-Hey, gang this is Mike with My Real Estate DOJO and this is Soraya and today’s lesson is about how we took her business, first we made a video explaining to you guys how we made her website from just being a mission statement to producing leads and generating paying customers automatically. Now I helped her take her business to the second stage which is now outsourcing the work to independent contractors to do the work for her, while she sits back and monetizes from the website.
From taking it from just having a job to taking it tothe S-quadrant the ones that takes the pictures. Not only does she take it to the S-quadrant, but also the b-quadrant and trying to set up systems. So right now let’s give the mic to Soraya and talk about her first experience when she first outsourced a job to a co-worker of hers to do two photography jobs. Go ahead Soraya, tell me a little bit about that.-Well, it was great to actually be able to make it a win-win for both of us. Both for the other photographer as well as for myself, because you are outsourcing your work. You are still able to use that time that you still have available, whereas you are not going out there and physically doing it.
You are still able to use that time to…-…do something different.-Exactly!-You know, in this case, when your client went out there and took the picture, where were you at that time?-I was doing break time-it was lunch hour.-Okay so break time from work, from your job. What I am saying is, you were at work and you independent contractor was out there making you money. For that session, what was the total gross for those pictures? What did it come up to?-It was around $230.-So $230. Once the dust cleared you were left with 100 and something bucks.-Yes, $115-$150 or $115-$115-Okay, $115. Basically in a nutshell, you were at your job, I helped you create a second income, then I showed you how for your website to generate leads to then the customers go and book automatically, so you don’t have to call and follow up with these people to book them and say “Do you want this day?”, “Do you want this time?” and pay phone tax.
Once that happened, I showed you how to hire independent contractors and rendered the service yourself. You were at work on lunch break and you made a $115.-Right!-At the same time you created a win-win for the realtors that took the pictures, plus you created jobs for co-workers of yours that love doing photography and have a way better camera than you do.-Right!-That said, it wasn't a completely win-win. This was your first outsourcing.-Correct-Now it didn’t go all to plan-No!-Now this is what I call a good learning experience, but she happened to make money out of it. A lot of times when you are in business you will fuck up and make mistakes. But this is great and you go to be positive, because you need to learn, you need to readjust and make new policies, twist a little bit and make the product or the service work, but you loose something monetary. In her case it was a win-win, because she got punched in the fact, she got knocked out, but she got up and in time made a profit from it. So tell me what happened that the ball was dropped and why almost you lost those customers? What happened?-Initially what happened was that the client ended up not being happy with the end result.
What my mistake was not being in communication with the client at that point. I let that communication become part of the other co-worker.-Beautiful, so those are a couple of mistakes made. Number 1 you in your infancy stage you didn’t think that this contractor is going to take care of your customer and you learned that that was wrong. The contractor is going to take great pictures, but the contractor is not going to be able to do what you do and give the love that you do the customers in business is what you learned. Is that right?-Right!-So the communication between the business owner or somebody that cares compared to just a contractor. So what is the second thing that you learned or the mistake that you made in this scenario?-The second mistake was learning to be better prepared or anticipate those types of issues and be safeguarded against them with an agreement.-Beautiful. That’s a great thing-the paperwork. Once you’ve made these mistakes,I helped you counter these things and come up with solutions. For example, you need two types of paperwork for your contractor that says “Hey, Bob, you are going to do these pictures, do these thins and I am going to give you X, Y and Z”and then you will often need paperwork for your customers that says “If I render services they are not refundable, you have this many days to cancel, these are the procedures, this is what its going to cost you” and basically have a system of procedure with your customers, have a system with your contractors and have paperwork with everybody that explains what needs to happen, because not having that is going to cause you to loose money and frustration and probably bad reviews. Where having those is going to save you a lot of headaches. What do you think was there any other mistakes that we made in this transaction?
I mean lack of communication with the customer, not having proper paperwork for the customer and contractor. Anything else comes to your mind?- Just being better prepared.-Well what about this one-your pay. What happened is you payed the contractor immediately after. He took the picture and you instantly payed him, right. Later on the customer calls you and you are out of money twice. You were thinking you were going to have to refund $200 to the customer and you’ve already payed half that money to the contractors. Now you are in this bad situation. That’s a no-no.When I talk to you about it is I tell you should have them work for a whole week and then be one week behind. You will have that in your paperwork, so they are always behind one week. That will safeguard you from the contractor not doing a good job. It is the contractor’s responsibility to do a good job and in the right wayto make the customer happy. She is not there, so she cannot control her.
