WGAN Podcast-How Virtual Tour Photographers can do 1:1 Networking by Phone

WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host 31.34K Website Atlanta, Georgia Linked In Facebook Twitter YouTube TikTok Instragram Matterport Service Partner Google Street View Trusted Photographer Zillow Certified Photographer We Get Around Network Member	31.34K DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user	plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 0
	WGAN-TV \| How Virtual Tour Photographers can do 1:1 Networking by Phone Using the Owwll App \| Guest: OWWLL Founder Jason Hill \| Episode: 182 \| Thursday, 23 March 2023 \| www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL Referral Code: WGAN Transcript (Video Above) [00:00:03] Dan Smigrod: Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum (www.WGANForum.com). Today is Thursday, March 23, 2023, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: How Virtual Tour Photographers can do One-on-One Networking by Phone Using the Owwll app. Our subject matter expert today is Owwll app Founder Jason R. Hill. Hey Jason. Thanks for being on the show today. [00:00:36] Jason R. Hill: Nice to see you and nice to have everybody listening today. I look forward to today's episode, and sharing the journey of Owwll and bringing some people on the platform to talk one-on-one with us. [00:00:46] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. Jason, before we jump into what Owwll is; how it works, etc., I'm just going to make some calls through the Owwll app, and that will give context for our viewers today. [00:01:01] Jason R. Hill: Let's do it. [00:01:04] Dan Smigrod: For our viewers that want to follow along, the app is the Owwll app. Use the short link: www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL That'll give you the option of selecting either the OWWLL iOS app or the OWWLL Android app and use the referral code - WGAN - and we'll have a special offer for you later in the program. I'm going to begin by calling Alexander Sajovits. [00:01:37] Jason R. Hill: Then once you get them on the line, I'm going to share my screen, of course. [00:01:41] Dan Smigrod: You can go ahead and do that now. That's fine. [00:01:44] Jason R. Hill: Perfect. And everyone will get to see what Alex looks like on the other end within Owwll's App. [00:01:58] Jason R. Hill: We are mirrored now, I'm going to go to the app. [00:02:02] Dan Smigrod: Hey Alex, this is Dan Smigrod. Hey, I'm hosting WGAN-TV and you're live on WGAN-TV Live at 5. Thanks for taking my call. [00:02:18] Dan Smigrod: Still with me Alex? [00:02:29] Alexander Sajovits: Can you hear me? [00:02:30] Dan Smigrod: I can. Sounds like you might be driving so maybe you might pull over for a second. [00:02:37] Alexander Sajovits: I'm standing in one place right now. [00:02:40] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. Alex, I notice that in the Owwll app, you are a licensed real estate broker in New York and Florida. You're among the top 9 percent Douglas Elliman agents company-wide in 2020 and part of a husband and wife team. Tell us about being a real estate associate broker for Douglas Elliman. [00:03:10] Alexander Sajovits: It's intense today. It's high regards for agents in a capacity being able to work in the luxury market. Being able to have a good understanding of how to determine what value is when it comes to working with sellers and buyers and Douglas Elliman has that brand. My wife and I, Leah, we both were licensed in New York and in Florida, like you said before, and have sold homes in New York and sold homes in Florida and make transitions between buyers and sellers of both the states. It makes it much easier for us because Douglas Elliman is a national company. It's very easy for us to take clients from New York, California, Colorado, even Texas, and transition them into the state of Florida. We have a network of about 7,000 agents that Leah and I like to work with in most of the country. When we have a home that we want to market, luxury home or any property that we're working with, we're able to work with 7,000 agents across the country and network through the Douglas Elliman brand, and it has helped us immensely. [00:04:21] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. I see that you're new to the Owwll app, what would be the best possible outcome for you being on Owwll? [00:04:38] Alexander Sajovits: I like to help people, that's basically what I do. I advise people on what the right direction is; selling real estate. I have a lot of experience and a lot of buyers, a lot of friends come and they consult with me. They ask me a lot of questions on what they could potentially forecast, for, what they can see coming down the line in a transaction because I've had so much experience and seen almost everything on the landscape of a purchase or sale transaction. A lot of people ask me what to expect, and I say you know what you want, listen to someone's planning on selling and give me a call. If you have any questions, give me a call, I'm here to help. That's what I do for a living. I help people in a transaction, whether it's a purchase or it's a sale, but sometimes we talk about the market. I have a lot of gut instincts when it comes to which direction the market is going. I'd like to think that I've been right, pretty much. [00:05:39] Dan Smigrod: Alex, I'm Founder of a community of 20,000 virtual tour real estate photographers. They may be curious about what the perspective is of a licensed real estate broker. Is that the thing that they could be on Owwll; call you and say, "Hey, this is what I'm doing in my market, what's your reaction?" "How do you think I should change my pitch?" "How should I approach agents in our city?" [00:06:11] Alexander Sajovits: That's how I use Owwll. I like the opportunities because we're putting ourselves out there. We want the phone calls. We want you to call us. We want you to ask us for our advice. That's the reason for being on the OWWLL app; I love it. [00:06:26] Dan Smigrod: Awesome! [00:06:26] Alexander Sajovits: I do the same thing when I call someone. They're putting themselves out there to build a relationship with people. I'm getting a bunch of advice; whether it's my industry or any other industry. I'm able to reach out to somebody who might be in the development area that I might have a question about. I can't seem to find somebody to answer it for my particular market, but I might get some to answer it from another market and they are readily available. [00:06:50] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. Alex. Terrific. You're listed in the Owwll app as Alexander Sajovits. Help me with your last name? [00:06:58] Alexander Sajovits: Sajovits. [00:06:59] Dan Smigrod: Sajovits. [00:07:05] Alexander Sajovits: Sajovits. [00:07:06] Dan Smigrod: Alexander Sajovits? [00:07:08] Alexander Sajovits: I've had a problem with it for the past 48 years now. [00:07:10] Dan Smigrod: That's okay. My last name is Smigrod, I have to spell it out for everyone. Alex, thanks for being on the show and good luck with the Owwll platform. [00:07:21] Alexander Sajovits: Thank you very much, Dan. I appreciate you calling. [00:07:23] Dan Smigrod: You bet. I'm going to move on to talk to Kelly and before I do [00:07:41] Dan Smigrod: meet with me one sec, I'm going to call Kelly Iannone and when we get done with the few