Multiverse of Media: Operations, Scaling, and Service Models - Part 2

In this second installment of our "Multiverse of Media" series, Matty and Moses dive deep into the operational engine required to scale a real estate media business. Drawing from their experience building international software companies like Pixlmob and PropMedia, they translate high-level business lessons back to the local photography level.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Recruiting at Scale: Why you need to stop hiring just who you know (family and friends) and start leveraging the broader internet to find elite talent.
• The "Core Number": Identifying the one metric that actually moves the needle for your specific business model, whether it’s shoot efficiency or agent recruitment.
• High-End vs. High-Volume Operations: A look at two different paths—Moses’s "Middle America" 2,500-shoots-per-year model focused on efficiency, and Matty’s "Luxury Miami" agency focused on bespoke $5,000+ videos.
• The Power of Delegation: How to use fractional experts, virtual assistants, and management layers to reclaim your time and achieve true business freedom.
• Retention Economics: Why real estate media is one of the most scalable production businesses due to "sticky" customers and natural viral referrals from social-networking agents.
• Services & Streamlining: Deciding between a "Five Guys" limited menu of core services versus a high-touch creative agency model.

Whether you are a solo shooter hitting a growth ceiling or an aspiring agency owner, this episode provides a roadmap for building a business that protects your values and your sanity.

Connect with us:

Build your free profile at PropMedia.com or streamline your post-production at Pixlmob.com!

Subscribe for weekly interviews with industry-leading photographers, tech innovators, and real estate experts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, Matty, the burning question on everyone's mind who tunes into this on YouTube is why the heck do you always have a cough drop? I mean, is this like a belt and suspenders thing? You're not sick. Like this is my securities. It's your security cough drop.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Yeah, I just feel better knowing that it's there.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

All right. Uh well, if if you have a security cough drop in your life, uh, please comment so that I can understand that my business partner is not actually as crazy as I think he is right now.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

And if you're wondering what the heck you're listening to right now, this is the Prop Media Podcast. Um, I'm Maddie. This is Moses, and we uh talk about property media and security cough drops, and and cough drops, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Other lobs and is, yeah. But mostly anything in the real estate industry relating to images and video and all that jazz. So today we've kind of been putting together a series of like we've started a large media company, we've started a large uh media software company, and kind of trying to trade translate some of the things we learned from the international business back into how we would restart a local photography company, which is what many of you guys who listen um do. So it's some of it's this is kind of like our fantasy football picks in a way, but it seems like it's been useful to you guys and interesting of just riffing off of things that have changed and how we think about it, and then you guys relating it to your businesses and what might make sense, and hopefully in in different ways of thinking about it than are typical uh in the industry right now that you might hear from any other coach that you turn it tune into. So, Maddie, where were we? I think we were we finished up with go-to-market strategy. We talked a good bit about that, but now maybe into operations.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, so we kind of left off um just catching everyone up. We've kind of picked how we would design our fantasy real estate media company.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

It's probably worth a refresh. So Maddie, Maddie's is styled more as like a lifestyle, high margin, high dollar per hour, move to Miami, shoot the thousands of dollar shoots and scale. And then mine was more of the middle America. We're gonna shoot 200, 250 shoots, and we're gonna work to grow and do thousands of them. So two different business models, two different perks that match kind of our uh personalities and lifestyles, I guess. Yeah. Um, so where are we on operations in Operation Takeover Miami?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

So, yeah, uh picking up on kind of like uh we've talked about go to market, we've talked about uh the different audiences. Can we pull that list up, Ben? And just we recap. This is part three. So also it's helpful for us. We've been talking about this for three months now um to get that recap. So startup costs, tools, our business models. We've talked about um what tech and our tech stack we would use um uh in go to market. Did we talk about recruiting much? I think we could maybe do a little touch on that a little bit, and then we'll hop into operations.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

We did a little, but we can I think we did talk about it. We can refresh because we were talking. I think a lot of what we drilled into with the recruiting was you're you're finding the reliable person that's gonna match. It's gonna be harder for you because you got to really you've um like for me, I could hire somebody part-time, spend a few hours with them, train them on the basics of getting the bracketed shots that I need, rely on a good post-production system and and have a reliable workflow. Whereas on your side of things is maybe is actually more critical that you have like killer recruiting to have the value proposition, to recruit the person with the skill set to produce the higher art, the less production. Um so I think we we drilled into that a good chunk, but was there more you wanted to share?

