WGAN-TV Training U | Urbanimmersive Franchise Network: Why Own a Franchise | We Get Around Network Forum

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	WGAN-TV \| Urbanimmersive Franchise Network: How to and Why Own a Franchise in Your Market \| Guests: Urbanimmersive Inc. President and CEO Ghislain Lemire and Urbanimmersive Inc. Executive Vice-President François-Hugues Liberge \| Episode: 186 \| Thursday, 20 April 2023 \| Urbanimmersive Franchise Network \| @fhliberge Transcript (video above) [00:00:03] Dan Smigrod: Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum: www.WGANForum.com Today is Thursday, April 20, 2023, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: Urbanimmersive Franchise Network. How to and Why Own a Franchise in your Market. And our subject matter experts to talk to us on this topic are: Urbanimmersive President and CEO Ghislain Lemire and Executive Vice President François-Hughs Liberge. Hello, Ghislain. Hello François. Good to see you. Thanks for being back on the show again. [00:00:47] Ghislain Lemire: Thank you Dan. Hi Dan. How are you? [00:00:50] Dan Smigrod: Awesome! For today's show, I am going to role-play. [00:00:56] "Lee Way": It may be helpful to know that my name is "Lee"... I'm a solo real estate photographer that does $100,000 gross annually. Typically I shoot residential real estate, some commercial, typically shooting 250 residential listings per year, averaging $400 per shoot. Sometimes just photos. I edit my own images; not necessarily happy about that. I am thinking about adding at least one photographer as an independent contractor; maybe two. I've never been happy with my website and feel free to ask me questions as I go through my questions. I think it may be helpful to know that I watched previous Urbanimmersive Franchise Network shows on WGAN-TV at: www.WGAN.INFO/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN - I can see all the shows, including the two most recent ones: 8 Reasons Real Estate Photographers Should Join the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network; and, Urbanimmersive Franchise Network: Deep-Dive Back-End Demo. I know that you have a show coming up on WGAN-TV: Urbanimmersive UiMeet3D 3D tours and ChatGPT = Lead Generation. I'm really, really familiar with Urbanimmersive Franchise Network because I've done my homework by watching the WGAN-TV shows. That said, I do have questions. I've also even been through your microsite: www.Urbanimmersive.com/Franchise Again, I've watched everything, I read this site, but here are my questions. I shoot Matterport. I'm open to moving away from Matterport - mostly because of how long the shoots take and how much I can charge for them and my market: Nashville, Tennessee and also because of the monthly hosting costs. Maybe François, Urbanimmersive offers 3D tours. How should I feel about making this transition? [00:03:22] François-Hugues Liberge: Like you said, Matterport charges you recurring fees that you have to pay even if no money is coming in, and the time capture is really long with Matterport. What do we offer? We offer more than just the 3D tours. Urbanimmersive Franchise Network offers a simpler platform that's integrated with your other services that will be a lot cheaper with what we offer our franchisees. Plus, with a time capture that's a lot more efficient, a lot quicker, so you have more time to do more residential listings. Instead of being a hurdle to offer 3D tours - time to capture and recurring charges - with Urbanimmersive 3D tours, you will have faster capture and no recurring charge tours to offer to your customers. [00:04:07] "Lee Way": I'm a little bit confused because it sounds like Urbanimmersive doesn't charge me anything for 3D tours. [00:04:16] François-Hugues Liberge: That's exactly right. We have a royalty: that's all you can eat buffet type of royalty. It's 3% that includes the use of our platform or PERP; which is a Photography Enterprise Resource Planning, plus what we offer as some basic products. For example, 1) single property websites; 2) 3D tours and 3) floor plans that are included in our 3 percent royalty. [00:04:41] Ghislain Lemire: Not all 3D tours are free. If you do commercial shoots, and Lee, you mentioned that you were doing commercial shoots too. The commercial 3D tours are charged USD$0.01 per SQ FT. Let's say you do a 10,000 SQ restaurant. You're going to pay 10,000 SQ FT multiplied by USD$0.01. [00:05:08] François-Hugues Liberge: That's $100 for the post-production services. [00:05:12] "Lee Way": You have mentioned a couple of things and it is a little bit confusing for me. I was going to ask about pricing later, but maybe it's helpful if I just understand how this Urbanimmersive Franchise Network pricing works. What my costs would be, so that when I asked you about Matterport 3D tours, I really can get my hands around that. François, you mentioned 3%, I think what my understanding was from reading everything on the website and watching WGAN-TV previous shows with you -- If I bill out $100,000 worth of services, then I'm going to be charged 3% of the $100,000. Essentially, you're sending the bills for me, that's part of what I'm buying into the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network, so, you know how much I'm charging my clients. [00:06:13] "Lee Way": It's pretty straightforward, if I bill out USD$100,000 for the year, I'm going to be charged 3% times $100,000 = $3,000. But, I'm going to be charged when I'm earning revenue; that's when I'm being charged. [00:06:27] François-Hugues Liberge: Exactly, as opposed to what I said, that's why the basic difference is that you're giving us money when you're making money. [00:06:34] "Lee Way": Then, there were two other components of cost. 1) Ghislain had mentioned that if I'm doing commercial real estate, I understand that there's a USD $0.10 SQ FT charge. Okay. I get that. Then, I'm going to ask you about editing photos in a moment, but it sounds like that's 2) the only other thing that you actually charged me for -- and I need to do through Urbanimmersive Franchise Network -- is have my photos edited by you and there's a rate card for that. I think I've heard three components of cost. 1) 3% royalty to the photo editing charge (which we are going to talk about in a little deeper when I asked my questions on that topic); 2) if I'm doing commercial shoots; I'm going to be charged USD$0.01 per SQ FT.; 3) 3% royalty. And there is also a small, one-time setup/training charged to get started. [00:07:39] François-Hugues Liberge: Really small just to cover the initial training charge which is minimalistic. [00:07:46] "Lee