It All Started On The Slopes
It’s 2015 in Denver and I’m a busy agent trying to take a Friday off to go skiing with a friend. We all know what happens to Realtors who try to take a day off. I got a call from a past client who received my automated alert that a home in the specific neighborhood they wanted to be in had just been listed and they had to see it that day. Uggh. I had my skis on and almost made it to the lift when that call came in. I explained where I was and promised I’d find a friend in the office who could get them in and if they liked it we could write an offer that evening. I then proceeded to call and text all my fellow agents trying to get help from them to show the home. It took about 40 minutes to find an available agent and then we had that awkward conversation about the commission. I explained that I’d been working with them and I just needed a door opened. We agreed to $100 and she took it from there. I did end up writing an offer that night and they bought the home and still live there to this day.
Idea Creation
The next week I was having a beer at a tavern with my friend who went skiing with me and we decided there had to be a better way to get help when we needed it. So on a bar napkin with a pen we drew up the concept of what would eventually become Showami.
I had visions of Shark Tank dancing through my head with all the investors begging me to choose them. Little did I know how difficult and time consuming it is to take an idea from concept to reality. There’s no shortage of good ideas, there’s a shortage of people with the means, grit and skills needed to see a project through to create a profitable business.
The next step was vetting the idea with other real estate agents to see if they would use a service like this if it was available. I created a survey and sent it to a few hundred Realtors in Denver asking them how often they help out other agents with showings. Once I saw that 85% of agents had either shown a home or helped somebody else show a home during the previous 3 months I knew there was a need in the marketplace.
Now For The Hard Part
I was off to meet attorneys and software developers to find out how to protect the business and build the machine. As with any industry, software development companies vary greatly in quality and ability to deliver the MVP ( minimally viable product ). I interviewed three companies and the bids came back between 40K and 225K for the exact same thing. I chose the company in the middle which quoted 75K and we began to build. I took money from savings to build Showami and did not require help from outside investors. I did a lot of research on venture capital and angel investors which led to my decision to self fund.
By October 2016 we were ready to launch and decided to get a booth at the state Realtor Convention in Colorado to let the world know about this amazing tool that we had created. In the meantime I discovered two competitors with the same idea that had entered the marketplace. One of the services was well funded out of Dallas Texas and the other was a low tech version in Denver that was trying to build a proof of concept. The company in Denver sent out an email to all it’s users including me saying that they wanted a partner to help take the business to the next level. The truth is that he was facing what I would eventually face. After all the time and energy put into building and improving the service, it still lost money every month and not enough transactions were taking place to make it a viable business. Showami acquired the Denver company for some cash and equity.
The October launch at the convention was disappointing with only 50 sign ups coming from all that effort and no transactions. In November we were able to import the users from the acquired company and that combined with our sign ups ended up getting us some transactions where agents paid for showings and other agents got paid. Those first few transactions were key to providing motivation to keep moving forward.
An MVP Was Born
An MVP opens the door to possibilities but as a founder you become acutely aware of the shortcomings and begin to think that if you just make a few changes to the platform it will take off and everyone will want to be a part of it. So within a year I decided to invest another 40K into development and marketing. We did see consistent but slow growth during the next few years but we still lost money pretty much every month. Money is the least of the investment that a founder makes into a business. In many ways it becomes an extension of the founder and takes up valuable time and energy robbing the other business that the founder was originally focussed on.
In 2015 as a real estate agent I sold 72 homes with just myself and a transaction coordinator. Because of the time I was now spending on Showami my real estate business began a slow decline. I sold 63 homes in 2016 and never broke 50 sales per year again after that time. Think about this from a logic standpoint. I sold 20 fewer homes worth over $100,000 in revenue and instead invested time and energy into a company that lost money every month. Why would anyone do that? The simple answer is faith. I had faith that this service that I created was helping agents in their business and life. I also believed that if enough people knew about us and used us that eventually it would be a profitable business.
Spreading Because Of A Virus
By 2019 revenue had increased to the point where we had income enough to pay for a part time software developer. I was lucky enough to stay in contact with the original engineer that built the platform and found that he was available and willing to work with me again. It was so encouraging to see the wish list of features being built and experience users positive feedback and transaction growth. He was about to be brought on full time in 2020 until COVID hit and basically shut down our business for 45 days. We agreed to cut his hours so he could find full time employment since we had no idea if or when we would be able to show homes again. Then the unexpected happened and we had crazy exponential growth beginning in June of 2020 as agents were able to begin showing homes again.
When I look back at 2020- 2021 it amazes me how much I was actually doing. I was the customer support, administration, sales, marketing, legal and onboarding person. I was doing all of this and still hadn’t drawn a single dime from the company in the form of a salary or anything. I knew that I had to get help and by October of 2020 my first hire was virtual assistants who could take all of the manual work from me. This is where I learned to actually build a business. I was forced to create and document systems and processes for others to execute which freed me to do other work. It was freeing to offload parts of the business that I didn’t enjoy and honestly wasn’t really good at. We eventually were able to bring on some really quality people in administration, development and sales/marketing and the business kept growth and profitability well into 2022.
It’s easy to look to the past and see your mistakes. This year we spent a lot of time and marketing money in hopes that we could grow even faster than the previous year. It made sense at the time. Agents are really liking our service and telling others about us all the time. Let’s spend some money to tell more agents about us and grow even faster. But the market forces that higher interest rates created had a bigger impact than all of our marketing efforts. We were not immune from the transaction slowdown in our industry and are finding new ways to pivot and offer additional services to meet our client needs.
Thanks for taking the time to read through my ramblings about my experience as the founder of Showami. My hope in writing this is that you have a better understanding of the very real struggles and triumphs that I as a founder went through at various stages of growth. I wanted to quit and sell several times along the way. The thing that keeps me going is the belief that we are really helping agents and having an impact on their business and life.