Take a look at their virtual tour --

There are times when our work gets frustrating.  There are clients who drive us crazy.  There are things about being self employed and owning our own virtual tour business that are hard to deal with.  There are days when I want to quit and go get a “real job”.  Yesterday was one of those days for me -- today may be one of those days for my husband...I’ll ask him as soon as his teeth stop chattering.

What keeps us motivated at times like these is the realization that despite the ups and downs and the frustrations and the challenges, what we do makes a difference and allows us to live a fantastic life.  Our company is called Vision Quest Virtual Tours because it is our VISION that keeps us focused on why we do what we do.  Sometimes it is the vision alone that keeps us going.

As more and more people are realizing the need to showcase their businesses with virtual tours, we have started seeing lots of YouTube videos on websites.  YouTube is a great option for showing sneezing pandas and little British boys biting their brother’s fingers but maybe it should not be the first choice for showcasing your business.

Today I was watching a video introduction for a drug and alcohol recovery program.  The video was posted to YouTube so when I was finished watching the video, I was given an array of other choices of videos to watch.  This particular program has 6 videos so those were some of the 12 other suggestions that YouTube offered me...

The other six however included a video for a medication for premature ejaculation, a video titled “Tall Brazilian girl finds love”, and one called “the Ultimate Girls Fail Compilation” which apparently is very popular as it has 72 Million views (well 72 Million and One now because of course I watched it)!!  The video I went to YouTube to watch only had 182 views so clearly Ultimate Girl’s Fail garnered more attention than the drug and alcohol treatment program. 

For many people, the idea of buying a boat is a fantasy that is way out of reach but most of those people have never actually been aboard a motoryacht or sailboat.  We recently photographed a virtual tour for a 48 foot motoryacht and had the joy of staying aboard for a few days and got a taste of living aboard a boat.  We were hooked but never imagined that buying a boat was something that we could ever afford.

As we walked into the marina, we passed the office for Charleston Harbor Yacht Sales and on a whim, I picked up a flyer.  What I saw shocked me -- liveaboard boats were available for anywhere from $25,000 to $250,000!  In fact we learned that the boat we were staying on, the Blue Hour, was for sale for less than $200,000!!  We had no idea what a boat of that caliber would cost and we were floored.  So much so that we made an appointment with John Douglas of Charleston Harbor Yacht Sales to go look at boats the very next day.  It's our plan to buy a boat within the next few years and live aboard when we are home in Charleston, SC.

I am sure that our experience was not unlike many people who drive past the marinas and see the sailboats and motor yachts but never would imagine that owning a boat is within reach.  I am sure many people who hear the word "yacht" imagine Donald Trump or Mitt Romney cruising around the islands - not themselves living in a floating condo.  I am also sure that many people have no idea how comfortable life on a boat can be and imagine that the cabins would be cramped, small and dank.

What better way to debunk those misbeliefs than with a virtual tour?  We are able to photograph panoramic spins of the staterooms, salon, decks and bridges and take wide angle stills of heads, galleys and instruments to provide a one click overview that even the most uneducated person can appreciate.  Still images do not do justice to small spaces like the interior of a boat but 360 degree panoramas certainly can. 

If you are a yacht owner or broker trying to sell a boat, there's no better way to showcase your vessel.  To understand the value of a yacht virtual tour, you just need to click on the link below then give us a call at Vision Quest Virtual Tours to schedule your own. 

B & B On The Sea Virtual Tour -- http://tours.visionquestvirtualtours.com/36486

Many people set New Year’s Resolutions and the vast majority of those are never achieved because the people who set them do not have a plan to reach them.  This an old acronym regarding goal setting that says the key to achieving goals is that they need to be:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

My goals are always the same every year -- to be physically fit, financially secure, spiritually grounded and to foster good relationships with the people I love.  These are noble but vague goals...

I spent my career as a w-2 employee and I like the idea of a paycheck coming every two weeks or so and commission checks coming as well.  I like the idea of going to an office with a bunch of like minded people.  Even though working in an office often means working three hours and socializing for five, I like the framework of having set office hours.  I like office Christmas parties and birthday cakes in the conference room.  I especially love the competition with other sales people.

Working from home and traveling all over the country for our national virtual tour company could be very isolating for me if we weren’t a part of the RTV national network.  We are connected to the group through the Facebook group, the annual national convention and just the contacts we’ve made by collaborating with other virtual tour photographers in the network.

Everyone knows that it’s important to be prepared for emergencies but there are certain things that only become emergencies when we don’t plan for the inevitable.

Ten days before my first half marathon, I found out that I had sesamoiditis which is odd since I didn’t even know I had sesamoids.  These two little bones on the base of my big toe were irritated because I hadn’t listened to my body which told me that my running shoes had broken down even though they still look relatively new.  Luckily, I had the resources to get new shoes in time for the race because without them, I might not have been able to finish. 

I learned a similar lesson in our virtual tour business this summer when my photographer husband said we had to replace our camera.  The camera we replaced is a high end Canon model which looks brand new and was only a little over a year old.  I learned that camera shutters are rated for a certain number of clicks.  Because of the volume of images we shoot for our virtual tour business, we had gone way over the recommended clicks for our camera.  Greg was seeing little issues with the camera that I with my inexperience would not have noticed.  Rather than wait for the camera to break down during a shoot, we bought a new camera of the same model.  We carry the old one as a back up and we’ll keep track of about how many clicks we have to know when it’s time for yet another new one. 

It is our practice to photograph using the very best equipment we can afford and upgrade it as we are able.  Starting a virtual tour business using RTV, Inc.’s virtual tour technology did not require a big upfront financial commitment but as we have grown, we have had to plan ahead for upgrades and replacements of equipment.  Just as my shoes could have sidelined me for the race, not planning ahead could be a big issue for our business. 

I blogged recently about the fact that businesses that succeed do so because they have the resources to stay in business in spite of early failures.  While it’s admirable to “give all you’ve got” be sure to save a little if you want to succeed in business for the long term.

For our virtual tour business, our Lagniappe comes in the form of Tour Tracks jobs.

For us, there is absolutely no question about whether we will attend.  Our virtual tour business was successful before the convention and was successful after the convention.  But something fundamentally changed for us as a result of attending the RTV Convention.

This is also how it happens in most businesses.  Professor Amar Bhide showed in his Origin and Evolution of New Business that 93% of all companies that ultimately become successful had to abandon their original strategy -- because the original strategy proved not to be viable.  Note this statistic refers not to business that failed but to businesses which ultimately became successful.  I wrote recently about finding the right strategy for your business and referred to the fact that my greatest successes have come after my worst failures.

Our strategy didn’t fail because we didn’t try hard enough to make it work.  Our strategy failed because there was a better path for us that emerged as a result of the obstacles we faced and overcame.  We put in all the effort we could but day after day, we were hearing nothing but “No Thank You” as I called Realtors.  Our market was hit hard during the housing market collapse and our Realtors weren’t making money and therefore weren’t spending money on  marketing.  As we continued to contact those Realtors to no avail, we stumbled upon some other business by chance.

We thought that we would do a few vacation rental virtual tours and healthcare virtual tours as a way to make a little extra money while we waited for our North Georgia virtual tour real estate business to take off.  What happened instead was that the Healthcare virtual tours and vacation rental virtual tour business skyrocketed and our new strategy became crystal clear.  As a matter of fact, residential real estate virtual tours now make up about 5% of our business and healthcare and vacation rentals make up about 85%.

Should I choose to focus on where I finished in comparison with the other racers that day, I might become discouraged but it’s also true that I finished faster than every single person who did not finish or did not start the race that day.  So basically that puts me in the top 1% based on how I choose to measure myself.  I am in an elite category of people who actually showed up to run the race!

Many people like the idea of owning their own business or running a half marathon but how many people actually get out and turn their good ideas into a reality?  How many actually make it to the starting line?  There are many similarities between getting to the starting line of running a race and running our national virtual tour company using RTV, Inc’s virtual tour technology.

This should not surprise the rest of us because we all hear voices in our heads -- the only difference between a “sane” person and a schizophrenic is that we get to choose which voices we listen to.  I find that it is very important for me to filter the voices I hear by choosing what I listen to, what thoughts I allow to reside in my mind, what I choose to read and watch on TV and who I allow to speak into my life.

As I’ve gotten older (and fatter) I’ve realized that I have got to focus on a bigger picture.  I made the decision that I would watch the scale but EVEN IF my weight did not go down, I was going to remain committed to improving my physical fitness.  I now have a lengthy list of criteria that measure my success -- how my clothes fit, if I am able to increase the mileage I run or bike, how I feel, and whether I exercised 3 - 5 days a week whether I wanted to or not.  EVEN IF I never see the number I hope for on the scale, I will keep going because I have learned to change how I measure success.

Likewise, the single factor that I used to measure my success in my career previously was my income.  It wasn’t that I was overly obsessed with money but I am a very competitive person.  My line of work is sales and in sales, income is how you keep score.  If my career success was measured by income alone, then the "pinnacle" of my career just so happens to be the time in my life when I was most unhappy.

Really, you think it was the camera that did that?

We’ve all been there, in fact we may go through periods where we feel that way every day.  In exercise, there is a concept called the Borg Perceived Exertion Scale which rates the level of physical exertion that is perceived by the person and compares it to the actual exertion as measured by things such as heart rate, calories burned, etc.

The challenge is that often what we perceive to be our level of exertion is not really accurate.  Have you ever been to the gym and seen someone who walks around the gym flirting and chatting and never seems to do any actual exercise?  You can imagine though that this person goes home and says that they worked out for two hours!  If you’ve ever worked in an office environment, you’ve probably seen the same thing!  If you have ADHD like I do, you've probably DONE the same thing.

When things get tough, it’s extremely important to understand the WHY of what you are doing if you want to find the WILL to continue...

There is a well known scripture in the Bible that speaks of “mounting up with wings like eagles.”  If you have never seen an eagle “mount up” then you may think this only refers to the eagle floating effortlessly on the wind.  In fact, some versions translate the word Hebrew word for mount as “soar with wings like eagles” and that’s probably because most people have only seen an eagle that is already in flight.

But take a look at this slow motion video of an eagle mounting up and the Scripture takes on a different meaning.  I’ve seen this many times up close because the eagles don’t like it when I come too close on the deck.  There is no way to describe the sound of the power behind those wings as these giant birds take off.  The look of determination and extreme focus in their eyes is awe inspiring and really gives new understanding to what it means to “MOUNT with wings like eagles”.