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah, I'll I'll definitely I I have some thoughts um there, which I've learned a lot over the past five years in uh the way we work with Pixel Mob, obviously. We have a marketplace and we we do recruit talent. And um also talking to people like Brad at Windows Still, like yeah, his approach to recruiting is so interesting, but in both those cases, uh leveraging the internet. This is gonna sound almost too obvious, but like uh you mean you should put your business on the internet, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

That's what you've learned from running an international marketplace.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

It's just there's more fish in the sea than you realize. Yeah, I think oftentimes, and this is not this is what I'll see, but this is also what I know, and what I've my lived experience is you f know somebody, and so like you you frame your business around the people you know that you might hire. I could hire my brother, I could hire my sister, my aunt, my cousin, my friend from high school, which is common and can be dicey, yeah. But the we build around those ideas, and what Brad showed is that there's so many options, and I think that has changed me uh in in how I frame that a little bit. There's um that doesn't mean you can't value those connections, but I think I tend to overvalue those connections and put too much uh weight on that frame. So um I think I would definitely broaden my search, and there's so many ways to do that now. Um, he uses indeed, and uh he said he's interviewed over 30,000 people. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And his whole job was interviewing people, and they've built a national footprint in a very short amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Well, and his business relies on that on an even different level than either of us were talking about. Like I'm talking about scaling into this half of South Carolina, and you're talking about scaling in Miami. I mean, Brad's talking about like the fundamental thing that he does is hiring the photographer that's gonna service an area across the entire United States. So it's like his core business unit is a photographer.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Whereas, and that's actually a different business model than um either of us are talking about.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

But the lesson learned there is that definitely applies the skill, I think we overvalue our skills and that they're not repeatable.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Sure. Um 100%. That in every business, everybody always feels like when you've done it, you do it the best, and nobody can do it as good as you, particularly in any kind of creative field. But in yeah, in reality, you were gonna say something about that, and then I I'll uh tag something on the end, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yeah, I think in my scenario, um, it'd be easy to fall into a trap of I need these super talented, really experienced cinematographers that have 10 years, and I think I even said that in the last episode. And it's not necessarily that that's untrue, just the um way you find them may not be as limited as you may think. And there might be people that would be willing to move into new um a new area, particularly a luxury market, um, to go work on your business in my my new business, um, to do that. Um just generally broadening that search out. I think that would be something I would a lesson that I've learned from my past experience experiences in this past uh five years building a software company, finding talent across the globe for editing. Um yeah, I think that the the it's a much bigger pool than you realize.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah. To to riff off of that, like one of the biggest things that I've learned across all the businesses that I've started in my life is that every business has like one there's one number that really matters for that business. And sometimes you can you can express that number different ways. But like when I was an agent, that number was how many people I could talk to in a day to connect with enough people to s to sell. But then when I started running a team, it started to be how could I organize the team to produce hundreds of transactions a year? And the number shifted to toward a transactional focus instead of maybe a price point focus. But then when I moved into brokerage, it changed again. And I think these parallel in photography as well. So in brokerage, the fundamental unit, which eventually became a like a conscience struggle for me, was eventually it felt like like horse trading people because the fundamental unit in brokerage is recruiting a productive agent.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

And you're you're constantly trying to figure out how to pull productive agents from other brokerages into yours and maybe your value proposition, my value proposition with Keller Williams. I thought was better.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

It's like Moneyball. Have you you've seen that one with Brad Pitt? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, well, actually, so we played it very like money ball because we wouldn't we did not normally go after like the top top agents because it would take years to recruit a lot of people instead. We would just go base hit, base hit. That was so interesting. Yeah, it was like this is a producer who does six to twelve deals, and maybe with color Williams systems, a little bit of coaching, maybe we can get them to 20, 22 deal, and we'd and but they're easier to move, yeah. So, like that was the base unit, and it wasn't it wasn't a certain number of top producing agents, it was just a gross number of agents, period. Yeah, and then the statistics of how many of them would be higher end and how many of them would be brand new is a kind of that's the whole business model of a Keller Williams franchise is focused on that number. How many new agents do you get in the door every single month? And that's how Keller Williams grew from zero to the largest in the market back when I was a franchisee in like 30 years. So zero to the largest in the world was driven by that focus on that one number. So similarly, I am going somewhere with all this in photography. Getting that number, I think often is going to push you toward learning that as your business matures, it's more and more about who you're gonna recruit, is a core function of the business. But businesses are different. So, like my business that would be a production business in Greenville, South Carolina, my core number would probably have to do with the business efficiency of how many shoots that I could actually do. And it'd be a little more agnostic. Like I wouldn't care if I could have one of my photographers and they're happy doing 30 shoots a week and they're like, that is their jam. If I have one of those versus having seven who do five a week, it doesn't matter that much to buy my business model. To yours, it might matter more because you got to invest more into those individuals to get them up to stuff. But then with Brad's business model all across the nation, it goes back to his core number is the person.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Yeah, it's coverage.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