Way": I'm going to re-ask my question because I just can't believe that you're not charging me for shooting 3D tours. I mean, I pay Matterport a monthly hosting fee and it's a little bit crazy because of their new pricing. I have to hide my tours as quickly as I can otherwise I'm going to move up to the next recurring charge tier and the next tier and just keep paying more hosting. I'm trying to move away from that. I wanted to ask this question because I need clarity on this. If I'm shooting Urbanimmersive 3D tours, there is no charge for shooting them. There's no charge for hosting them. I only get charged 3% of what I charge my clients. [00:08:41] Ghislain Lemire: That is right. The 3D tours will be hosted for 12 months. After 12 months, you're going to receive an email saying, "Would you like to have another 12 months?" If yes, you're going to have to pay for it, another 12 months. But 12 months within the residential market, it's enough for most of the business. [00:09:07] "Lee Way": That works for me in terms of my clients, my clients will be happy, but I would still like to host my tours longer. Since I'm so prolific at shooting 3 D tours, I want to impress potential new clients. I want a lot of 3D tours to be hosted even if those houses have already been sold. Do you have your pricing yet on the charge after 12 months of hosting that is included? [00:09:32] Ghislain Lemire: It's $15 for another 12 months, Lee. But also if you have a large quantity of tours you would like to host, you can download the tour and it's very easy to host the tours on your servers (if you have a server and stuff like that, if you want to avoid costs.) Because our tours can be downloaded and working offline, actually. [00:09:56] "Lee Way": That's cool! And that's a great thing! But you had me at $15 for another 12 months. Got it. Again, I'm just so in disbelief (about free) that you have a really good 3D tour solution -- I'm really impressed with UiMeets3D. I've seen it online (and I've seen it in the www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com) and I can't wait until next week's show when you do a deep-dive demo of UiMeet3D 3D tours + ChatGPT. It sounds like I get unlimited 3D tours. No charge for unlimited floor plans -- as long as they are residential -- and I get unlimited single property websites. [00:10:47] Ghislain Lemire: Yeah, absolutely. It can be very useful to have unlimited property websites because if you have clients that work in teams, then he can provide three property websites: one for each of the team and another one that integrates all the team together. That's one point. [00:11:07] "Lee Way": Yeah. Well, at the moment it's just me. I'm a solopreneur. I hope to add one or two independent contractors. At the moment that piece really doesn't apply to me. I'm just obsessed with: 1) I can shoot my tours for free; 2) I can get free floor plans and 3) I get free single property websites. And, the only time I'm charged is when I'm making money (3 percent of sales). [00:11:37] Ghislain Lemire: Yeah. As simple as that. [00:11:39] "Lee Way": All right, that sounds like a very cool thing. I was thinking, maybe there's some monthly fee that I need to pay to Urbanimmersive. You're both nodding your head, "no"... I get that. I mentioned that I'm doing my own photo editing. To some extent it's holding me back because every time I shoot, if I'm editing, I can't be out shooting, and if I decide to delay it to the nighttime, then I can't be spending time with my wife. It is somewhat of a pain point to me, I'm an okay editor, I'm not the best. I have this sense that if I got out of the editing business, I'd have way more time in my life or whatever I want to do with it. You did mention that you charge for photo editing. Can you tell me about that? [00:12:35] François-Hugues Liberge: Yes. We charge for that. We charge per picture. And, we charge for 3D tours of commercial spaces (USD$0.01 per SQ FT). The way image editing works, when you do your shooting, download everything to our platform. We do all image editing overnight. You get your pictures back in the morning. One of the reasons we're really pushing for that also, we need consistency in image deliverables, because we will approach big customers -- nationwide customers -- so that way we're making sure that every picture that we deliver has the same quality. [00:13:11] "Lee Way": I'll ask you more about national accounts, but I want to stay on image editing. How do I need to prepare my files? Are you doing bracketed pictures? How do I need to submit my pictures for you for editing? [00:13:24] François-Hugues Liberge: Simply upload your images 5x bracketed. [00:13:27] Ghislain Lemire: First of all, we're going to ask you to use brackets. Yes, get the best image editing pricing with five brackets. Also, I think the output is better with five brackets. When you get home from your photo shoots, you just open our software, select your order, and drop all your brackets in what we call a bucket, and we take care of everything else. If you want, you can reorder the sequence of your images. [00:13:57] "Lee Way": Sorry, but I did watch your deep-dive demo on the previous WGAN-TV Live at 5 show, so I'm clear on the back-end. I just really just wanted to get clarity that I need to submit images as bracketed five times for best pricing and image quality and then I'm good. I could imagine that there's an image editing rate card and I can request it by emailing: franchise@Urbanimmersive.com Get a copy of that so I know what image editing pricing looks like. The key thing is I really need to deliver my pictures in the morning. What time do I need to get my images to you? I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm on Central Time. What time do I need to get the images to you at night in order to get them back in the morning? What time can I get them back the next day? [00:14:43] Ghislain Lemire: You can send them anytime you want. It's just that we're going to require at least an average of 12 hours to get all the images and send them back to you. [00:14:53] "Lee Way": That works. I get them to you by 8 pm and I'm going to have them by 8 am the next day for our client. [00:15:05] "Lee Way": I think from what I saw on your deep-dive demo that I can set it up so that my clients just get sent the pictures directly, even if I don't want to look at them. [00:15:17] Ghislain Lemire: Indeed, so we call that the automatic delivery. If you trust our system enough, you just opt-in for that and we will send the images directly to your client. They might even receive the images in the middle of the night. [00:15:29] "Lee