calls, we'll talk about what it is that I'm doing. I have Jason, tell us about that. [00:08:02] Dan Smigrod: I'm looking at Kelly's profile. [00:08:04] Kelly Iannone: Hello, I'm Kelly Iannone. I retired at 40 from the Walt Disney Company after realizing that climbing the corporate ladder was not fulfilling for me. I did so through investing in apartments, and I now help other high performing professionals and business owners passively invest in apartments without the headaches of being a landlord. This allows them to start to separate their time from money and gain financial freedom earlier than they ever thought. [00:08:30] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. Thank you for playing that video. That video is actually on the app so I could see a little bit about Kelly. I'm going to go ahead and call her. [00:08:45] Jason R. Hill: For the audience listening when it's flashing live, that means Kelly is accepting calls at $1 for 10 minute block of time and there she is, she just picked up. [00:08:55] Dan Smigrod: Hey, Kelly, it's Dan with WGAN-TV and you're live on WGAN-TV Live at 5. Thanks for taking my call. [00:09:04] Kelly Iannone: Absolutely [00:09:05] Dan Smigrod: - Kelly, I noticed on your Owwll app profile, you have nearly 5,000 followers on LinkedIn. How did that happen? [00:09:15] Kelly Iannone: - I sure do. I began gaining followers, I've been a long-time LinkedIn user from my career in corporate America. But when I really started talking more about what I'm doing and real estate building passive income and achieving financial freedom, it really seems to attract a lot of people who are interested in learning more and having conversations, and so I grew an audience organically there out of surprise. [00:09:43] Dan Smigrod: - Can you tell us more about passively investing in apartments? [00:09:49] Kelly Iannone: - Yes. I own a real estate investing firm and we buy apartment complexes in the Southeast United States. We do it for folks that are frustrated with the volatility of the stock market and their assets aren't performing how they'd expect it and they want more control, but they don't necessarily have the time to acquire real estate and manage all the day-to-day assets. That's where we come in. We identify properties and people invest alongside us. They are passive from the perspective of once they identify the deal and they vet the deal with the operator. We do that hand in hand with them. They invest in the deal and then they receive all the returns of a property in the benefits of owning real estate without having to deal with the day-to-day hassles and headaches. [00:10:45] Dan Smigrod: - How do you use the Owwll app? [00:10:48] Kelly Iannone: - I use Owwll in a couple of different ways. Owwll has been a great platform and it's really expanded my reach and my audience on LinkedIn. I've got a lot of professionals that I'm connected with and some business owners, but on Owwll, I found that it really opens up a whole different network of people. A lot of business owners. A lot of influencers out there, and a lot of people are doing great things. It gives me an opportunity to go through profiles and find my ideal avatar who may be interested in passively investing and just starting to network and have conversations. If there is an option that we can work together, great and if not, it's just another connection and network, and that's what I do from an outbound perspective. But then I also found that having real estate on my profile, a lot of people watch HGTV and they want to get into fixing them, flipping apartments, not apartments, but fixing and flipping houses. They've always wanted to invest in real estate, but are now sure how to get started. I get a lot of people that they're both on LinkedIn and it's great, so I can push into Owwll now to call me in there, and I'm timed locked into how long we can have these conversations as opposed to just giving away free advice all the time. But it's a great way to have that conversation and then we can extend the conversation as it makes sense for both them and myself. [00:12:15] Dan Smigrod: - Our community members are typically virtual tour photographers and they're trying to figure out how to develop new business. Is that the kind of thing that it's okay to call you, Kelly? [00:12:29] Kelly Iannone: - You can totally ... I think I'd be more of a thought partner from that perspective. I guess I would say depending on the audiences or the market. You're in Atlanta, Georgia, Dan, I can see that here. We've got a few assets that are in the Atlanta, Georgia area, and of course, whenever somebody is looking at renting real estate, having photos and videos and having those 360s is super impactful for pre-leasing these units. One of the biggest expenses in owning real estate is the vacancy, is the time period where somebody who's not living in the property is paying rent. Anything we can do to shorten that timeframe and use virtual photography and video for that would absolutely make sense. [00:13:14] Dan Smigrod: - One last question, Kelly. Thank you. I noticed that you worked for one company for 19 years. [00:13:21] Kelly Iannone: - Yeah. - I worked for the Walt Disney Company for an extended period of time. Yes. It was always my dream as a kid to work for the Walt Disney Company so I was born and raised in Michigan; moved to Florida, I got a job there. Unlike most millennials, I'm an elder millennial. Unlike most millennials, I stuck with the same company. At some point I figured out it no longer fulfills me, so I actually retired from the company on my own terms earlier this year and I'm just continuing to pursue my real estate ventures and help other people on their path to financial freedom as well. [00:13:57] Dan Smigrod: - Awesome, Kelly, thanks for visiting with us. [00:14:00] Kelly Iannone: - Totally. Have a great day, Dan. [00:14:03] Dan Smigrod: - Thanks, Kelly. I'm going to move on to making another call to Brian Strubhar. [00:14:12] Jason R. Hill: - Brian has the most reviews on the entire Owwll app. He's outpaced myself. [00:14:24] Brian Strubhar: - Good evening, This is, Brian. How can I help you? [00:14:34] Dan Smigrod: - Hey, Brian, This is Dan Smigrod, the host of WGAN-TV and you live on WGAN-TV live at 5. Thanks for taking my call. [00:14:42] Brian Strubhar: - Hey, thank you Dan. How are you doing today? [00:14:45] Dan Smigrod: - I'm doing great! Good visiting with you again. Brian, I noticed that you have 1,000 plus five-star reviews on the Owwll app and have taken nearly 250 calls, perhaps you might be the right person to ask, "how do you use Owwll?" [00:15:02] Brian Strubhar: - Owwll to me is really a connection tool much more than a social media type platform. It's a place where you can have conversations with pretty near anyone. I loved that timer aspect because it keeps you on track, keeps your conversations from running on forever and just wasting time. But then I also loved the little... I call it the digital doorbell, where if somebody who sees one of my Facebook lives or Instagram reel or some other content on the web, I do a call-to-action to reach out to me on Owwll. Whether I'm Owwll or not, they can ring my doorbell, letting me know that they're there, and now I can go on and take a call or we can have a conversation. That's where the app is doing its part to connect two individuals and you don't lose