the marketing.
But the marketing budget is spend as much
as you possibly can and then wait
till something else in your businessbreaks him.
(34:09):
Okay, okay.
I mean, explain that a little bit more.
I need to know something. Yeah.
So my take on it is
if you can have a positive
customer acquisition cost,lifetime value ratio,
meaning that it costs lessto acquire a customer
than what you're going to profitand make on that customer,
(34:32):
you should infinitely spendinto the customer acquisition bucket,
because the life you're always going to bemaking money, the ratio is positive.
Okay?
And then I love it.
He adds in until something elsein your business breaks.
So let's just. Yeah.What's that part? Yeah.
So what that means is I hired Shannon on
(34:56):
and she built a sales program,
a sales engine for us that ran,
and she was running it,and she hired people into it.
And we started getting people to say yes.
Imagine that.
Right. Come up with some processes.
You build this plan and people say, yes,
(35:18):
you know what the next problem was?
We had to service those yeses.
Yeah, I was going to sayhaving enough people to to do those jobs.
Right.
Okay.
Well,we are out of inventory, if you will.
What did we need?
Well, we needed more photographers.
That was the pinch point.
(35:39):
She broughtthe she brought the answer to me.
Hey, Todd, you need to bring this personoff the field so that he can train
all of the new photographers
we're going to need,because I have people saying, yes,
okay. Slowed everythingdown. Boom. Did it.
I didn't think about it. It was scary.
I was getting a little bit better
at not thinking about or not thinkingas much about these scary things.
(36:01):
And you will too.
You'll analyze it, you'll overthink it.
You'll think, no, no, no, no, something.
And you eventually get you to say yes.
Hopefully that's the goal.
You say yes and you see what that did?
It was positive for me the next time.
And a suggestion like thatfor growth was brought to me.
(36:24):
I analyze the information.
You always should.
As the business owner,I didn't overthink it.
The past was a good predictionof the future.
It work.
Last time we brought high level peoplein, we executed a method and a plan
and we got more businessand we made more money.
So the more you do that, the easierit gets.
(36:46):
I was sweating, I was like, I can't dothis, I can't do this, I can't do this.
And thank goodnessShannon was such a good salesperson
that she soldme on the idea of hiring her.
Like, I feel bad.
Like the amount of pitching
she had to pitch me on my companyto grow with her was crazy.
If I think about it.
(37:07):
But that's
that flow you'll get intoand that will be easier.
And back to us. Quote.
Then something broke.
We fixed it,
and then we poured more money into itso that we could grow something else.
Broke, needed admins, needed the schedule.
Hey, we had to write a scheduling software
and then we kept doing thatconsistently over the years.
(37:28):
We still do that to this day.
We 2022, 20 and of 22 throughout 23.
We 2022, end of 22 throughout 23.
Worst year ever.
We said no to a lot of things.
We cut a lot of thingswe talked about this last week,
so I won't harp on it, but we did notcut any sales and marketing.
We spent just
as much, if not more, because you can't
(37:50):
turn off your sales engineif you want to grow again.
Core value number five think growth.
How can I say cut?
The sales team would have made the yeara much better,
but I'm literally cutting off my abilityto grow.
Yeah. What? What's happened?
Even if you say you have a downmarket, Todd, where there's less
(38:10):
inventory to shoot,which we've experienced
if you continue to invest in your salessystem versus an individual
marketing technique,you're going to capture
what we've talked about before is you'regoing to capture more of that market.
And so even if youryour total number of shoots is down,
you have a higher market share,which when the market bounces back
(38:31):
and you've maintained those relationships,you're going to be to the plus.
So yeah, you might be downin terms of actual number of shoots,
but you're up in your market share.
And then when the market recoversyou're that much further ahead
during that next cycle.
Yeah.
And that's how you're able to say and everything lined up in that store and that,
(38:51):
synopsis that Craig gave that we can say
July of 25 was our best monthever after 22 years.
Right?
And that beat the previous month,which was the best month ever.
So, Craig, let's let's get more.
Okay. So we covered the high level.
Let's get down to the,the nuts and bolts of this.
And I want to make sureI'm going to try to just break it
because this can be overwhelmingbecause we've talked about some big topics
(39:15):
and the idea of a sales managerthan a training manager,
you know, and then a head of trainingand that, you know,
director, coach and all this stuff,it gets to be overwhelming.
Let's we have to start somewhere.
And that's the important thingis you have to start somewhere.
Craig, you had a great, a great technique
(39:35):
of the coffee meetings.
You know whatwould just be a simple change?
That if you were on my strategyof wanting to grow to infinite or grow to,
you know, large goalsand not be a boutique, you know
what would be the simple change ofin the coffee technique?
Meeting?
