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Publications

What your agency is worth, and how to raise it.

Practical articles for real estate media agency owners on pricing, hiring, recurring revenue and selling. Each one opens on a real agency and a real number, and ends with what to do about it. Two new pieces a month.

A drone hovering over a small house on a pedestal
Strategy6 min read

Keep the Brand, Hand Off the Back Office

What an operating partner runs, what you keep, and what it costs

One owner with three photographers went from an $84,000 month to a fifty-something-thousand month and asked me in September why he could not let go. The Growth Partner answer is a back office that runs twelve functions under your brand for 35% of collected revenue, with the shoots and 100% of the company staying with you.

  • What the model is
  • What you keep
  • What it costs
  • How it differs from hiring
  • + 2 more sections
  • growth-partner
  • strategy
  • operations
Read
A staircase of lit glass steps rising on navy
Strategy6 min read

The Price Rise You Hear About a Year Later

Most of the clients you lose to an increase never tell you they left

One owner raised prices, sold the agency, and learned from the new owners that eleven clients had quietly left over it. Another raised on January first and most of the list never noticed. The difference was a $25 listing website nobody had asked for.

  • Why nobody tells you
  • Never raise without adding
  • Why the increase happened at all
  • Before the next increase
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • pricing
Read
A ring of golden light on navy
Strategy6 min read

Three Ways Out of the Middle

Sell now, keep going alone, or bring in an operating partner

One owner with a $35,000 to $50,000 a month book asked me in August why we didn't just buy it and write him a check. Under $300,000 in revenue that check is 45 to 60 cents on the dollar, and the last one the advisor in our group sold went at 40. The other two doors keep 100% of the company, and the difference between them is who carries the back office through a slow quarter.

  • Door one: sell now
  • Door two: keep going alone
  • Door three: bring in an operating partner
  • The four lines side by side
  • + 1 more section
  • growth-partner
  • exit
  • selling
Read
A blueprint diagram of arrows cycling around a house
Strategy10 min read

Paid Ads That Pay for Themselves

The Boosted Social Funnel, and the five steps that come before it

One video ad in the Seattle market produced 150 warm leads and $5,740 in fourteen days against a first $500 of spend. It was a boosted post that took about sixty seconds to set up, and it was step six of six. The five steps in front of it are what decide whether the money comes back.

  • Only three percent of your market is ready to buy today
  • The five steps before you spend a dollar
  • The ad itself takes about sixty seconds
  • Where the money gets burned
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • marketing
Read
A camera and a stack of prints on a desk under lamplight
Strategy8 min read

A Profile That Sells While You Shoot

Treat your Instagram as a landing page, not a portfolio

One month of a single assistant sending messages off an optimized profile produced 570 messages, 121 responses, 45 warm leads, and four booked listings. Nine times out of ten an agent checks your profile before replying, which is how a feed of nice houses quietly costs you the outreach too.

  • Your profile is a landing page
  • Sell the process, not the result
  • Give the link a reason to be clicked
  • Where operators get this wrong
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • marketing
Read
A blueprint dial with a gold segment
Strategy10 min read

Financial Management for Growth

Most agency decisions get made on a feeling, and the feeling is usually out of date

Two shoots grossed $2,300. After video editing, photo editing, a floor plan, listing sites and card fees, $1,758 was left, and the owner had touched the work for 11 hours. That is $160 an hour, which is the number to argue with. Ask an owner why they have not hired yet and you get: I do not think I have enough. Enough for what?

  • Turn every feeling into a number
  • Start with your baseline, not your revenue
  • Budget by percentage, then hire against the calendar
  • Move the cash forward
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • finance
Read
A photographer on a tripod outside a lit home at twilight
Strategy10 min read

Training Shooters in Sixty Days

How to build a bench that holds your standard when you are not on the shoot

By person eighteen, somebody forgets their Zillow camera at home. At one agency that got past this, a single creative lead trained eight specialists himself and the video lead trained ten to twenty editors over five years. Almost nobody there was trained by the founder.

  • Hire for what you can train
  • Teach one workflow, hands on, and let it copy itself
  • Put quality in a loop instead of in your inbox
  • Pay for the standard you are asking for
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • team
Read
A marble town carved on top of a single column
Strategy10 min read

A Team Foundation Before Headcount

The work that decides whether a hire succeeds happens before the job is posted

One creative missed a Matterport scan and went back to reshoot without telling anyone, so the agent walked in on a photographer at her listing she had not scheduled. That client was worth $35,000 to $50,000 a year and has been referring business elsewhere since. Nearly everything that decides whether a hire works happens before the job is posted.

  • Start with the hire you actually need
  • Put a number on the role before you post it
  • Hire on the calendar, not in the panic
  • Where operators get this wrong
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • team
Read
A cut-paper burst of blue and gold around a white house
Strategy9 min read

Selling Content Retainers

How to turn a client who books you per listing into one who pays you every month

One former owner sold content retainers to agents at $2,000 to $2,500 a month, did good work, and watched every client cancel at 90 days, no matter what. They kept booking their listings. What died was a bundle of shoots, which invites the client to do arithmetic on the units. Sell the second Tuesday and a number the agent can read each month, and it has a chance.

  • Sell to the agents who cannot keep up with themselves
  • Package a month, not a shoot
  • Price it so a slow month still pays
  • Where this goes wrong
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • recurring-revenue
Read
Two people exchanging a small box across a desk
Strategy10 min read

Winning Brokerage Partnerships

You do not win these at the top, and you never win one once

One Coldwell Banker relationship ran over a hundred listings a month at seven to eight hundred dollars a booking. It took six to nine months to build, and the people who kept it alive were the office managers and marketing coordinators, not the broker who said yes.

  • These deals are won from the bottom
  • Ask what the brokerage is short of
  • Where these deals fall apart
  • What a real one looks like a year in
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • sales
Read
A white paper house set into torn strips of blue and gold
Strategy10 min read

Consult, Don't Quote

The fastest revenue in your business is sitting in bookings you never call about

A $250 drone job came in on an island listing with no structure on it. The consultation ran fifteen or twenty minutes, the project came out over $1,500, and it kept growing after that. The crew was driving there either way.

  • The call has a shape
  • Where operators get it wrong
  • What changes when it works
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • sales
Read
A tiered marble cake topped with a brass camera
Strategy10 min read

Pricing for Average Order Value

The revenue you already booked is the cheapest revenue you will ever add

One agency in the group raised prices almost 35% in July, told the list across three emails written as questions and answers, and two people out of thousands asked about it. The crew was already driving to the property, so most of that increase landed as profit.

  • Small price moves are almost all profit
  • Price the job, not the deliverable count
  • Package it, then present from the top
  • Roll the increase like a launch, not a decision
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • pricing
Read
A blue card with a gold band on navy
Strategy9 min read

The Irresistible Offer

Stop selling services and start selling the decision

Top producers pay an extra $200 a shoot because the agency carries a $7 million insurance policy and a team that picks up the phone. That is what an offer is. The photos are the same.

  • Value is an equation, not a price list
  • Bundle the job, not the services
  • Stack outcomes and make the next step obvious
  • Where operators get this wrong
  • + 1 more section
  • strategy
  • acre-partner
  • offer
Read
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What agency owners in the group are seeing on pricing, offers, platforms and AI, with the numbers attached. Unsubscribe whenever. No pitching.

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