your privacy, so you're not just blasting your own personal phone number out all over the place. There's just nothing like it for connecting with people. [00:16:00] Dan Smigrod: - What tips do you have for those that are new to Owwll that are interested in business development? [00:16:09] Brian Strubhar: - As far as developing their own business? [00:16:12] Dan Smigrod: - Yeah. I could imagine you have some tips on how to be successful at using the Owwll app? [00:16:19] Brian Strubhar: - One of the biggest tips that most people miss is to make some outbound calls because it's not like cold calling. It's literally people will run to the phone when they hear the doorbell so to speak, they get the message that you want to talk to them. Or if they're live and you actually call them, their phone rings, they run to the phone, they can't wait to have a conversation; totally different than when a telemarketer, for example, rings your actual number. Now you wonder how they got your number and why they're trying to bother you. Because of the very small financial exchange with every conversation people run to the phone because it's a dollar or two or five or ten bucks depending on their price. But I look at it as it's less than the price of a cup of coffee, for example, and I can sit down with them for 10 minutes, pick their brain gets some information, if I need to, which has saved me a ton of time and effort from attorneys to celebrities, et cetera. But it also gets me all kinds of exposure. If they want to get on radio and TV, I've done that, podcasts are great. There's a lot of ways you can use it, but I also can use it to serve other people; so I can call another business owner, find out who they are, what they do, what their pain points are, and help them come up with a solution. It may not be myself, but I can now refer them to someone else on the Owwll platform that I've talked to, that may be a perfect fit and able to serve them well. That's one of the best things I have with this platform. [00:17:49] Dan Smigrod: - I was looking at some notes from you regarding building connections and expanding relationships, listening deeply. Do you want to expand on any of those points? [00:18:02] Brian Strubhar: - Those are keys to having amazing conversations. Obviously, listening to the other person. I guess you could say reading between the lines, but listening between the lines, listen to the conversation and ask clarifying questions. People love to talk about themselves, and if you can find out what their true problem is and dig a little bit. A lot of times it's not what they think -- their surface problems are what they easily share with you, but if you dig a little bit, a lot of times you'll find out what their real problem -- or their real struggle in business is -- and now you may be a perfect fit to help them. When you come to solve or give them a solution to their problem, they see it much different than pitching. When you just call people to pitch, they feel like it's another ad because I think we're all sold out, so to speak, on ads and pitches everywhere we turn. It doesn't seem to matter what platform you're on, whether it's YouTube or Facebook or you pick one, there's ads everywhere staring us in the face, everywhere we turn. We're tired of being pitched, but we all love to be served. I think that that's one of the biggest keys to expanding your business through a conversation. [00:19:13] Dan Smigrod: - Brian, you're listed on the Owwll app as Brian Strubhar? Am I pronouncing that correctly? [00:19:20] Brian Strubhar: - We say Strubhar but same difference. [00:19:22] Dan Smigrod: - Brian Strubhar [00:19:28] Brian Strubhar: - It's Strubhar. [00:19:29] Dan Smigrod: - Strubhar. Okay. That's great. [00:19:32] Brian Strubhar: You got it. [00:19:32] Dan Smigrod: Brian, thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. Bye, bye. [00:19:38] Brian Strubhar: - Bye, bye. [00:19:40] Dan Smigrod: - I'm going to make one more call and then we'll ask Jason to talk about what it is that we're doing. [00:19:47] Jason R. Hill: - It was like the old days of Z-100 where you got to call people. ;-) [00:19:57] Dan Smigrod: - "We're going to take the next caller." ;-) [00:20:06] Dan Smigrod: I am calling, Mike. [00:20:24] Jason R. Hill: While Dan is doing that, if it's flashing green, that means you could call him at the rate that they put on their profile. Mike is $10 for a 10-minute call. [00:20:33] Dan Smigrod: Hey, Mike. Can you hear me, Mike? Hey Mike, it's Dan Smigrod, host of WGAN-TV and you're on WGAN-TV Live at 5. Thanks for taking my call. [00:20:52] Mike Kaeding: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. [00:20:54] Dan Smigrod: You bet. Good visiting with you again. You're CEO of Norhart. Tell us about your company. [00:21:03] Mike Kaeding: At a high level, we design, build and rent apartments. But really we're focused on solving housing construction costs. We're already achieving about a 20-30% reduction in cost. We believe that someday we could achieve a 50% reduction in cost. Imagine what that means. Someday your rent could be half, your mortgage payment could be half. But ultimately, we're just looking to solve America's housing affordability crisis. [00:21:34] Dan Smigrod: Mike, I met you at the Podfest podcast conference in [Orlando]. Aside from both of us having interests in podcasting, what else did we have in common? [00:21:49] Mike Kaeding: The Matterport stuff, right? [00:21:52] Dan Smigrod: That's right. Tell us what Norhart is using Matterport for please? [00:21:58] Mike Kaeding: We have apartments, and what we love about Matterport is that we can scan inside the entire building, so that people can visit our website and get a full volumetric feel and walk through what those spaces look like. It's just a marvelous technology. [00:22:16] Dan Smigrod: Tell us about the size of Norhart. [00:22:21] Mike Kaeding: We're about a $200 million company today, and we have about 1,000 units under management. Our construction arm's the biggest division. We're producing at about 500 units per year right now. [00:22:34] Dan Smigrod: Those are pretty big numbers. What is the CEO of a $200 million plus company doing on the Owwll platform? [00:22:46] Mike Kaeding: Great question. I'm experimenting with this. I got a ton of people who reached out wanting to pitch, wanting to connect in some way. I simply don't have the time to connect with everyone, it's quite a few every day. But I remember back when I wish I could connect with CEOs and leaders. I want to give people that opportunity. This is an interesting platform where it weeds out those who are not really interested in connecting with me. It gives people who actually want to have a meaningful connection, have a meaningful dialogue and a meaningful relationship, give them an opportunity to actually connect with me. That's been fun. [00:23:23] Dan Smigrod: Mike, thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. [00:23:26] Mike Kaeding: Thanks. Have a great day. [00:23:27] Dan Smigrod: Thank you. We were visiting with Mike Kaeding. Mike Kaeding, the CEO of Norhart, also on the Owwll platform. Jason, how about taking it off of screen share? Let's jump into this topic. [00:23:48] Dan Smigrod: Thank you. Even before we started visiting what Owwll is and how it works and what the mechanics are, we just made four calls. Boom, boom, boom, boom, people