True success rarely happens overnight whether in nature or business.  I’ve seen the eagle’s nest with the babies in it - not quite ready to take flight and dependent on their parents for their basic needs.  I’ve seen the babies that have recently left the nest and don’t yet have the beautiful white head and tail -- they really don’t stand out much from any other bird of prey.

So often the same thing happens in our every day lives.  We see a small business owner whose business seems to run itself, we see an athlete who breaks records running a marathon and doesn’t seem to break a sweat, we see people whose marriages look like a perpetual honeymoon.  We compare ourselves to them and think that they must have some special gift we don’t.  What we often don’t see in these cases is what these people looked like in the beginning...before they reached a level where the wind picked them up and allowed them to soar effortlessly.

I’ve been there -- When I started running, I could barely run for 60 seconds straight and yet I am now six weeks away from running a half marathon.  When we started in virtual tour photography, we couldn’t GIVE our tours away and now we have a thriving national virtual tour business and much of our business comes from referrals and repeat business.  The reason that so many people don’t stick to a new venture is that they lack that determination and focus that the eagle has when he first takes off.  They assume it was going to be easy at first or on the other hand, they see how hard they have to work in the beginning and assume that it’s always going to be that hard. 

What I have never seen is an eagle turn around and come back to the tree and say, “This is too hard”.  That is because the eagle knows instinctively that by putting in the initial effort necessary to mount up then eventually he will catch the updrafts and be able to soar to heights that other birds couldn’t even imagine.

Drafting can be done cooperatively or it can be done competitively.  In competitive drafting, the racer behind the leader stays in the slipstream of the leader to conserve his own energy and also to force the leader to expend more energy.  There is no give and take here.  Even though the rider in front gets a physical and possibly psychological benefit from having someone inches from his front tire, the bottom line is that the rider in the front has to work the hardest.
To truly understand the beauty of drafting, watch a professional bike race like the Tour de France.  This three week bicycle race across the mountains of the Alps and Pyrenees is truly an epic event which pushes professional cyclists to their very limits and it is an amazing demonstration of the power of collaboration and teamwork...

In the Biblical creation story, it says that God looked at everything he had made and was pleased so on the seventh day he rested.  In the top ten list of rules He later gave to Moses, number 4 was to honor a day of rest every week.  If the God of the universe thought rest was so important and even rested himself then why do we look at it as a dreaded four letter word?  One of the hardest lessons for me to learn as a beginner athlete and as a small business owner is that REST is a requirement - not an option. 

Either I will choose to rest or my body will shut down and force me to rest!

You may have heard it said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” but perhaps it’s time to rethink that definition.

Sometimes the only way to see results IS to do the same thing over and over and over again.  In fact in many cases, the definition of insanity is expecting results without doing the same things over and over again.  This applies to my life right now more than ever as I train for my first half marathon and work to take our national virtual tour company to the next level. 

Now understand, I have the option of waiting to register until I am closer to the race date to see if I can really do this.  I can justify waiting to make the commitment -- I have never run 13.1 miles!   I don’t know for sure if I can do this so maybe I should wait.  Trust me, if there was a medal for procrastination, fear and excuse making, I would win GOLD! 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a national virtual tour provider and we travel all over the country photographing virtual tours for healthcare companies.  We have photographed in 35 states in the past year and a half and while that means we have had some great adventures and seen some awesome places, it also means we have spent a ton of time in the car and eating fast food on the road.  Like most new businesses, we were on a tight budget which meant that our meal choices weren’t always the healthiest.

Let me start by saying that I am not an athlete. I have always wanted to exercise and have done it in spurts but was never consistent so I never reaped the benefits. I never played sports in school and I have never particularly enjoyed exercising.  My weight yo-yoed for years and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten fatter and lazier and it became more and more difficult to lose the extra pounds.  After my mother was diagnosed with diabetes, I realized that I was on the same path if I didn’t change something.

We recently shot a Quincy, Illinois real estate virtual tour for a family who is moving out of state due to a job change.  The homeowner is moving from Illinois to Denver, CO but she knows nothing about Colorado -- in fact has never been there.  She is relying on the internet to try to learn as much as she can about the Denver market.

In looking at the local MLS listings in Denver, she found that most of the listings that said they had “Virtual Tours” had simply taken the same still images from the listing and put them into a slide show and added music.  She said that watching the “virtual tour” was deja vu since she had already seen the exact same pictures.

When we arrived at her home and began staging the rooms, turning on all the lights and taking 360º panoramic images, she quickly realized that what we were doing was much more intensive than the “virtual tours” she had seen. 

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we believe that a virtual tour should be more than just a slideshow put to music.  A virtual tour should offer the viewer a chance to truly look around the home and get a feel for the flow and layout.  The virtual tour should allow the viewer to imagine themselves in the space and visualize their furniture and personal items in the home.

The stills are important as well because most people add filters when they are looking through local MLS listings.  In addition to price and number of bedrooms, one of the most common filters that people use is Number of Pictures.  Some Realtors just stick in one picture of the front of the home or a handful of shots they take with their point and shoot cameras and hope that people will be intrigued enough to want to learn more.  While this may work in some cases, most buyers we talk to really want to be able to narrow down their options and tell us that high quality pictures allow them to do that more easily.

Here is the virtual tour we created for our client -- http://fusion.realtourvision.com/53178 -- As you can see, it is MUCH MORE than a slideshow put to music!

It’s definitely true that high quality professional pictures are better than nothing however there’s a big difference between still images and a truly interactive virtual tour.  Our virtual tours are created using a combination of still images, 360º and partial panoramas, and can also include video clips.  In addition to just the virtual tour, we offer a still package plus the virtual tour because the combination of good stills AND the virtual tours is a one two punch that provides the whole package...without the sense of Deja Vu!

The same progression is happening with virtual tours.  At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, about 90% of our business is commercial virtual tours for businesses.  Consumers have gotten lazy and want to see a place of business before they decide to visit.  Residential real estate virtual tours and hospitality virtual tours very quickly became the norm and that trend is continuing to other businesses.  Many of us can no longer imagine booking a vacation without watching a virtual tour!

As the economy has tightened, many people are becoming more cognizant of where they are spending their money.  Dinner at a nice restaurant is a luxury these days so consumers want to plan ahead.  We have a date night this weekend and I have already been on the restaurant’s website to check out the menu and plan my meal.  We photographed the restaurant’s virtual tour so we already know what to expect from that aspect but this will be the first time we’ve eaten there.  This restaurant virtual tour gets tons of hits on their website of people looking at the tour so I know that I am not alone in my desire to see before I spend.

As the digital age continues to evolve faster than the economy is growing, businesses are having to carefully decide  to spend their marketing dollars and a virtual tour is quickly becoming an “Of Course” item as in “We need a website, good SEO, a Facebook page...and of course, a virtual tour.”

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we have had a flat price for our residential real estate virtual tours.  This made it easy for us in the past because each virtual tour was a combination of still and panorama images and we like having the freedom to showcase each home in its best light rather than having to pick and choose which areas to photograph and charge on a per photo or spin basis.   

Fusion -- the latest virtual tour platform from RTV, Inc., has essentially changed the way that we think about virtual tours and has presented us with so many additional bells and whistles that we had to reevaluate our virtual tour pricing options.

In the end, we decided to keep the base price of a residential virtual tour the same but offer up sell opportunities that would increase the price of the tour should the agent choose to select these add-ons.  Our base tour price of $100 for our local real estate market includes the virtual tour and our social ignition package.  The social ignition package includes distribution of the tour to over 40 social bookmarking sites as well as a YouTube video and Craig’s List ad.  We are offering several $25 upgrades that allow each Realtor to customize their virtual tour package.

We know both these Realtors and can attest to the fact that all else really was equal.  They were dealing with two very successful and experienced Realtors.  We live in a small town where every Realtor in town knows the others listings for the most part.  Both Realtors suggested the same price for the house and were taking the same commission for the sale.  If it had been a personality contest, the Realtor they chose would definitely not have been the winner! 

Because the home owners are moving out of state, they are searching for their new home mostly online and then will go to the new location for a few trips before they actually have to start the new job.  Their time is limited when they are in town for these short trips so they said that professional photography and good virtual tours are the one thing that allows them to narrow down which houses they are going to look at on these short trips.

For their upcoming home buying experience, these virtual tour and high quality pictures allowed them to create a short list so they knew that the buyer for their home would likely do the same.  The winner of the Realtor choice for them was easy -- they chose the one who would be providing a professional virtual tour of the home they are selling.

In a recent Facebook post, a fellow virtual tour photographer bemoaned that he needed to hire a sales and marketing team to grow his virtual tour business.  Someone quickly responded that he should call me to which my husband quickly replied that I was already booked and definitely NOT available.  I am the sales and marketing department for our successful virtual tour business, Vision Quest Virtual Tours.  I work with many new virtual tour providers who worry that they can’t do what we do because they aren’t good at sales.

When you think of a natural born sales man what traits and characteristics come to mind?  We all know that person who could sell anything to anybody...whether they need it or not. Your experiences with sales may color your thinking.  If you have been hounded by people trying to sell you something then the traits that come to mind may include pushy, obnoxious, distracting and someone who won’t take no for an answer.  If you know someone who is truly successful in sales you may think of things like an outgoing personality, the ability to listen and a genuine interest in others.

One of my first jobs after college was selling fax machines in Atlanta.  This was in 1989 when fax machines were the hottest new thing to hit the market and everyone wanted one because people were just realizing that they weren’t only for big businesses.  The company I worked for offered a fine product but the price was over double what Sharp was selling their products for and my product offered no additional bells or whistles.  For a comparable product, our entry level fax was $1,795 and Sharp’s was $995.  The reason I did not close many sales was because when someone asked me why they should pay nearly double for a comparable product, I had no good answer.  I had all the makings of a good salesperson but I was not selling a product at a price I believed was fair.  I was told to sell the “value of the brand” but frankly, in a side by side comparison, there was no additional value.  I originally led the company in appointments and cold calls but I failed miserably in closing sales and quickly became discouraged.  This experience led me to believe that I was not cut out for sales and I didn’t try my hand at sales again until nearly 10 years later.

