July 30, 2025 • 55 mins
What will help you grow your real estate media business faster and larger? Just the right camera and gear, or sound business principles that you can apply consistently? Todd and Craig argue: It's not about the camera.
Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Episode Open
01:54 Industry Conferences
05:12 Spiro Updates
06:05 Spiro Sync Gathering?
10:49 Growth Isn't About the Camera
54:11 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):
it means we’remaking more money doing less shoots,
which I think is almost
kind of the golden combinationfor business.
Let's do less of something,sell it for more,
to make more money,
(00:34):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing your real estate,
photographyand videography company, Spiro.
It's a software platform.
It's designed to help you manage your dayto day real estate media business.
And ultimately, we'd loveto help you grow and scale as well.
Welcome back to another week.
I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
And just enjoy this timeeach and every week where we get to talk
(00:59):
shop, kind of,you know, relax a little bit,
talk about how business growsand maybe give you some examples,
how of how we've grown and mistakeswe've made over the years,
and how you can learn from our mistakesso you don't have to make them
as Todd says.
Todd Kivimaki, our owner and founderand cohost of the podcast, Welcome Back, Todd
Craig, It's great to be here.
(01:20):
You know, this is year 22 for Wow VideoTours, our real estate media company.
So excited about that.
You know,I've been doing a lot of reflecting
you all lately about just businessand the years.
And I get a lot of questions.
I love the questions from you guys.
I do a lot of coaching to you all.
And, you know, there was some industrynews this week that happened.
(01:42):
And so and we have some actionable itemsthat help you
grow your business in 2025 and beyond.
We've got it allpacked into this podcast for you today.
Yeah, there's going to be a lot.
But before we do that,it was like to, dive into, you know,
what's going on in the industry.
Any news conferences, announcementsthat you have, Todd this week?
(02:04):
Yeah, just a few of them here.
So, a reminder, the conferencesand the industry
are in November out in Las Vegas.
There's two of them. They're fabulous.
There is the REPP conferencethat is November 7th and 8th.
So I get the the pleasure of emceeing
(02:24):
and hosting that conference this year,which is going to be great.
That's the Eli Jones conference.
So the REPP team, just a fabulous eventthat is again November 7th and 8th.
There's an MVP day on the sixth.
It has a minimum monthlyrevenue requirement
and I think it might be sold out.
So they sold out immediately.
(02:46):
They found a bigger venueand it's either sold out or close to.
So make sure you if you want to do thatplease visit
repplaunch.com/repp2025.
We'll link it belowif you're typing at repp has to P’s also
PMREis November 18th through 20th.
We will be at that conference as well,so we will have a booth.
(03:08):
The Spiro team will be there.
Excited to meet you.
That is pmreeconference.com.
So pleaseI think it's great. Pick one of them.
I would love to see at them.
And, we will be at both of them.
Like I said.
But I think this is a good time
to think abouthow you're going to build your business.
How are you going to recharge?
And I know it can seem overwhelming rightnow, like, oh, I'm super busy too.
(03:30):
Like, I can't think about what I'm goingto do in November.
But to be frank, that'show you grow a bigger business
is that you think ahead,you think ahead of today.
You think ahead of six months from now.
Even so, conference is
their beneficial.
I'll just throw in there
the conversations you get to havewith other people in this space.
(03:50):
And just the sharing of stories and,you know,
sharing things that have worked foryou and, things that haven't worked.
It's it's just a good timeto kind of relax and, and share ideas
and build some build some friendshipsin the, in the industry as well.
Yeah,I know specifically at the repp conference,
they've adjusted the schedule a bit to bethey have breakout sessions,
(04:12):
and you're going to go sitwith other business owners
in your same, you know,
and your same size of business.
So same stage of business. Excuse me.
I think that's so relevantbecause it's always, you know,
when I speak on stage, I'm always like,
hey, guys, like,I don't want you to feel pressure.
I say it here on the podcast,
like, don't feel pressure to do millionsof dollars a year in real estate media.
(04:35):
If you're just starting out, you're like,I can't do it.
You can do it.
Just it took me 22 years to do.
But when you can sit at a tablewith someone that's like,
oh yes, a VA oh, my first photographer.
Oh yes, my 15th photographer,
that's when you're really lateand you go, oh, I can do this.
And then the cool thing about ittoo, Craig, is you're sometimes
(04:57):
teaching at that table, which is fabulousbecause when you can teach it,
it means you've mastered it,which means that.
And when you can give backand help others.
I don't think there's anything betterthan that.
Yeah, it's a good feeling.
It sure is. It sure is.
So looking at we also like to talkabout potential Spiro updates here.
There is a Septemberlaunch plan for Spiro.
(05:20):
We're going to integrate Titus, whichwe've talked about on the Spiro tech call.
If you want to find out more, go backto the Spiro Super User Facebook group.
It's basically a great financing.
Optionspay out close for real estate agents.
And along with
that we're going to optimize the propertywebsite editor.
So this is going to give you an applike experience.
(05:41):
It's not going to be an app.That's not what I'm saying.
But we're going to optimize itas if it were an app.
We know you guys are out therein the field,
many of you trying to expedite in QCphotos from your phone.
The next day.
And we've looked at all of how you use it.
We've reconfigured that going to bejust a really streamlined experience.
Very cool.
(06:02):
Oh, also, Craig, I meant to mention
and I kind of hesitatebecause this isn't in stone yet.
Okay, but you know how I do this.
I say things and then kind of like,oh, did I say that?
Like, are we going to do that?
But we hinted at the idea of a gathering
for Spiro users,
(06:24):
non spiro users,but us Spiro doing a gathering
and we call it the Spiro summit beforeI think we made it up on air.
Craig I think we really did.
We were spitballing livewe were.
And enough of youemail me or said something about it.
I was like, wait a minute.
Like
(06:46):
There might be something here, likethe industry might need this.
So Shannon and I got in a room todayface to face, which is always dangerous.
And, when there's ideas, are there?
You have you,
for those of you listening. Yeah. Right.
Yep. Yeah.
I was just mid sip of my morningdrink and,
(07:07):
I, it almost came up through my nose.
Sorry.
I'm going to get you one time Craig.
That's my goal out.You know, it was one time.
I have too much expensive equipmentsitting in front of me.
Don't do that.
Too many electronics.
And, oh, my goodness, if you're not,if you don't watch on YouTube,
go back and watch. It's great.
(07:28):
So we sat in a roomShannon and I were like, this idea.
And we started brainstorm.
And Shannon has built a ton of eventsfor real estate agents.
And we just got going and we're like,oh my goodness, like this.
So what we're what we're thinking you alland we want your feedback.
It's the reason why I'm telling you this.We came up with the tag.
(07:48):
We came up with the name of Spiro Sync, okay.
And what this is,this is a little bit different.
It's not like the conferences whereyou are going to go and learn in November,
but the idea of this is
or thetagline is breathe, build and belong.
And this is not just for you.
(08:10):
This is bring your leadership team,bring your admin, bring a photographer.
It might just be
you want a photographer, but you're like,I need some sort of event.
I need some sort of team building.
We're going to have our teamfrom Wow there, we're going to talk
not just the owners, but we're going totalk about operations VA teams.
(08:33):
We're going to virtuallydo some time online.
VA teams, the VA teams like let's Connect.
I know the communityneeds this connection, and that's why
we just thinkthis idea of belonging is so important.
We know that it can feel likeyou're out on an island.
Craig and I both did it right.
Craig, how many timeswere you in your own business?
(08:54):
You're like,
you get in your own head and you're like,this thing's never going to work.
Like, I might as well just go backand work at McDonald's.
Nothing wrong with working at McDonald's,but but it's like you get it
in your own head when you have belongingand when you can connect with others,
and then
when you can get your team to do that.
I think it can just be fire.
(09:16):
So let me know, isthis is this worth doing?
Like it will be in the cornfields of Ohio?
We won't do in Lima because we're we'rethere's no major airport here.
So we're thinking Dayton, Ohio2026, third week of January.
Shoot me a message. Let me know.
Would you come to it?Do you see value in it?
(09:36):
What would you want to accomplish from it?
Sounds good to me.
You know, Spiro Sync,
that idea of being an islandand out on your own,
even as a photographer, out in the field,you can slip into
that feeling of lonelinessand that you're the only one
dealing with the issues that you are.
(09:57):
And you get stuck in thisoverthinking cycle.
And it just it can get bad.
But when you can plug back into communityand realize, oh, wait a minute,
I'm not alone, I'm actually facing thesesame things and work through it together,
and bounce ideas off each other.
That's that's a good thing.
I like that idea. So. Yeah, yeah.
(10:20):
Drop us a line.
Hello@spiro.media.
We would love to hear from you.
Yeah.
All right,just one thing to close with that,
and then we'll get to the topic.
But I saw that my businesses grew
exponentiallywhen I started asking more questions.
And I think the idea of that community,the relationships,
the vulnerability of asking questions
(10:41):
can just take you to the next level.
Yeah, for sure.
All righty.
Well, let's dive into this.
- Let's, Craig- a bit of a little bit of a provocative
title for this podcast.
And we've talked about it before.
That it's not about the camera
(11:02):
we get, we get stuck on, pixel
peeping,as you say, Todd and equipment and gear.
And I mean, it is creatives.
Yeah, we love gear.
We love that creative outlet. Right.
But we want to dive into some things that
we believe will really benefityour business, to help you get beyond
just the gear and the creativity partand looking at your business.
(11:23):
That's what this podcast is all about.
So, Todd, we're officially,you know, over halfway through the year.
It's the end of July here when this,this, episode gets published and,
looking at the data of our real estatemedia company
Wow video tours,it's been a really good year.
And we don't say that to to brag.
(11:44):
But it's pretty staggering.
It is.
You know, we are up nearly 20%
in 2025 at our media company,
and that's 20% over for our best yearever, 2024.
So when you have growth like that,
(12:05):
I, I looked at that because many ofyou asked me that question, how do I grow?
You know, I talked to one of you this weeklike I just quit my job
August 1st.
I'm full time. I'm all in.
It's like, how do I grow?
It's like, well, okay, well,let's let's break this down.
It's a lot more simplethan what you think.
And so I did that throughout the courseof what
(12:28):
we took, what we didover the last few years, that wow.
Right.
And what's, what'sreally kind of amazing about it is it's
not necessarily it is a growth in termsof the number of shoots we've done, but
the how of how of those numbers
is really in that average order priceand that going up.
(12:50):
Yeah.
And that's so keybecause when we looked at our numbers,
like Craig mentioned, not only is itgoing to be our best year ever,
but we're actuallyit'll be our best year in revenue.