all prearranged, they were expecting my call, but even if they weren't, it's that easy to connect. At the highest level, how can virtual tour photographers, [00:24:21] Dan Smigrod: do one-on-one networking by phone using the Owwll app? How do you develop business with Owwll? [00:24:30] Jason R. Hill: That's a great question. When you look at the most successful experts in the world, it always comes back to rich relationships and connections. Owwll enables that. At the end of the day, we have so many platforms today like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and it's gotten harder to have a genuine conversation with people because everyone has their guard up. You just heard Mike say that he has 50,000 plus connections on LinkedIn, he posts regularly, and his inbox is just overwhelming, and a lot of good opportunities, unfortunately, are missed by Mike. There's a lot of people like myself in Mike's inbox. I said, let's come on my podcast or let's chat about Owwll and he just can't get to all of them. But I'm a business professional that wants to call Michael and I'm willing to spend $20, $50 for a quick conversation just to chat with him. People in the industry that you're referencing can go in there, they can look for people in their home area, I'll use Florida as an example, you look up South Florida, and anyone who puts South Florida in their bio will show up in the search filter. Then those individuals can reach out to people in real estate. We have a lot of real estate agents on the platform, and just connect with folks like Alex, who we spoke to earlier, and really try to form a collaboration. No different than meeting in-person at a networking event. Owwll enables you to do it at an extremely fast pace. We saw Brian had over 1,000 phone calls with different people. It's like where else can you meet 1,000 people in the matter of a year or two? Also log all the calls. Brian can now look back and see every individual he spoke with. He also can use those reviews on his website because people are referencing what he spoke about saying "Brian's a professional." "He educated me how to use social media better, for example, or how to use Owwll better." There's just so many techniques where you can make outbound calls and build relationships quicker, in a professional setting, because of their review mechanism that we have at the end of every phone call. [00:26:31] Dan Smigrod: I'm totally confused. This just feels like cold calling. There's this app, I dial a number and I start calling. What happens? Are there best practices? [00:26:44] Jason R. Hill: Yeah. That's a great question. The power we give over to the expert to list their price at what they want. I'll use an example. Let's say we have a patent attorney. Everyone's always knocking on patent attorneys' doors on LinkedIn and Instagram trying to get advice for free. The patent attorney can list their price at $50 for a 10-minute phone call. Now they know that the individual calling them really wants to speak with them. They're not wasting their time, and they could jump on a quick 10-minute call, and if the call is good, the advice seeker can of course extend the call and add more time, 10 more minutes for $50, as an example. We give the power to the expert to set their own rate. They're never going to be faced with the issue of spam phone calls or calls that just aren't appropriate. They also can review the person calling them. If somebody calls them inappropriately -- and he's really trying to date them -- well, guess what? Stamp, one-star review and that person just hurt their profile for future calls, of course. [00:27:45] Dan Smigrod: Well, we're really talking about two things, one is receiving calls, and the other is making calls. Let's focus on, "I'm a real estate photographer, I shoot virtual tours, I just heard of this Owwll app. I go to: www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL I use the referral code: WGAN I'm in the Owwll app. I see people are live, and I select one and I call." "What is it that I say to that person?" "How do I begin a know, like and trust relationship?" [00:28:23] Jason R. Hill: That's a great question. [00:28:24] Dan Smigrod: Again, it just feels like dialing for dollars. I know that's not what this is. What are the best practices when you are making outbound calls? We know the photographer is interested in developing business. I imagine the first thing the photographer says is not, "hi, I'm calling to see if you'd like to buy a virtual tour?" How do you use the Owwll app to successfully do these one-on-one networking calls that may lead to business? [00:28:59] Jason R. Hill: Well, that's a great question, because when you go to a networking event, really the first thing someone does, hands you their business card, you size them up based on what they're wearing, and you have to have icebreaker questions to get to know someone. But Owwll makes it easier because we list all their social media handles on their profile. That individual can list different questions that are most commonly asked to them as an expert. We looked at those four profiles while you were on the call with each individual and we saw how Mike listed. He listed, "I have over 50,000 connections on LinkedIn." "I run a company that has approximately a $200 million valuation." "Feel free to call me about hiring and firing techniques because" he's gone through so many challenges, operating a business of that scale. He also works with the Special Olympics. Immediately, if the Special Olympics hit home to you, you could call Mike and really just have a natural conversation about the Special Olympics or any other questions that he lists. The best practices are really that you list common questions that people would ask. [00:30:05] Dan Smigrod: Well, we're not up to that part yet because we're making calls. I promise to get there. I think what I'm hearing is, "I'm a virtual tour photographer. I've joined the Owwll app. I'm ready to make my first call, before I make that call, look at that profile. Read their LinkedIn profile, their Twitter, their Facebook, whatever social media that they list, their Instagram. Then read the profile that's in Owwll because maybe Owwll people list even suggested questions to begin a conversation with them.