(39:57):
Well, for me, it would be investingin another photographer
to take on more of those shootsand free up my time.
Yeah.
To to to sell more or workmore on the business
rather than in the businessas, as you've said before.
Yeah.
So it's just a simple thingof protecting your time to make sure
that you put that on your calendar
(40:19):
and nothing gets booked over that.
That one hour once a week, whatever it may
be, is on your calendar because you can'tshut that engine off right.
And in the weekswhere you have it, where no one shows
up, you can't turn it offfor the next week because you feel bad.
No one showed up.
(40:41):
Okay,don't spend your time at the coffee shop
looking for new techniquesand not do the technique that you're
that is proventhat it can work. In the past.
Look for ways to make it better.
You're always going to have to pivot.
You'realways going to have to look to improve.
We do it every dayat Wow. we analyze what we do, but
we do not jump from one thingto the next, to the next, to the next.
(41:04):
Right.
Would you be would it be fairto say, though,
that you can employ techniquesjust as a part of an overall strategy?
It's not about the technique necessarily,but you're you're
executing different techniquesjust as an ongoing strategy
to engage your clients and new clients.
Oh for sure.
(41:24):
I think it's as simple as that.
Craig, I really do. I think
when you put that with consistency,that's how you get your method.
Fair enough.
And then consistency means I, I do it,
but you do the technique, but thenyou have to measure it as well, right.
And through that measurement,
when a technique needsto be more efficient or convert more,
(41:47):
how can I help this techniqueconvert more.
How is it a is it a top a funnel thing?
Is it a is it a bottom of funnel thing?
Meaning do I need to get more peopleto know about my coffee meeting,
or am I just not really buildinggood enough relationships
with people at the coffeemeeting to get them to say yes?
Or maybe my my offering is not as good or,you know, there's many different ways,
(42:08):
but we would analyze that top of funnel,bottom of funnel,
and how can we get more people to say yes,and we would pivot.
And then when a technique grew old,we would go into the next thing.
But I can tell you
there's we're still using the sametechniques that we've used forever.
They look a lot different.They feel different.
But it's whatwe've done. When I was selling.
Okay. Todd.
(42:28):
So this can sound a little overwhelming.
Just this big picture stufffor a, say, a currently a solo operator.
So what would be the first tangible stepsthen that someone can take
that's listening right now from,moving from techniques to to strategy?
Yeah.
(42:49):
One analyze what techniquesyou're currently doing time.
Even if you're like,hey, I'm not using a technique.
You probably are.
When are you talking to Agent real estateagents?
Okay, that's a technique.
And I ask and I want you to startwith that technique
because that'swhat you're comfortable with.
I don't want to say use these techniques
(43:10):
because if they don't alignwith what you're comfortable with,
I'm never going to get you consistentwith doing these techniques.
And that's a strategy that we usewith the sales team at Wow.
We understand how they like to sell.
Some of them love the call.
Some of them love the stop buysome of them love the hold events. Yes.
(43:32):
And then some of them go,oh, and I could never hold the event.
Or the one that holds the events.
Like I could never build individuals withthese people because I like a big group.
Be comfortablewith what you are comfortable with.
That'show you're going to be consistent with it.
If you hate cold calling and everybodyin the world hates cold calling,
if you try to force yourselfinto cold calling,
(43:54):
you're going to do this for two daysand it's going to be so uncomfortable
that there's going to be a shiny objectand you're going to go do that
in your business.
It's probably going to be QC photos.
So one start
analyze what techniques you're using rightnow. Two.
(44:16):
Stick with that technique okay.
And let's measure some time.
So whatever that technique is let's
go back to Craig'scoffee meeting technique okay.
Are you doing that once a week.
All right.
What what time are you spending on it?
You're probably spending a little bit oftime to post to let people know you're.
They're advertising that coffee meeting.
(44:37):
Then your time to get to the coffeemeeting.
You have costs involved inbuying some coffee and then any follow up
that you do about the coffee meeting,just track that time.
Okay. Time tracking we're doingI'm doing it right now.
I'm doing it with a lot of y'all.
I've done it for the last two weeks,and we've done up episodes in the past.
On the importance of time tracking.
(44:57):
Yes. So track that time and
that is the time that you're spendingacquiring customers.
All right.
So to get customer acquisition cost,
we just need to know what, you knowput a value on that okay.
So if you spend say there's three hoursweekly for your coffee meeting,
(45:17):
say it's 50 bucks an hour iswhat is is what you're paying yourself.
Okay.
You'reprobably if you're going to hire someone,
you're probably gonna pay himmaybe 50 bucks an hour or less to do this.
So it's a fairestimate for 150 bucks a week.
You had that coffee meeting?
Four times a month.