And also number of shoots.
But the thing about it is, is
our revenueis outpacing the number of shoots,
(13:10):
which means our average ordervalue went up, which means we're actually
making more money doing less shoots,
which I think is almost
kind of the golden combinationfor business.
Let's do less of something,sell it for more,
to make more money, because we all knowthe kinks and the bottlenecks.
(13:32):
You know, say we just cut prices in half
while number of shoots would skyrocket it.
Right.
But we're still above it.
Yeah, it's a race to the bottom,you know, go back.
Two months agowe did that podcast. Podcast.
But what's going to happenis we're going to have a kink
with the number of photographersand all of us,
(13:52):
we all have a kink right nowin the summer.
We're all looking.
We monitor our lead time very closely,
and we know if agents can't get in 3or 4 days,
they're going to go find someone else.
So to not put yourself in that predicamentis fabulous.
Less shoot more money.
We're going to break down how we did it
(14:13):
if Todd before we dive into it.
If you could.
This can be really kind of hard.
Sorry I'm putting putting you on the spot,but if you could boil down to one word
on the growth that we've experiencedthis year, what would it be?
It's a good one, Craig.
You know, I, I think one word
(14:35):
just has to be focus.
The focus that we had to grow
is what has given us this growth.
Okay.
So with that necessity of focus okay.
Yes, we're having an amazing year,but it hasn't always been that good.
(14:55):
So go back.
Let's go back to 2023.
Right.
What what did things look like back then.
Yeah 2023 was tough.
And I've shared this beforeso I won't tell the whole story.
But end of 2022 we lost a major account
a quarter million dollarsand one day gone.
Boom.
(15:15):
The market was down.
That was another quarter of $1 million.
So that's a half $1 million.
We didn't know it at the time.
You know,we were just hoping that it was that
we only going to be downa quarter million.
Just from the accountand the market was bad.
It was super fast,like houses were selling
instantlywith 50 offers, a lot of inspections.
(15:37):
Yeah. No inspections.All cash. Yeah. Crazy.
It was crazy.
And we,we the business just didn't come in.
And so what we had to do
honestly for meCraig like it was an oh crap moment.
Like I'm not talking like,
you know, this yearI'm not going to make as much
(16:00):
literally y'all. I'm like,
I might have to sell my house.
Like,I like my wife and I talked about that.
I had never talked about that before.
Like,that's a pretty that gets you to focus
like none other when you're like,
(16:22):
hey, babe, we might have to sell the house
like we raise our kids.
Our kids are like this. How? Like,
that's a big thing, right?
So what did that focus lead to then
in that in the middle of that really hardsituation?
Yeah.
So like we hadjust had to get rid of the shiny objects.
(16:43):
My back up against the wall
forced me
to say no to everything except
one thing that we'll talk about,
but it really itit forced me to focus, Craig,
because I was like,I have to keep the ship afloat.
I to be quite honest, Craig, it was.
(17:04):
That was your 20 or 21.
That was your 20
and it was 20 years of growth.
Every year was better than the previous.
And I think after 20 years of that.
(17:24):
I got a little lax.
Okay.
And I lost focus.
A but, you know, I started Spiro.
In the meantime I was splitting focus and.
It just took some more attentionto get back into it.
So what we did,we looked at everything we were doing.
(17:45):
We cut everything we were doing.
I cut it from a personal level toand I tell you the personal story
because it connects to the business,but you might need to do it two
so when we
did basketball tournaments, we decidedwe could still do basketball tournaments.
We packed our food to eat in the hotel.
(18:07):
We didn't eat out.
Yeah, because it's expensive to eat out.
I didn't knowif I was going to have that $100.
We packed food.
We booked hotels that had a microwave.
Like we did all the little thingsbecause I was
in just save mode right?
(18:29):
And so I got to knowmy numbers really good.
Craig.
And that's one thing that if you're goinglike, hey, I think everything's good
or I think everything's bad,
you better find outreal quick, really, where you're at,
what do your numbers tell you?
So when you're in that situationyou're looking okay.
I, we we have to cut.You said the shiny objects.
(18:52):
What?
You can't cut everything.
Obviously,you have some business functions
that have to stay toto keep the doors open.
So what what were the things or
maybe the one thing that you didn'tcut that
somebody on the outside looking inmight say, well, you need to cut this too.
Was there anything specific.
Yeah.
I mean, our, one of our biggest expensesand it's something we did not
(19:16):
touch was sales and marketing
because our goal, our core valuesremain the same.
Craig.
Our coreour fifth core value is think growth.
We want to grow.
And so we knew that if we remove
the engine of growth,
it was going to lead to even a worse 2024.
(19:40):
And that that honestly, like
if you turn the podcast offafter this, you this is the message
like that idea of focusing on growth
led to our best growth ever.
And Craig, when I say it, it
sounds stupidly simple, right?
(20:00):
Right.
Like when you focus on growth,you're going to lead to growth, right?
Nobody quote me on thatbecause it's a dumb quote, but it's true.
Yeah,
it's it's really easy to be tempted.
I'm so glad you said thisbecause this is what I ran into
to all the time beforeI was in the real estate media industry.
(20:22):
I spent almost nine and probablyabout 20 years working in radio
broadcasting, broadcast radio,and my focus I was on air, yes, but I,
I also managed a stationand did sales and marketing.
And every time I would talk
with a business ownerabout advertising on air,
(20:44):
if they were in aposition like a financially,
challenging position,the thing that I always consistently
heard and Iand I learned this in college as well,
most of the time, the first thing peoplecut in their business
is their advertising, right?
Because the budget's getting constrictedand advertising
doesn't necessarily have a, concrete
(21:07):
immediate,
number, like an ROI.
You can't always necessarily,get that ROI number right away.
And so it's kind of an intangibleand they're like, oh, I got to cut that.
But what happens is when youcut your advertising in your marketing,
you're not in front of everybodythat you're trying to reach.
(21:30):
And so then your salestake another hit in another dip,
and now your budget's even tighterbecause you're making even less.
And and it just, it's,it's a vicious cycle,
downward cyclethat is almost impossible to get out of.
And I talked toI talked to quite a few business owners,
some some you could see the light bulbgo on, some still didn't get it.
(21:53):
And and they're like, not now. I just
but that's a
vicious cycle to cut your advertising.
It is, it is.
I love analogies Craig.
So I'll do an analogy here real quick.
It reminds me of playing monopolywith my son Grant.
So he, he's, middle child.
He has a humongous brain,and I know he's my child, so I say that.
(22:16):
But, like,the way he thinks is incredible.
I cannot beat the kid at monopoly.
I'm not kidding you.
I can have the most luck,but I can't beat him at monopoly.
And it's almost.
Yeah, I can, like, every once in a while,I talk trash.
My beating like maybe one out of ten.
I shouldn't admit I talk trash to my sonwhen I beat him.
Monopoly.
But that's how bad he beats me.
(22:37):
I like to win. Kind of funny though.
Yeah, but it's like this idea of
if you have houses or hotels
built on a property and say,I have one property left,
I've got like, you know, the yellow,whichever that is, and
I land on one of
(22:58):
his properties,I have to pay him out if I mortgage
my hotels, if I mortgage, if I sell themback and mortgage my property,
I have essentially cut off any moneyI'm going to make.
He goes from landing on Marvin Gardensand paying me
$1,800 to pay me $22.
(23:20):
That's what we didn't do at Wow.
We that you can't sell the hotels, y'all.
The hotel was my salesand marketing department.
And yes, I have a department.
But for you, it's going to be salesand marketing efforts.
And I'm going to give you what to do
in August or whatever monthyou're listening to this in.
You cannot cut off your sales engine
(23:42):
if you want to grow,good or bad, you just can't do it.
That's a key
insight, that business enginethat you can't let go of.
But okay, so here's where thethe provocative title of this
episode comes in.
When I, when we look online is seen,it seems like.
And we're going to step on toes sorry.
(24:04):
Or we're just going to do it.
It seems like so much the conversationthat we see online in the real estate
groups is talk about the camerasand the picture quality and like,
like we said earlier,what you call the pixel peeping,
the, the the focus pun intended,it is intended
own your puns, you cowards.
(24:26):
Don't ever say pun unintended on it.
Anyway, I want that t shirt, Todd,
I askedmy mother in law did to, user cricket.
I'm still waiting on that t shirt.
But on your phones, you cowards. Anyway,
the focus needs to be
on the engine,not necessarily on the gear.
Yes. No, it's.
(24:47):
Craig. I'm sorry.
This is a, Yeah.
I mean, this is a bit of a ranton my part, but I see many and many of you
ask really great questions, and you'reyou're doing this correctly, but.
And so this isn't directed at you,but holy cow.
Like, I get a good amount of what's goingon the real estate media industry either.
Yeah.
I see what's going on on social,you know, YouTube.
(25:11):
You guys ask me questions.
Craig, if I see one more comparison
on AI editing, like it's like
like I there was one.
It's like like these are hour longcomparison videos
that have a lot of views on them,like zooming in to a photo
to look at pixels of two differentAI photo editing companies.
(25:35):
Craig, I forgot you could even zoom in
and see a pixel like seriously, y'all.
Like.
And the thing about it is, isand this is why business.
And I say thisfrom a place of love in my heart.
I think you guys really know me.
Like if this is the first time
you're listening to me, I'm reallynot a mean person.
I do thisbecause I want your business to succeed.
(25:56):
Let me tell you a little secretwhy you all are looking at pixels
and trying out 42 different photo editorsor AI editors.
You know what? We're doing at Wow.
We are building relationshipswith all the people
that you should be building relationshipswith.
(26:16):
That's how we grew 20% over our best year.
Just plain and simple.
It's all comes down to focus.
Do you need a better camera? No you don't.
We shoot video on iPhonesand you know what we do?
We shoot 8000 videos a year,
8000 videos a year.
(26:38):
We shoot them on iPhones.
My camera.
I'm still using the Sony a6400.
I'm not in the 7000 series.
No one's saying anythingand no one's saying anything.
Yeah, I had someone ask like,oh, should I go to iPhone? No.
Your client say anything about like,no, no, I never said anything about it.
Like, oh,and by the way, we shoot shot 8000 videos.
(26:59):
No client ever goes, hey,because they trust us.
Because we take care of them,because we have a relationship with them,
because we've serviced them for 20 yearsor even one year.
We look at the stats of howwhen they come back, how often they come
back, we call them,we nurture them, we care about them.
That's why they don't carethat you shoot on an iPhone.
(27:22):
That's whythey don't care that you shoot on a6400.