I have trained hundreds of salespeople and I have seen this proven many times.  The people I thought would be the best at sales -- those naturally gregarious folks who never met a stranger -- often turned out to lack the discipline necessary to actually succeed in sales.  In fact, I am one of those people.  I, like many people who gravitate to sales, am a big picture thinker but am not so great when it comes to details.  Luckily my husband is a great partner in our virtual tour business.  As the virtual tour photographer, he is the creative genius behind what we do but he is also the detail guy who makes sure that those pesky details like invoicing and paying bills get done. 

The secrets to the success of our virtual tour business are consistency, persistence and having a great product.  Sales is nothing but a numbers game -- the more contacts and calls I make, the more sales I make.  This happens for two reasons.  One is the fact that the more people I talk to, the more likely I am to find someone who is interested in what I am selling.  But the second reason is that the more people I talk to, the more I understand my market and the perception of my product.  Each time I overcome an objection or answer a question, I am better equipped for the next time.

Persistence doesn’t mean not taking no for an answer.  Instead it means finding out if No really means No or does it possibly mean Not Yet.  I continue calling a lead until I have determined that they do not need or want my product. If I have understood all their objections and explained the benefits of my product then there is nothing wrong with taking No for an answer. 

Finally, I have a product that I believe in and THAT is the biggest secret to our success.  Our virtual tour technology allows us to provide an excellent product at a very competitive price.  My husband is a great photographer and has created workflows that allow us to provide exceptional virtual tours at a very affordable price.  With the introduction of Fusion by RTV, Inc., we now have what I consider to be the greatest virtual tour platform on the market so all I need is the opportunity to show it to someone and the “sale” is easy.

Sales and marketing consultant Mike Sigers says it well, “There is no such thing as a natural born salesman. You become a “natural” by talking to and negotiating with thousands of people.”  In other words, sales is something you learn to do - not something you are born with.  I am definitely proof of that!

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a national virtual tour provider specializing in healthcare virtual tours and hospitality virtual tours.  We are based in Quincy, IL and provide Illinois virtual tours but we have also photographed virtual tours in over 30 states.  To learn more, visit us at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

Our virtual tour business is currently in negotiations for so much potential business that it makes my head spin.  We have bids in negotiation for several huge contracts that are right in our sweet spot and we’ve been told “Yes” by several businesses that are even now working out the logistics.  Webster defines potential as “existing in possibility; capable of development into actuality.”  Because I am an optimistic person, I look at opportunities that exist in possibility and calculate all the potential income.  The problem with this is that you can’t spend potential!

There are certain universal laws that we believe to be absolute.  The law of Increasing Returns is one of those that we strive to live by.  Whether you call it Karma or the Golden Rule or sowing what you reap, there's truth to the fact that eventually what comes around, goes around.  There’s a great quote by Napoleon Hill in his classic book, “The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons.”  Hill suggests that we “Render more service than that for which you are paid and you will soon be paid for more than you render.  The law of ‘Increasing Returns’ takes care of this.”

A great example of this happened to us just yesterday in our Illinois Virtual Tour Business.  We went to photograph a real estate virtual tour for a Realtor in a nearby city and when we arrived at the house, the place was a TOTAL MESS.  I don’t mean clutter...I mean mess.  The home was empty but the homeowners were doing some remodeling work and there were tools and materials all over the place as well as bags of garbage.  Our job when shooting a residential real estate virtual tour is to photograph the house in a way that will appeal to potential homebuyers.  At first glance, there was no way we could possibly do that.  My husband is a great virtual tour photographer but there are some things that no level of creativity can overlook.

Greg and Paige Mitts of Vision Quest Virtual Tours recently attended RTV, Inc.’s national conference in Traverse City, MI where they were awarded the top honor of “Most Valuable Players” from among a network of over 1,500 other virtual tour providers.  Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides state of the art 360º virtual tours primarily in the fields of healthcare, hospitality, and education.  Though headquartered in Quincy, IL, Vision Quest Virtual Tours has photographed virtual tours in over 30 states.

Originally established in 1999 as RealtorVision and now RTV, Inc., RTV is a profitable and privately held corporation that proudly supports over 100,000 real estate agents and businesses in 27 countries.  Their virtual tour technology has also attracted over 1,500 independent business owners who provide unparalleled worldwide coverage in the field of virtual tour photography. This makes the RTV network the largest full service virtual tour and property marketing network in the World.

Hi Paige –

I’m not ignoring you – as a matter of fact, XYZ company would be very interested in talking to you. Unfortunately, our marketing budget is depleted for the year, so it doesn’t really make sense to talk now. Could you please contact me again in April?

It can get frustrating to send out multiple emails and leave repeated phone calls and not get responses but it’s part of the process of building our virtual tour business.  This particular client told me that she had kept my emails in her inbox but she just hadn’t gotten back to me because things kept coming in that were more urgent.  It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in what I was offering - she absolutely was!

When we started our virtual tour business we assumed that the majority of our business would be residential real estate virtual tours.  We quickly became frustrated as we made calls because we assumed that the Realtors we were talking to would immediately see the value of our product and services and line up to schedule real estate virtual tours.  We found it very difficult to open the doors in the real estate market and refocused our business elsewhere and quickly became experts in the commercial virtual tour arena.

In 2011, Real Estate was only 5% of our virtual tour businessbut it will be much bigger now that we have figured out how important a market stream it is. We now have a real "hometown" and have found a way to focus our efforts consistently on building our Illinois Virtual Tours without sacrificing the time I spend marketing nationally to healthcare and hospitality virtual tours.  We started small -- I met a Realtor at an open house and shot two tours for her the same day.  She loved the tours and got us an invitation to do a presentation at her office’s sales meeting.  My presentation consisted of her bragging about our work and telling her peers that they would be crazy NOT to use us.  That day, we booked 7 tours for another Realtor and shot several of them that very day.  A week later, we got a call from another, and now we work regularly with most of the Realtors in that office and get referrals from them for other Realtors who see the work we’ve done for them.

The hours I spend on booking a big job vs. the phone ringing on a consistent basis with REORDERS from this handful of Realtors was enough to convince me that the Real Estate market is worth the effort. Trust me, we used to say we hated working with realtors but now we love it and it provides us with a base income that allows me to focus on the bigger jobs without having to worry about mortgage and car payment money.

  While cultivating an initial relationship with Realtors may be a lot of work, they are the ONE very consistent and ongoing stream of income that we can count on without having to do additional outbound marketing. With commercial tours, we shoot it once and hope for referrals but once you have a loyal and SATISFIED realtor, you don't have to resell them over and over.

We even hired a local photographer so that we don't lose that Illinois virtual tour business when we are traveling. Realtors are the only line of business we have where we GET calls every week instead of me sitting down to make calls every day. We have great relationships, they love our work and they tell other Realtors about us all the time.

It didn't happen overnight but slowly but surely we are converting many of the Visual Tour users over when they see the difference that professional photography and a kick ass tour delivery system makes. All it cost us was a few doughnuts and a lot of persistence - not a bad return.

The great thing about sales is the understanding that once you know what your closing ratio is, you can easily extrapolate how many calls you need to make in order to close a set amount of business.  I have learned that I have to make about 100 calls to book 10 virtual tours.  If Greg was a less experienced virtual tour photographer, then I might have to make 200 calls to book those same 10 business virtual tours.  The formula remains the same - the only thing that changes is the x and the y. 

To say that I have a 10% closing ratio DOES NOT mean that I win one out of ten times.  It means that if I make 100 contacts, I feel pretty confident that we will end up shooting 2 -3 virtual tours and if I make 1,000 contacts, we will eventually shoot 100 virtual tours.  Charles J. Givens, author of Wealth Without Risk puts it this way,  “Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.” 

I start a running tally every week knowing that I need to make a minimum of 100 calls if I want to maintain the growth of our virtual tour business.  I write everything in a notebook that I keep with me at all times and I write down the number beside each new call, email or face to face contact.  I know that I need to make 100 contacts every week to keep our business growing.  The challenge is not giving up on the 95th call.  I hear the word NO more than most people because I keep calling.  That’s the secret of our successful virtual tour business.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides interactive 360 degree virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education with an emphasis on behavioral healthcare virtual tours and vacation rental virtual tours.  We are located in Quincy, IL but we photograph virtual tours all over the country.  For more information or to schedule your virtual tour, visit our website www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

Here are some lessons we’ve learned along the way...

I visited the website of another Charleston, SC virtual tour provider to check out our competition.  On their website, they have samples of their work and the tour that they chose to showcase their services has a panoramic spin with someone sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor working on the dishwasher.  Seriously, of all the tours that you could choose to represent yourself, you couldn’t find one that didn’t have the dishwasher repair man sitting in the middle of the floor?

One of the challenges Realtors face is that their clients often don’t see their own clutter but as an outsider coming into a home for the first time, you’d think one would notice the dishwasher repair man.

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we work as a team.  With close to 15 years as a professional photographer, Greg stays behind the camera and I go in front of him to prepare each room to showcase the property in the very best light.  It is not unusual for him to have to wait on me to finish staging an area because our work represents both us, the Realtor or business owner and the property we are shooting.

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we specialize in photographing virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  We have many eggs in many baskets!!  This month, we were on track in March to have our biggest month of income ever.  We are working with two beach vacation rental companies, several small businesses and we were scheduled to shoot three behavioral health programs.  We are used to traveling thousands of miles per month to shoot all over the country but all of these were within a short distance from our home in Charleston. I was looking forward to a relaxed month for once!

It’s hard to stay motivated when I am looking at a full pipeline.  There is the temptation to relax and think I’ve earned a break once I get the pipeline looking good.  I have trained and supervised hundreds of sales people and I know that I am not alone in this tendency. I understand sales metrics such as closing ratios and a pipeline of projected business. I know that I have to make a certain number of calls to book a certain number of tours.  I also understand that a certain percentage of the tours I book will cancel or reschedule for a variety of reasons.  This is why it is of the utmost importance to have a very full pipeline and to have a variety of streams of income and NOT to slow down once the pipeline looks full!  Or to use an egg metaphor - I know better than to count my chickens before they hatch.

In the past, we relied on emails and phone calls to clarify information and then sent an invoice once we came to terms and hoped to be paid when we arrived to shoot the virtual tour.  While this worked almost all the time, we did run into a few situations where the client did not understand some aspect of our terms even though I thought I had explained them clearly.  This puts both us and the client in an awkward position and has the potential to cause hard feelings down the road.