There has to be paperwork and agreements made with the contractor that say: “Hey, if you don’t do your job right, I still want to get payed for it, because I spent so much money on marketing, I spent so much money on picking up the phone and doing the sales. I am paying for the hosting, for the domain, for the coaching-all that stuff. When I get a customer and I pass the ball to you, it’s your responsibility to go to the end zone. If fucking drop the ball, because of your own lack of responsibility and reliability, then you have to pay me my percentage, because I’ve already done my part. Isn’t that correct? That’s something that you are going to be putting into your paperwork. When you passed the ball to your teammate, they got to the job. If they don’t do the job, they got to pay you. Right?That sounds unfair for the contractor, but who is to say that the contractor is not going to work something out behind the customers back, not to pay the company or whatever reason the contractor’s lack of professionalism and responsibility is hurting her business. They should pay, because she’s done her half 100%correctly. If the contractor doesn’t want that then there are other people out there that are going to want to accept her terms and conditions. She’s the one that has the business, she’s the one who has the funds. Not the contractor. Does that make sense? So this is a couple of mistakes you made: paying the contractor immediately afterwards without making sure the contractor is happy, lack of communication once you got your customers money.
You were like “Great, everything is going to be ok” and then the paperwork between the customer and the contractor. Those are some of the mistakes you made, but don’t worry. I told her this is a great thing, because these things instantly help me and her put things into place for this shit not to happen again. Does that make sense? The fourth thing is that I told her she really needs to disclose to her buyers that “Hey, fucking make a reservation”. If they cancel within 48 hours they need to forfeit to compensate for the damages, because she is loosing the opportunity to book somebody else. Then 2, if they go out there and take a picture and for some reason the realtor is not happy with it there is no refunds, because a). She rendered the service and b). The photographer shows the realtor the pictures and asks if they are happy with them. If they are not happy with them, they are going to take more pictures.
But if that customer or the realtor says he is happy with them, then they leave the destination, do the editing, say they don’t want it for whatever the reason. Sorry, we already rendered the services. You confirmed you wanted the services, so they are wishy-washy customers, she needs to protect herself, because she has to pay the contractor, she has to pay for the advertisement, she has to pay for the hosting, the marketing the coaching, for her time. You can’t run a business with wishy-washy customers. That’s why I tell her and tell you guys, don’t fuck with the 20% that give you 80% of your headaches. Fuck with the 80% or better yet fuck with only the 20%. Tell me about the 20%.You’ve told me people go to your website, the ones that pay automatically give you the least headaches. Tell me about that.-They are more prepared, they’ve already made the decision. They’ve picked me upfront without hardly any questions.-But they read your website, they understand the terms, their due diligence.They are smarter people. They know what the fuck they want, they know what the fuck they are getting. People that don’t know what the fuck they want, are never going to be happy in a sense. That’s the 20% I am talking about that you shouldn’t fuck with. When your new, when I started my moving company Dr.Move I fucked with everybody because I was hungry, I was living in my car. But I quickly learned after 6-7 years not to fuck with those 20%, because its not worth it. Anything else about the 20% that you noticed: they know what they want, they are easy-going, you’re telling me they are always pretty happy, they are extremely happy, they give you tips, they give you advice, right?
How to improve your business? Isn’t that right?-They just seem like they are more loyal to you or there is something that connects them to you. They see the effort that you are putting in…-…the grind, the simplicity, your systems. They support you because you’re an immigrant to America, right? You’re a woman out here, you’re grinding, you’ve got a job, you’re creating an extra income and some of these people appreciate you for that. Haven’t you told me that multiple times.-Yes they do.-In her pursuit for her financial freedom, she has made a couple of mistakes, like dropping a ball when she outsourced out. But we can figure the program to save her of the mistakes. The most important thing is she is now moving towards abetter future. She gets the customers and she outsources it out.
My first suggestion to her is don’t use your friends and family photographers, because you cannot enforce your contractor policies, because they are going to seem like they are too harsh for them. Remember if you run a job ad and photographers call you, you are going to let them know what the terms and conditions are upfront, they are going to be okay with getting x-percentage, they are going to be okay with you deducting from their paycheck if for example they didn’t make the customer happy or they didn’t show up for the shoot and things of that nature.One thing we really figured out was what did you come up with? What kind of layout did these people have? You met a few people today and you were laughing and telling me about it.-Equipment- wise they were probably more equipped.-You told me everyone had a way better camera than you. You had this cheap camera and you couldn’t believe that they all have this better equipment, more light equipment. I don’t know this business, you do. Extra shit that you didn’t have, but they were looking for you. You didn’t have a camera, you had a shitty lens, your lens was entry level.