Way": I'll ask more about that. I got some notes and I got some questions. I forgot to ask you about the Matterport thing. I don't mind moving to Matterport, but I know I have some clients that may be reluctant to move. How do I deal with that? What's my timeframe for migrating from Matterport 3D tours to Urbanimmersive 3D tours? Then, what if I have hold-outs that the only way I'm going to keep them as a client is if I continue to offer them Matterport 3D tours? [00:16:00] Ghislain Lemire: You are allowed to provide Matterport tours and our systems will allow you to put the links there and everything. The only thing that we're not allowing you, Lee, is to promote those competitive products. That's it. [00:16:19] "Lee Way": That's it? So as long as I take Matterport off my website, I can continue to offer Matterport for as long as I want and then migrate so that I'm offering and promoting Urbanimmersive 3D tours. [00:16:36] Ghislain Lemire: Indeed. [00:16:37] "Lee Way": Cool. The other thing was, I feel like I've been doing this awhile with my business and I've cobbled together all this stuff. I have Mailchimp for doing my eblasts. I have single property websites I get from another vendor. I mentioned Matterport. Even though I do Matterport, I get floor plans from a different vendor. My website, which I've never been happy about, is yet another company and I have website hosting that I'm paying for. I've engaged people to do SEO for me from time-to-time, I got a booking widget. I think I've lost count of the different things and I'm getting exhausted keeping track of all these things. My impression is that all the things that I can think of to run a real estate/virtual tour photography business, Urbanimmersive Franchise Network offers. [00:17:40] François-Hugues Liberge: Exactly, yes. It will become a one-stop shop for you, so you'll have one big supplier instead of many different suppliers. The good thing also is all those things you mentioned are fully integrated together. [00:17:54] "Lee Way": One of the shows, Amélie Ste-Croix Dube, your VP of Operations, talked about that. it would be okay to take my Mailchimp list -- export it -- imported into your PERP platform and then I can go turn off the annual fee that I pay Mailchimp, and then stop getting those charges on some other services that I either have as a subscription or I have as a pay per use. Is that part of the Urbanimmersive philosophy? Get it all under one roof and get rid of all those different things. [00:18:30] François-Hugues Liberge: Exactly. Our company owned franchisees experience the same thing: many recurring fees -- and per shoot fees -- that they could stop paying. So we're just replicating that model to other franchisees. [00:18:39] "Lee Way": I'm guessing you really don't give me a website for free though, is that an Add On if I decide that I'd like to have you do that, is that a one-time thing? [00:18:46] François-Hugues Liberge: There's a small charge for it. That's a one time expense and that's it. [00:18:49] "Lee Way": That seems pretty reasonable. I mentioned that I was thinking about adding one or two photographers as independent contractors. The things that are holding me back from doing this are: 1) how do I figure out how to compensate the photographer? Sometimes they're doing 3D tours. Sometimes they're doing 3D tours and photos. Sometimes 3D tours, photos and videos. The shoot services vary by job. Sometimes they are also doing drone photos. It just seems like it's a really complex process to figure out how to properly compensate the photographer: to track all that. Calculating paying them mileage. Then on top of that, I'm thinking, the coordination process because I had a photographer that was helping me out for a while, and every time a client would text me and go, "Lee, are you available at 10 am on Tuesday?" Then I would have to check with my photographer who would say, "Yes. I'm available at 10 am Tuesday." Then I would get back to the client and say, "Yes. That works. My team member is available." There's a reason that I've stayed small because I have these concerns. On the other hand, I know I can't grow unless I add an independent contractor or two. Could you help me understand? I don't really understand what an ERP is. I saw it in the videos. This Photographer Enterprise Resource Planning (PERP). It had all these words around booking, scheduling, invoicing, delivering. Maybe we could start with my photographer. How do you simplify how I can onboard independent contractors as photographers? [00:20:53] François-Hugues Liberge: Ghislain is not only our Founder and CEO, he is also a coder and that's part of the system and he takes care of it very well. [00:21:02] Ghislain Lemire: This is whenI'm talking too much. ;-) [00:21:06] "Lee Way": Don't geek me out. Just give me the top line please. Do I pay the photographer -- Do you keep track of everything that I want to keep track of? If I want to pay mileage; if I want to establish what the rate is; if I want to pay per photo; if I want to pay per 3D tour; drone photos and/or videos? Is there a way to easily, simply track all that? [00:21:33] Ghislain Lemire: Yeah, absolutely, Dan, and automate it. Actually, when you're photographers go shoot something for you, they will see in real-time how much that they will get paid and on your side, you're going to have an approval system where you're going to be able to see all the details of the shoots, how much is going to be paid for everything they've done during the shoot. Your margins -- actually the sales and versus the costs -- and you approve it and it goes to payroll. So it's a pretty efficient system that we have that enables you to run your solo photography business to a multi-large photography service like we do at Urbanimmersive. [00:22:18] "Lee Way": For the platform, okay, the client has ordered all this stuff and I understand they could place the order themselves without talking to me or I could take the order and inputted into the system, but assuming they place their order, and then I assign it to the photographer, and I saw on your previous show, it all mashes up with Google Calendar -- that made sense to me. Available photographer -- boom -- assigned. Assuming that the photographer delivers all the things that were promised to the client, and I've assigned a rate of pay to each of those tasks, then there's an easy way for me to look at it, approve and have it automatically go into where I would click on a button to pay the photographer. That's up to me whether I want to pay instantly or weekly. [00:23:16] Ghislain Lemire: Absolutely. Also your