We started using written proposals this year to make sure that what we say and what our client hears is the same thing.  Our proposal outlines what we are agreeing to provide and the terms under which we agree to provide it.  Once we have confirmed a time and date to shoot and agreed upon a price, I send a confirmation email with the proposal attached and ask that it be signed prior to the shoot. 

The proposal is not a lengthy contract and is certainly not binding but it does outline our expectations in a clear, concise bullet form. If there are questions about our terms, I want to be able to address those PRIOR to showing up to shoot.

We will be working with each group of students to give them suggestions and help them learn more about our business and then they will create a 17-25 page project that we will receive in April.  We have been invited to attend the student presentation the end of April and definitely hope that we can be there.  As an added bonus after the end of the semester, we will receive an information and recommendation sheet for social media from the instructor, Dr. Mark Wolters.

I have a degree in Public Relations and have been in marketing for a very long time but I am so excited to hear the recommendations of these groups.  I just don’t have the time to spend doing this sort of project on my own between all of our other responsibilities.  There is no way we could afford to pay for a marketing analysis of this magnitude.  We cannot wait to see what the groups find!

If you own a small business, your local university can offer some great opportunities for you.  My niece is currently the Director of Marketing for the Memorial Hospital of Adel in Adel, GA and she got this job after serving her internship for the hospital while getting her Master’s in Public Administration at Valdosta State University (my alma mater!!).  Her internships gave her a chance to try out several different fields and gave the hospital a chance to see the quality of her work and work ethics prior to hiring her.  

Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides 360º virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  To learn more, visit us at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or call us at 404-863-9769.

Before we started Vision Quest Virtual Tours, I worked for a therapeutic boarding school that had been embroiled in a multi-million dollar lawsuit.  The bulk of the lawsuit was thrown out by the judge and a small portion was settled but the mother who initiated the suit had a vendetta that lasted until the school eventually closed.  The school survived the lawsuit but did not survive the onslaught of internet attacks that this mother led.  A Google search for the school’s name yielded the school’s website first and second and our virtual tour as the third  listing but the fourth through seventh items that are returned were negative attacks.

These vicious and somewhat baseless attacks were led by this woman but appeared to come from several disparate sources.  Because they seemed to come from a variety of sources, they appeared to have merit in the eyes of the prospective parents I talked to.  Since the third item that came up in the Google search was the virtual tour, I was able to separate the truth about the school from much of misinformation that was out there.

We get about 1,500 hits per month to our website but even more importantly than that, we drive those hits from dozens of different sources. My experience at the school made me realize the importance of variety in Search Engine Optimization.  We blog regularly and submit our tours and blogs to over 40 different websites and we get lots of web exposure as a result.  If you search “Vision Quest Virtual Tours” on Google, there are two full pages about us before anyone else even shows up.  This is a big deal because our name Vision Quest  and the term Virtual Tours are pretty generic terms that are used by many other companies. 

The Google search for our name returns references from 16 different websites in the first three pages alone!  Google juice comes from having lots of different backlinks to your website.  The fact that someone searching for our name yields returns from not only our website but from 15 other sources on just the first three pages helps to boost our credibility.  Many people who do a search for our company aren’t really looking for more information as much as they are for validation that we are who we say we are.

The very first Google result that refers to anything other than our company is on the third page and is titled “Co-Ed Naked Networking on Vision Quest Retreats”.  While our web content is scintillating, I am pretty sure that Co-Ed Naked Networking would catch the eye of anyone who is searching the web in the same way that the negative posts caught the eye of people who searched for the school.  When someone searches for our company, I want them to be thinking about virtual tours - not co-ed naked networking!

Vision Quest Virtual Tours photographs high definition 360º panoramic virtual tours all over the country.  We specialize in the areas of healthcare, hospitality and education.  We have photographed tours in 31 states but when we aren’t on the road, we split our time between Charleston, SC and Quincy, IL.  Vision Quest Virtual Tours is owned by husband and wife team Greg and Paige Mitts and the only co-ed naked networking we do is with each other!  To learn more or to schedule a tour, visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or call us at 404-863-9769.

There’s an old saying that being an artist is a great way to earn a living as long as you don’t starve to death first. Owning your own virtual tour business is a 100% commission deal.  You only get paid if you get someone to buy your services.  This can be frustrating for someone who has great technical skills and is a great photographer. It was the same when I was in the financial services world - the most technically proficient and skilled planners were often the worst salespeople and were shocked that no one wanted to use their services.

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we have a clearly defined business model that works well for us.  Our primary focus is healthcare, hospitality and education.  This business model fits well for our unique situation because we have no kids or pets and therefore have the ability to travel on a full time basis.  We enjoy shooting real estate virtual tours but until recently we did not pursue that business because of our travel schedule.  We now have a photographer in our home town whom we trust and who can shoot those tours for us when we are on the road.  The great thing about real estate virtual tours is that once the relationship is built, there is the potential for a consistent stream of income.

While what we do works for us, we never want to imply that our business model is ideal for everyone or is the only way.  The great thing about owning your own virtual tour business is that you can set up your business however YOU choose.  By choosing a great partner like we have in RTV, Inc., we can focus as much or as little time as we want to our business and still offer a fantastic product.

Our only source of income is virtual tours however there is absolutely nothing wrong with having your virtual tour business be a part time venture and having something else be your core business or main source of income.  I believe that there are a few keys to making a part time virtual tour business work.

• Differentiate between part time and spare time.  If you are working a full time job and/or have a family, then there is really no such thing as spare time.  You must be diligent about making time for your business on a consistent basis.  If you do nothing other than make one new contact a day, you will eventually see results.  Set a finite minimum goal for every week.  I prefer to not make that a time goal but instead an objective goal.  My goal is to make 100 new contacts a week.  Perhaps a part time goal would be to make one new contact every day and a total of 10 for the week.  The key is consistency.

• Create your unique value proposition.  At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we photograph high quality virtual tours at a reasonable price in the areas of healthcare, hospitality and education.  That does not mean that we don’t do other types of tours but by knowing what our value proposition is, I can then target my marketing approach.  Your value proposition is based on your specific skills - you can choose to compete based on superior photography skills, being the most efficient and better value, based on knowledge of a specific business, etc. 

• Count the cost.  I talk about this a great deal because I have seen so many people enthusiastically throw their hat into the self employment ring and end up failing miserably because they did not count the cost ahead of time.  There is a ramping up period that is inevitable in any new business.  Owning a virtual tour business requires a relatively low initial investment compared to other types of businesses but it is also not type of business where the business flows in as soon as you announce you are in business.  

• Analyze your market.  Is there enough demand for what you want to offer in your local area or are you going to have to expand into neighboring communities?  We live in a small town with 40,000 people and ours is the largest town in the region. If we were tied only to the local area, there would not be enough business for us to operate long term on a full time basis.  We chose where we live because it is centrally located and allows us to easily travel from coast to coast.

• Consider the rewards.  What if your virtual tour business only generates an extra $500 a month of income?  For most people, that amount of money makes a huge difference in their lives.  An extra $500 a month would make a huge difference in what type of car you can drive, how quickly you pay off your debt, what kind of vacation you can take, what kind of house you can afford.  What would an extra $500 a month do for you?

Having a good business plan is vital to running a successful business in the long run.  Again, whether that business is for extra income or your full time job, having a plan lets you measure your success.  No one should ever misunderstand us to say that ours is the only viable or worthwhile business model.

Plato said, “All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at  the right moment, without meddling with anything else.”  One of the greatest experiences of my life has been the chance to do work that fits with my natural gifts and even better than that is finding work that combines my natural gifts with my husband’s natural gifts and allows us to work together.

We feel lucky that our ONLY business is Vision Quest Virtual Tours.  We found a market that allows us to do nothing other than photograph virtual tours without having to do other types of photography.  Because of our crystal clear focus and understanding of what we do well, we are able to produce superior quality work with relative ease.

I watch Greg creating tours and know that if I were to try to do what he does, it would take me four times longer if I didn’t give up in frustration long before then.  He is the technical one in our partnership.  He knows the shortcuts in Photoshop, he has developed systems to allow him to build multiple tours at the same time, he knows what he is looking for when color correcting an image. By the time Greg is finished creating a virtual tour, he has taken the images through five or six different software programs but he makes it look easy because he is working within his area of expertise.

Greg listens to me on the phones and is amazed at how easy it is for me to talk to people about our virtual tour business.  I LOVE calls like the one I got today where the client told me that his web guy said he didn’t need the virtual tour and I got to overcome a laundry list of objections.  I have spent hours on the phone over several months and today he finally got it! I was able to answer all of his questions and we are doing 8 virtual tours for him next week.  That sort of thing fires me up but I understand that wouldn’t be the case for someone who doesn’t share my natural gifts and skills.  Talking to someone 20 or more times before they say yes gives me a huge sense of accomplishment! 

If you haven’t already found a way to get paid to do something you love, consider taking the time to write down a description of your ideal lifestyle.  What would your work hours be?  What would your role be in the company?  Who would you work with?  What special skills and talents do you bring to the table?  Then look at your current life and ask yourself “What is keeping me from living my dream?” 

By knowing ahead of time what your vision is, you can recognize it when the right moment comes along.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides high quality virtual tours for heathcare, hospitality and education.  We have photographed tours in 31 states but when we are not on the road, we split our time between Charleston, SC and Quincy, IL.  To learn more or to schedule a tour, visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

I feel like I am writing a book report as I finish my blogs about the Traveler’s Gift, by Andy Andrews, I cannot help but share the valuable insights from this book.  The final three Decisions shared in the book are all about choosing how we react to the circumstances of life:

• Today I choose to be happy.  I am the possessor of a grateful spirit.
• I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit.  I will forgive myself.
• I will persist without exception.  I am a person of great faith.

It’s hard sometimes to remember that we choose our attitude.  During an extremely difficult time in my life, I made the decision to conquer grief and depression and instead focus only on positive things.  I got rid of my cable subscription and made cd’s of only positive and uplifting music to listen to instead.  I read books that were positive and every night before I went to bed, I would list the things that I had to be thankful for.  The list got longer every day as I began to change my choices and LOOK for things to be thankful for.  I began to let go of past hurts and grievances and instead choose to forgive others and myself for mistakes of the past.

Choosing to have a good attitude does NOT mean ignoring the reality and circumstances of your life but rather choosing to focus on what you can change instead of dwelling on what you can’t.  There are a million excuses why something can’t be done but there are always at least a handful of reasons why it CAN at least be attempted.  If I fail, I want it to be because I tried everything possible to succeed.  Only then can I rest knowing that I did my best.