It's yeah, it's it's coverage when when people are hitting windows still nationally. Does he have someone there or does he have to source someone there? Wow. I was so sorry. I apologize, Mr. Brad. Didn't mean it. Yeah. Um, so anyway, the if you can, I would encourage you if you're listening to this and you never thought about this, like what is the core number that changes the future of your business? Is it the number of people? Is it the quality and training of a select people? Does it not matter and it's more transactional? If you can get clarity on that, it will give you a lot of operational clarity of what you should focus on to move the needle for your business. If you're just tuning in and you don't know who we are and you just found us through a different channel, we run the Pixel Mob platform and Prop Media Platform. Those are two different channels that help businesses in the real estate media space grow in different ways. Pixel Mob manages all your post-production, connects you easily with uh not realtors, with editors and AI tools and all kinds of things to make the back end of your production business smooth. And then Prop Media helps you actually find realtors where realtors can find you and direct to your website and that sort of things. They're both worth checking out. Prop Media, you can make a free profile, it's super easy. And in Pixel Mob, you can go in by credit, and you can do instead of staying up until 2 a.m. tonight, you could actually have an editor do that for you and go spend some time doing something else. Have a mental health evening.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

I think that real estate media, um, and when we were active in North Seventh, um, I felt like that uh key performance indicator for me was net new customers. If I could boil it down, and I I think probably would be some growth one, yeah. The thing is with real estate media in particular as a business model is that the customers tend to be very sticky.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

You do unless you suck, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why that might flake. But the thing is, as a photographer, right? So a lot of you might have come from a photography background, or you're hearing this coming from um a photography background where you shoot weddings and events and things like that, and real estate media is kind of something you're starting to explore, or you've you've got a fledgling real estate media business. The big difference is that these customers come back multiple times a year, um, if not multiple times a month, depending on kind of their scale. And um locking is locking in the customers in retention is huge, but there's gonna be a natural retention that already comes to the business model level.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

There's a default retention in our business that the pain of finding a new photographer is gonna create natural lock-ins if they've used you and were even relatively pleased with your service.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, you shoot weddings and they might be a big ticket item. You might walk away with six or seven thousand dollars to do a wedding like that, but you're not gonna do that again, hopefully, for that customer.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Well, I've thought for a long time that there is a Fortune 500 company there that does like national wedding shoots, and it's also a divorce law firm, and it's also a marriage counseling firm. And new new shoot. This is a billion-dollar idea, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

But anyway, yeah, new business model. Everyone scrap this real estate media thing. But I I think the there's already a natural lock-in. Um, and you have to work very hard to continue to retain those customers, and that should be a one of your very high key performance indicators as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

And that that's one of the cool things that is actually parallel between software and real estate shooting, is like software, like these hundred million billion dollar software companies, one of the biggest things that makes that kind of revenue scale possible is retaining customers so that you gain a thousand customers this month, and then in every software company, you say you lose 15% of them every month, but you gain another thousand. So there's always this churn factor, but you gain a thousand, you lose 150, you gain a thousand, you lose 150, and then like this compounds dramatically, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

It's the compounding effect, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

And it's the same thing on and on different scale in real estate media. Like it's the same, like you earn the customer, but in some businesses, like weddings, you earn the customer, and then hopefully you never shoot a wedding for them again. Like if that turns out well for them, then that that's it. You won the business, you got paid well, but they don't come back. And if they do, it's weird. But in real estate media production, they come back uh on average four times a year. So that makes it a much more scalable production business that you're not constantly having to find the new business as long as you can keep them happy. It's like a snowball.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

And the snowball just gets bigger and bigger the longer you can roll it. And it makes it, I mean, I think it's a cool, it's a cool business. It has good unit economics for a lifestyle business and it and it can have good business economics for uh regional or national footprint.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I I think the opportunities there, if you can really boil them down, um, are working towards that compounding effect. Uh every month is a new base. You know, if you had 40 customers, maybe make it simpler, there's 10 customers. Uh this month, if you had 12 next month and 14 and 16, or 22 the next, your revenue opportunity each month grows. And obviously, if you can retain them, that's the next level down. So in in my fantasy model here, uh these are very high ticket comparatively.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Um and you've already zeroed in some ways of going after the high-end realtors and zeroing in on the ones that are doing the high-end shoots.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yep. Yeah. So getting them to getting that to compound is about bringing in new customers, retaining them, and and agents are viral nodes in their environments.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

It's a crazy thing about realtors, is realtors love to connect and talk and network. Like they are massively disproportionately wired toward that influencing, dominant kind of personality. Yeah. They like to talk to each other.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