That's 600 bucks.
(45:38):
Okay.
And say that gets youjust one client to be.
Just to be simple with this equation
at that point, then you spent $600and mainly of your time.
But let's assume
you're going to put someone in that place600 bucks to get one client.
Okay.
Now what does a client on averagespend with you?
(45:59):
All right.
So this is what you have to understandwhat your lifetime value is as a client.
Typically our clients at Wowthey do like 5.3 shoots a year with us,
our average client, okay, 5.3
shoottimes your average order value, okay.
260, 300.
Whatever it is,some of you have a $1,000 average order.
That's great.
(46:20):
Multiply that together
and that's what you're goingto make off them in a year.
Just to keep things simple, I would justtake that yearly number right now
and know that clients
stay with you longer than one year,but at least you have an idea.
It cost you $600 to get this clienton average in the next 12 months
that they're with you,they're going to do five shoots
(46:42):
at, say, $200 for easy math.
That's $1,200.
No, no, five shoots.
I said times $200
$1000
Yeah. Sorry, my math wasn't math.
Okay, 1000 bucks.
You're going to make off that client.
It cost you 600 to get them. Nowyou have to figure out your cost.
A good.But at least you have these ratios here.
(47:04):
Okay? So take out your cost of goods.
And what do you make on that?
But at least we're starting some point.
We know what a customer acquisitioncost is.
We have an idea of what a lifetime valueis or at least a yearly value.
And then from there, what we can do is
we can begin to do that more.
Okay.
So what's the next technique?
Can you make that technique better?Can you convert more?
(47:26):
Can you get more people to your coffeemeeting?
Okay, if not,then what's the next thing you can do?
I've challengedI've challenged you all to make five,
to have five meaningful conversationsfour times a week.
That's another technique again.
But when you're when you coupledconsistency with techniques,
that's how you get these systemsand you build your sales engine.
(47:50):
Okay.
Have five meaningful two minuteconversations with clients a week.
Super simple.
That's one hour a day, four times a week.
That's four hours, 50 bucks,200 bucks to do that.
Customer acquisition.
How many can you get to sayyes from those conversations?
How many clients a year acquire
that's going to
(48:10):
get you the top line date of understandingyour customer acquisition cost
and how we're going to get to a very roughlifetime value.
Okay.
Todd.
So I think the overarching pointthat we've been kind of hammering home
is, is stop asking,what's the trick to get clients?
What's the method?
You know,and there's 20 bazillion different
methods that we've talked aboutand others have talked about
(48:30):
and start asking, how can I builda repeatable system, a repeatable,
yeah, system is the best.
That's word I can think ofto acquire client, to acquire clients.
Yeah.
And and the idea of that, it sounds maybetoo technical to a lot of you system.
(48:51):
Like how do I build a system?
It seems likeI need to know how to write code.
You don't.
At the end of the day, pick 1 or 2things that you are comfortable with
that are helping you acquire clients,
and then be consistent with them.
That is how you build your system.
(49:11):
And all the while,while you're doing those techniques,
you remember thatthis is just your next best draft,
so you don't feel like those techniqueshave to be perfect.
The biggest you're going to gain the most
by just consistently doing them.
We can always make them better.
We can always understandmore metrics about them.
(49:34):
I'm sorry if I overloaded youon some of these metrics today.
If you're not doing anything,the next best step is to do something
consistently.
And when you do that,what you focus on will expand.
You'll eventually say, hey,I actually am doing
this technique and I have an idea,
(49:55):
or I've stumbled into this, or a client
suggested that I do this thing,or they invited me to a brokerage meeting.
Boom,there's your new technique. Get more.
Have technique one lead to techniquetwo coffee meetings to brokerage meetings.
Those lead to buildingrelationships leads a brokerage deals.
It leads to you building out your system.
(50:15):
But consistency is honestly the thing
that you have to start with, right?
And having the courage to spend the moneyto invest in those systems
to help them grow and continueto build your business.
Right? Right.
And just my mindsethas shifted throughout the years.
I was very hesitantto put the money in the build
(50:38):
sales.
Fast forward a decade later,
I'm like, how can we put as muchmoney as possible into it?
Because
you have to spend it to make it.
And I know that through the consistencyof what we learn to build
our sales engine, that makes us money,and I am, I hate even saying this,
(51:02):
but in year 22, I'm making more moneythan I ever thought I would make.
And I only say that to motivate youbecause I'm less focused on money now.
And I think that's one reason why.
But if you want to grow,you have to have money,
you have to put money into your business,
and it's going to take you somewherethat you never thought was possible.
I never thought it was possible.I look at the numbers.
(51:24):
I looked at the numbers.
Last year I had our accountantdouble check the numbers.