This is not to say that you don't need to carefully consider an endeavor before starting it, it just means that one should weigh the costs and decide whether or not to go for it.  We started our virtual tour business at the peak of the recession.  We were broke and unemployed and in the middle of a terrible economy but we took advantage of an opportunity and have turned it into the business of our dreams.  If we stop to look at the obstacles we face and the odds against us, then we might never have started on this journey and oh what a mistake that would have been!

The book The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrew is about Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success and I am reflecting on how these decisions apply to our virtual tour business. I wrote earlier about the first Decision - “The buck stops here. I am responsible for my past and my future.”  The next three decisions are somewhat interrelated as they are all about our actions.

The second Decision of the book came from King Solomon and was “I will seek wisdom. I will be a servant to others”.  It seems strange that the man who is considered the wisest man ever would advise the traveler to seek wisdom.  But there is truth in the idea that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.  Our virtual tour technology provider, RTV, Inc. has a national conference that we will be attending in May.  I will be teaching other virtual tour providers about how to market their virtual tour business but the real reason we are attending is to learn from other virtual tour dealers about their best practices.  Even after almost 15 years as a professional photographer, Greg is always open to learn better ways of improving his skills and systems as a photographer. 

The third Decision of the book is “I am a person of action. I seize this moment. I choose now.”  This decision was shared by a Civil War colonel at a critical time in the war.  Given the choice to surrender or charge, the colonel gave the order to charge and in doing so changed the outcome of the war. 

Quitting is often a temptation but as the colonel in the book said, “When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act.”  Most of us will never face a physical battlefield but we must make this same decision on a daily basis in the battlefields of our minds.  Armed with this simple philosophy, we can usually win our battle at least for the day.

I have found a way to work my way through a quagmire is often not to focus on the big picture but instead to break my actions down into manageable pieces.  I have a goal of making at least 100 contacts every week and that number can be overwhelming so when faced with the temptation to take a break or quit before the end of the day, I force myself to make 5 more calls.  Usually, the 5 turns into 10 and the 10 turns into 20 but by deciding to do SOMETHING, I am often able to get over the hump.

The fourth Decision, “I have a decided heart. My destiny is assured” was shared with the traveler by Christopher Columbus during his journey to find the New World.  Armed with little other than a dream, Columbus was passionate about his vision of an undiscovered land.  This passion allowed him to push on despite months of travel with no land in sight...and despite the fact that almost everyone thought he was crazy to try. 

Having your own business requires just this sort of determination - especially the sales part.  Like I said earlier, I know that when I am calling for a new area, I need to make about 100 calls in order to book two or three tours.  What that means is that I am going to get no one on the phone or get told NO about 97 times a week.   I got an email last week from a business that said they were interested in doing a tour but needed to pass for now.  I exclaimed my disappointment and Greg said, “I think sometimes you think everybody that shows any interest is a Yes”. 

I realized at that minute that there’s a reason that he’s the photographer and technical guy and I’m the salesman.  He’s right...I absolutely believe that everybody that I talk to would benefit from what I am selling because before I call, I have researched their websites to see if a virtual tour would be a good addition to their marketing efforts.  I know the value and quality of our tours so I am absolutely flabbergasted every time someone tells me “No”.  If I did not think that way, I would become overwhelmed by the 97 No’s I get and I would want to quit making the calls.

But like Columbus, even though I may not see dry land, I have a clear vision of where I am going and I know without a doubt that if I put in the hours on the phones, the results and my destiny are guaranteed.  There are many things you can’t control when you own your own business but you ARE in control of your actions and your attitude.  

To learn more about us or to schedule a tour, visit www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.” - Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice in Wonderland” tells us that if we don’t know where we are going, then it really doesn’t matter what road we are on.  Unfortunately, many people run their small businesses with the same philosophy as Alice. 

It is easier to get back from somewhere you’ve been than it is to go somewhere you’ve never been before.  One of the easiest ways to set your goals at the beginning of the year is to examine what you accomplished the previous year. 

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we specialize in Healthcare, Hospitality and Education.  Our goal is to focus our marketing efforts and business in these specific areas.  Our year end numbers prove that these marketing efforts paid off as 90.5% of our business came from those areas.  For 2011, 52% of our income came from healthcare virtual tours and boarding school virtual tours.  For that same time period, 38.5% of our income came from hospitality - vacation rentals, bed and breakfasts, inns and hotels. 

It’s not that we don’t do virtual tours in other areas but because we know what our market is, that is where we focus our efforts.  We did about 5.5% of our business last year for residential real estate and the remaining 3% were a variety of different businesses.

Unlike Alice, because where we want to go, we have a much better idea of which road to take...which is a very good thing because in 2011 we photographed 350 virtual tours in 31 states!

If you are considering starting a business, look not only at the long term profitability but also the short term expenses involved in start up.  One of the big downfalls for small businesses is not being prepared for taxes at the end of the year.  Because we are self employed, we knew what our end of year income was on 12/31 and because Greg does such a great job as the CFO of our virtual tour business, I also knew exactly what our expenses were for the year.  Last week, I gathered all the information for our taxes and did a preliminary estimate of what our tax situation will be. 

2011 was our first full year in business so we had no idea what we would owe in taxes therefore we did not send in quarterly estimated payments.  With much anticipation and a little apprehension, I calculated our taxes and realized that we are going to end up writing a pretty good check to Uncle Sam.  At first I was unhappy that we didn’t have enough write offs to offset more of the taxes but in retrospect, I am pretty excited.

Owing taxes means that Vision Quest Virtual Tours made a significant profit in our first full year in business.  We shot 350 tours in 31 states last year so we have almost 39,000 BUSINESS miles that we can write off for the year.  At 51 or 55 cents a mile, that is a significant write off.  We are able to write off our phones, internet, meals, uniforms, advertising, supplies...if you own your own business, you know that the list goes on.  Even after all of the deductions, we still owed a good bit.  As hard as it is to write a big check to the IRS, our hope is that we owe twice that much next year because as small business owners, we only pay taxes on our PROFIT!

Starting our virtual tour business was something we did after lots of research and planning.  We operated the business on a part time basis the previous year and made enough to cover all of our start up costs.  On December 30, 2010, I quit my full time job and we dove headfirst into the self employed world.  We went full time only when we knew we had enough consistent and projected income to make the business viable for the first year.  Because we had done a great deal of preparation in the year before we pulled the full time plug, we were ready when the opportunity presented itself.

We credit much of our success to having a great partner who allows us to focus on what we do best.  Originally established in 1999 as RealtorVision and now RTV, Inc. proudly supports Vision Quest Virtual Tours as well as over 100 thousand real estate agents in 27 countries.  They are the largest full service virtual tour and property marketing network in the World and yet allow us the autonomy to run our own business and make our own decisions.  With them acting as our back office, we can focus on photographing and building virtual tours and let them focus on things like research and development of new technology and hosting our tours.

If you are considering starting your own business, count the costs and weigh the risks.  Statistics will tell you that between 50 - 90% of small business fail within the first year and yet the dream of many people is still to own their own business and defy those odds.  We are living proof that the rewards far outweigh the risks!!

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is owned by Greg and Paige Mitts.  We specialize in virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  To schedule a tour or learn more, visit us at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 843-410-4701.

I just finished reading the book “The Traveler’s Gift” by Andy Andrews and it had a profound impact on me.  This simple little book describes the journey of a man who travels back through history to learn important lessons from historical figures such as Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln.  As I read the book, I couldn’t help but think about how these same lessons apply in my life and business.  The subtitle of the book - Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success - refers to these seven lessons.

The first decision was explained by Harry Truman and the lesson is that “The Buck Stops Here” or in other words, we all must take personal responsibility for where we are.  Andrews writes, “I am where I am today -- mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially -- because of how I think”.  In order to change where I am, I must change how I think. 

How I think determines how I act and the decisions I make.  The decisions I make today, directly control the outcome of where I am tomorrow.  Every day we face the cumulative effect of all the other decisions we have made.  I have a terrible habit of staying up way too late which means I wake up late which means I lose valuable business hours. I have the same amount of hours that everyone else does in a day but it’s how I utilize them that determines my success. 

Not only must I focus on working hard, I must also work smart.  Not all of those hours are equal.  Sure it would be a great idea for me to go for a run but right now may not be the ideal time for that.  A run would take me away from my desk during business hours and right now I need to be talking to people about virtual tours.

We feel blessed to have a successful virtual tour business, Vision Quest Virtual Tours.  We frequently hear people tell us that we are so lucky or that they are jealous of the life we live but many decisions go into our success.  Here are 7 of the decisions that were critical in getting us where we are today:

1. We chose to downsize our stuff so we could supersize our lifestyle.  We live in a tiny house with a tiny payment and very little overhead.  We have just one car.  Because we have chosen to travel, we don’t need a bunch of stuff or a big house.  Because we don’t have a bunch of stuff, we are free to travel. 

2. We live entirely on cash and have chosen not to utilize credit cards.  This sometimes affects where we are able to travel or the timing of certain purchases but it gives us a sense of certainty in knowing that we haven’t gone into debt to start or run our business.  It also means we have to carefully watch our balance sheet to make sure we are keeping the pipeline of future business full.

3. We decided that one shared income was enough since it meant that we get to work together every single day.  There are times we would love to have at least one steady paycheck but this is the risk we chose in being self employed.  The rewards greatly outweigh the risks.

4. We decided that we would focus our time on what we do best.  For us that is two main lines of business - healthcare and education and Vacation rentals and hospitality.  By having a crystal clear focus, we can streamline our efforts and create an impressive portfolio in those distinct lines.

5. We dedicated our business to serving others and we give back a portion of every dollar we make.  We think “luck” has very little to do with our success so we honor the giver of the gifts through donated tours and charitable contributions.

6. We decided that we would price our virtual tours in a manner that made the accessible to almost any business.  We believe so highly in the value of the virtual tour and have seen what it can do for a business.  We would rather have many smaller jobs than try to gouge a few people.  We believe that by offering a high quality product at a fair value, everyone wins.

7. We decided that having the right partner changes everything and we are so grateful that we chose RTV, Inc. for our virtual tour technology.  They are constantly evolving and refining their systems so we don’t have to spend any of our time, money or efforts on researching and development.  We have a back office that makes us look even better than we are and we are eternally grateful for the support of the RTV team. 