I know, yeah,I got an A7s3 or they're probably up.
The A7r14.
I don't even know it because I don't care
because it's not goingto get me to the next level.
It's not your picturequality is not your editing quality.
It's the fact that you got to buildyour sales engine
(27:44):
to, okay, to put it in perspective
there, there is some focus on continuingto provide better quality,
right?
I mean,
so yeah, I guess to be fair.
Oh, so we haven't looked at new equipment.
No equipment. We haven't. Yeah.
(28:06):
I mean the equipment works.
So we
what we focus on though,Craig is aligned with our core values.
We focus on how we better
equip and educate the photographers.
So we do spend time with feedback.
(28:27):
And when we look at photoswe say and our QC process.
And many of you have a QC process too.
But in our QC processwe say did autoHDR do its job okay.
And before there is autoHDRthere were human editors.
It's did editing do their job
and editingis not ever going to do their job 100%.
(28:48):
It wasn't when we had human editors.
It's actually better with autoHDR,
and if it did its job, great.
If it didn't fixthe small little thing that needs fixed.
And then did the photographer do their job
that feedback goes to Brittany at Wow
and she then compilesthat feedback, digs in a little bit more,
(29:12):
gives her eye into it,and then helps the photographer understand
why you need to take the third wallin a small bathroom,
why you can't cut off and watchif you can't show the floor,
then you got to come back and double upwith a vertical two and a half baths.
Like those are all the little thingswe built into because it's not like,
(29:33):
hey photographer,you need to buy a A7sR15.
It's like, hey,you just need to step back, hug
the doorframe to the right,open up to the left until you can see
the other door frame, and then make surethat you can see the concave ness of this.
Like we go through our training,we look at that very in depth.
(29:54):
Yeah.
So it's not to say that you'renot not concerned with quality at all.
There's stilla concern for quality because
agents will look at overall quality.
Yeah.
But but the focus is ongrowing the business.
Right.
The, the effort to step outsidethat your doors, go visit offices,
make phone calls.
(30:15):
It it kind of reminds meyou've you've talked about this before.
The the one thing principle.
Gary Keller
Yes, yes.
There was wasn't thereanother another name to.
Yeah.
Alex Hormosi says it somewhat similar.
Okay. Yeah.
I think a lot of people do.
(30:35):
I just listen to theI listen to Alex a lot.
I read the Gary Keller book.
Right. Okay.
So for the real estate business ownerlistening right now,
what what is the one thing would you say?
Yes. Craig.
So Gary Keller asks the question is,what is the one thing I can do
such that by doing it,everything else will be
(30:55):
easier or unnecessary?
Let me say it again because I think it'sit's but there's a lot to digest in there.
What is the one thing I can do such thatby doing it,
everything else willbe easier or unnecessary?
Okay.
You know, basicallywhat's the one thing that you can do
(31:17):
that is going to take your businessthe furthest
So you have a perfect story about this
the first time you set up a broker deal.
Can you tell us about that? Yeah.
So it was our first large brokerdeal. Craig.
And it was in a real city.
You know, it wasn't in the cornfield.
It was in a big city.
And Dayton, Ohio, and it was a big name.
(31:37):
Hundreds of agents at this brokerage,this was like, oh, crap.
Like, this is a big like I've workedhard to get to this person
and the
meeting was scheduled and coming up to it,
I well, oneI took the meeting immediately.
Okay.
So it's not like like I knew at this point
(32:00):
I couldn't service hundreds of agents.
Okay.
So it's not likeI told the managing broker, oh, I'm sorry.
Like, I really have tojust get this camera figured out
or I need to perfect my systems,
or I got more photography to hire first.
I've got I got to hire more photographersbecause it's really
(32:20):
just me and a couple part time people.
Like, I took the meeting.
Okay, I was ready for.
I probably had a week.
You know, we scheduleprobably a week out now.
In the meantime,I started to play the what if game.
I was making calls to some people,one in particular, like,
hey, like this big thing'sgoing to come through.
Like, if this closes, I literally need youto quit your job almost instantly.
(32:43):
And we've got to focus on this and so andluckily for me, that person was on board.
I'd set that up and,it happened to all fit together nicely.
So I laid some groundwork,
but I didn't halt the progress,
I went in, I had the meeting, and
(33:03):
And honestly, he helped me like we created
the perfect brokerdeal segments in the room.
Like I had portions of the broker deal.
But he was likea visionary of the industry.
And he was like,would it be great if we did this?
And we did this?
And he was like, we're not even goingto give him an option to do photos only.
I still remember I'm like,are you like, okay, great.
(33:24):
Like he's like, no,
because I know if we give them an option,they're cheap and they'll do photos only.
So they're going to have to dophotos and video.
He's like,
can you like driving your car and likehang out the sunroof and take video?
I'm like, well,we'll do it a little bit differently.
But yeah, we have a suction cup mount.
And so he washe was creative helping me with it.
I earned his trust.
It was the first meetingI had with him, but I earned his trust
(33:48):
by whom I was working with.
That's a key pointto getting in front of him.
I talk about it all a lot.
Go back and listen tosome of our broker deal things.
If you're like,how do you get in front of this person,
Todd, go back and listen to those podcast,because that's how I got that trust.
But I was all in and I remember Craig,
there was a point in the conversationthat like,
(34:09):
we were both excited, we were creatingis like, yeah, this could be awesome.
Awesome for me,awesome for you, awesome for the agents.
It's a win win win. Truly.
And he looked at me, Craig.
And he said,
Todd, can you do it?
(34:30):
And I'm like, yeah.
So what was what was the response.
Like 10,000 pounds on your shoulders,right.
Like Craig I knew, I like I knew I couldn’tdo this with the cards I had right now.
If I was going to stay with where I was,I couldn't do this.
It was hundreds of agents.
(34:50):
And still to this day, it'sour largest deal. Yes.
And okay, so so how did
how did that one thingfocus, principle tie into this?
It you're you're earning the businessbefore you even have the infrastructure.
Yeah, yeah. Well, there was
(35:11):
stupidly and smartly enough,I responded instantly. Yes,
with confidence.
Right. Yeah.
And then and then I got,I got really happy
because the meeting was doneshortly after that.
Shook his hand,you know. Hey, we'll follow up.
This is what we're going to do.
And then I walked out of the office.
(35:32):
Sun hit my face.
It was like, oh.
And then you know what happened, Greg?
I got really hot really quick
because I was like,how am I going to do this now?
Right?
The person listening
right now or watching, they're thinking,okay, Todd yeah, this is great fun story.
But yeah, what do I do Monday morningwhen it when I'm trying to implement this.
(35:56):
Yeah,
I focused on the one thing I needed
okay.
So I, the one thing I needed to growmy business was to get more business.
That was the marketing engine,the broker deal engine.
That's been so fabulous for us.
Okay, my problem at that date
and time, that point in timewas not business anymore.
(36:17):
My one thing if I focused onwould move my business along.
The furthest was I neededmore photographers, I needed staff,
I needed help.
I remember I told youI had some conversations set up,
I first call, I made,I call my wife told her,
went well, second callI made was to this individual.
I'm like, hey, you need to quit.He's like, boom, I'm going to go do it.
(36:38):
I'm going to tell the principal like,there's three.
There's 2 or 3 weeks of school left.
And I knew that I laid off.
That was the thing I focused on.
Then he came on and we focused onbuilding the team of what we would need.
Also, there was another gap at the time.
I needed scheduling software.
The software didn't schedule at the time,and I knew there was going to be
(37:00):
hundreds of jobs coming inand I couldn't schedule.
The people couldn't call me,and I had no clue what the date book was,
and I knew there was goingto be a lot of photographers.
So I went
to the developer who I knew.
I'm like, hey, Kyle,you got to build this thing for me.
Like, great, let's do it.
So, you know,your focus will change a little bit.
(37:22):
But the thing that I want to make a pointof, Craig, is I.
I didn't change my focus. I wasn't split.
This idea of multitasking is a lie.
You can't multitask.
It's split tasking. It's split focusing.
I focused on getting the job.
I laid some things up,but it's not like I went
and builtthe scheduler prior to having it.
(37:43):
And I was smart abouthow I set expectations with that broker.
We had a build out plan.
He didn't expect me to do a 100 jobstomorrow.
All right.
So I set those expectationsof when we could launch
and when we could do all the agents.
But it all was very, very concrete,
(38:04):
just direct focus on what neededto be done at that point in time.
Okay. So you're a systems guy.
You've talked about that in the past.
So this to me this is kind of an abstractprinciple okay.
Yeah. The one idea, the one focus.
The one thing.
But what what's the systemyou build or the or the structure.
(38:24):
What's something concretethat the person listening right now
that's looking to growtheir business could put to action,
say, in the month of
August, to help startgetting their their focus
and start making some forward progress,especially in light of recent news.
We've heard about another particularbig company in our industry.
(38:45):
Yeah for sure.
So we you know,well, let's talk about that, Craig.
But let's talk aboutwe'll get to the news and teaser.
VHT
you knowwe it's it's something to talk about but
you need a sales engine like Todd.
What do I do. Here'sjust a very easy plan.
What I need you to do is I need youdaily to have five meaningful
(39:09):
two minute conversationswith a real estate agent,
okay?
This can be a current client.
This can be new clients.
This can be a warm lead, okay.
And you'll get that as you talk to currentclients.
It's easierto call current clients. Right.
And then and then you can askfor the referral. Yes.
Ask for the referral.
If they know I can trust you,they will refer you.
(39:31):
Worst thing is if you say, hey,do you know anybody else who's looking for
the same level of services and qualitythat we provide you?
Worst thing they say is like,let me think about it.
Or they say, no, but if you don't ask,they're not going to say anything.
Okay, so five meaningfultwo minute conversations.
(39:52):
And I want I only want you to do that.
I need you to do 20 a week okay.
So that's four daysI'm giving you Friday off for three days.
Very nice of you.Thank you, thank you. Great.
Thank you.
Because well, I'm sorry I said it.
I said it like a you know what? But I,
I, I, I do this because I under
(40:13):
I hear fromyou guys like this is difficult to do.
I remember dialing the phoneand hanging it up,
dialing the phone and hanging it up.
I remember
pulling into the real estate office,sitting there getting to my left brain.
I'm pulling out of the real estate office,and I was gonna walk into,
okay, I know it's not like somethingwe all gravitate towards.
(40:33):
You're all you are typicallyan S personality, which means you want
to help others, which means you feel badwhen you ask others
to buy your product or service.
So 20 calls a week
if it happens, take Friday off enjoy.