I'm like, no, this doesn't.
How can we clean these one more time?
I did it again this year.
I'm like, can you make sure thatthis net is correct?
So yeah, I've gone through it already.
So if you want to get to that point,just be consistent.
You got to take some risk.
You're going to get lucky along the way.
(51:45):
But the consistency will push you through.
Yeah.
And for those of youthat are very much growth minded
and building a large business,
taking Todd'stack of investing in employees
and contractors to help you buildthat business, you're investing in people.
Todd Todd's mindset has allowed meto do what I love my goals.
(52:06):
My personal goalsare not the same as Todd's,
but his mindset has allowed meto really enjoy the work
I do every day in both the shootingand the business development.
That will continue to help methen grow my market
and allow somebody else to also be ableto take care of their family.
There's just
think about your why,you know, in implementing all of this,
(52:29):
and that'll give you some really goodmeaning into your day to day work.
You'll wake up with a reasonto continue to do what you do.
Yeah.
Thanks for that perspective Craig. Yeah.
Oh well it's been a, it'sbeen a great great episode
and caused me to think a little bit morebecause, you know,
I still am out theredoing business development as well.
(52:51):
So it's challenged me.
I hope it's challenged you as well.
Guys, and ladies, guys and ladies,
just to think about yourwhy think about your systems
and not getting caught in the trapof just a method,
methods or will come and go, butconsistency will drive your business. So
(53:11):
Todd any
anythingelse, any closing thoughts from you?
Craig,I think that sums it up really well.
I do want to just pivot herereally quickly at this last
little bit of podcast, and I don't knowhow many you're still on with me, with us,
but we have an event that we are planning,your Craig, we
we had this harebrained idea of doing whatwe are calling the Spiro summit,
(53:32):
where we all get together and, you know,
as a community to grow.
And we had enough of you actually say,hey, are you going to do that?
And you consistently said, hey,are you going to do that?
That we are about 95%sure we're going to do it.
So we're going to do it in early 2026.
(53:53):
We're looking at the third weekin January.
This is called the Spiro Sync.
It's where we're going to gather.We're going to grow.
We're going to take time to take a breath
and there'll be more information about it.
It's going to be here in Ohio. It'sgoing to be cold.
Y'all will probably have a snowball fightand build snowmen.
But I'm excited about it.
We're planning it around.
Well, more information to come about itif you're still listening to this.
(54:16):
And that seems like it'd be interestingif you come out to the cornfields of Ohio,
let us know.
Send me a quick message.
Just a pink chat bubble or hello@spiro.media
be like Spiro Sync sounds good.
Want more information?
We will keep you in the loop.
We're planning this, just not as businessowners, we're hoping or we're looking to
have you bring your other key person,bring your admin that's helping you grow.
(54:39):
If you have a sales person,bring your sales person.
We're going to have all types of segments
the team from while the team from Spirothere, and we're going to connect.
We're going to do something onlinewith your VA's,
our Vas, connect with your VA's.
We just build this community.
It's important to us because we know whatit's like to be out there on the island.
It's lonely at the top.We want to connect with you.
(54:59):
We want to bring you togetherthe community.
And, we'll make surethe heat's on for you.
The third week of January here in Ohio.
You know, Todd,just a quick squirrel moment here.
You said we always talk about the fieldsof of northwest
Ohio, the corn fields some week.
Well, it's still warm.
I don't want to do this when it's cold.
We need to take our podcast outsidewith out in the cornfield
(55:23):
there at the Wow officeand in my backyard, I.
I'm right next to a soybean field.
So I could have the soybean field,which is the
to show you guys we really we're serious.
We're in the middle of these farm fieldsright?
Craig? I love that idea.
I actually think in the field behind methere is there's just an area that always
gets really saturate with waterthat doesn't grow corn or grow soybeans.
(55:46):
If it's that year, I'm going to get it.
I'm going to push the desk out there.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna have
I love that I let's see what I'm goingto fly the drone up there
and see if there's that deadspot this year. There we go
anyway.
All right.
That's going to wrap things upfor this week.
Guys, we just we appreciate you again.
I know what I say this a lot,but we really do appreciate the time
(56:07):
you take out,especially during busy season.
If it's busy season where you are at,where you're at right now, to to either
watch the podcast or listen, especiallywhen when you share it with others.
We really appreciate that.
The, the likes and the sharesjust help us to be able to invest
more in other, real estatemedia businesses and help them grow.
So thank you for that.
(56:27):
We're honored and humbled by it.
And, just want to say thank you.
Make sure you take time this weekto be thankful for
the things that you've been blessedwith in your life.
Think about your why becausethat continue to drive you?
And, make sure you take a breaththis week.
You have a great week. Take care.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
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.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.