`` [00:30:50] Jason R. Hill: Correct. When we look at platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, sometimes it's hard to get to know the individual positions. They keep it within those platforms, but Owwll, we let people list all their social media handles up to four, including a website so people can click your profile and immediately get to know you as an individual, as a business owner, as an expert, or you can even watch the video like we did with Kelly. Kelly rarely references exactly what to expect on a phone call. The beautiful thing about Owwll, we don't hide other platforms on our profiles, we allow them, so that we could get to know the individual. [00:31:27] Dan Smigrod: I think the first thing I heard was get to know the person that you're planning to call before you call them because they're giving you all the resources to understand them. Then, I think second, and I think a number out of the four even said this. Brian in particular, is deep listening. Listen! Don't start selling. Listen! Keep asking questions. As Brian said, people like talking about themselves. Keep asking questions. The [second] would be: listen, listen, listen. Then I think, third, what I heard was keep asking questions. [00:32:14] Jason R. Hill: Also just being consistent. Every single day I drive to work, drive home from work. I typically make an Owwll call and I get to know an individual. Sometimes people are bad at listing things on their profile and you call them and you have a great conversation, you find out so much about the individual that was not listed. There's so much power to the platform because a lot of individuals just want to speak, and they list themselves at $1 [for 10 minutes]. The power is also not only – [00:32:45] Dan Smigrod: One dollar for 10 minutes? [00:32:48] Jason R. Hill: Some people charge $1 for 10 minutes because they're okay with the volume of calls coming in at $1 [for 10 minutes]. If they get too many calls, they can increase it to $10, $20 for a 10 minute block of time, of course. [00:33:02] Dan Smigrod: Then I think maybe the fourth thing I heard is, "Oh, well, where do I begin? There's so many people on the platform." Well, there's search capability. If you want to search for me, I’m in Atlanta, I'm looking for a real estate agent or I'm looking for a REALTOR. People on Owwll tend to list things like where they're located and what their profession is. That it's possible to do a search to find perhaps some needles in the haystack of where to begin so that you're beginning a conversation with someone who's actually in your market that is doing something related to potentially either being a potential buyer of real estate photography in general, virtual tours in particular, or if they get to know you, like you and trust you being a position to refer you to someone else that's in the market. [00:34:03] Jason R. Hill: That's big because a lot of people in the Owwll community see a lot of value in offering that individual or speaking to turn to other community members. Like Brian mentioned, when you call him, he will have a conversation with yourself and then they'll bump into another real estate professional or photographer. Then they'll say, "Hey, you have to speak to Dan." I do that all the time. It works as a really great connecting tool where LinkedIn works well with that emails work well, but you have people live on the platform. When you refer someone right after a call ends, you potentially can hop on another Owwll phone call, which is pretty unique. [00:34:40] Dan Smigrod: The big picture is to make outbound calls. You got to take the initiative. It begins with a phone call. If you think about, perhaps in a previous world, where you took the time, went to an event, it's pretty efficient with your time because you can make calls back to back to back. I think. Just flip it around and say, "Okay, I've just joined the Owwll. I noticed this, when I joined Owwll, I kept getting calls because people saw that I was new. My badge said "New" and therefore, I didn't even need to make an outbound call, "oh, I got stage fright in calling somebody, I don't know." No, just sit back and people will start calling you. I found that process super-interesting. It wasn't like people called me and said, "Buy my service. Buy my service. Buy my product. Buy my product." They actually called, as you might connect, socially at a networking event and said, "Gee Dan, I notice that...." "Could you tell me more about that?" I have not heard of Matterport virtual tours." Is that like this, that or the other? Just by being on Owwll, I was open to the possibilities. Then, I'm busy a lot of time, so I'm not ready to take calls, so I just didn't list myself as being live. I found that I had time in my schedule to say, "oh I'll go live on Owwll for an hour or two and all of a sudden I started to receive calls when it was convenient for me and then the conversation began." [00:36:37] Jason R. Hill: Absolutely. [00:36:39] Dan Smigrod: Is that just the technique itself, if you're just not an outbound phone person, call person, just be open to the possibility that others like calling and they'll call you. [00:36:51] Jason R. Hill: Yeah, we did that by design. Whenever someone is new to the platform, they have to apply to become an expert. Once we approve them, we require them to do their first 10 phone calls at $1 [for 10 minutes] and we put a new symbol on their head shot. What's nice about that is that it lets the other people in the community know that this is a first-time user and we want to make it a good experience. You can tell, because their call count is zero. Calls taken will be listed as zero in that case. They also typically have zero reviews. So it's nice as other people want to see other people succeed on the Owwll platform, so they typically will call that new individual. It's really treated as a demo call. They want to let the individual know how the platform works and the best practices to do on their profile, for example, how to do their profile over if they notice something. It's really encouraging all users to follow the trend, and how to use it the best way. [00:37:47] Dan Smigrod: Jason, so I've listened to the show so far. I'll try this thing, Owwll. Maybe you can share your screen and even before talking about, go ahead, if you would share your screen and even before you start showing us how to set up an account, perhaps what you could do is just maybe just take us through at the top level: what was I doing in terms of making a call with the Owwll platform and then perhaps how do I be open to receiving calls from via the Owwll app? [00:38:24] Jason R. Hill: This is the view of an expert. They have a timer mechanism, right here, and I'm going to go offline to show everyone the first step. Right now, no one could call me. I just logged into the platform. But when I login, every expert is presented with this timer mechanism and this is the best part of this technology. I could have a cancellation in my schedule for the day and decide, hey. I'm just sending some emails out. I don't mind going live on the Owwll app. We allow people to set a timer for up to 4 hours and when I hit Save, now my timer started and what that did is that put me live. That's telling all my followers, 961 of them, that I'm willing to take a phone call right now. And I'm listing myself at $99 for 10 minutes. If I wanted more calls, I can lower it down to $1 [for 10 minutes]. Of course, I would get calls at $1 because 961 people got a notification that I was available to take calls. They also could set up where they get a text message. Under notifications, there's different alerts. My Owwll text alerts; you could set up a cell phone number, I get a text message because if you really want to speak to an individual, obviously text messages are a lot stronger than a notification. [00:39:44] Dan Smigrod: Can take a look at your profile? Maybe even just pop in. "read more" link. So you list suggested questions. What to expect during your call, and then there's some backstory about you. Then if we go back to... And then you've got some hobbies and personal interests. It's really not hard to connect with you. Not like a physical call, but in terms of, "Oh! You're interested in sailing and boating and traveling." [00:40:14] Jason R. Hill: Correct. [00:40:15] Dan Smigrod: Chillin' on the beach. There's other ways to begin a conversation with you other than, "let's talk business, there's a way to still