But if you don't get 20
(40:56):
meaningful conversations, then you got it.
You have to fill up on Friday.
If you're 17,you need to talk to three more people.
And I'll just to clarify, like
this isn'tcalls like meaningful conversations.
Okay, so hey, here's a little cheat code.
If you walk into an officeor you go to a brokerage event,
or if you go to a MLS event, you'reprobably going to talk to five people
(41:18):
in the first ten minutes, okay,so that you're done for a day.
But I think what what this will do isthis will start your sales engine,
build meaningful conversations
and get you off the ground right.
It's amazing how
once you take that, taking thatfirst step is always the hardest thing.
It's just like an exercise, right?
(41:39):
You don't want to drag yourselfout of bed in the morning
and go take a brisk walk or run, but
once you get that first step done,
the momentum builds
and you'll startto see the payoff on the effort.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And I think that's great because sometimeswe need to track our effort
and see what it was. You know,
(42:01):
the beautiful thing about exerciseis you begin to feel it in your body.
And I think you'll feel this too,because you'll get the feedback
and you'll actually calland you'll think the person
is going to hate you,but the person really loves you.
And you see these, you see these,
you see the output of your energy in.
But I think it's important.
Let's be strategic about let's trackour sales team tracks it.
(42:24):
Now, don't worry about a CRMif you're not set up in a CRM, which is a
customer relationship managementpiece of software, just use a spreadsheet.
Okay, Google Drive or Excel or whatever,and just have a column of the date
you called.
The next column would be the client name.
I'd probably put their phone number thereso you can call them back easier.
Maybe the company they're withand then any notes about the conversation.
(42:47):
You know, thatthat note might be like left the voicemail
that might be had a conversation.
Talk to them about so-and-so.
They refer me to this person.
Okay. So just put some notes in there.
The last thing is, isif you're going to follow up with someone,
if there's something actionable about it,go to your calendar
because you're going to gain informationfrom these conversations.
Go to your calendar
(43:07):
and put something on your calendar tomake sure you follow up with that client.
Yeah,because there's not there's nothing worse
than calling the person
having a great conversation, them needing
something from you,and then they never hear from you again.
Right? Yeah.
So powerful challengefor the month of August.
(43:29):
To hammer this home Todd let's go aheadand and talk about the news
that just broke that everybody's talkingabout online right now with VHT
Kind of an opportune
time to focus in on this effort
in this challengethat Todd has laid out for us.
Oh sure is.
So if you haven't heard of VHTwho VHT was one of the country's
(43:52):
largest media providers to realtors.
They they announced earlier in the week
that they are closing shopvery quickly like in a couple of weeks.
And like they're only taking ordersfor another week or two.
Right.
So you and they've been aroundfor over 20 years. Wow.
And they're huge.
(44:13):
And I think they're doing 50 to75,000 shoots a year.
It's just a guess I might be completelyoff base, but it's a huge company.
So you have thousands of agentsacross the US
scrambling to figure out who is going toprovide that media for them.
(44:33):
And so you got a great opportunity.
Make calls, ask questions.
The agent's going to tell you,oh, this is perfect timing.
I used to use VHT and they just closed shop
gave us no other option.
I used them for five years, ten years,whatever it may be.
(44:54):
You get that information right.
Craig, do you feel likewhen you talk to agents, are they pretty
closed tight to chest with information,or is it just flow?
I mean, some are cautiousif if it's a, true cold call
and there's no connection madefrom another realtor that referred you,
they can be a little bit.
But again, you do it long enough.
(45:17):
You you build up a tolerance to that.You understand?
They're not trying to just be mean to you.
It's Realtors are busy people, but,
more often than
not, especially if it's an opportune time.
Yeah, they're they're going to talk.
Realtors like to talkand they just, you know, so like to talk.
Yeah.
So they do they listen well to they do.
(45:39):
Let's be fair to realtors.
They have to listen.
The good ones and I'm good at it.
It's a squirrel.
Squirrel moment.
let it go right now.
Craig I feel like that was
I had a realtor of one time asked me,
have you ever thoughtabout being a realtor?
And I'm wondering if it'sbecause I talk to talk too much to them?
(46:02):
Anyway,
I, I did work in radio for a long time,
so it's hard to get that,you know, but no, I think
they're looking to improve their business.
And if you're providing a solutionto a problem
they're facing,they're going to talk with you.
Okay, Craig,let's let's break down the VHT thing
real quick, and I want to tie it intowhy I'm so excited
(46:22):
for all of youand honestly for myself as well,
because I think there'sa great opportunity
with real estate media in 2025 and beyond.
Okay, VHT.
Humongous companyowned by a larger company
that's owned by a larger and a larger.
Okay, there's your nesting boxes.
There was nothing.
There was no resource, no amount of money.
(46:44):
They had everythingthat potentially could have been needed.
Okay.
I think homes.comhas more money than Zillow.
So I want to make a point that all you
you guys feel limited like, oh I got thisor I have that or I like know like
this is a company that have more moneythan anything, more resources.
(47:05):
And I think they were losinglike $10 million a year
after 20 yearsto lose that amount of money.
And I think about like, they didn'teven try to sell the book of business,
which was really I'm like, well,
wonder why they didn'ttry to sell the book of business.
And and who knows, the reasonmight not ever be told, in my opinion,
(47:25):
really doesn't matter.
But the point I want to make to all of you
is, I really think that the VHT
Matterport those companies,
I think they lost focus
as to what was really important.
I think they got too clever
(47:46):
and tried to have this massive pay off.
There was some really intelligent brainsin a room
that thought, we're going to devise thismaster plan where we're going to leverage
these four different companiesto own the space.
But being too clever doesn't work.
(48:11):
Our business is simple.
I luckily was forced to do it in 2023.
I might have been the VHT of 2025
if I want have focused in 2023.
I had a lot of shiny objects.
I had a lot of crazy ideas.
We were spending time and money on them.
(48:34):
The tough
year of 23 forced me to focus onwhat's important.
At the end of the day, your client isthe most important thing to you.
That relationshipwill, will yield, will return
you them using you, them referring you,which will give you
the lifeblood of your business,which is revenue.
You can't have a business with negativeprofit.
(48:58):
Revenue. Negative profit, okay.
If you do, if you do20 million in revenue, I don't know.
That's what VHT was doing.
If you do 20 million in revenue,but you lose 10 million a year,
no matter how much money you haveand your parent companies have,
you're going to cut it off at some point.
(49:20):
Focus on what's important, please.
I'm telling you,it might seem too simple to you.
And you think you're more sophisticated
than five meaningfultwo minute conversations four days a week.
But if we want to have done this at Wow,
we might have been the VHT of 2025.
(49:40):
We're up 20%, almost 20% year
over year over our best year ever.
We came back in 24 a littlebeat up from 23, and we had our best year
ever, and we're beating it by nearly 20%this year.
And again,
I don't say it to brag, but I say itbecause I want you to take that path.
(50:03):
It's not difficult for all of you.
A lot of you talk about, oh,it's tough to beat the big people like,
oh, they do VHT was doing a 150 for photosyou can't sustain.
It's a race to the bottom.
It doesn't work for anybody.
Follow the simple path.
Have the meaningful conversations,
build relationships, do the hard thing
(50:26):
and your business will grow.
The key word that I'm taking away fromthis Todd is meaningful
and or when you get too cleverand used it,
you only focus on,
massive business growth and numbers.
You take the humanity out of business,working with others in the marketplace,
(50:48):
and ultimately the reason we're all doingwhat we do is we
we need towe need to take care of ourselves.
You know, we need income.
Many of us, most of us,I don't know, have families that we love
and care about and want to take care of,and we're working hard for them.
So is the realtor.
So if you can truly serve somebody
(51:09):
in a meaningful wayand not make it just about the business
and you're just real with peopleand authentic
with people, yeah,that's going to go a long way.
And taking time to have conversationswith people.
It's so easy to just shoot a quick textor a quick email,
but to have an actual,meaningful conversation, that's huge.
(51:32):
Yeah.
So it almost seems too simple.
Craig I think it does.
I'm I'm I'm happy.
It I'm happy.
I'm happy that people overthink it,I really am
I'm happy that people make itmore difficult than it has to be,
because it just shows that ifif you simplify it
and you do this.
You're adding your competition.
(51:52):
And again, competition means nothing.
It really means nothing.
And look at the great upper hand
you have right nowbecause that hole in the market exist.
So take this opportunity to do it.
Just trust me. Please do it.
Yeah.
And you'll see your business. Just go.
So there's there's the challengefor the month of August. 5 by 4 method
(52:14):
five meaningful conversationsfour days a week. And,
see what impact it has on your business.
Magic is magic is in that work.
Not not the gear.
Yeah. So are you serious?
Are you serious? Enough?And I'll end on this.
But are you seriousenough about your business
(52:36):
to have 80 2-minute conversations
in the month of August?
There you go.
We'd love to hear at the end of August
how that month wentwith taking that challenge.
So drop us a line. hello@spiro.media.
We would.
We love hearing from you.
Leave a comment on the YouTube channel
(52:57):
which we try our bestto keep up with those.
Yeah. We want to hear from you.
What what successful Toddalways makes us share success stories.
Makes us.
It sounds kind of bad.
Makes us share success storiesat our staff meeting every Friday morning.
And, we want to hear your success stories.
What what went good for you in August?
(53:17):
Share that with us. All right.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Oh my pleasure. Also,we've got a great community.
The Spiro Super UserFacebook group. Please get in there.
You know, you guys are so kind.
I see a lot of people are like, oh,
not Spyro related, but posting this herebecause I just love this community.
Thank you all for making thatsuch a great community.
Get in there and let's talk about it.
(53:38):
Tell your successes.Or maybe you need some kind of building.
Be like, hey, I, I only had one this week.
Like, okay, well you can do it.
This is something that I found was
this is what unlocked that for meor I was struggling with that as well.
So let's do it as a community.
Don't be on an island. Please don't.
Your ego is going to tell
if your ego tells you like, hey,you need to do it yourself.
Your ego's wrong.
(53:59):
Please just get into a community.
If it's not, if it's not, if it's notthat Facebook group, I don't care.
I'm not offended by it.
Find some communityto push you to hold you accountable.
There you go.
All right.
That's good to wrap things up this week.
Thank you so much for taking time.
We know it's a busy summer, so thank youfor taking the time to listen or watch.
(54:20):
And again, if you have somebodyyou want to share with us, ask a question.
Topic idea, business topic idea,drop us a line.
hello@spiro.media.