And I this is kind of what I like about the more luxury high-end video and stuff in particular. If you can crack into that, is that they are going to promote your business intentionally or unintentionally. Like they're going to look great on camera, they're going to promote the crap out of their video in as a byproduct. People they might get 30,000 views on a thing. So you're like, who shot this? And you get to this, you get to feed off of someone's actively gonna go distribute your content. So that's a big, I think, a big plus in in my line of this new business model.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Yeah, it's it's uh partnership. And I think there's there's nowhere that the referral uh functioning elements of business function better, I think, than realtors, because they are they are social networking nodes. Like when I was when I was active, one of the most common reasons that I would hear from a client, and actually I still this still happened to me a week ago. A client, uh past client from 10 years ago texted me with a question about a recommendation of how to get some information. And I'm like, hi, Pamela. I hope you're well, and sure, I can help you. Um but people see like if think about it, you're moving to an area and you don't you may not know anyone if you're moving from out of state, but you know your realtor, and you know that realtors connect with a bunch of people and they know a handyman and they know an air conditioner guy, and they know like they know all your basic people in the area, and they're like your front door into an area. So, depending on how your photography business works, like if you do more than real estate, that could make a lot of sense as a node in that capacity, but then they also operate as a node because the real estate industry is hyper connected with itself, like to the tune that they got sued for like $70 billion a few years ago because they're so connected that they were accused of uh colluding about commission structures and stuff like that. Yeah. Because, like in every single area, there's a realtor Facebook group where if they don't know the handyman, they throw it in the Facebook group and say, Hey guys, who's the best handyman nowadays? And then all the other realtors chime in. And I see every few days on our local one, somebody like, hey, who's a good real estate photographer or something like that? So if you can ingratiate yourself to realtors and and wow them with customer service and operations, it tends to start creating a natural viral kind of flywheel just because of who the realtors are. But they have to like you, yeah, and you have to deliver great service, which is where operations comes in.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Because I think that's where a lot of the solo shooters start to struggle that aren't trying to scale in either direction, and they'll get to a point, and maybe they're doing like 15, 20 shoots a week, like not bad, right? But if you're doing that and you're the only person, your customer service is almost going to necessarily drop. Like if you're doing five shoots a week, which let's say each of those take two hours to accomplish, it's 10 hours of shooting. That means you got 30 hours to go wine and dine with realtors and do great customer service and do that fast edit for somebody to wow them and get them to come back, all that jazz. But as soon as you're doing 30 shoots, 20 shoots, like your time gets cut in half and tends to get compressed. You tend to get bitter towards your needy clients, you tend to get a little grumpy on the phone, you tend to be right. Really, you want that? Well, we'll find another photographer because I don't got time for that. Like, that's where all that starts to come from is it gets compressed that you would never have done that in your first 10. Clients, but in your 100 to 200 clients, suddenly it's I don't have time for that guy. Anyway, I'm I'm talking a lot, but what are you thinking? Like if you're if you're helping somebody scale who's going from five to 10 to 20 shoots a week, what are the operational things when you're operating in Miami that you're focused on to make sure that CS customer service experience does not drop based on what we've learned?

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yeah. I mean, you've got to have your bases covered, right? So, um, and the more you can shift that responsibility outward, the better.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