photographers will be able to exchange information with you, so if they have a comment, if they do need an adjustment like let's say they had to pay parking, stuff like that, they're going to be able to give you the information from their photographer panel (dashboard). [00:23:35] "Lee Way": That's helpful. There are some toll roads in the greater Nashville area. That's helpful to know. [00:23:44] "Lee Way": I saw the deep-dive WGAN-TV demo on this compensation thing, and so I really just wanted to confirm that. That's helpful to understand. [00:23:58] "Lee Way": Can you speak a little bit more about the coordination and scheduling? Maybe just a few minutes. What does the client do? How do I accept that? How does the photographer get it? Maybe what kind of communication is happening between the client; between me and the photographer; between the photographer and the client. Is that all done by the platform? [00:24:22] Ghislain Lemire: It can. Actually, you can still work the way you want to work. Let's say that you prefer a client texting you to say are you available tomorrow, stuff like that. You know, the system enables you to be flexible the way you want to work. But if you want to add the full automation that the system can provide you, yes. I mean, the system will provide your clients a step-by-step ordering system that will give the clients your availability, your hours and everything. It will calculate the travel fees and give your clients an instant confirmation. You can also opt-in to real-time route optimization. Meaning that you will encourage your client to pick hours during a day that will stack up your route in order that you will be able to do eight trips during your day, so you don't lose your time traveling here and there from one place to the other place. We're also optimizing the route in real-time. [00:25:21] "Lee Way": So Ghislain, does that mean I can have variable pricing to say if the client wants this exact time, it's this cost, or if they're flexible in terms of the morning and don't mind being juggled for efficiency purposes? How does that work? [00:25:42] Ghislain Lemire: You could do that. It's not usual that we see this. Actually, the way we encourage clients to pick a time that will optimize your route is simply by guaranteeing, actually, the hour of the booking. Let's say that you want to stack up and optimize your route as much as you can, the system will say, "Okay. This is a guaranteed hour, so if you pick that time, the photographer will not reshuffle your day." While the other time, we're going to give the photographer the flexibility to call you back and say, "You know what, maybe instead of being there for two hours, could we work at three hours because I have another shoot", or stuff like that. That's the way the system will try to encourage the clients to pick up the best time for you. [00:26:37] "Lee Way": I think I could handle more shoots if I wasn't just buried with the logistics. It just seems anytime a client places an order, it seems like through the life cycle of that order -- from how I take it to how I schedule it, to how I book it. I'm doing all these manual tasks of tracking, sending emails. I mean, is there a way to automate emails that confirm to the client that the photographer is on their way? [00:27:07] Ghislain Lemire: That's the basis of the system, to automate all of this so that you can really take advantage of a fully integrated system. And also if your client wants to cancel a meeting, an appointment, or just replace it another day and stuff like that, they don't have to call you. Actually, they can call you if you want. But they can do it online. [00:27:29] "Lee Way": Yeah. I mean, I've built a personalized business, [00:27:37] "Lee Way": and I do have clients that text me and it is a very short conversation because all they do is they say, "are you available at 10 am tomorrow?" The expectation is, okay, I'm going to reserve the time, they're going to send me the address, and that's the conversation. There's not much more. I have all the information about their name and address, all that, but right now I'm just manually managing all that process myself. [00:28:05] François-Hugues Liberge: But what if your customers will be able to see that while they're sitting right there with their sellers and they're both on with them online to book their appointments for the pictures your customers will like starting to use the automated platform to confirm their online booking. [00:28:21] "Lee Way": Yeah. I missed the name. You called it PERT or something? [00:28:25] François-Hugues Liberge: PERT, yeah. [00:28:27] "Lee Way": PERT. [00:28:28] François-Hugues Liberge: Photography Enterprise Resource Planning. [00:28:30] "Lee Way": Okay. I've heard that term before: ERP. [00:28:35] François-Hugues Liberge: "P" because we specialize in ERP for Photography, exactly. [00:28:39] "Lee Way": PERP. Okay. All right, that's cool. I suspect that I could be way more efficient in my business development. -- When I'm not busy, I start to make some outbound calls to check up on clients I haven't shot for in a while. I've been doing my email marketing and I do eblasts when I find the time. But it is pretty time-consuming to create these emails and then keep track. How can the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network -- I think you referred to it as a CRM in the last show -- how can you help me with my follow-up emails; with my email marketing? [00:29:27] Ghislain Lemire: There's two things with the marketing. So you have your home digital marketing on Facebook and all your social media. We're not going there with you. So this is something you're going to have to handle by yourself or with your selected preferred provider. On the other hand, we do provide you with an email marketing system that comes with many templates and you can also automate depending on different triggers that you want to set up with your system. So this is the less expensive, actually marketing system that you can use and it's built-in in the system, and it's super-easy to create new templates, send them to your clients just like that; a very efficient system. [00:30:12] "Lee Way": I'm assuming most photographers are either doing a bundle: it's 1) a 3D tour, 2) photos; 3) floor plan; and 4) a single property website. Are you creating templates for different bundles, different services? [00:30:29] Ghislain Lemire: Actually, you do have options of different templates and you can create templates with our system, so templates that are just for you. [00:30:38] "Lee Way": Okay. Now I know you said this before in our discussion that you don't