These are Seven Decisions that have helped determine our personal success.  What are the decisions you have made that have gotten you to where you are today?  What decisions could you make that could change where you are tomorrow?  I’ll be blogging about the other decisions over this week but for now, it’s business time and I need to get back on the phones. 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a full service virtual tour provider specializing in virtual tours for Healthcare, Hospitality and Education.  We split our time between Charleston, SC and Quincy, IL however have photographed over 350 tours in 31 states.

We photographed 350 tours in 31 states last year and drove 39,000 miles to shoot tours.  We photograph a wide range of virtual tours and our prices range anywhere from $100 to $2,500 depending on the size and scope of the job.  I read a Facebook comment earlier today from a photographer that said that he would not consider shooting using HDR unless it was on a higher price tour because he felt like it was extra work and the extra time made it cost prohibitive. 

That confounds me!  We pride ourselves on providing an excellent product no matter if we are shooting a one bedroom condo or a huge hospital.  Like I said earlier, we charge according to the scope of the job but every single image we shoot is photographed using the 9 exposure technique because it gives us the best results every time...and we think that's why our customers choose to work with us!

By the time we publish a virtual tour, we will have used no less than 6 different software programs to create the end result.  Because of the volume we do, we have streamlined our processes and invested in our systems so that in actuality it takes us almost the same amount of time to shoot a tour using HDR as it does to shoot without it. Even if it does take a little longer, we find it easier to just do our best work every time and trust that it will all even out in the end.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours specializes in virtual tours for Healthcare, Hospitality and Education.  When we are not on the road, we split our time between Charleston, SC and Quincy, IL.  To learn more or to schedule a tour, give us a call at 404-863-9769 or visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

I learned from this was that when you are making a sale -- whether it be a $6 million sale or a $60 sale -- no one can tell your story better than you.  This is a lesson I have never forgotten and keep in mind when I am making sales calls.  I believe that I can tell my story with a good voice mail but it’s not unusual to find a business where the person I am trying to reach does not have voice mail and I am asked if I want to leave a message. 

My answer to the question “Can I take a message?” is to simply and politely say that it would probably be easier if I just call back.  I usually say, “Why don’t I just call her back in case I get back on the phone.  That way we don’t have to play phone tag” and then I ask when might be a good time to try back.  I tell the person taking the message who I am and who my company is but then explain that I would prefer to explain what we do and it would be much easier for me to tell that story than ask the receptionist to do it for me.

When I get the chance to talk to a decision maker, I am pretty good at sharing my passion for what we offer in a way that convinces them of the value of a virtual tour for their business.  The challenge is trying to share that passion in a little pink message slip to be interpreted and conveyed by someone else.  This is what I must do when I am asked to leave a message and my preference is not to take that risk.

There are many reasons I want to be the one telling our story.  I am passionate about our virtual tour business.  I am lucky to work with my husband who is also my best friend and I am very proud of his talent as a professional photographer.  We have an incredible portfolio and have worked with leaders in the industries we represent.  I have seen firsthand what having a virtual tour can do for a business.

Again, I find it helpful to tell the person on the phone who I am, what we do and why I am calling because the main job of a receptionist is to act as the gatekeeper and keep pesky salesmen like me from bothering decision makers.  By befriending the person answering the phone, I greatly increase my chances of getting through the next time I call.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is located in Quincy, IL.  We provide virtual tours in Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa as well as all over the country.  We specialize in healthcare, hospitality and education as well as residential and commercial real estate.  To learn more or to schedule a tour, visit our website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

A virtual tour is a perfect way to provide a preview of the items for sale as well as show the property that is included in the auction.   We did our first virtual tour for them yesterday and were thrilled with the results.  The house is being remodeled so we will go back once it is done and take the interior pictures of the home but this tour allows someone to get a great idea of what is being offered without having to go to the preview day.(click here to view the tour)

We have priced the auction tours a little higher than a plain real estate tour since we will be doing more stills of particular items.  We are looking forward to creating a great partnership with Sullivan Auctioneers and the best news is I get a sneak peek at what is going to be in the auction! 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides high quality 360º real estate virtual tours in Quincy, IL and the surrounding areas.  We focus nationally on healthcare virtual tours, school virtual tours, bed and breakfast virtual tours.  To learn more, visit our website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

As the internet has evolved, so have our expectations for websites.  Remember when people used to ask you if you HAD a website?    Now having a website is a given -- if you have a phone number and a business card, you probably should have a website.  The internet has provided us a virtual mall where we can browse around and get a real understanding of our options before actually actually engaging the services of a particular business.

The problem is that many websites today are nothing more than a glorified business card.  The days of just putting pictures and text on your website and asking people to decipher your message are over.  We are so inundated with data that we no longer want to sift through pages of information to find out who you are and what you charge.  As I research prospective customers for our virtual tour business, I am amazed at how often I have to search multiple pages just to find the phone number for the facility much less the name of someone to talk to.  Now granted, I am on the website trying to get this information so that I can sell our virtual tour services to them but MOST people are on a company’s website as potential customers for THEIR services.

Whether we are talking about healthcare facilities and treatment programs, vacation rentals or residential real estate, there is no shortage of competition for business in today’s market.  Most people use internet searches to create a “short list” of options to call later.  I know that’s what I do.  Once I have created a short list, I go back and review all the detailed information to help me further narrow down my choices.  Most of the time, I want a quick overview from the home page that answers my basic questions -- who is this business, what do they do, what makes them special and who do I need to talk to if I am interested.

A virtual tour is a one click way to answer many of those questions.   If the information on the home page interests me, I will then go on to read the rest.  By providing an automatic overview of the program, home or business, the virtual tour allows the prospective customer a chance to walk around without a pesky salesman asking “Can I help you?” 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides high quality 360º virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  We specialize in virtual tours for therapeutic residential treatment programs but we work with any business that wants to give their customers a chance to “look around”.  We are located in Quincy, IL but work with businesses all over the country.  Visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com to see why businesses in over 30 states have chosen us as their marketing partner.

As they neared their very expensive cars, Hubert bent down and picked up a quarter.  As he held it up, he asked the other men in the group if they had not seen the quarter on the ground.  Their answers were either that they hadn’t noticed it or hadn’t deemed it worth stopping to pick up because after all, as one man said, it was only a quarter.  Hubert looked at them all with disbelief and said “The day I step over money is the day they put me in the ground.”  Perhaps there’s a reason he was the most successful of the group.

It was Benjamin Franklin who is credited with the quote “Time is Money” but I have most often heard that quote repeated by people who have much more time on their hands than they do money.  I think Hubert would agree with me when I say that Time is Time and Money is Money.  I have been in sales for a long time and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it is how to tell the difference between Time and Money. 

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we determine our prices based on the amount of time and effort that a particular job will entail.   We publish guidelines on our website but those prices are often negotiable based on many factors such as our current work load, our travel schedule, the volume of tours a particular client is ordering at a time.

We are working with a ministry that has an extremely limited budget.  I explained to them that if we could do a tour for him on a Saturday before we leave town for a large out of state job, we would do the tour for 1/4 of our normal price.  It is a win/win situation for us -- he gets a high quality virtual tour and we get paid on a day when we would otherwise be sitting home watching television.  Now keep in mind, we are going to sleep late that morning and be home in time to watch the University of Georgia football game that evening.

It’s true that we will invest our time to do the job at a greatly reduced price.  We will have to pay for gas to drive to the job.  It’s true that we will then come home and have to process the job and create the tour.  And yes, we will have to pay for the hosting of the tour.  But at the end of that day, we will have more money in our pockets than we did when we started the day and frankly, Greg will be processing and building the tour as he sits beside me on the sofa watching the University of Georgia football game -- which is where he was going to be anyway!

I have blogged before that a business with no income is a hobby.  It’s true that we are in business to make money and as your business grows, you have to weigh the value of your time.  But I have to laugh when I hear people say that it’s not “worth their time” to leave their house for less than a certain amount of money.  Until there is someone willing to come to our house and pay us for sitting home, we will consider ANY job no matter what the price.

The key is to weigh the cost.  We don’t turn down full price jobs to do discounted tours and when we do a discounted tour, it is with the understanding that we will schedule them around our other customers.  I also spend my time talking to and encouraging new virtual tour providers who call me for advice on how to grow their business...but I schedule them for times when I am in the car between jobs or on the weekends when we are home relaxing - not during peak phone calling hours.

We rarely want to lose money on a job although we look at the big picture. If the job is one that could open other doors for us, is for a ministry that we want to support financially or a new business we want to encourage, we have no problem making less than our normal price or even doing the job for free sometimes. 

We have been blessed in our virtual tour business and we love to give back...whether it is of our time or money.  To end with another quote by Benjamin Franklin,

“For my own part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring favours, but as paying debts. In my travels, and since my settlement, I have received much kindness from men, to whom I shall never have any opportunity of making the least direct return. And numberless mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our services. Those kindnesses from men, I can therefore only return on their fellow men; and I can only shew my gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other children and my brethren. For I do not think that thanks and compliments, tho’ repeated weekly, can discharge our real obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator.”

We went from the place where a great month was 350 hits to the point where we were consistently at 1,250 hits for the month.  About that time, life got in the way and I stopped blogging for a few weeks.  We were out of town visiting family, we were packing to move, we were really busy photographing tours...there are plenty of “good excuses”.  But the fact is that Google is a fickle friend!

I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics of Google rankings and analytics but I do know that Google loves blogs or should I say, Google loves fresh blogs.  We blog on our own website as well as over 40 other blog sites and once I write a blog, I get an instant jump in visits to our website.  I get some residual readers over time but it's a trickle compared to what I get when I put in a new blog.  But during the time when I was too busy to blog, I saw a very profound drop in our website hits.  Our hits still maintained some of our momentum but we very quickly dropped from a consistent montly number above 1,250 down to 1,000.  Having worked so hard to get up to 1,000, I got busy with my blogging to make sure it didn't drop again.

The problem with being a small business owner is that you can’t rest on your laurels or past achievements for very long.  My part of the business is sales and marketing and that entails a long to-do list that must be maintained every day or else we will lose momentum in our virtual tour business.  I have now realized that near the top of that to-do list is to keep my blog current and fresh.  The value of Google Analytics is that I can track the results of my efforts.  I can see whether the cold calls I am making and blogs I am writing are driving traffic to the sight.  I've always said that you can't expect what you don't inspect and Google Analytics allows me to inspect my results.