You’re out there and you’ve been hustling, you’ve done multiple photos, now you got your website automation for you, leads are coming in, you are outsourcing to people that have way better equipment, maybe they even take better pictures than you. The funniest thing is, I told you guys in my previous video, if you want to turn nothing into something, it’s not about knowing everything, it’s all about leads production. If you are able to do leads, you don’t need the equipment, you don’t need the talent. When I started moving I didn’t know how to answer the phone and give a quote to a customer. Once the leads came in, once the leads came into her business, she figured out how to do the shoot. She figured out how to do better editing, more leads came. She thought she can hire all these people out there, spent all that time and energy on buying$2000 cameras and they don’t know how to generate business. Whereas she has the cheapest camera, the cheapest lens, but she knows how to generate business and she has done multiple shoots and now she is so busy, she is going to be outsourcing this thing. Instead of her being S-quadrant she can move into the B-quadrant, where people are called and people are answering or better yet people go to her website, pay automatically, book automatically, whereas she gets a notification, she outsources it simply by text messaging to her contractors, they go do their job. Boom! Money’s gone to the account, she will 10 or 5 contractors out there and we’ve talking about even maybe taking this not worldwide, but in the United States. Isn’t that correct. How long has all this been happening?You’ve just been telling me how you cannot believe it.-It’s happened pretty quickly.
The ball had started rolling in August last year, so we’ve been able to scale it up pretty fast.-But it was no magic. Tell people what you got to do. Your lunch break, what do you do with your lunch break?-I work, I go do shoots.-It’s not like you are going in and hanging out. What are you doing on your weekends?-I work, I book clients, I do marketing.-That’s right, it’s not like you are just getting this with luck, are you not reading fucking books?-Yeah, I’ve read over 50 books last year. I read a book a week or four in a month.It’s definitely has been a lot of hard work put into it. A lot of sweat equity.-That’s right, just the other day you were telling me how you haven’t seen your family, you haven’t seen your nephews. Tell this people, that it’s not fucking easy.I am not selling you some magic pill, some get rich scheme. No mother fucker, you’ve got to put work in if you want to get to where you want to go through and if you’re wise enough its definitely possible in fucking America. And I am a proof and here is another immigrant and I mean like grew up with no Dad. You didn’t have shit handed to you and now you are working, giving other mother fuckers jobs. Tell me the sacrifices you had to go through. So these people know. But it’s possible!-It is possible.
You have to basically embrace, like mike says, your lacks and disadvantages. You don’t take them as excuses, you embrace them, you make solutions, you get creative, you find a way. You know a lot of us are not born with a silver spoon handed to them when you have the connections or…-Immigrant man! Or you don’t have to be an immigrant. Some of you areAmerican-born and you don’t have that silver spoon, like she’s talking about-Even in here, regardless where you are from, you have situation to which you are born into, but you just take them and you learn from them. You grow as a person and you go after what you want.-Can it be done?-Absolutely!-Just like yourself. Here is a great things about her, some of you guys don’t know.How much did you used to weigh?-170 pounds-I am going to edit this video and put it under. Not only has she achieved working on financial freedom, she is also into fitness. She used to be a lot bigger and now she is a lot skinnier. That’s why I wanted to put my time into her, because I knew she was a fighter, I knew she was going to do whatever the fuck it takes and I knew if I poured a little into her, she is just going to blossom up and she is doing an amazing job, guys. She is just killing it.
Yes, year is not a long time, but it is along time when you don’t get to see your family, your fucking nephew. Tell me,your nephew was the reason you went back to photography and you are not hereto seem him, because you are grinding during the weekends. How does that feel?-It’s though. I miss that time, but I know that you can’t have everything all atonce. You do have to make some sacrifices. For me is spending a little more timewith my family, with my nephew. He is 4 years old and it is because of him that Istarted photography to begin with. So I am definitely grateful for him, but I knowthat the sacrifice I am making right now will definitely have a huge pay off later-For him, for you. Right?-Absolutely!-For the economy, for a lot of photographers that love to take pictures.
They havethese $2000-5000 cameras, but they just don’t know how to do it. I really want tosalute you, I want to take my hat off to you. I know this is the beginning, you’regoing to be working towards having 10 photographers and then working onhaving Austin, then Houston, then San Antonio and branching out. Doing exactlywhat you are doing now. I know its hard for you to believe, you’ve got a day,you’ve got a month and I told you we are going to do 40 a month, you are goingto do 10 shoots a day and you didn’t believe it. Now you believe it more and youknow that if you are willing to sacrifice, you’re willing to set up systems, you’rewilling to be creative, you’re willing to do whatever the fuck is required.