you don't charge for email marketing, but I just wanted to re-ask the question. You're not charging me every time I do an eblast to my customers? All included? [00:30:57] Ghislain Lemire: It's all included. [00:30:58] "Lee Way": And what about tracking? Right now, I am using HubSpot in terms of trying to keep track. Sometimes I enter it into HubSpot; sometimes I don't. Is there an equivalent piece for Urbanimmersive Franchise Network in terms of tracking my sales calls? [00:31:18] Ghislain Lemire: Absolutely. Everything is included in terms of tracking your sales activities. Also tracking what your clients have seen on your website, so the page viewed and stuff like that, the statistics, so everything's included so you don't have to buy or to use a system like HubSpot or Salesforce and services like that. [00:31:38] "Lee Way": So it's another category, another vendor that I could save some money by importing my content back into Urbanimmersive Franchise Network; not be charged for a monthly fee and another vendor I can simplify my life and reduce my out-of-pocket expense. [00:31:58] Ghislain Lemire: I'll go further than that, yes. Let's say you become so big that at one point you want to hire a sales rep or an inside salesperson. The system comes also with a commission on activities and on sales that will ease the process of paying your sales rep. [00:32:18] "Lee Way": Okay. - François, you touched on this a little bit earlier when we were talking about photos of wanting to be consistent because of maybe some national accounts. I guess there were two questions. I think they're both money-related -- or revenue-related. Do you anticipate potential leads for our business? Do you anticipate potential orders from national accounts via Urbanimmersive Franchise Network? Could you touch on those two topics of how joining the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network might result in additional business for me? [00:33:01] François-Hugues Liberge: - Yes. Because we already have our corporate franchises that are covering many markets in the US. Many are maybe relative; a few markets. We still have many markets that we don't cover. But we have national customers that are in those markets and they're already dealing with us in the markets that we cover, so those customers are an easy target. When we open up franchises we tell them, "hey, now we have coverage in Nashville, Tennessee and Lee is there." [00:33:30] "Lee Way": - If you have a potential lead for me, is that my pricing or is that pricing that Urbanimmersive is specifying? [00:33:41] François-Hugues Liberge: - There's two different ways to look at it. Could be if it's a national deal that we have a special price all across the nation, then there's special pricing. If they just want to know if we would have coverage, then they can go through our website, through the marketplace, see that you're there and choose you as a provider. [00:34:03] "Lee Way": - So for clarification, just to make sure that I understand this is that I join the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network, you're doing some marketing at a national level. 1) It sparks an inbound inquiry for photography services in my town, Nashville, Tennessee. You might just forward that lead to me and say, "hey, this is what they expressed interest in. It would be your client, your pricing, it's up to you to close the deal." [00:34:35] François-Hugues Liberge: - Yes. [00:34:36] "Lee Way": - 2) Then the second thing I think what I heard was that there may be some business where -- I can imagine as a national account they don't want to talk to 150 photographers in 37 cities and negotiate pricing in every market, so you may strike a deal with a company that needs 150 cities covered in 37 US states, and then you'll maybe. [00:35:09] François-Hugues Liberge: - Have a pre-established price for those. [00:35:11] "Lee Way": - Come back to me and say, "hey, this is what the job pays, are you in are you out?" [00:35:17] François-Hugues Liberge: - Exactly, yes. [00:35:18] "Lee Way": - That's straightforward, I get it. Should I count on some extra business or should I just think of it as gravy if and when it happens. [00:35:29] François-Hugues Liberge: - We'll have some actually. We have partnerships with CoreLogic which is our main shareholder and they have partnerships with MLSs all across the US. So we are integrated in those MLSs also. For that -- especially smaller MLSs -- they are actually looking for photographers. Then because we have partnerships with them and franchisees, we'd be able to offer them a service and that'll give a few listings a month, the franchise that's in that territory. [00:35:58] "Lee Way": - I got to ask this question a little bit differently maybe and this might be for Ghislain, I watched the last WGAN-TV show. Again, when I was watching, Dan, gave out a short URL, www.WGAN.INFO/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN so I was able to watch all the shows and my ears perked up because it sounds like just before your last show that you did a deal with CoreLogic. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Do they own the whole company now? Do they bring in new business? Can you give me the top line on what that deal is and how it might affect me in Nashville, Tennessee? [00:36:48] Ghislain Lemire: - So actually we acquired from CoreLogic, HomeVisit, which was their photography services division. After the deal, we also completed a partnership agreement in which there's technological integrations, and a co-marketing program that we're putting in place. Overall, it's going to ease the process of making business with you and with our platform for real estate agents. That for real estate agents, also increases productivity. As an example, we established so far with 26 MLSs, a single sign-on system, meaning that if an agent is signed in, a system can automatically be logged in in your ordering system. But there's multiple integration to come as well. [00:37:45] "Lee Way": - That sounds like it might be less friction for the agent. They've already signed in and they can simply place an order because they see me on their platform. [00:37:56] Ghislain Lemire: - Absolutely. Afterwards, you can think about integration that will take your visual content and push automatically your content on the MLS as your clients will not have to download it and we re-upload it on their platform. It's all integration that looks like this, and also the visibility of the national platform so that you can get some orders, some leads from this integration. Like François said, CoreLogic owns 20% of the company, so