Since Google’s constant question seems to be “What have you done for me lately?” and I’m going to be pretty busy for the next two weeks, I am writing several blogs over the next few days so I have them ready to post over the next few weeks.  After all, Google doesn't make exceptions for you when you're too busy!

Preparing for a virtual tour is much like putting on make-up.  The goal is to achieve a natural look without catching the eye of the viewer on a detail that isn’t what you want to show.  I believe the key to preparing for a 360 degree virtual tour is to stand in the middle of the room, turn in a circle and see what catches your eye.  Obviously you want to remove out and out clutter but there are other things that can cause a distraction when viewing a picture of a room.

Here are some things that are we find eye catching - and not in a good way.

1. Trash Cans -- One thing that we always try to move are trash cans.  Unless a trash can in a room is part of the decor, we move them out of the picture.
2. Mini blinds -- The metal ones are are notorious for hanging crooked or getting bent and this grabs my attention.  With a little adjusting, we can usually either pull the blinds up or straighten out the slats so that it doesn’t show.
3. Dust Ruffles/Bed Skirts -- These things somehow get pulled out of place when the bed is made so I try to make sure that the bedspread is even and the bed skirt is straight.
4. Light Bulbs -- The first thing I do when I go into a place to photograph is turn on all the lights and nine times out of ten, there’s at least one light bulb burned out somewhere in the house.  We don’t always have access to extra light bulbs so I am frequently moving hot light bulbs from one room to the next as we shoot.
5. Lamp Shades -- Speaking of turning on lights, lamp shades are another nemesis of mine.  Crooked lamp shades jump right out of the picture.  In addition to leveling them, I also try to remember to turn lamp shades so the seam is in the back.
6. Pictures and Mirrors -- Art, like makeup, can really enhance a room but a crooked picture is like smeared lipstick in my mind.  Sometimes pictures are hung crooked but most of the time you can nudge it a little and get it straight.
7. Papers and sticky notes -- I have a terrible memory so I understand the need to tack reminders all over the house but when it comes to taking the pictures, this little reminders just look like clutter.  Take them down for the picture and then stick them right back up.
8. Refrigerator Displays -- We all like to tack things on our refrigerator door but when taking a picture in a kitchen, we clear off the front of the fridge.

These are just a few of the things that we try to look for before starting to photograph but when I stand in the middle of the room and turn in a circle, there are often others that I see.  If you don’t pay attention to the little things, you may look back and realize they were the big things.

(Final line of this blog was a paraphrase of a great quote by Richard Brault -- “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” )

Vision Quest Virtual Tours specializes in 360º tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  For more information, please visit our website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

I have been in sales for years and making cold calls is an integral part of sales.  But I will be the first to admit that I still get butterflies in my stomach every time I sit down to make calls.   Given the chance, I could probably find enough excuses to put off cold calling for 27 years.  The problem is that if I don't sell, we don't eat so I have to find a way to overcome my cold call stage fright every time I pick up the phones.

I love CLOSING sales because I am a very competitive person and closed sales is how you keep score in my world.  Part of closing sales though is getting through all of the No’s and overcoming objections and making it through the gatekeeper to talk to the person you need.  I believe that some of the butterflies that I get when I sit down to call are just adrenaline and excitement of getting to do what I love.  Some of the butterflies are from knowing that Greg can't photograph what I don't sell so no matter how good he is on the back end, the front end is up to me and I don't want to disappoint him.  Some of the jitters are from plain out fear of the unknown because face it, there are a lot of unknowns when you make cold calls.

Keep in mind, I have great confidence in our company Vision Quest Virtual Tours.  I believe that virtual tours make a huge difference in the marketing efforts of the businesses I am calling and in the lives of people who own the homes and businesses we photograph.  I know that I am good on the phones and can build rapport with my clients.  When stage fright comes -- and it always does -- I have to remind myself that our customers are excited when we come to do their virtual tours.

My very first call this morning started with my standard question, “Have you considered adding a virtual tour to your website?”   The answer was, “Yes, we were just talking about it yesterday but I wasn’t sure who to call.”  I’ll admit that not all of my phone calls go that well or else I probably wouldn’t have the jitters when I sit down to make calls...BUT enough of them do that I keep calling and can estimate a predictable stream of income when I overcome my fears and put in the effort.

What we do has the potential to change people’s lives -- the home owner who sells their house because of the tour, the business who sees their business increase because their customers have a vision of what they do, the client who decides to get treatment they need because their fears are allayed by seeing where they will be going.  It’s worth fighting through the nerves because what we do matters.  At the end of the day, even if I haven’t closed a sale, I have shared information about a valuable service that we provide and I know that the Yes is always worth it no matter how many No’s I hear.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours specializes in virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  We believe that when making big decisions, the big picture makes a big difference.  To learn more, please visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

We travel most of the year with our virtual tour business, Vision Quest Virtual Tours, so the original plan had been to  give up our little apartment and put everything in storage but the thought of being homeless was abandoned when we found this amazing little house right on the Mississippi River.  It is in Quincy, IL where my husband Greg grew up and where most of his family lives.

We fell in love when we saw the first sunset off the dock and knew that we had found our home.  Greg snapped some quick pictures and did some panoramas and created a virtual tour so we could show family and friends our new place.  We only had about three weeks from the first time we saw the place until we load the U-Haul.  Furthermore, we have a two month trip to California and Oregon so we won’t be moving in until the end of October.  Everything we own will be in storage for two months while we are on that trip and I had two weeks to pack it all up.

I got a great understanding of the value of a real estate virtual tour from this experience.    We only looked at one house and we knew we had found our home.  I can’t imagine working with a realtor and looking at multiple homes and trying to keep them straight from notes or snapshots.  We only saw the house a few times and I am relying on the virtual tour to decide what comes with us and what we are giving away or selling.  Sure, I measured walls but it’s hard to envision how things will work without seeing the actual layout and that’s something I would not have had without our virtual tour.

People often ask us why we charge by the job instead of by the image and the answer is because we think that a virtual tour should really give you a chance to look around and get the big picture and we take as many pictures as necessary to tell the story.  We shoot a combination of 360º spins, partial panoramas and still images so that the viewer can really see the space.  Because I have that tour, I have been able to see how our furniture will fit, where the pictures will hang, what size curtain rods I need to take, where my dishes and kitchen stuff will go.  I have donated stuff that just doesn’t work in the new space.

I can close my eyes and see the sun setting over the Mississippi River from our deck but I am not as good at remembering how many cabinets are in the kitchen.  I would never have understood how valuable real estate virtual tours are without this experience.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours will be moving to Quincy, IL as of October 30th.  We specialize in 360º virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education but after seeing how helpful the virtual tour is to a home buyer, we will be offering our services to real estate agents as well!  For more information, visit us at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

We live in a town whose main industry is tourism and there are dozens of businesses locally who would benefit from the work that we do.  We have family members who owns a hotel and cabin rental company just a short drive from where we live.  My best friend’s husband is a realtor.  If one were applying “logic” then we would seem to have had built in markets to start our business.  However, when dealing with friends and family, logic does not always apply.

It’s called bartering and IT ROCKS!!!

A similar change has recently come about with our virtual tour business.  We began shooting our images using High Dynamic Range photography and the difference is unbelievable!

When we started our North Georgia virtual tour business, I did extensive research on our market and found that there was one major competitor who we would be sharing our  regional market with.  They had great market saturation with the Realtors and offered a quality product at a good value.  Our product and photography can go head to head with anyone anywhere but I saw no reason to go head to head.  We chose a different niche and focused our efforts more on marketing to businesses than Realtors and have enjoyed great success.

I shared last night about how we are living our dream life.  Vision Quest Virtual Tours allows us to travel all over the country  photographing healthcare virtual tours.  We love what we do and are successful in our business because we understand those specific, simple habits that always lead to success.  But today, I didn’t feeeeeeeeel like getting on the phones.

I learned sales from someone who was a Master in the art. In fact, he was so good at selling that I never could tell when it was that he actually made the sale. I learned more from him about life and business than I have from anyone in my life but he made it look so easy that I really thought that I could never do what he did.   It wasn’t until I went on several training appointments with the WORST salesperson in the world that I was able to understand the components of the sale. By seeing WHAT NOT TO DO, I was better able to understand the process of making sales in any business.

Our virtual tour business is aimed at providing high quality 360º virtual tours for businesses. Business owners have a strange tendency to be available during business hours so that means that my sweet spot for catching a decision maker is somewhere between 10:00 and 3:00. I may get a few people earlier but chances they are doing their morning running around just like me. I may get some people after 3:00 but I have found that late afternoons generally find people running around to finish before the end of the day. With a finite set of prime hours, I have to make sure that I am doing the activities during those hours that will yield the greatest results/income. 

We have an iPhone app called Quicklytics that allows us instant updates of how many people have been on our website in a given day, week, month or custom period. We watch our hit stats the way a stockbroker watches a market ticker. The reason we track this information so intently is because we have found that there is a direct correlation to the growth of our business.

In the classic book, Think and Grow Rich, Napolean Hill says , “When riches begin to come they come so quickly and with such great abundance that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.” Most successful businesses can look back and see when the business finally took off but rarely can they point to one specific event or decision that caused the spike. While we wouldn’t say our riches have arrived quite yet, our business has experienced exponential growth.

One of the objections I sometimes hear from prospective customers is that they aren’t interested in paying Vision Quest to create their virtual tours because they can do it themselves. Just as we can paint our own homes and change our own oil and cut our own hair, it’s absolutely true that you CAN do it yourself. The question is...should you?

The key to success in sales is figuring out what to do after you hear the word NO.  Even the best salesperson hears NO a great deal of the time.  But the fact is that 90% of YES's come after a prospective customer has said NO.     

In the past few weeks, two of our close friends in two different cities have had their homes broken into. Imagine walking into your home and finding that someone violated your sanctuary and taken your stuff. The trauma and shock of that experience must then be followed by the stress of dealing with police reports and insurance companies to detail what is missing.

Next weekend, Greg and I are going to Ringold, GA with our church to help that community which was decimated by a recent tornado. Homes and businesses there were literally flattened by the tornadoes...families lost everything. Again, in addition to the trauma of surviving the storm, can you imagine trying to remember everything you own and providing that detail list to your insurance company?