In the meantime, make sure you take timeout of your week not just for those,
five two minute conversations
per day, but take some time to be thankful
for the things in your lifeand make sure you take a breath this week.
(54:42):
You have a fantastic week. Take care.
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
it means we’remaking more money doing less shoots,
which I think is almost
kind of the golden combinationfor business.
Let's do less of something,sell it for more,
to make more money,
(00:34):
Hi and welcome to the Spiro Podcast,managing your real estate,
photographyand videography company, Spiro.
It's a software platform.
It's designed to help you manage your dayto day real estate media business.
And ultimately, we'd loveto help you grow and scale as well.
Welcome back to another week.
I'm Craig Magrum, host of the podcast.
And just enjoy this timeeach and every week where we get to talk
(00:59):
shop, kind of,you know, relax a little bit,
talk about how business growsand maybe give you some examples,
how of how we've grown and mistakeswe've made over the years,
and how you can learn from our mistakesso you don't have to make them
as Todd says.
Todd Kivimaki, our owner and founderand cohost of the podcast, Welcome Back, Todd
Craig, It's great to be here.
(01:20):
You know, this is year 22 for Wow VideoTours, our real estate media company.
So excited about that.
You know,I've been doing a lot of reflecting
you all lately about just businessand the years.
And I get a lot of questions.
I love the questions from you guys.
I do a lot of coaching to you all.
And, you know, there was some industrynews this week that happened.
(01:42):
And so and we have some actionable itemsthat help you
grow your business in 2025 and beyond.
We've got it allpacked into this podcast for you today.
Yeah, there's going to be a lot.
But before we do that,it was like to, dive into, you know,
what's going on in the industry.
Any news conferences, announcementsthat you have, Todd this week?
(02:04):
Yeah, just a few of them here.
So, a reminder, the conferencesand the industry
are in November out in Las Vegas.
There's two of them. They're fabulous.
There is the REPP conferencethat is November 7th and 8th.
So I get the the pleasure of emceeing
(02:24):
and hosting that conference this year,which is going to be great.
That's the Eli Jones conference.
So the REPP team, just a fabulous eventthat is again November 7th and 8th.
There's an MVP day on the sixth.
It has a minimum monthlyrevenue requirement
and I think it might be sold out.
So they sold out immediately.
(02:46):
They found a bigger venueand it's either sold out or close to.
So make sure you if you want to do thatplease visit
repplaunch.com/repp2025.
We'll link it belowif you're typing at repp has to P’s also
PMREis November 18th through 20th.
We will be at that conference as well,so we will have a booth.
(03:08):
The Spiro team will be there.
Excited to meet you.
That is pmreeconference.com.
So pleaseI think it's great. Pick one of them.
I would love to see at them.
And, we will be at both of them.
Like I said.
But I think this is a good time
to think abouthow you're going to build your business.
How are you going to recharge?
And I know it can seem overwhelming rightnow, like, oh, I'm super busy too.
(03:30):
Like, I can't think about what I'm goingto do in November.
But to be frank, that'show you grow a bigger business
is that you think ahead,you think ahead of today.
You think ahead of six months from now.
Even so, conference is
their beneficial.
I'll just throw in there
the conversations you get to havewith other people in this space.
(03:50):
And just the sharing of stories and,you know,
sharing things that have worked foryou and, things that haven't worked.
It's it's just a good timeto kind of relax and, and share ideas
and build some build some friendshipsin the, in the industry as well.
Yeah,I know specifically at the repp conference,
they've adjusted the schedule a bit to bethey have breakout sessions,
(04:12):
and you're going to go sitwith other business owners
in your same, you know,
and your same size of business.
So same stage of business. Excuse me.
I think that's so relevantbecause it's always, you know,
when I speak on stage, I'm always like,
hey, guys, like,I don't want you to feel pressure.
I say it here on the podcast,
like, don't feel pressure to do millionsof dollars a year in real estate media.
(04:35):
If you're just starting out, you're like,I can't do it.
You can do it.
Just it took me 22 years to do.
But when you can sit at a tablewith someone that's like,
oh yes, a VA oh, my first photographer.
Oh yes, my 15th photographer,
that's when you're really lateand you go, oh, I can do this.
And then the cool thing about ittoo, Craig, is you're sometimes
(04:57):
teaching at that table, which is fabulousbecause when you can teach it,
it means you've mastered it,which means that.
And when you can give backand help others.
I don't think there's anything betterthan that.
Yeah, it's a good feeling.
It sure is. It sure is.
So looking at we also like to talkabout potential Spiro updates here.
There is a Septemberlaunch plan for Spiro.
(05:20):
We're going to integrate Titus, whichwe've talked about on the Spiro tech call.
If you want to find out more, go backto the Spiro Super User Facebook group.
It's basically a great financing.
Optionspay out close for real estate agents.
And along with
that we're going to optimize the propertywebsite editor.
So this is going to give you an applike experience.
(05:41):
It's not going to be an app.That's not what I'm saying.
But we're going to optimize itas if it were an app.
We know you guys are out therein the field,
many of you trying to expedite in QCphotos from your phone.
The next day.
And we've looked at all of how you use it.
We've reconfigured that going to bejust a really streamlined experience.
Very cool.
(06:02):
Oh, also, Craig, I meant to mention
and I kind of hesitatebecause this isn't in stone yet.
Okay, but you know how I do this.
I say things and then kind of like,oh, did I say that?
Like, are we going to do that?
But we hinted at the idea of a gathering
for Spiro users,
(06:24):
non spiro users,but us Spiro doing a gathering
and we call it the Spiro summit beforeI think we made it up on air.
Craig I think we really did.
We were spitballing livewe were.
And enough of youemail me or said something about it.
I was like, wait a minute.
Like
(06:46):
There might be something here, likethe industry might need this.
So Shannon and I got in a room todayface to face, which is always dangerous.
And, when there's ideas, are there?
You have you,
for those of you listening. Yeah. Right.
Yep. Yeah.
I was just mid sip of my morningdrink and,
(07:07):
I, it almost came up through my nose.
Sorry.
I'm going to get you one time Craig.
That's my goal out.You know, it was one time.
I have too much expensive equipmentsitting in front of me.
Don't do that.
Too many electronics.
And, oh, my goodness, if you're not,if you don't watch on YouTube,
go back and watch. It's great.
(07:28):
So we sat in a roomShannon and I were like, this idea.
And we started brainstorm.
And Shannon has built a ton of eventsfor real estate agents.
And we just got going and we're like,oh my goodness, like this.
So what we're what we're thinking you alland we want your feedback.
It's the reason why I'm telling you this.We came up with the tag.
(07:48):
We came up with the name of Spiro Sync, okay.
And what this is,this is a little bit different.
It's not like the conferences whereyou are going to go and learn in November,
but the idea of this is
or thetagline is breathe, build and belong.
And this is not just for you.
(08:10):
This is bring your leadership team,bring your admin, bring a photographer.
It might just be
you want a photographer, but you're like,I need some sort of event.
I need some sort of team building.
We're going to have our teamfrom Wow there, we're going to talk
not just the owners, but we're going totalk about operations VA teams.
(08:33):
We're going to virtuallydo some time online.
VA teams, the VA teams like let's Connect.
I know the communityneeds this connection, and that's why
we just thinkthis idea of belonging is so important.
We know that it can feel likeyou're out on an island.
Craig and I both did it right.
Craig, how many timeswere you in your own business?
(08:54):
You're like,
you get in your own head and you're like,this thing's never going to work.
Like, I might as well just go backand work at McDonald's.
Nothing wrong with working at McDonald's,but but it's like you get it
in your own head when you have belongingand when you can connect with others,
and then
when you can get your team to do that.
I think it can just be fire.
(09:16):
So let me know, isthis is this worth doing?
Like it will be in the cornfields of Ohio?
We won't do in Lima because we're we'rethere's no major airport here.
So we're thinking Dayton, Ohio2026, third week of January.
Shoot me a message. Let me know.
Would you come to it?Do you see value in it?
(09:36):
What would you want to accomplish from it?
Sounds good to me.
You know, Spiro Sync,
that idea of being an islandand out on your own,
even as a photographer, out in the field,you can slip into
that feeling of lonelinessand that you're the only one
dealing with the issues that you are.
(09:57):
And you get stuck in thisoverthinking cycle.
And it just it can get bad.
But when you can plug back into communityand realize, oh, wait a minute,
I'm not alone, I'm actually facing thesesame things and work through it together,
and bounce ideas off each other.
That's that's a good thing.
I like that idea. So. Yeah, yeah.
(10:20):
Drop us a line.
Hello@spiro.media.
We would love to hear from you.
Yeah.
All right,just one thing to close with that,
and then we'll get to the topic.
But I saw that my businesses grew
exponentiallywhen I started asking more questions.
And I think the idea of that community,the relationships,
the vulnerability of asking questions
(10:41):
can just take you to the next level.
Yeah, for sure.
All righty.
Well, let's dive into this.
- Let's, Craig- a bit of a little bit of a provocative
title for this podcast.
And we've talked about it before.
That it's not about the camera
(11:02):
we get, we get stuck on, pixel
peeping,as you say, Todd and equipment and gear.
And I mean, it is creatives.
Yeah, we love gear.
We love that creative outlet. Right.
But we want to dive into some things that
we believe will really benefityour business, to help you get beyond
just the gear and the creativity partand looking at your business.
(11:23):
That's what this podcast is all about.
So, Todd, we're officially,you know, over halfway through the year.
It's the end of July here when this,this, episode gets published and,
looking at the data of our real estatemedia company
Wow video tours,it's been a really good year.
And we don't say that to to brag.
(11:44):
But it's pretty staggering.
It is.
You know, we are up nearly 20%
in 2025 at our media company,
and that's 20% over for our best yearever, 2024.
So when you have growth like that,
(12:05):
I, I looked at that because many ofyou asked me that question, how do I grow?
You know, I talked to one of you this weeklike I just quit my job
August 1st.
I'm full time. I'm all in.
It's like, how do I grow?
It's like, well, okay, well,let's let's break this down.
It's a lot more simplethan what you think.
And so I did that throughout the courseof what
(12:28):
we took, what we didover the last few years, that wow.
Right.
And what's, what'sreally kind of amazing about it is it's
not necessarily it is a growth in termsof the number of shoots we've done, but
the how of how of those numbers
is really in that average order priceand that going up.
(12:50):
Yeah.
And that's so keybecause when we looked at our numbers,
like Craig mentioned, not only is itgoing to be our best year ever,
but we're actuallyit'll be our best year in revenue.
And also number of shoots.