it's the biggest shareholder. They're very serious about working with Urbanimmersive and making it like you say, I like your words: a friction-less experience for your clients. [00:38:41] "Lee Way": - Well, do I need to worry -- HomeVisit it's in my market -- do I need to worry that now I have a competitor that when I place an order through Urbanimmersive Franchise Network that HomeVisit has access to my clients? [00:38:56] Ghislain Lemire: - When you become a franchisee of Urbanimmersive Franchise Network, you have a protected territory, a full protection within your territory. Your clients are protected as well. So HomeVisit will not be able to run after your clients. We mentioned HomeVisit, but it could be other brands that we own. [00:39:17] "Lee Way": - I noticed you now have nine different companies that you bought. I love that you bought the companies because it sounds like before you even wanted to talk to me about joining as a franchisee, you've been able to work out all the backend systems with franchisees that you actually own. That said, I just wanted to make sure that they're not having a competitive advantage over my business in Nashville because you own them and therefore, their leads are going to automatically come in and get parsed out to one of those nine businesses if they're in my market. [00:39:51] Ghislain Lemire: - That's a good point. Actually, no. They're running exactly the same systems, the same procedure, the same rules that you're going to have to follow as a franchisee, but mainly protect territory and protected clients. [00:40:06] "Lee Way": - Well, since CoreLogic now owns 20% of the company, and now with this HomeVisit piece, do you think you'll end up having new national accounts as a result of that and/or simply leads from my market? Do you think that that's a significant thing that I should be really celebrating and that it's a really good thing? [00:40:30] Ghislain Lemire: - This is actually our goal. And in order to achieve that, we need you because HomeVisit is not everywhere. North America it's super-large. In order to create deals with national accounts, we need to have a very large network of franchise photographers because first, the franchise enables us to have a consistent output, consistent products and experience, so it's easy for companies like CoreLogic to integrate our system and provide a consistent experience. [00:41:06] "Lee Way": - I think I read that, in fact, I think it was in a WGAN-TV show. I think you mentioned that because of that CoreLogic acquisition they are big into print and direct mail, that that's something that may be a new service that you end up offering to us? Print? Direct mail? [00:41:28] Ghislain Lemire: - This is actually the cherry on top of the sunday, if you want, because HomeVisit is operating a pretty significant print operation. We have our own printers and everything. This is right now a service that is exclusively to the HomeVisit brand that we will soon roll out to all our franchisees. Meaning that soon, if you become a franchise of Urbanimmersive, you're going to be able to offer prints and direct mail services, which we expect will increase your business revenue from the same number of orders -- [00:42:11] "Lee Way": - I presume that's going to be an Add On. That's not going to be you're sending out free pieces of direct mail for me. But presumably I'm not paying for it unless I've actually made a sale. [00:42:22] Ghislain Lemire: - Yeah, it's going to be totally integrated within the ordering systems. Your client will be able to order; select the templates; select the neighborhood where they want to send the flyers and stuff like that. It's a turnkey solution. You won't have more work to do. We're going to handle everything from the design to print and everything, So it is going to increase your revenues. [00:42:43] "Lee Way": - Okay. That's cool. I look forward to learning about that when it comes out. François, I'm sorry I have a meeting coming up after this and I need to keep moving. François, I think you mentioned some business insights? I'm not sure. It was related to when I engage an independent contractor, you could tell like what percent I was paying to the photographer versus my revenue? Maybe Ghislain, maybe that was you? [00:43:15] François-Hugues Liberge: -The margins with the photographers. You can see on every shoot how much money you make. [00:43:22] "Lee Way": - You keep track of that? I'm thinking right now, "Okay. I paid for gas. I paid for the tolls. How much money did I actually make on that job?" Now, it is brute force for me to figure it out every time. Are there other business insights because it is in this PERP system? [00:43:53] Ghislain Lemire: - But you bring up a good point because actually, staffers at work within our groups (our company owned franchisees) find it pretty interesting to be able to see data and benchmark their own metrics with the rest of the group because we're very transparent. You are talking about margins. We're super-open about margins. What should be your margins? How much should you pay photographers? You are always going to have a group to talk with and benchmark your ideas, your pricing and stuff like that, so that's part of the advantages of being a franchisee. [00:44:30] "Lee Way": - Do aggregate all the data and anonymize it so that I can actually see, "Oh! My profile margin is 50%. The average is 60% of all the franchisees that are going through the platform." So I can't see who that is, but it's being aggregated and anonymized. [Yes!] Awesome! During one of the shows you mentioned, François, recurring revenue, I think you called it Prime. I couldn't get my arms around that. Can you help me understand? I love the idea of recurring revenue. I don't have any today. How might joining Urbanimmersive Franchise Network help me generate recurring revenue? What does that look like? I don't understand. [00:45:21] François-Hugues Liberge: - Prime Subscription is similar to Amazon Prime, where you get free delivery on every order that you make; no matter how many orders you make a month. It's the same principle, but based on 3D tours, floor plans and property websites. [00:45:34] "Lee Way": - Give me an example of what a client would pay and what is it that they get? [00:45:41] François-Hugues Liberge: - Let's say a customer pays $150 for a photoshoot for 30 pictures. Then you charge X amount for 3D tours plus x amounts for floor plans. If that customer subscribes to Prime membership, that usually we suggest it sells for around $30 a month, with that Prime membership, when the real estate agent orders a regular photo shoot for $150, the customer will get the 3D tour and floor plan included at that price. [00:46:13] "Lee Way": - Okay. Now I'm totally confused because the client is paying $30 a month and I think I've heard unlimited virtual tours, unlimited floor plans, unlimited single property websites. When I presently do a Matterport tour. I may be charging $350 for that. I think what I'm hearing is what you're saying but now you do that for free. Granted, I understand I'd be switching to Urbanimmersive 3D tours, which take a lot less time to shoot and there are zero hosting costs. I don't need to think about that, but I have some angst about you asking me to give up $350 for shooting a 3D tour that I'm only getting $30 per month and what if that client -- I guess my average client is four or five shoots annually. [00:47:04] François-Hugues Liberge: - Exactly, an average agent orders 4.5 real estate listings a year. For sure that'll be power sellers that are using more. But usually in the long run, if you'd go on average, it's 4.5 real estate listings per agent. The good thing is your costs as a franchisee, if somebody orders a 3D tour, your cost is your time, if you do the shoot yourself, or the time of your photographer to do the photo shoot. There's no cost and you get revenue every month. We share the revenue 30 percent/70 percent, so 30 percent for Urbanimmersive and 70 percent for the franchisee. If you charge $30 a month, you'll get $21 every single month for that customer. The good thing is when there's no listings and you're not there shooting, you're still making that $21 a month. [00:47:58] "Lee Way": - I have a couple of brokers that I do business with and the broker pays for the real estate agents' tours. Would I be charging the broker $30 and now I got five agents that are banging away at that? [00:48:16] François-Hugues Liberge: - It has to be per agent. [00:48:18] "Lee Way": - Per agent? [00:48:20] François-Hugues Liberge: - Yes. [00:48:20] "Lee Way": - Okay. [00:48:26] "Lee Way": Should I just not worry about this? There's a business model there, it's working for you. [00:48:31] François-Hugues Liberge: - When you said like actually because we own nine photography agencies, we're testing those things and that gives us a big market advantage that we see something that's hard to go against. The good thing, it ensures customers loyalty because they know that with you, they're getting more for their money. Usually a real estate agent has a backup photographer. They will use the primary photographer 60%, 70% of the time, and then use a back-off photographer. When the customer subscribes to Prime, that gives you almost 100% of his business because he knows that he's getting his money's worth. [00:49:08] "Lee Way": - The idea is to get more business because the agents think, "Oh! I called Dan, he's not available." But now they don't have to call me because I didn't pick up and they moved on to the next photographer. First, they can go book me online, but there's now another incentive for them to use me because they only have to pay for the photos, not for the 3D tours, the floor plans and the property website. [00:49:34] François-Hugues Liberge: - I go back to my Amazon example. If I can order something from Amazon versus Staples, the prices are the same but I have a free delivery with Amazon. I will always order with them. [00:49:45] "Lee Way": - I can make a leap of faith there. Incidentally, you mentioned that because you have these nine companies that you acquired that are essentially franchisees granted, they're much bigger than my business. I think HomeVisit has 250 photographers. Is that about right? [Yes] I imagine some of these agencies have been using Matterport. I just have this angst. Should I be worried? What's been the experience about your agency that you've acquired, switching from Matterport 3D tours to Urbanimmersive for 3D tours? [00:50:27] François-Hugues Liberge: - That's why, as Ghislain said earlier, that there's no obligation -- if the customer still wants Matterport 3D tours. Okay. But we offer only Urbanimmersive 3D tours. We've kept the same philosophy with our corporate franchisees. A good thing that we saw: over 97% have switched to Urbanimmersive 3D tours. [00:50:48] "Lee Way": - You're not forcing the other 3%... It's the same thing that you've just offered me to say, "Hey, if your client wants to keep Matterport, perfectly fine, but your success rate is 97% of the clients have switched." I imagine part of the switching is that the tours are "good enough" and you can charge less for them because they don't take as long to shoot, so the client ends up getting a lower price presumably. [00:51:17] François-Hugues Liberge: - Exactly. [00:51:18] "Lee Way": - Either I or my independent contractors can be in and out faster and therefore we can handle more business. That makes sense to me. When I was watching that deep-dive demo on the back-end of Urbanimmersive Franchise Network PERP, it's been maybe a week or so since I did that. Could you just remind me, Ghislain, about what my client can do on their login of the portal? [00:51:48] Ghislain Lemire: - Your client will have their own dashboard. And within this, what we call a client panel, they will be able to manage everything from ordering, from seeing their invoices, changing the descriptions, stuff like that. It's a complete dashboard that they can manage. Also UiMeets3D 3D tours - that we're going to talk about next week on WGAN-TV Live at 5. It's a great UI and it's very efficient for your clients to manage everything from there. [00:52:21] "Lee Way": - Let me see if I understand. They can place orders, they can change orders. They can look at existing appointments. They can look at their order history. [00:52:34] Ghislain Lemire: - They have to consult the invoices, so you don't have to use a separate invoicing system, it's all integrated. Your client will love the fact that they see the orders and the invoice is attached to the order. [00:52:51] "Lee Way": - I also think that I can deliver my digital assets and they can pay when they get the delivery. - I think there was something else. I didn't quite understand it. I want to say the term is line of credit, maybe there is a different term. Can you just explain to me what that was? I might just allow the client -- [00:53:17] Ghislain Lemire: - You certainly have great clients that are not willing to pay you per shoot because maybe they are too large, they're having 10 years history with you. [00:53:28] "Lee Way": - Yes. I have some large clients. They say this is such a pain to have to put it on a credit card because then I have to expense