So the more you're not the grumpy guy who's like, you frickin' diva.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Well, I think one of my lessons in starting Pixel Mob, um, opposed to other entrepreneurial endeavors I've done uh in my 20s, is that um realizing that you can work with fractional and contract experts. Yeah. We work with a fractional CFO at Pixel Mob. Like he's not a full-time person on our payroll. Um, but we don't need a fract a full-time person, but we do need someone that's going to give us high-level tax advice or strategic advice uh around pricing or payroll or a new hire, all that kind of stuff. This can this is you know, some of the obvious things, accounting, you know, like taxes for a lot of people, for me, that's a big burden. Um, like that's something you could easily outsource and should try work towards outsourcing. Um but even like your customer support, like the more that can be a siloed thing within someone's domain, the less likely they're gonna be carrying in the baggage of I had a terrible shoot this afternoon and got stepped in dog poop, tracked it into my car, and into the person's house, and they yelled at me and whatever, you know, like the customer support person uh could handle those other stuff without bringing in that extra baggage. Um, and if you're the you're starting out, you're like, Well, I can't afford that. There's very affordable solutions, you know. So you'll hear this over and over and over again. Um, if you're starting out, is working with a virtual assistant. Yeah. And uh a lot of people don't know what to do with a virtual assistant, but I would totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Like, the don't wait. Like, just start experimenting with what you can give up. And you're gonna be nervous about some things, you're gonna be really nervous about customer service at first. You're gonna be nervous about them touching your photos if you're if you're like really tuned in to the perfection of your photos, you don't want anyone to touch that. That's fine. Some of those instincts are great. You want quality, you want, and in your business, you've got to have quality, or you're gonna lose some of those high-end things. That's what they're doing very high tech in this scenario, right? Yeah, but regardless of what it is, you got to figure out something because there's only so many hours in the day, right? Like everybody's heard that saying there's only 24 hours in a day, you can only do so much, and and that's the head cannon happening when you're like, I don't have time for you. If you don't like the photos, fine, I'll refund your money, go find a different photographer. That's what's happening. You ran out of time, you can't do it, and you're and you're okay with where you are. The only way you can live on more than 24 hours a day is by learning to hire somebody else. Because as soon as you learn how to hire and work with somebody else, you now have 48 hours in the day. Actually, no, that would be slavery. You have an extra 40 hours, right? That can be deployed. In a week, yes. Yeah, in a week. Yeah. You don't, you don't when you employ someone, just in case anyone's wondering, you don't actually have rights to control their whole life, just you know, what they agreed to work for you in. Um, but that's it's such a leap for so many people. And like I think I forget that sometimes that I've been I've I never intended to even start a business, but I've been thrust into that since my early, early 20s and learned, and it's almost old hat of like we can't do that, we can't accomplish that, it's not good enough anymore. Um, like my instant response is okay, how can we hire into that? How can we have the revenue to hire into that so that somebody can focus on that? But that's a it's an impulse you have to train. And at first, it's usually terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Yeah. It is it is counterintuitive.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

You want to have control, you think that's the value of your business is that you have that most common thing I hear from a young entrepreneur is that they are the talent, they are the reason the business is awesome, and there's some truth to it. Like that's why everyone feels that, right? They brought something into existence that had never existed before. And they honestly don't usually know exactly why it worked.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

And so they cling to all of the little sacred cows and all the things that they did because they they don't understand the formula yet. Yeah, they don't understand that this was the thing that worked, and the other nine things that you're clinging to didn't really matter. Yeah. And that's where the number matters. Like, does it connect to the fundamental number of your business, the fundamental business model? If it's driving that forward, great. Maybe that should be a sacred cow. But if it doesn't connect and it's just something that you're like, I I did this thing, and and I maybe that contributed, but it doesn't connect to what you actually see as the core economics of how your business grows, then you should really think about whether that is something you need to hang on to or whether that's something you can think about outsourcing.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

So let's fast forward three years into your new business. Things are going well. You've got you've been outsourcing. What does your operations look like?

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Well, it depends. How far did we get in three years? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

I know you tell me what this is your fantasy.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Oh, okay. Well, I won't push it into too fanciful of a realm, but let's say in three years we get it to uh with some focus, we get it to 200 shoots a month. So we're doing factor some seasonality in there. We're doing between 2,000 and 2,500 shoots a year. All right. So in that, in that pace, what is that? You got like say 50 weeks in a year into 2,500. All right. So we're doing 50 a week. What do you need to actually do that with good customer service? I mean, A, you've got a reasonable amount of revenue there, should be able to hire in full-time ad administrative support at that space. Maybe I would be focused on having a manager and administrative support to that manager plus the team of photographers. I think that would be sufficient in that space, which means in this right here, this is probably minimum of 120 to 140,000 in overhead, maybe a little bit more if you're hiring quality people into that space. And also that's super determinant by where you live. Like we're in a very low cost of living area, wages tend to be lower, and everything is cheaper. If you're in San Francisco, it might be twice that because bread is twice expense, twice as expensive as it is in Greenville, South Carolina. So anything we say about hiring, don't take that and be like, oh, Moses said it should cost this because it may be very different in your market than it might be in mine. But you should have revenue to do that, and that would allow you to essentially offboard most everything of the business into those administrative functions. And they could probably do it better than you. So then what do I do? Well, I do whatever I enjoy doing in the business as the business owner. So if I enjoy shooting, then I might be cherry picking the top clients that I enjoy working with.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

If I enjoy and if you're if you're not working with Moses, he does not enjoy you.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

I mean, this is going into the public, but yeah, um, I I don't shoot, so let's be real. Um I would be designing the systems and the experience for the customers, and that's what I would be doing, is I'd be figuring out how to make sure we're getting the best reviews, the best feedback from our customers, making sure my um my team, those two core people, most likely, um are taken care of, that they have a clear path in front of them about how to advance in their career. Because there's nothing more costly to your business typically than losing a key employee. That it's always worth um pushing ahead, having a roadmap in front of them. So you have stability. You have a management team that doesn't change every year. And that that layers for retention as well, where your customers come to rely on that stability.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