But the thing about it is, is
our revenueis outpacing the number of shoots,
(13:10):
which means our average ordervalue went up, which means we're actually
making more money doing less shoots,
which I think is almost
kind of the golden combinationfor business.
Let's do less of something,sell it for more,
to make more money, because we all knowthe kinks and the bottlenecks.
(13:32):
You know, say we just cut prices in half
while number of shoots would skyrocket it.
Right.
But we're still above it.
Yeah, it's a race to the bottom,you know, go back.
Two months agowe did that podcast. Podcast.
But what's going to happenis we're going to have a kink
with the number of photographersand all of us,
(13:52):
we all have a kink right nowin the summer.
We're all looking.
We monitor our lead time very closely,
and we know if agents can't get in 3or 4 days,
they're going to go find someone else.
So to not put yourself in that predicamentis fabulous.
Less shoot more money.
We're going to break down how we did it
(14:13):
if Todd before we dive into it.
If you could.
This can be really kind of hard.
Sorry I'm putting putting you on the spot,but if you could boil down to one word
on the growth that we've experiencedthis year, what would it be?
It's a good one, Craig.
You know, I, I think one word
(14:35):
just has to be focus.
The focus that we had to grow
is what has given us this growth.
Okay.
So with that necessity of focus okay.
Yes, we're having an amazing year,but it hasn't always been that good.
(14:55):
So go back.
Let's go back to 2023.
Right.
What what did things look like back then.
Yeah 2023 was tough.
And I've shared this beforeso I won't tell the whole story.
But end of 2022 we lost a major account
a quarter million dollarsand one day gone.
Boom.
(15:15):
The market was down.
That was another quarter of $1 million.
So that's a half $1 million.
We didn't know it at the time.
You know,we were just hoping that it was that
we only going to be downa quarter million.
Just from the accountand the market was bad.
It was super fast,like houses were selling
instantlywith 50 offers, a lot of inspections.
(15:37):
Yeah. No inspections.All cash. Yeah. Crazy.
It was crazy.
And we,we the business just didn't come in.
And so what we had to do
honestly for meCraig like it was an oh crap moment.
Like I'm not talking like,
you know, this yearI'm not going to make as much
(16:00):
literally y'all. I'm like,
I might have to sell my house.
Like,I like my wife and I talked about that.
I had never talked about that before.
Like,that's a pretty that gets you to focus
like none other when you're like,
(16:22):
hey, babe, we might have to sell the house
like we raise our kids.
Our kids are like this. How? Like,
that's a big thing, right?
So what did that focus lead to then
in that in the middle of that really hardsituation?
Yeah.
So like we hadjust had to get rid of the shiny objects.
(16:43):
My back up against the wall
forced me
to say no to everything except
one thing that we'll talk about,
but it really itit forced me to focus, Craig,
because I was like,I have to keep the ship afloat.
I to be quite honest, Craig, it was.
(17:04):
That was your 20 or 21.
That was your 20
and it was 20 years of growth.
Every year was better than the previous.
And I think after 20 years of that.
(17:24):
I got a little lax.
Okay.
And I lost focus.
A but, you know, I started Spiro.
In the meantime I was splitting focus and.
It just took some more attentionto get back into it.
So what we did,we looked at everything we were doing.
(17:45):
We cut everything we were doing.
I cut it from a personal level toand I tell you the personal story
because it connects to the business,but you might need to do it two
so when we
did basketball tournaments, we decidedwe could still do basketball tournaments.
We packed our food to eat in the hotel.
(18:07):
We didn't eat out.
Yeah, because it's expensive to eat out.
I didn't knowif I was going to have that $100.
We packed food.
We booked hotels that had a microwave.
Like we did all the little thingsbecause I was
in just save mode right?
(18:29):
And so I got to knowmy numbers really good.
Craig.
And that's one thing that if you're goinglike, hey, I think everything's good
or I think everything's bad,
you better find outreal quick, really, where you're at,
what do your numbers tell you?
So when you're in that situationyou're looking okay.
I, we we have to cut.You said the shiny objects.
(18:52):
What?
You can't cut everything.
Obviously,you have some business functions
that have to stay toto keep the doors open.
So what what were the things or
maybe the one thing that you didn'tcut that
somebody on the outside looking inmight say, well, you need to cut this too.
Was there anything specific.
Yeah.
I mean, our, one of our biggest expensesand it's something we did not
(19:16):
touch was sales and marketing
because our goal, our core valuesremain the same.
Craig.
Our coreour fifth core value is think growth.
We want to grow.
And so we knew that if we remove
the engine of growth,
it was going to lead to even a worse 2024.
(19:40):
And that that honestly, like
if you turn the podcast offafter this, you this is the message
like that idea of focusing on growth
led to our best growth ever.
And Craig, when I say it, it
sounds stupidly simple, right?
(20:00):
Right.
Like when you focus on growth,you're going to lead to growth, right?
Nobody quote me on thatbecause it's a dumb quote, but it's true.
Yeah,
it's it's really easy to be tempted.
I'm so glad you said thisbecause this is what I ran into
to all the time beforeI was in the real estate media industry.
(20:22):
I spent almost nine and probablyabout 20 years working in radio
broadcasting, broadcast radio,and my focus I was on air, yes, but I,
I also managed a stationand did sales and marketing.
And every time I would talk
with a business ownerabout advertising on air,
(20:44):
if they were in aposition like a financially,
challenging position,the thing that I always consistently
heard and Iand I learned this in college as well,
most of the time, the first thing peoplecut in their business
is their advertising, right?
Because the budget's getting constrictedand advertising
doesn't necessarily have a, concrete
(21:07):
immediate,
number, like an ROI.
You can't always necessarily,get that ROI number right away.
And so it's kind of an intangibleand they're like, oh, I got to cut that.
But what happens is when youcut your advertising in your marketing,
you're not in front of everybodythat you're trying to reach.
(21:30):
And so then your salestake another hit in another dip,
and now your budget's even tighterbecause you're making even less.
And and it just, it's,it's a vicious cycle,
downward cyclethat is almost impossible to get out of.
And I talked toI talked to quite a few business owners,
some some you could see the light bulbgo on, some still didn't get it.
(21:53):
And and they're like, not now. I just
but that's a
vicious cycle to cut your advertising.
It is, it is.
I love analogies Craig.
So I'll do an analogy here real quick.
It reminds me of playing monopolywith my son Grant.
So he, he's, middle child.
He has a humongous brain,and I know he's my child, so I say that.
(22:16):
But, like,the way he thinks is incredible.
I cannot beat the kid at monopoly.
I'm not kidding you.
I can have the most luck,but I can't beat him at monopoly.
And it's almost.
Yeah, I can, like, every once in a while,I talk trash.
My beating like maybe one out of ten.
I shouldn't admit I talk trash to my sonwhen I beat him.
Monopoly.
But that's how bad he beats me.
(22:37):
I like to win. Kind of funny though.
Yeah, but it's like this idea of
if you have houses or hotels
built on a property and say,I have one property left,
I've got like, you know, the yellow,whichever that is, and
I land on one of
(22:58):
his properties,I have to pay him out if I mortgage
my hotels, if I mortgage, if I sell themback and mortgage my property,
I have essentially cut off any moneyI'm going to make.
He goes from landing on Marvin Gardensand paying me
$1,800 to pay me $22.
(23:20):
That's what we didn't do at Wow.
We that you can't sell the hotels, y'all.
The hotel was my salesand marketing department.
And yes, I have a department.
But for you, it's going to be salesand marketing efforts.
And I'm going to give you what to do
in August or whatever monthyou're listening to this in.
You cannot cut off your sales engine
(23:42):
if you want to grow,good or bad, you just can't do it.
That's a key
insight, that business enginethat you can't let go of.
But okay, so here's where thethe provocative title of this
episode comes in.
When I, when we look online is seen,it seems like.
And we're going to step on toes sorry.
(24:04):
Or we're just going to do it.
It seems like so much the conversationthat we see online in the real estate
groups is talk about the camerasand the picture quality and like,
like we said earlier,what you call the pixel peeping,
the, the the focus pun intended,it is intended
own your puns, you cowards.
(24:26):
Don't ever say pun unintended on it.
Anyway, I want that t shirt, Todd,
I askedmy mother in law did to, user cricket.
I'm still waiting on that t shirt.
But on your phones, you cowards. Anyway,
the focus needs to be
on the engine,not necessarily on the gear.
Yes. No, it's.
(24:47):
Craig. I'm sorry.
This is a, Yeah.
I mean, this is a bit of a ranton my part, but I see many and many of you
ask really great questions, and you'reyou're doing this correctly, but.
And so this isn't directed at you,but holy cow.
Like, I get a good amount of what's goingon the real estate media industry either.
Yeah.
I see what's going on on social,you know, YouTube.
(25:11):
You guys ask me questions.
Craig, if I see one more comparison
on AI editing, like it's like
like I there was one.
It's like like these are hour longcomparison videos
that have a lot of views on them,like zooming in to a photo
to look at pixels of two differentAI photo editing companies.
(25:35):
Craig, I forgot you could even zoom in
and see a pixel like seriously, y'all.
Like.
And the thing about it is, isand this is why business.
And I say thisfrom a place of love in my heart.
I think you guys really know me.
Like if this is the first time
you're listening to me, I'm reallynot a mean person.
I do thisbecause I want your business to succeed.
(25:56):
Let me tell you a little secretwhy you all are looking at pixels
and trying out 42 different photo editorsor AI editors.
You know what? We're doing at Wow.
We are building relationshipswith all the people
that you should be building relationshipswith.
(26:16):
That's how we grew 20% over our best year.
Just plain and simple.
It's all comes down to focus.
Do you need a better camera? No you don't.
We shoot video on iPhonesand you know what we do?
We shoot 8000 videos a year,
8000 videos a year.
(26:38):
We shoot them on iPhones.
My camera.
I'm still using the Sony a6400.
I'm not in the 7000 series.
No one's saying anythingand no one's saying anything.
Yeah, I had someone ask like,oh, should I go to iPhone? No.
Your client say anything about like,no, no, I never said anything about it.
Like, oh,and by the way, we shoot shot 8000 videos.
(26:59):
No client ever goes, hey,because they trust us.
Because we take care of them,because we have a relationship with them,
because we've serviced them for 20 yearsor even one year.
We look at the stats of howwhen they come back, how often they come
back, we call them,we nurture them, we care about them.
That's why they don't carethat you shoot on an iPhone.
(27:22):
That's whythey don't care that you shoot on a6400.
I know, yeah,I got an A7s3 or they're probably up.
The A7r14.
I don't even know it because I don't care
because it's not goingto get me to the next level.