it back to my company. It's a pain in the tush. Isn't there a different way you can handle this? [00:53:43] Ghislain Lemire: - Yes. The PERP comes with what we call a credit line. You will be able to decide how much credit you want to give them. Let's say you're allowing them to spend $4,000 per month. They're going to see their credit line. Every time they will order -- or the team members order from you -- it's going to add up the full shoot cost on their credit line. At the end of the month, the system will send them their statement and they will have 20 days to pay and you can decide if you want to charge interest and everything. [00:54:18] "Lee Way": - If I'm presently sending them a paper invoice once a month, this is all handled automatically. I don't need to keep track of it, the system keeps track of it. If I want to accept credit cards which would be new for me, that's okay. I think I read this, not even a credit card fee. If I charge $400 for a job, the job is $400 whether they pay with a credit card or pay by check. Is that correct? [00:54:49] Ghislain Lemire: - Actually you're going to register your credit card system within our system. That's going to be the fee of your credit card if you use PayPal or Stripe. [00:54:57] "Lee Way": - Whatever fees Stripe presently charges me. I did just have a couple other questions. I just wanted to make sure that I can keep my brand. Lee Way Real Estate Photography Services in Nashville, Tennessee, we've been around a really long time. I just want to make sure I'm not just changing my name to Urbanimmersive Franchise Network: Nashville. [00:55:21] François-Hugues Liberge: - If you go on the websites of all of our corporate franchisees, you'll see that it's HomeVisit powered by Urbanimmersive. Your name will remain because your customers know you and we want to keep it that way. [00:55:35] "Lee Way": - That's what I thought I saw in the WGAN-TV shows. I just have to ask this question. I know you said at the beginning of our conversation, but there is no recurring franchise fee. [00:55:47] François-Hugues Liberge: - [Correct] A potential franchise like you is somebody who already has business, so we know we will have royalty coming up. Somebody starting from scratch that does not have revenue because they have to build their business. Your business is already there. You are already growing -- already profitable -- so we just want to keep that going and so that's why no recurring franchise fee. [00:56:13] "Lee Way": - I shared with you, I'm pretty good about my forecast. I'm doing about $100,000 every 12 months. Business has been a little flat for me. I know part of that is I get overwhelmed with the logistics and so that's why I wanted to really start this call as I think that maybe moving away from Matterport would let me reduce the time it takes to do shoots. It would get me out of that Matterport recurring fee. It sounds like I can migrate clients at their pace. Frankly, they'd have an advantage of a lower cost and then we're in and out faster. I'm happy about the fact that you all would edit my images and frankly I think the quality would get better than my editing. Then I can spend more time with my wife and then I can spend more time doing shoots on the days that I'm doing that. I got all these different third-party tools, so I'd be happy to get rid of all of those and consolidate it under one platform. It sounds like I'd be able to easily add one or two freelance photographers and have a simple way to pay/track them. The whole idea of bookings, scheduling, invoicing, delivering sounds like that PERP -- I'm going to call it a PERPetrator ;-) but the PERP platform that you got, the ERP for Photographers, that sounds cool. Be thrilled to be able to get rid of my annual Mailchimp bill, it's pretty big. My HubSpot annual bill and all my other recurring expenses that I'm doing. I'm not sure that I would count on any potential leads or any national business, but frankly if any of it came in I'd be thrilled. That sounds like it'd be nice to get some insights about my business. I'm looking forward to learning more about that order, print and direct mail stuff. I love watching Dan and his WGAN-TV shows. He always seems to ask the questions that I'd want to ask. Ghislain, I understand you're doing that show with Dan next week: Deep-dive Demo of Urbanimmersive UiMeet3D 3D tours + ChatGPT = Lead Generation. That sounds way cool. I think where I'm is: "GREAT! I am ready to join the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network. What happens next?" "How long does it take to get started? "When do I get my training?" [00:58:37] François-Hugues Liberge: - [Go ahead Ghislain] [00:58:42] Ghislain Lemire: - It's pretty straightforward. We have an onboarding team, a very solid onboarding team. You just apply. They're going to contact you. You're going to have some interviews with the team to make sure there is a fit. [00:59:03] Ghislain Lemire: You're going to receive the contract, so you're going to have to take the time to read it. By the way about the contract, keep in mind that if you join the Urbanimmersive Franchise Network and you don't like all the systems and all the technology, you can just send us a notice and you can get out in 30 days. There's no real obligation. By the fact that you keep your name, the risk is low. [00:59:32] "Lee Way": - I love it! Tell you what, I'll go to: www.Urbanimmersive.com/Franchise I'll look for the link... I will request the contract. It sounds like if I have any additional questions, I can email Franchise@Urbanimmersive.com and just send off my questions or I can schedule a meeting, if I need to do that. Based on the description of my business does it sound like I would get a quick approval and could get started with Urbanimmersive Franchise Network? [01:00:06] Ghislain Lemire: - Absolutely. [01:00:09] "Lee Way": - Awesome. [01:00:15] Dan Smigrod: Hi. This is Dan. I just saw your talk with Lee. It looks like he's super-excited about getting started with you. That's awesome! François, Ghislain. Thanks for being on the show today. [01:00:26] Ghislain Lemire: - It's a pleasure. Thank you, Dan. [01:00:28] François-Hugues Liberge: - Thank you, Dan. [01:00:29] Dan Smigrod: - Lee was visiting with Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President François-Hugues Liberge and Urbanimmersive President and CEO Ghislain Lemire. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. You've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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WGAN-TV Training U | Urbanimmersive Franchise Network: Why Own a Franchise18605