So anyway, I think that's that that would be my team. I I don't think it has to be much more much deeper than that, but have management admin, maybe still virtual assistant, or admin might be virtual assistant, depending on the quality of the talent, and then outsourcing, editing, or automating post-production and editing. So that might be another virtual assistant hire to oversee that. But three years from now, I'm not so sure. I think that may be manageable with just that two-person team.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

And then a bunch of contract photographers.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

If you're doing 2,500, I would guess probably at least 10 contract photographers based on like, yeah, I think that would make sense. That would work. So 50, 50 a week. How do you handle spread across the geography for ease where the photographers are happy? This one has this area, this one has this area, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

How are you handling customer support, post-production, and delivery? Are this is that all happening under your admin role? Like one person? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I think so. At that scale, I don't think you would need more than one. I think there is a probably a single customer service helpline. It's probably a single monitored uh customer service slash sales email. It's probably monitored and shifts by overnight VA, admin, and then escalates to the GM. Notice the layers, like where my uh my priority in the business is gonna be freedom and my ability to spend time with my children, my family. Um if that's my focus, I'm not necessarily maximizing for 500,000 in profit. I might be happy with 200,000 in profit and everything leveraged and layered where it's never going to touch me when I'm at a kid's um choir practice or choir practice. I don't know why I'd be at a choir practice, choir recital. Um, or actually in that world, maybe it could be at the choir practice.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

I only want to hear you sing once a quarter.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Once a quarter, it could be a practice, it could be a recital, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

After you practiced, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Um, but like that's optimizing your business for what you want. Like you might want to make 500k and you might not have any kids. Or you might want to make 500k and you're like, you know what, I could miss some wire rehearsals. Like it's it's up to you. Like, what how are you going to design your business? If you design a leveraged business, you get to make those choices. Yeah, if you don't, those choices get made for you.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

My team would look a little different. Um, I would be hiring for creative ability, taste, and ability to automate. So, like operations, a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

I probably share that last one. But but truly, if I'm honest, I would be I would not be nearly as focused on those others that might be like, well, obviously, you need that in a real estate or in a media company. No, you don't. I mean, the photos need to be good, but it can be procedural, it could be good, it can be production. Um, continue.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Yeah, I I think the what I'm learning as I'm doing more and more experimenting, and we're implementing more and more automations and automated flows with AI. Like, there's so much more coverage within your business that one person can manage. Yes. Um, so I'd be looking for people that can do many projects, wear many hats. So understand those.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Computers also doing admin, like more like a holistic.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

I probably would keep those pretty pretty separated.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

But I would in and then I'd be hiring for the things that AI can't do. So I'd have someone that's really like uh what is the automations and operations guru.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

So stringing together the AI tools and the people.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

Yeah. And I would want to hire a team that are comfortable and understanding and working in these environments. Um, I think you have I would be looking for some sort of like creative director. And um, and they would probably this is fantasy level, right? So uh blank check, it's a little, but uh so take it with a grain of salt. But I do think I would probably have someone that's in charge of post-production on on staff. Um, we would outsource some things, we would use AI for some things, um, and but it's going through one eye, particularly in a high-touch scenario. And in particular, in this business model, I think you're doing a lot more bespoke stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

And there's consistency of taste and consistency of product that becomes a high priority for your deliverable.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

Right. And Moses knows this about me. I tend to invent. I'm an inventor, which he does. Pros and cons. A lot of cons. Um, but the the pros are you creating unique things, cons are creating unique things. Um, it's harder to systematize. Sometimes they're very unique. And where you want to reinvent the other things rather than recycle and reuse established um systems and things like that. Um I've I've learned a lot through our our partnership in being able to uh build off of existing systems, and I'm a lot less likely to take things that are um if we can do it off the shelf, I'd much rather do that. So um, yeah, using existing uh uh tools that can be wired together, build a system that can be highly automated um for like delivery, um, your post-production, um getting into systems that generally are going to make decisions for you that have already been solved.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

I I think those are except for that creativity and taste. Like that's a that's a tension that I'm hearing in what you're saying. Like you're huge into automation.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

The system doesn't have to do the creativity and taste. Yeah, it has to that's on the product of the yeah, the the output, the videos, the uh this the creative packages we offer and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