do a gracious opening." "Hey, Jason, thanks for taking my call. I noticed you're interested in boating. I love sailing, myself. Tell me about that." A conversation begins where there's some commonality, perhaps. Then I see that you have links that go to your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, your website. You can read more about you. Great, and then at a top level, what other ... And then I noticed you had some videos as well. The very bottom of the Owwll app, if we went back to the Owwll app, I know you're on LinkedIn, but if we went back to the Owwll app, then at the very bottom, there are some videos. Great. You had played one earlier. If we go back up to the top of your profile, there were some keywords that you've chosen like podcaster and finance. Perhaps you could show us how to search for REALTORS. Maybe we just start with a REALTOR in Orlando. [00:41:42] Jason R. Hill: Under here is the filter search. If you want to go broad, these are all the broad topics, you can select hobbies, you could do expertise. This is expertise. If we want to look at real estate, there's photographer there, but let's do real estate only, and then hit Apply. All these people listed real estate in their expertise somewhere. You scroll down. [00:42:15] Dan Smigrod: We can see that there are a couple that are live now. Not to say you couldn't just click on anyone, and I presume request the call or request the go live. [00:42:24] Jason R. Hill: I could request Daniel to go live. The ability to use that feature means you must have the amount of money in your digital wallet that he's charging. He's charging $1 [for 10 minutes] and it worked. If he was charging $10,000 and I clicked it, it would say insufficient funds because we don't want Daniel getting an alert or notification for someone who can't afford to pay for that call when he goes live, and we can see up here, these people showed up. If I pick Dan, Dan's on a call right now, which is yourself. I can notify me when available because I know that you're going to come off a phone call and then you'll be available, and I want a notification when that occurs. But I could call Kelly and Mike right now. Let's pick Kelly. Kelly is charging $1 for 10 minutes and I could click the call button. I could list an agenda: real estate in South Florida. That could be the topic, so she knows why I'm calling and I can hit the call button and immediately -- we won't do it now, of course was a will ring herself on like a regular cell phone call -- and we get connected, which is so cool because she's saying to the world, you can call me. Right now with all other platforms, we've just gotten addicted to messaging and then saying, "let's set up a meeting in the future." Then it's typically setting up a Zoom meeting, and what happens? It's three weeks down the road and then something comes up and it gets canceled. People get frustrated with cancellations. Their time is so valuable, with the Owwll app that can't happen. You could instantly call them, which is so cool. [00:44:01] Dan Smigrod: I've taken you off screen share. Thank you for that. Owwll is super-interesting. How did this begin? [00:44:10] Jason R. Hill: Yeah, that's a great question. I've been in the financial service business my entire career giving advice, networking, and I moved to Florida six to seven years ago with my family. I have two young children and I started podcasting, and you see in the background it says the "Shrimp Tank" over here. I've interviewed over 250 entrepreneurs and I've heard their journey and how they scale a business. I've learned from their failures. And COVID-19 hit and just the light bulb went off. Everybody was dying to have conversations. Everyone missed human interaction. They wanted to network, and I just look at all the platforms like LinkedIn, and from my struggles, I would have so much difficulty talking with people; getting them on phone calls, and then I would get frustrated with all the cancellations that would occur once a meeting was set, and same thing with cancellations even for my podcast where I'm giving someone such value to do an in-person show and footage and recordings, and I just thought there had to be a better tool out there and it didn't exist. At that point, it's just like COVID just made me think outside the box . Wouldn't it be cool when I drive to work every morning for 30 minutes, after I listened to a podcast, I could maybe call the person I just listened to. I always want to pick their brain or about that conversation. They were speaking about on a podcast, but you go on Instagram, you go on LinkedIn and you get ignored. I mean I'm there: a business owner willing to even spend money, and I know they'd be willing to take my money, but there's no platform that has it setup properly. But everyone's like, "you just Venmo them." That's awkward to Venmo somebody money to speak with that. There's no real platform out there that nails payment processing smoothly and gives people that opportunity to take time if they want to speak to other individuals, and it's so cool I've been on Owwll where I go live and I get calls from friends. They're like, I saw live on Owwll so I knew you were willing to take my call or colleagues or other past guests with the Shrimp Tank because it's too uncomfortable. I don't know on my morning drive that Dan is up drinking his coffee and he's willing to have a chat with me. It's so unique that you could drive to Disney World, which I'm going to tomorrow for three hours, and just jump on a couple of calls and get so much accomplished during my drive, and we're all looking to do more passionate projects. We've seen the growth of entrepreneurship, the gig economy, and we just see so many individuals after their 9-5, they come home and they're working on their passion projects, and Owwll enables that because they could do it 5-10 o'clock at night for, example, and really just scale that other business outside of their 9-5 and use the Owwll app as a connection tool to build relationships because we all know that the people with -- The biggest brands have the biggest networks at the end of the day, and they put so much time into having people trust them and like them, and with Owwll it enables that because of the review mechanism at the end of every phone call. [00:47:20] Dan Smigrod: I rate the person I talked to, they rate me. If we talked they'll put in a description perhaps to say, "definitely take a call with Dan. He's interesting." [00:47:33] Jason R. Hill: Yeah. [00:47:35] Dan Smigrod: "Want to learn something about virtual tours, Dan is the man ;-) ..." [00:47:39] Jason R. Hill: Absolutely. Then you could take that and use a screenshot; put it on your website and use it as leverage to share with your audience, "Hey, you could call me." You can put office hours on your LinkedIn profile or Instagram and tell the world, "hey, I'm available certain times per week" for example. [00:47:56] Dan Smigrod: It's interesting on the rating system, I felt that was a little bit like taking an Uber. I want it to be on my best behavior because I know the driver rates me and if I want to get picked up, I better be rated highly by drivers. That driver probably wants to be on their best behavior because they know that the passenger is going to rate them -- never mind tips -- rate them. Then all of a sudden, for example, we were talking to