Vision Quest Virtual Tours has recently finished shooting 30 cabin virtual tours for a North Georgia vacation cabin rental company. Within a week after shooting these tours, one of the cabins had an unfortunate incident where renters using fake identification and stolen credit cards stole many of the valuables from the cabin including electronics, linens, decorations, dishes, and much more.

Luckily for the cabin owner, there was no questioning what was stolen because they had a room by room cabin virtual tour that showed the cabin exactly as it looked prior to being wiped out. Virtual tours are not just great for marketing, they are also invaluable should there be the sort of tragedy that we have seen examples of recently. 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours has recently finished shooting 30 cabin virtual tours for a North Georgia vacation cabin rental company. Within a week after shooting these tours, one of the cabins had an unfortunate incident where renters using fake identification and stolen credit cards stole many of the valuables from the cabin including electronics, linens, decorations, dishes, and much more.

Luckily for the cabin owner, there was no questioning what was stolen because they had a room by room cabin virtual tour that showed the cabin exactly as it looked prior to being wiped out. Virtual tours are not just great for marketing, they are also invaluable should there be the sort of tragedy that we have seen examples of recently. 

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a North Georgia virtual tour provider specializing in high definition 360 degree virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education.  Professional photography, cutting edge technology and a national presence are just some of the reasons that Vision Quest Virtual Tours has been chosen to provide healthcare virtual tours, school virtual tours and vacation virtual tours to businesses in 26 states this year.

For more information, visit us at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or give us a call at 404-863-9769.

We have found a remarkable rhythm and flow that has made this work but that’s not to say that there weren’t challenges. In the book, Daze of Our Wives, Dave Meurer says “A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' come together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” The biggest secret to our success was to learn how to blend our differences into a unified business plan.

In my last blog, I talked about having a vision for your business that was about more than just creating a stream of income and I believe that is essential to happiness in life. There is an great idea that if you find something you love, then the money will follow. If that were totally true, then I would be paid to eat watermelon and play with puppies all day. The real truth is is that a business that doesn’t make money will soon be out of business.

The Bible says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18. It is from that Scripture that we chose the name Vision Quest Virtual Tours.  Your long term goals are your VISION but your VISION must include short term objectives. Brian Tracy, the world renowned guru of goal setting, states “An average person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society...if that person has clear, focused goals”.

Short term objectives are different than long term goals. For example, a measurable goal of hitting a certain income must start with shorter term objectives that are designed as stepping stones to that goal. The problem with focusing only on goals is that one may overlook important steps that are necessary to reach the goal.
 

“For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect -- people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us -- then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.” Bill Collins, Good to Great

No one particularly wants to think about death or talk about planning a funeral but sooner or later, it becomes a reality that we all must face.  The decisions and plans that must be made after a death are overwhelming but these decisions do not have to be left to the last minute.  Pre-planning of a funeral is perhaps one of the most thoughtful gifts a person can give to their loved ones.  Most funeral homes now provide online services so that individuals can relieve their family of having to make important emotional and financial decisions during a period of great stress and grief.

A funeral home virtual tour allows this online pre-planning to be done without having to personally visit the funeral home.  

Gerber says, “The technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure takes the work he loves to do and turns it into a job. The work that was born out of love becomes a chore, among a welter of other less familiar and less pleasant chores. Rather than maintaining its specialness, representing the unique skill the technician possesses and upon which he started the business, the work becomes trivialized, something to get through in order to make room for everything else that must be done.”

To make sure that our business had a chance to thrive, we took a year and a half of building the foundation for our business before we quit our “day jobs” and launched Vision Quest Virtual Tours as our full time career.

I came to understand this concept fully after reading Max Lucado's book "Cure for the Common Life...Living in Your Sweet Spot".  For the first time, I really began to understand the uniqueness of my gifts far outweighed the list of my weaknesses when it came to the successes in my life.  This was life changing for me as it altered my analysis of career decisions.  Lucado says that you can find your "sweet spot" by looking back at your life and answering five questions:

1. When have you been really successful?
2. What topics can you talk about for days?
3. What are your optimal working conditions?
4. How are you best in relationship?
5. What makes you say YES?

Greg and I asked ourselves these questions and the answers to these questions gave us the framework for living the life of our dreams.

Professional photography, a national presence, the premier virtual tour technology...these are some of the many reasons that Vision Quest Virtual Tours has been chosen as the virtual tour provider for programs in over 25 states!  

What are you passionate about?

What drives your economic engine?

What can you be the best in the world at?

At Vision Quest Virtual Tours, we made the decision that we would focus our business where our passions are.  Our goal is to do most what we do best and for us that translated into shooting virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education. For Vision Quest Virtual Tours, the answer to the first of those question came very easily.  A study of our backgrounds gave us an easy and obvious answer to the first question.  

After more than a year researching virtual tour technology and about two dozen emails and phone calls with Jason LaVenture, there was no doubt that RTV, Inc. was the only choice for me. I am sure Jason had long given up on me by the time I placed my order but not once during that year did he give me anything other than his complete attention when I called with my endless questions.

We began the virtual tour business while working a full time job but our first big break came from a chance meeting in the grocery store. My wife met the owners of a cabin rental agency in the area where we lived. They had been considering adding virtual tours and we explained that we were willing to give them a super low price if they would let us use them as our guinea pigs. We ended up doing over 40 tours for this company in about six weeks while working my full time job. With that many tours, we learned how awesome RTV technology really is...and at the same time, we earned back our initial investment in the virtual tour technology. Over the next few months in business, we made an effort to do something each day to learn more and build our business and quickly realized that it was time to make the move to doing virtual tours full time.

Since the beginning of 2011, we have replaced two full time incomes and shot over 100 tours. Rather than focusing on real estate agents, we have focused on businesses. We have created a niche marketing virtual tours to healthcare, hospitality and education and have had the opportunity to photograph in 26 states in less than six months.

Our initial cabin rental company was an opportunity for us to build our portfolio and learn the system so it did not matter that we charged such a low price. That volume in such a short time meant we got to truly test the limits of the RTV technology and perfect our system of shooting and building tours. What it also did was allow us to showcase our work and gave RTV an idea of what we have to offer. When another cabin rental agency in our area called RTV and asked for a photographer to do tours for their 30 cabins, Jacque Burke of RTV called, emailed, texted and sent messages to us on Facebook because she knew we were the perfect fit! We sent samples of our work to the client and the next day began shooting for them. This time around, we shot all 30 tours in less than two weeks in between about 20 other shoots.

For anyone considering the virtual tour business, there is no question that RTV is the partner you want beside you. The technology is just the beginning. The training is fantastic. Even though I have a degree in photography and have been a professional photographer for 12 years, I learn something new every single time I watch a webinar. The technology has grown with us and is always on the cutting edge. We are confident that no one can beat the product we have to offer.

Thanks RTV for helping us live our dream!

Greg and Paige Mitts
VisionQuestVirtualTours.com

We have the ability to photograph virtual tours of just about anything...including the inside of a World War 2 airplane! But we do most what we do best and for us that means our focus is on healthcare, hospitality and education.

In looking at a very specific segment of our target market -- cabin virtual tours -- we have noticed a particular trend. After doing a Google search for the terms "Georgia Cabin Rentals", we went through 20 pages of listings before we started to see overlap. The interesting thing was that almost all of the cabin rental companies on the first page of Google had some sort of virtual tours! Granted some were just the typical slide show put to music, a YouTube video or individual panoramic shots but when Google ranking is so important, it would seem that these particular companies know something the others haven't figured out. Virtual Tours increase visibility!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but WE say a high definition 360 degree virtual tour is priceless. Vision Quest Virtual Tours provides cabin rental virtual tours to some of the top ranked Google searched cabin rental agencies. These virtual tours can also be made into YouTube videos further increasing your Google ranking. The text in our virtual tours is visible to Google which can further increase your Google ranking. But most importantly, the big picture makes a big difference and cabin rental virtual tours allow prospective renters the ability to take a look around each cabin with just one click. Knowing that just in North Georgia alone, a cabin rental company is competing with 20 pages of competitors would seem to make adding virtual tours of rental cabins a necessity.

Contact us to learn more or visit our website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.

Paige Mitts

404-863-9769

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a North Georgia Virtual Tour company that is a nationwide provider for high quality virtual tours for Education, Healthcare and Hospitality.  We offer a high quality service at an affordable price.  Call or visit or website for more details.

There is no additional cost to our customers! The new technology is ready for you to take advantage of on all previous and new virtual tours. How do you see one of your virtual tours on your mobile device? Just simply point your phone browser to one of your virtual tours links and enjoy. It’s really that simple! If you will like to see how this product looks in your phone just type this URL http://rtvpix.com/BU-8744-4CZNYO-01 on your smart phone right now and check it out!

Since late 2009, Vision Quest Virtual Tours has continually led the way in the North Georgia area with marketing implementations such as interactive HD virtual tours, virtual staging, panoramic listing sign riders, single property websites, listing syndication, virtual tour traffic reporting, interactive floor plans, and social networking training.

For more information call 404-863-9769 or email info@visionquestvirtualtours.com or visit their website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com .

About Vision Quest Virtual Tours
We’re a Georgia company that specializes in virtual tours for the Education, Healthcare and Hospitality industries. We are proud to use software developed by a Michigan company, Real Tour Vision in Traverse City. Together we use cutting edge technology to produce razor sharp images with the highest caliber customer service. More people choose www.realtourvision.com virtual tour company than any other virtual tour provider on the market. We encourage you to research the 360 virtual tour industry before making a decision. We are by far the most established virtual tour company in the industry. Our virtual tour customers, and their clients get only the best and most experienced advice and help from our staff. Thank you and enjoy our virtual tours.

Contact:
Greg and Paige Mitts
404-863-9769
info@visionquestvirtualtours.com
www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com 

Vision Quest Media

Have you ever wondered how to use social media in the workplace? Do you want to know how to rank higher than your competitors in search engines? This course is for you! Learn how spending 1 or 2 hours a week for dramatically increase your web presence. Follow this course and you will drive traffic to your website! This will be the best $25 you have ever spent! Take advantage today and get a jump start on your competition!

Atlanta Fly Inn - College Park, GA

Very private yard on dead end street with adjoining easement and surrounding acreage. 3/2 Ranch with metal roof and vaulted ceiling. Brick fireplace with wood burning stove. Two buildings with power and third with two rollup doors. Variety of plants and flowerbeds. Owner licensed in Georgia