But and like to point out a difference, like it's not that I wouldn't be having my admin and management team using Claude and every MCP we can touch and all of that jazz. But part of my focus with my design would be those layers between me and the business that I can work on it when I want to. Whereas sometimes when technology fails, well, guess who's in the office late at night fixing the MCP? It might be you, unless you have that management layer. But at the same time, you kind of love that stuff of like how do you get it to stick together and then how do you troubleshoot it if it goes wrong? Yeah. So it's just different accents of how, and you need the quality, you need the consistency, but who you are as a business owner, it's hard to even calculate how important that is to factor in that your business probably shouldn't look like my fantasy business or Maddie's. It should look like yours. Like, what are your values? What are you building into your operation system that actually protect those values? That's what leads to you doing something awesome and not hating your life.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Yeah. Let's round it out. I I think the big two things that we have remaining to talk about are uh customer service. Um, we've kind of dipped our toes in a few parts of the conversation. And then uh maybe we can flip these around. Let's start with this one services. What are the things you offer and uh intentionally don't offer if there is a a list?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Yeah, I think in mine it would be wise for me to take your Chick-fil-A or your five guys approach that we talked about like a year ago of like I have I probably have a limited menu. There's not, it's not there's no versatility, it's just that we're gonna focus on the 80% of stuff that every agent needs. Um, and probably make some intentional choices, at least until we get to maybe the scale that I was talking about before. Probably up to that 2,500 shoots a year. We're making choices of no, we don't, we don't do creative direction, we don't do commercials for agents, we don't do bespoke uh videos for a business that needs their space showcased for an event center. Like we we don't do that. Like we might we probably would focus on very specific individual customer profiles. Like, what do all of the realtors need for every shoot? And what do 80% of the realtors need for every shoot? And if it's less than 50% of the realtors needing it for every shoot, we're thinking of do we need to offer that, or do we just focus on the core business profile? Might layer in a couple other ICPs, like Airbnb would be a hop, skip, and a jump. Pretty similar persona, maybe slightly different in shooting style, but probably not enough to really make a huge difference in uh like the reason you'd streamline that, and the reason that five guys and Chick-fil-A are highly profitable is that they have very sophisticated post-production systems for your sandwiches. They're very simple, streamlined, repetitive, they're always the same. And you get you go to five guys, you're gonna get the exact same hamburger. It's gonna be great at the level of what five guys is. Right. And you go and you get what you ordered, and you're happy with it because that's what you went for. You went for an overpriced hamburger and it was great, and now you're done, and you're gonna move on with your day, and you're happy with five guys. That's the experience profile that we'd be looking for. That a realtor is coming in, they're like, okay, I'm not hiring an artist. I am hiring the person who's gonna create the marketing photos for me. Maybe they can do an easy uh walkthrough at the beginning of the video. They can do video, like those core pieces, but that's it. Cap it right there and be an awesome Chick-fil-A five guys until you get to a scale where I could hire talent who might be a creative director or something. And then that would expand an entirely different ICP. But I would try to be very disciplined on this is the profile, this is who we're after, what do they need? How do we do that and deliver that efficiently? And only really look at going beyond outside of that when you reach a saturation level that, like maybe we have 25% of the market and our growth is slowing. At that point, reinvesting capital into growing a new ICP might make sense. So now you, I think it's gonna be a little bit different. So what are you completely different?

SPEAKER_02 41:37

I would say, yeah. Um, I think this is a great business model.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

What's your what's your restaurant? What are you going for?

SPEAKER_02 41:43

I think uh I don't even know this isn't compared to a restaurant in the same way, but at least starting out, this is very high value services. I would focus almost exclusively on video. That would make sense because highest ticket, highest creative input, um sell sell things high margin to uh rich people, like so.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

I'd be starting with 25 photo packs and building to video, you'd be starting with video and maybe eventually layering in some photos.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Yeah, I think I probably would have photo packages, but they'd be starting at like a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