Brian -- 1,000 plus five-star reviews. Well, that says something about the quality of that interaction. I would imagine if you get on the phone and you're just hawking your product -- "buy virtual tours" -- "buy real estate photography" -- you're not going to get a high star rating. But if you give people a chance to know, like and trust you, then you have an opportunity to move the rating up and then at some point have the appropriate conversation or ask for referrals. [00:49:00] Jason R. Hill: Absolutely. [00:49:02] Dan Smigrod: When you started Owwll, was it a little bit like, "Oh! I used to go to trade shows and conferences and events and luncheons and networking events -- and puff -- that totally went away during two or three years of COVID?" Is the Owwll app the metaphor for that? [00:49:26] Jason R. Hill: I mean, some of it, yes. Some of that is prior frustration. I thought that is also great timing in the marketplace because everyone was working from home. For the foreseeable future, we did not see that people would go full-time in many careers in the future. Back to the brick-and-mortar space. I just knew it was perfect timing to go after such a crazy idea. Bootstrap, a mobile platform with many developers behind the scenes. Everyone said, "You're crazy! Apps are so expensive to build and maintain," but I learned so much from interviewing successful entrepreneurs that you have been in my shoes. I just looked at it and said you only live once. I've done well for myself as a financial advisor. Thankfully, I had a nice nest egg saved up and this is my aha moment in life to go for something a little different, a little bit more passion behind it to impact millions and millions of people. I can impact a lot of people in the financial service space, but not like Owwll. Owwll connects people. And we've seen a lot of people on the personal side be impacted. I think we've talked a lot about business. Well, when you look at our tagline on our website, it's whether using Owwll app for personal or business to build rich relationships. I'll use a story of someone that really leverages the platform in a unique situation. His son swallowed a metal bottle cap while he was visiting Disneyworld and he saw a doctor live on the platform that happened to be a very well-known doctor that lived in South Florida. What he ended up doing was calling the doctor and he asked for a reference and it gave him peace of mind because he knew that doctor knew so many medical professionals in the Disney World area. Owwll can be leveraged as a tool for personal situations. You look at the mental health crisis going on in the United States with young men in their 20s. It's uncomfortable to call people you know, but it's not when you're able to call someone on Owwll and you're able to look at their background and know that that professional, he'd give you proper guidance. There's a lot of personal situations where we're seeing coming out of Owwll where you get the opinion, "Oh! I have multiple sclerosis. You have multiple sclerosis." That individual tells that person, "hey, did you try this?" It really helped me and they walked away with this personal connection from that phone call. It had nothing to do with business. It's just a personal phone call. We're seeing that side of Owwll as well make such an impact. [00:52:04] Dan Smigrod: "I'm a real estate photographer." "I offer virtual tours." "I watched the show." I heard Dan say, "go to: www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL that'll give you either the Android or iOS app. Use the referral code: WGAN ..." Then what? What's the process to get started? What's that look like? [00:52:32] Jason R. Hill: When they use your code -- WGAN -- they're going to get $10 as a bonus, right at sign-up. Then they could go into the app and with very limited information, they don't have to fill out all their bio, they can make a couple of calls on the house. Obviously, if they call 10 people at $1, that's 10 calls [for 10 minutes each] and they could potentially have 10 new relationships from not putting their credit card in. Now, they want to spend hundreds of dollars a month on it. They could add their credit card and make outbound calls. Now, if they want to take the next step and become an Owwll expert, they must apply. The reason why we make people apply is we want people to list all their social media handles, a professional photo, and we want a professional bio. If we allowed everyone to be an Owwll expert without that application process, then we'd have a lot of empty templates with no headshots and we didn't want it to look like that. We force those people to do that for that reason, at that point they could accept calls and make real money. Once they make over $50, they can make a withdrawal to their bank account and within days they have the funds that they've earned into their bank account. Now what we see though is a lot of people don't really care to take out $50, $100 because they want to use the money they earn to then call other professionals. That's what we see a lot of, a lot of inbound calls and outbound calls simultaneously unless you're very big influencer or a niche expert in your field and you use the Owwll app really as a funnel tool to allow your audience to call you because you get so many incoming messages and you're utilizing it just to get the right people that are calling you and it could form opportunities for your business itself, like a patent attorney, as an example. [00:54:19] Dan Smigrod: "I signed up. I get my $10 to spend on calls and I see that there are many that charge $1 for 10 minutes; meaning I can make 10 calls to those people for 10 minutes each." "I can see when people are live." Why is it that you charge $1 or why is it that when I signed on for the first time, I can't just charge $250 for 10 minutes? [00:54:55] Jason R. Hill: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:54:57] Dan Smigrod: "Why do I need to do 10 calls at $1 for 10 minutes (each call), before I can set my own rates?" [00:55:06] Jason R. Hill: It's a great question. When we first launched the Owwll app, when we were in Beta, we noticed that a lot of people would come in and list high rates and not realize that they could change their rates after they set it for the first time. But we noticed that they would go live, not get any phone calls and say to themselves, "hey, this is a really cool platform. No one called me so I'm not going to use it anymore." They didn't experience what you just showed the audience, which was a live phone call, live interaction so we ended up realizing that we lost so many professionals that didn't get the opportunity to actually use it, because they would just expect someone to call them at that rate. And it comes back to bad marketing at the end of the day. A lot of professionals were big on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn and they would list themselves with one sentence in their bio and then immediately assume that other individuals would take the effort to click their social media handles and validate that that person's worth $250 for a 10 minute call. And what ended up happening is they would get no calls and look at it as the app was broken so we realize real quick, we have to really educate our new experts on how the phone rings. You have to get used to how the phone settings work and how the calls