It's not your picturequality is not your editing quality.
It's the fact that you got to buildyour sales engine
(27:44):
to, okay, to put it in perspective
there, there is some focus on continuingto provide better quality,
right?
I mean,
so yeah, I guess to be fair.
Oh, so we haven't looked at new equipment.
No equipment. We haven't. Yeah.
(28:06):
I mean the equipment works.
So we
what we focus on though,Craig is aligned with our core values.
We focus on how we better
equip and educate the photographers.
So we do spend time with feedback.
(28:27):
And when we look at photoswe say and our QC process.
And many of you have a QC process too.
But in our QC processwe say did autoHDR do its job okay.
And before there is autoHDRthere were human editors.
It's did editing do their job
and editingis not ever going to do their job 100%.
(28:48):
It wasn't when we had human editors.
It's actually better with autoHDR,
and if it did its job, great.
If it didn't fixthe small little thing that needs fixed.
And then did the photographer do their job
that feedback goes to Brittany at Wow
and she then compilesthat feedback, digs in a little bit more,
(29:12):
gives her eye into it,and then helps the photographer understand
why you need to take the third wallin a small bathroom,
why you can't cut off and watchif you can't show the floor,
then you got to come back and double upwith a vertical two and a half baths.
Like those are all the little thingswe built into because it's not like,
(29:33):
hey photographer,you need to buy a A7sR15.
It's like, hey,you just need to step back, hug
the doorframe to the right,open up to the left until you can see
the other door frame, and then make surethat you can see the concave ness of this.
Like we go through our training,we look at that very in depth.
(29:54):
Yeah.
So it's not to say that you'renot not concerned with quality at all.
There's stilla concern for quality because
agents will look at overall quality.
Yeah.
But but the focus is ongrowing the business.
Right.
The, the effort to step outsidethat your doors, go visit offices,
make phone calls.
(30:15):
It it kind of reminds meyou've you've talked about this before.
The the one thing principle.
Gary Keller
Yes, yes.
There was wasn't thereanother another name to.
Yeah.
Alex Hormosi says it somewhat similar.
Okay. Yeah.
I think a lot of people do.
(30:35):
I just listen to theI listen to Alex a lot.
I read the Gary Keller book.
Right. Okay.
So for the real estate business ownerlistening right now,
what what is the one thing would you say?
Yes. Craig.
So Gary Keller asks the question is,what is the one thing I can do
such that by doing it,everything else will be
(30:55):
easier or unnecessary?
Let me say it again because I think it'sit's but there's a lot to digest in there.
What is the one thing I can do such thatby doing it,
everything else willbe easier or unnecessary?
Okay.
You know, basicallywhat's the one thing that you can do
(31:17):
that is going to take your businessthe furthest
So you have a perfect story about this
the first time you set up a broker deal.
Can you tell us about that? Yeah.
So it was our first large brokerdeal. Craig.
And it was in a real city.
You know, it wasn't in the cornfield.
It was in a big city.
And Dayton, Ohio, and it was a big name.
(31:37):
Hundreds of agents at this brokerage,this was like, oh, crap.
Like, this is a big like I've workedhard to get to this person
and the
meeting was scheduled and coming up to it,
I well, oneI took the meeting immediately.
Okay.
So it's not like like I knew at this point
(32:00):
I couldn't service hundreds of agents.
Okay.
So it's not likeI told the managing broker, oh, I'm sorry.
Like, I really have tojust get this camera figured out
or I need to perfect my systems,
or I got more photography to hire first.
I've got I got to hire more photographersbecause it's really
(32:20):
just me and a couple part time people.
Like, I took the meeting.
Okay, I was ready for.
I probably had a week.
You know, we scheduleprobably a week out now.
In the meantime,I started to play the what if game.
I was making calls to some people,one in particular, like,
hey, like this big thing'sgoing to come through.
Like, if this closes, I literally need youto quit your job almost instantly.
(32:43):
And we've got to focus on this and so andluckily for me, that person was on board.
I'd set that up and,it happened to all fit together nicely.
So I laid some groundwork,
but I didn't halt the progress,
I went in, I had the meeting, and
(33:03):
And honestly, he helped me like we created
the perfect brokerdeal segments in the room.
Like I had portions of the broker deal.
But he was likea visionary of the industry.
And he was like,would it be great if we did this?
And we did this?
And he was like, we're not even goingto give him an option to do photos only.
I still remember I'm like,are you like, okay, great.
(33:24):
Like he's like, no,
because I know if we give them an option,they're cheap and they'll do photos only.
So they're going to have to dophotos and video.
He's like,
can you like driving your car and likehang out the sunroof and take video?
I'm like, well,we'll do it a little bit differently.
But yeah, we have a suction cup mount.
And so he washe was creative helping me with it.
I earned his trust.
It was the first meetingI had with him, but I earned his trust
(33:48):
by whom I was working with.
That's a key pointto getting in front of him.
I talk about it all a lot.
Go back and listen tosome of our broker deal things.
If you're like,how do you get in front of this person,
Todd, go back and listen to those podcast,because that's how I got that trust.
But I was all in and I remember Craig,
there was a point in the conversationthat like,
(34:09):
we were both excited, we were creatingis like, yeah, this could be awesome.
Awesome for me,awesome for you, awesome for the agents.
It's a win win win. Truly.
And he looked at me, Craig.
And he said,
Todd, can you do it?
(34:30):
And I'm like, yeah.
So what was what was the response.
Like 10,000 pounds on your shoulders,right.
Like Craig I knew, I like I knew I couldn’tdo this with the cards I had right now.
If I was going to stay with where I was,I couldn't do this.
It was hundreds of agents.
(34:50):
And still to this day, it'sour largest deal. Yes.
And okay, so so how did
how did that one thingfocus, principle tie into this?
It you're you're earning the businessbefore you even have the infrastructure.
Yeah, yeah. Well, there was
(35:11):
stupidly and smartly enough,I responded instantly. Yes,
with confidence.
Right. Yeah.
And then and then I got,I got really happy
because the meeting was doneshortly after that.
Shook his hand,you know. Hey, we'll follow up.
This is what we're going to do.
And then I walked out of the office.
(35:32):
Sun hit my face.
It was like, oh.
And then you know what happened, Greg?
I got really hot really quick
because I was like,how am I going to do this now?
Right?
The person listening
right now or watching, they're thinking,okay, Todd yeah, this is great fun story.
But yeah, what do I do Monday morningwhen it when I'm trying to implement this.
(35:56):
Yeah,
I focused on the one thing I needed
okay.
So I, the one thing I needed to growmy business was to get more business.
That was the marketing engine,the broker deal engine.
That's been so fabulous for us.
Okay, my problem at that date
and time, that point in timewas not business anymore.
(36:17):
My one thing if I focused onwould move my business along.
The furthest was I neededmore photographers, I needed staff,
I needed help.
I remember I told youI had some conversations set up,
I first call, I made,I call my wife told her,
went well, second callI made was to this individual.
I'm like, hey, you need to quit.He's like, boom, I'm going to go do it.
(36:38):
I'm going to tell the principal like,there's three.
There's 2 or 3 weeks of school left.
And I knew that I laid off.
That was the thing I focused on.
Then he came on and we focused onbuilding the team of what we would need.
Also, there was another gap at the time.
I needed scheduling software.
The software didn't schedule at the time,and I knew there was going to be
(37:00):
hundreds of jobs coming inand I couldn't schedule.
The people couldn't call me,and I had no clue what the date book was,
and I knew there was goingto be a lot of photographers.
So I went
to the developer who I knew.
I'm like, hey, Kyle,you got to build this thing for me.
Like, great, let's do it.
So, you know,your focus will change a little bit.
(37:22):
But the thing that I want to make a pointof, Craig, is I.
I didn't change my focus. I wasn't split.
This idea of multitasking is a lie.
You can't multitask.
It's split tasking. It's split focusing.
I focused on getting the job.
I laid some things up,but it's not like I went
and builtthe scheduler prior to having it.
(37:43):
And I was smart abouthow I set expectations with that broker.
We had a build out plan.
He didn't expect me to do a 100 jobstomorrow.
All right.
So I set those expectationsof when we could launch
and when we could do all the agents.
But it all was very, very concrete,
(38:04):
just direct focus on what neededto be done at that point in time.
Okay. So you're a systems guy.
You've talked about that in the past.
So this to me this is kind of an abstractprinciple okay.
Yeah. The one idea, the one focus.
The one thing.
But what what's the systemyou build or the or the structure.
(38:24):
What's something concretethat the person listening right now
that's looking to growtheir business could put to action,
say, in the month of
August, to help startgetting their their focus
and start making some forward progress,especially in light of recent news.
We've heard about another particularbig company in our industry.
(38:45):
Yeah for sure.
So we you know,well, let's talk about that, Craig.
But let's talk aboutwe'll get to the news and teaser.
VHT
you knowwe it's it's something to talk about but
you need a sales engine like Todd.
What do I do. Here'sjust a very easy plan.
What I need you to do is I need youdaily to have five meaningful
(39:09):
two minute conversationswith a real estate agent,
okay?
This can be a current client.
This can be new clients.
This can be a warm lead, okay.
And you'll get that as you talk to currentclients.
It's easierto call current clients. Right.
And then and then you can askfor the referral. Yes.
Ask for the referral.
If they know I can trust you,they will refer you.
(39:31):
Worst thing is if you say, hey,do you know anybody else who's looking for
the same level of services and qualitythat we provide you?
Worst thing they say is like,let me think about it.
Or they say, no, but if you don't ask,they're not going to say anything.
Okay, so five meaningfultwo minute conversations.
(39:52):
And I want I only want you to do that.
I need you to do 20 a week okay.
So that's four daysI'm giving you Friday off for three days.
Very nice of you.Thank you, thank you. Great.
Thank you.
Because well, I'm sorry I said it.
I said it like a you know what? But I,
I, I, I do this because I under
(40:13):
I hear fromyou guys like this is difficult to do.
I remember dialing the phoneand hanging it up,
dialing the phone and hanging it up.
I remember
pulling into the real estate office,sitting there getting to my left brain.
I'm pulling out of the real estate office,and I was gonna walk into,
okay, I know it's not like somethingwe all gravitate towards.
(40:33):
You're all you are typicallyan S personality, which means you want
to help others, which means you feel badwhen you ask others
to buy your product or service.
So 20 calls a week
if it happens, take Friday off enjoy.
But if you don't get 20
(40:56):
meaningful conversations, then you got it.
You have to fill up on Friday.
If you're 17,you need to talk to three more people.