It's like it's an add-on to the five thousand dollar shoot or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Exactly. Yeah, and you might be hearing something like that's ridiculous. Uh, but I in in luxury markets, this is absolutely uh uh a category and it's an expectation. Like you're setting the value and you start off high. Like um, if you're not paying that, you're not getting hired. The customer's right, they don't want you. Like that it's a this is a weird psychological game.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Now, that doesn't mean you can offer the exact same thing that you're offering in no you know, I could move my production company to Miami and expect to charge 10 times as much for the photos. Like it's a different, it is a different product.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Yeah, yes. So uh it it might be that we every project is is starts with a kind of a discovery call and a you know, um in and I would also try to bundle these. I mean, like I would have pre-established packages and they might be like $3,500 to $8,500 and you kind of like scale up and like these are what they are.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Yeah, but even with that, that discovery call that like that that 20-30 minutes of bespoke, like even though you're gonna you're gonna totally push them to your five packages, yeah, just listening to them and hearing what they need, and then being able to say, Oh, I th from what I'm hearing, sounds like you need package C right to deliver what you want for your clients. And that feeling that time with them, like that's a very different experience. That's your Matre D coming by the table. That's not a five guys experience. Yeah, it's a different feel.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah, I I think the like I probably wouldn't do floor plans, I probably wouldn't do specialty somebody else can do that renderings and stuff. I think. Photos and video aerials would be part of uh my services. Um and but I would have those pre-contained as bundles, yeah, and video would be the primary thing and be selling bundles of videos, like a whole marketing package. And then the main thing that I would be selling is is like custom, custom work and like call for uh um a consultation, and that's the majority of the work I'd be trying to push for, but have these five things that you could buy, like three video packages and then two photo packages that's like one with aerials and one without.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Yeah, so you got like insta buys for the people who don't want to talk with you because there are tons of realtors, don't have time for that. They don't want an intro call, they just want a five thousand dollar video, they want a three thousand dollar video, they know what they want, line those out, but then also front and center, you've got book a consult with Maddie, with the Maddie. That's the vibe, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:58

The Maddie, yes. That sounds horrible.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Um, yeah, well, you have to believe in your business, bro.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Right, right. Well, I mean, I would very quickly this is the part this is hard about this kind of model, is that you have to be willing to outsource, and by outsource I mean like hire in and uh you personally have to let go of that kind of in a creative role like that, need to let other people feel if you're gonna build a scalable business. And I want to build a scale business with 30 creatives, you know, that are doing stuff around the country, you know.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

And that's maybe unique about what you're describing because a lot of people in the pursuing the business model that you're talking about, you're constantly top grading your dollars for hours, they might not want to even hire a scale. Yeah, but you actually do want to scale a high-end creative agency.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

And in like I my background's in film, I was part of a production company, I was on a roster as a director. I and the way that works is they have different directors that differ do different kinds of commercials in this case. So uh you might have tabletop uh food directors, you might have stop motion animation, you might have fashion directors, comedy directors. Um, and like uh there's uh and like I did character and comedy, right?

SPEAKER_01 46:14

It was a very specific some of them are pretty great, in fact. Maddie, where can they see your commercials if they want to see your cool commercials?

SPEAKER_02 46:21

If if they felt so inclined, they could go to maddieffish.com. But yeah, uh, but I think the they're pretty fun. That methodology for a business model within real estate, look like luxury real estate in other broader property media could be really interesting, where essentially you have this roster and each creative has their own kind of brand and style. And I want to work with AJ or I want to work with Stephanie or whatever, and they get flown in and stuff. And like that's a this is we're talking about like super high tier level at this point. We're not talking about uh commodity real estate, but I I know we're talking fantasies, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:01

So but it's not fantasy, like we've talked to those people, like talking to people around the country, like that was Camillo's life. Yeah, that was that's Brad does that some like that's what he likes to do in his business. He'll go fly and do a crazy shoot in LA. Yeah, like and you get those choices if you scale and succeed in your business. Like, this is not a fantasy in the sense that no one's ever done it, yeah. Um, and it's it's it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

All right, uh, customer service. Let's wrap it up.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

This would be I think we actually we gotta wrap it up for time.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

So but this is our last one. It's our last one.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Well, is it though? Because we still haven't talked about customer service or retention and team management, and those are huge con huge concepts.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Are we gonna move this into four parts?

SPEAKER_01 47:43

I think we need to move it into four parts.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

We didn't plan for this, but I feel like we we just like to hear ourselves talk, then maybe that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Uh pretty much. I mean, that's what everybody has a podcast has to like this, hear themselves talk at least a little bit, right? So, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Cool. All right, well, thanks for tuning in for uh this little experiment. And we'd love to kind of hear your your ideas if there's some specific things you'd like to know or understand, or maybe there's a part of the business uh that you'd like to hear us talk about.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Yeah, for real. Like we're trying to apply this to the software scaling back to our business. But there, if you got specific questions of like how does this work with pixel mob? How does this work with prop media? How does this work in your actual media business? Like, we're glad. Hit comment, all that jazz. We would love to address specific things, not just whatever's on our mind, too.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

And if you haven't subscribed, we and you're maybe not familiar with prop media, we release uh podcast episodes like these every week. We talk with industry professionals across the property media spectrum. So, property tech, we talk with people who run and own small businesses, large businesses, everywhere in between. We talk to lawyers and journalists. We really try to cover a really wide spectrum of um people that are really experts in this category. So um hopefully that's of value. And if that does sound like value, we would definitely encourage you to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications when new episodes come out.

unknown 49:11

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

Thanks. See you next time.