come in, and how when people ask for an extension. And what we found is when people charged higher rates, their first call was the other caller educating them how to use the platform. There was a waste of that individual's money. They were just being nice and a lot of people were being nice and spending their own money so we realize real quick, they're just doing 10 calls for 10 minutes each, which is really easy like you noticed, because everyone will call you and within a day or two, you can increase your price to what you want to get to 10 calls. [00:56:51] Dan Smigrod: I also I would endorse the business plan of, "here's $10 and there are plenty of people that list themselves for $1 for 10 minutes and do the 10 calls" because I think until I received 10 calls and then I made outbound calls, it was really hard for me to understand a little bit about Owwll and then I think my initial thinking might have been, "Oh! I'm a subject matter expert related to Matterport. I'll charge a bazillion ..." No! When I made the calls and I received calls, I realized this was really more about a community and it's not about hitting people over the head, about making money. Perhaps as a subject matter expert, it's not about getting on the phone and pitching people. It's about having an opportunity to get people .. To have a know, like and trust opportunity that may lead to an introduction. It may lead to business. It may not, but it is yet another way to network and to do it one-on-one. [00:58:03] Jason R. Hill: I'm going to put you on the spot, because recently I had somebody ask to delete Owwll because he did not know how to use it, did not take a call, and then now he's been live every day and taken over 10 calls and fell in love with it. You yourself were also questionable before you had a couple of calls and then same with Mike who we interviewed and it's interesting within a matter of weeks, look at the people you've networked within the real estate industry, photography industry. So I would like you to share where you started and then what has blossomed so quickly, I guess. [00:58:36] Dan Smigrod: Well, I would say, "you don't know what you don't know, until you do at least 10 Owwll calls." [00:58:44] Jason R. Hill: Yes. [00:58:44] Dan Smigrod: It's super-easy to just go live as a newbie with a badge that says new and people will call you and then you get a sense of, "well, how are they going about their business development" and they never lead with their product or service. They always lead with, "oh, I noticed that on your profile. What is his Matterport thing? What is this: virtual tours? You live in Atlanta." It was really interesting to let the process happen and see how the community is using the Owwll platform and I think that will spark ideas. I think for me one of the things that I've done is set up office hours: 5-6 pm ET every Friday on Owwll and now I get people who want to chat. Sometimes I'm reluctant to have that conversation. Okay, I am making a commitment whether it's $1 for 10 minutes or $3 for 10 minutes or whatever it is that there's 10 minutes and then after 10 minutes, they may ask to continue the call and I may decide whether to allow the call to continue or not or say, "hey, thanks. Good visiting with you. I hope that works out for you." I'm experimenting with office hours, 5-6 pm ET on Fridays and directing people who are interested, perhaps in selling me something (via LinkedIn). Well, I suppose, "is it worth $1 for 10 minutes of my time to have a chance to pitch me?" I think it probably is. But it's a filter and I just go live so it's not like I'm setting up an appointment in my calendar. Anyway, so that's what I'm trying. Before we go, I wanted to read something to you and then maybe just get your reaction to it. "Owwll is a social networking platform that connects people instantly through private one-on-one audio calls, whether it's personal or business, build rich relationships by calling who you want, charging what you want, connecting when you want." Your thoughts on that? [01:01:08] Jason R. Hill: Of course, I absolutely love it because we changed it around a lot the first six months we launched. I finally came out with that exact sentence, and of course, I absolutely love it because we were struggling for a long time, trying to figure out like, what is Owwll? Everyone would always ask, "who uses Owwll?" It touched so many different industries and when we were just saying it was just for advice seekers and advice givers. That pigeon held a lot of people that wanted to network. We had a lot of professional athletes on this platform. We have a lot of people on Cameo that are celebrities that love it to reach their audience so that statement, you just read really connects everyone. One big community and that community could use it on a personal level or a business level and at the end of the day, you got to do with it what you want. You could call who you want. You could charge what you want so if you're an individual that wants to work $10,000 for 10 minutes and you are Gary Vaynerchuk, go ahead, charge $10,000 for 10 minutes and you have an audience that you serve that will pay that amount so why should we pigeonhole you, at the end of the day. And how cool it is that it's 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You could call someone -- at any moment -- you're just unhappy, call a happy expert, get cheered up. You want to call a comedian? We have an impersonator on Owwll that talks like Donald Trump and he is hilarious and for $10 for 10 minutes after a bad day, you could get a laugh on your drive home from work, for example, or with your buddies playing poker, which is what I did and we're all hysterical playing poker as we call him in, of course. [01:02:54] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. I promised this special offer. When you join Owwll with: www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL www.WGAN.INFO/OWWLL using the WGAN-TV referral code -- WGAN -- as Jason mentioned first, you'll get a $10 credit. Good to call 10 people for 10 minutes. Call 10 people for 10 minutes each. And if you talk to me for 10 minutes you'll receive three months of WGAN-TV Training U in Matterport: no credit card necessary. So maybe it's worthwhile just to call to get that special offer and learn what Owwll is about. Jason, thanks for being my guest today on the show. [01:03:44] Jason R. Hill: Absolutely and I'm going to spice it up. I just got these brand new Nike sneakers that were custom-made and they say Owwll. For anyone who downloads the app that uses your code [WGAN] when they received 100 calls, that referral came in through your code [WGAN] I will go out and get them a custom pair of Nikes that look just like this with their size, of course. Thank you for having me on the show today and anyone listening, I'm happy to chat with you on Owwll that Message me on LinkedIn. I typically refund the call costs for those calls just to help our community out and love pointing people in the right direction to the audience they serve to the other individuals on the platform, of course. [01:04:24] Dan Smigrod: Awesome! We've been visiting with Owwll app Founder Jason R Hill. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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WGAN Podcast-How Virtual Tour Photographers can do 1:1 Networking by Phone18477