And I'll just to clarify, like
this isn'tcalls like meaningful conversations.
Okay, so hey, here's a little cheat code.
If you walk into an officeor you go to a brokerage event,
or if you go to a MLS event, you'reprobably going to talk to five people
(41:18):
in the first ten minutes, okay,so that you're done for a day.
But I think what what this will do isthis will start your sales engine,
build meaningful conversations
and get you off the ground right.
It's amazing how
once you take that, taking thatfirst step is always the hardest thing.
It's just like an exercise, right?
(41:39):
You don't want to drag yourselfout of bed in the morning
and go take a brisk walk or run, but
once you get that first step done,
the momentum builds
and you'll startto see the payoff on the effort.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And I think that's great because sometimeswe need to track our effort
and see what it was. You know,
(42:01):
the beautiful thing about exerciseis you begin to feel it in your body.
And I think you'll feel this too,because you'll get the feedback
and you'll actually calland you'll think the person
is going to hate you,but the person really loves you.
And you see these, you see these,
you see the output of your energy in.
But I think it's important.
Let's be strategic about let's trackour sales team tracks it.
(42:24):
Now, don't worry about a CRMif you're not set up in a CRM, which is a
customer relationship managementpiece of software, just use a spreadsheet.
Okay, Google Drive or Excel or whatever,and just have a column of the date
you called.
The next column would be the client name.
I'd probably put their phone number thereso you can call them back easier.
Maybe the company they're withand then any notes about the conversation.
(42:47):
You know, thatthat note might be like left the voicemail
that might be had a conversation.
Talk to them about so-and-so.
They refer me to this person.
Okay. So just put some notes in there.
The last thing is, isif you're going to follow up with someone,
if there's something actionable about it,go to your calendar
because you're going to gain informationfrom these conversations.
Go to your calendar
(43:07):
and put something on your calendar tomake sure you follow up with that client.
Yeah,because there's not there's nothing worse
than calling the person
having a great conversation, them needing
something from you,and then they never hear from you again.
Right? Yeah.
So powerful challengefor the month of August.
(43:29):
To hammer this home Todd let's go aheadand and talk about the news
that just broke that everybody's talkingabout online right now with VHT
Kind of an opportune
time to focus in on this effort
in this challengethat Todd has laid out for us.
Oh sure is.
So if you haven't heard of VHTwho VHT was one of the country's
(43:52):
largest media providers to realtors.
They they announced earlier in the week
that they are closing shopvery quickly like in a couple of weeks.
And like they're only taking ordersfor another week or two.
Right.
So you and they've been aroundfor over 20 years. Wow.
And they're huge.
(44:13):
And I think they're doing 50 to75,000 shoots a year.
It's just a guess I might be completelyoff base, but it's a huge company.
So you have thousands of agentsacross the US
scrambling to figure out who is going toprovide that media for them.
(44:33):
And so you got a great opportunity.
Make calls, ask questions.
The agent's going to tell you,oh, this is perfect timing.
I used to use VHT and they just closed shop
gave us no other option.
I used them for five years, ten years,whatever it may be.
(44:54):
You get that information right.
Craig, do you feel likewhen you talk to agents, are they pretty
closed tight to chest with information,or is it just flow?
I mean, some are cautiousif if it's a, true cold call
and there's no connection madefrom another realtor that referred you,
they can be a little bit.
But again, you do it long enough.
(45:17):
You you build up a tolerance to that.You understand?
They're not trying to just be mean to you.
It's Realtors are busy people, but,
more often than
not, especially if it's an opportune time.
Yeah, they're they're going to talk.
Realtors like to talkand they just, you know, so like to talk.
Yeah.
So they do they listen well to they do.
(45:39):
Let's be fair to realtors.
They have to listen.
The good ones and I'm good at it.
It's a squirrel.
Squirrel moment.
let it go right now.
Craig I feel like that was
I had a realtor of one time asked me,
have you ever thoughtabout being a realtor?
And I'm wondering if it'sbecause I talk to talk too much to them?
(46:02):
Anyway,
I, I did work in radio for a long time,
so it's hard to get that,you know, but no, I think
they're looking to improve their business.
And if you're providing a solutionto a problem
they're facing,they're going to talk with you.
Okay, Craig,let's let's break down the VHT thing
real quick, and I want to tie it intowhy I'm so excited
(46:22):
for all of youand honestly for myself as well,
because I think there'sa great opportunity
with real estate media in 2025 and beyond.
Okay, VHT.
Humongous companyowned by a larger company
that's owned by a larger and a larger.
Okay, there's your nesting boxes.
There was nothing.
There was no resource, no amount of money.
(46:44):
They had everythingthat potentially could have been needed.
Okay.
I think homes.comhas more money than Zillow.
So I want to make a point that all you
you guys feel limited like, oh I got thisor I have that or I like know like
this is a company that have more moneythan anything, more resources.
(47:05):
And I think they were losinglike $10 million a year
after 20 yearsto lose that amount of money.
And I think about like, they didn'teven try to sell the book of business,
which was really I'm like, well,
wonder why they didn'ttry to sell the book of business.
And and who knows, the reasonmight not ever be told, in my opinion,
(47:25):
really doesn't matter.
But the point I want to make to all of you
is, I really think that the VHT
Matterport those companies,
I think they lost focus
as to what was really important.
I think they got too clever
(47:46):
and tried to have this massive pay off.
There was some really intelligent brainsin a room
that thought, we're going to devise thismaster plan where we're going to leverage
these four different companiesto own the space.
But being too clever doesn't work.
(48:11):
Our business is simple.
I luckily was forced to do it in 2023.
I might have been the VHT of 2025
if I want have focused in 2023.
I had a lot of shiny objects.
I had a lot of crazy ideas.
We were spending time and money on them.
(48:34):
The tough
year of 23 forced me to focus onwhat's important.
At the end of the day, your client isthe most important thing to you.
That relationshipwill, will yield, will return
you them using you, them referring you,which will give you
the lifeblood of your business,which is revenue.
You can't have a business with negativeprofit.
(48:58):
Revenue. Negative profit, okay.
If you do, if you do20 million in revenue, I don't know.
That's what VHT was doing.
If you do 20 million in revenue,but you lose 10 million a year,
no matter how much money you haveand your parent companies have,
you're going to cut it off at some point.
(49:20):
Focus on what's important, please.
I'm telling you,it might seem too simple to you.
And you think you're more sophisticated
than five meaningfultwo minute conversations four days a week.
But if we want to have done this at Wow,
we might have been the VHT of 2025.
(49:40):
We're up 20%, almost 20% year
over year over our best year ever.
We came back in 24 a littlebeat up from 23, and we had our best year
ever, and we're beating it by nearly 20%this year.
And again,
I don't say it to brag, but I say itbecause I want you to take that path.
(50:03):
It's not difficult for all of you.
A lot of you talk about, oh,it's tough to beat the big people like,
oh, they do VHT was doing a 150 for photosyou can't sustain.
It's a race to the bottom.
It doesn't work for anybody.
Follow the simple path.
Have the meaningful conversations,
build relationships, do the hard thing
(50:26):
and your business will grow.
The key word that I'm taking away fromthis Todd is meaningful
and or when you get too cleverand used it,
you only focus on,
massive business growth and numbers.
You take the humanity out of business,working with others in the marketplace,
(50:48):
and ultimately the reason we're all doingwhat we do is we
we need towe need to take care of ourselves.
You know, we need income.
Many of us, most of us,I don't know, have families that we love
and care about and want to take care of,and we're working hard for them.
So is the realtor.
So if you can truly serve somebody
(51:09):
in a meaningful wayand not make it just about the business
and you're just real with peopleand authentic
with people, yeah,that's going to go a long way.
And taking time to have conversationswith people.
It's so easy to just shoot a quick textor a quick email,
but to have an actual,meaningful conversation, that's huge.
(51:32):
Yeah.
So it almost seems too simple.
Craig I think it does.
I'm I'm I'm happy.
It I'm happy.
I'm happy that people overthink it,I really am
I'm happy that people make itmore difficult than it has to be,
because it just shows that ifif you simplify it
and you do this.
You're adding your competition.
(51:52):
And again, competition means nothing.
It really means nothing.
And look at the great upper hand
you have right nowbecause that hole in the market exist.
So take this opportunity to do it.
Just trust me. Please do it.
Yeah.
And you'll see your business. Just go.
So there's there's the challengefor the month of August. 5 by 4 method
(52:14):
five meaningful conversationsfour days a week. And,
see what impact it has on your business.
Magic is magic is in that work.
Not not the gear.
Yeah. So are you serious?
Are you serious? Enough?And I'll end on this.
But are you seriousenough about your business
(52:36):
to have 80 2-minute conversations
in the month of August?
There you go.
We'd love to hear at the end of August
how that month wentwith taking that challenge.
So drop us a line. hello@spiro.media.
We would.
We love hearing from you.
Leave a comment on the YouTube channel
(52:57):
which we try our bestto keep up with those.
Yeah. We want to hear from you.
What what successful Toddalways makes us share success stories.
Makes us.
It sounds kind of bad.
Makes us share success storiesat our staff meeting every Friday morning.
And, we want to hear your success stories.
What what went good for you in August?
(53:17):
Share that with us. All right.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Oh my pleasure. Also,we've got a great community.
The Spiro Super UserFacebook group. Please get in there.
You know, you guys are so kind.
I see a lot of people are like, oh,
not Spyro related, but posting this herebecause I just love this community.
Thank you all for making thatsuch a great community.
Get in there and let's talk about it.
(53:38):
Tell your successes.Or maybe you need some kind of building.
Be like, hey, I, I only had one this week.
Like, okay, well you can do it.
This is something that I found was
this is what unlocked that for meor I was struggling with that as well.
So let's do it as a community.
Don't be on an island. Please don't.
Your ego is going to tell
if your ego tells you like, hey,you need to do it yourself.
Your ego's wrong.
(53:59):
Please just get into a community.
If it's not, if it's not, if it's notthat Facebook group, I don't care.
I'm not offended by it.
Find some communityto push you to hold you accountable.
There you go.
All right.
That's good to wrap things up this week.
Thank you so much for taking time.
We know it's a busy summer, so thank youfor taking the time to listen or watch.
(54:20):
And again, if you have somebodyyou want to share with us, ask a question.
Topic idea, business topic idea,drop us a line.
hello@spiro.media.
In the meantime, make sure you take timeout of your week not just for those,
five two minute conversations
per day, but take some time to be thankful
for the things in your lifeand make sure you take a breath this week.
(54:42):
You have a fantastic week. Take care.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
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
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.