WGAN Podcast-Intro to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers

WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host 31.32K Website Atlanta, Georgia Linked In Facebook Twitter YouTube TikTok Instragram Matterport Service Partner Google Street View Trusted Photographer Zillow Certified Photographer We Get Around Network Member	31.32K DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user	plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 0
	WGAN-TV \| Intro to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers \| Guests: Urbanimmersive Inc. President and CEO Ghislain Lemire and Urbanimmersive Inc. Executive Vice-President François-Hugues Liberge \| Episode: 208 \| Thursday, 30 November 2023 \| @fhliberge WGAN-TV Transcript \| Intro to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers - Are you a busy real estate photographer that would like to get all your digital media solutions from one vendor? - Are you seeking an all-in-one solution that includes online ordering, invoicing, and marketing automation? - Would you like to pay per project instead of a monthly subscription? Stay tuned. Hi, all. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com] Today is Thursday, November 30th, 2023 and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: Introduction to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers. Our subject matter experts today are Urbanimmersive President and CEO Ghislain Lemire and Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President François-Hugues Liberge. Ghislain and François, thank you for being back on the show. - Thank you for having us, Dan. - Nice to see you again, Dan. - Ghislain, before we dive into the services offered, why Urbanimmersive? - If I can summarize that, Dan, why Urbanimmersive is I will say that because I like to say when I'm meeting with photographers, that we do basically everything. We're one of the most vertically integrated platforms for photographers. So if you don't have something or if you don't have a feature, or functions, or something in our platform, it's probably because you don't need it. We have everything. - And the scale and scope, the size of Urbanimmersive, the number of photographers that you're working with? - Well, the company today, it's quite sizable. I mean, we're turning around $10 million in revenue per year. We have around 50 full-time employees which work on the post-production, work on the development of our software. And we also have different brands, real estate photography services brands that account for something like 200+ photographers working under the brand Urbanimmersive. On top of it, we have close to 1,000 independent photographers or independent photography businesses that use our technologies to deliver products to their clients. - And some sense of the scale in terms of the number of listings that Urbanimmersive has done? Perhaps the number of views over time? - Oh, my gosh, that's a good question because we're looking at brands separately. I seldom aggregate all the data in terms of the number of listings and everything. But I will say that it's surely, correct me if I'm wrong, François, maybe 50,000 shoots a year. - Yeah, 50,000 75,000 I think. Yep. - And on top of it, you can add up the 3D tours and the floor plans that we're providing to third-party without being very involved, so what we call "do it yourself clients" that use our systems. - Okay, great. I thought for today's show, to really understand an -- Introduction to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers -- if you don't mind, I thought we'd role play some. - Sure. - So for the purpose of our role play, my name is Lee and I am a busy real estate photographer. I'm also thinking about adding a freelance photographer. By way of background, my company's name is Just Shoot Me Real Estate Visual Media Services. Just Shoot Me. I use many vendors, tools, and solutions to run my real estate photography business. For example, I use a photo editing service; a virtual tour service; a floor plan service; a single property website offering; Dropbox to deliver my jobs. I create my invoices in QuickBooks. I book recurring jobs via email, text and phone; some via a web form. I use a service for creating and sending my marketing e-blasts. I have a web developer for creating my website and a separate company for hosting my website. I've kind of cobbled together all these different solutions, services, tools to run my business. I heard about Urbanimmersive in the We Get Around Network Forum, but I'm still having trouble understanding exactly what Urbanimmersive offers and about how hard or easy it is to get started. So I've called you. Again, my name is Lee. Where do we begin for me to try and get my hands around Urbanimmersive services? - Yeah. So thank you, Lee, for contacting us. I think you are definitely at the right place. And before we start and dive into what we can do for you, I think it's important for you to understand where we're coming from and what our vision of your business is. Because I don't know your age, you haven't told me, I mean, I'll guess. I am 35. ;-) - Oh, it looks great for 35s, Lee. Sorry. ;-) But I mean, if you go back 15, 20 years ago, I mean your business, real estate photography business was quite simple. I mean, photographers were delivering beauty shots. I started 15 years ago and having 25 beauty shots for a shoot was basically all it. I was coming back home and I was doing my photo editing and delivering that to my clients. Today, it's quite different. The business has changed a lot. And if you allow me, Lee, to share my screen. I'm going to start by kind of positioning where we stand. You understand today, Lee, that the real estate photography business is right now. As we speak, it's happening. There's a lot of driving forces that make your business evolve at such a fast pace that it's unbelievable what we're experiencing. And first of all, if you want to grow, we will discover pretty fast that you need to do a lot of shoots per day because the margins are still super-tight. You remember 10 years ago, a 25 photo shoot was basically the same price as today. So the price hasn't increased a lot. So to do a lot of volume, you're going to need a lot of technology. So you can't continue to do all the things separately early because at the end of the day, you're going to spend three hours on the road and four hours at the office. You don't want to do that. One particular thing about your industry is that even the visual content is becoming tech-driven. You see this little camera here, we call that the 360 camera. You probably have it if you already start offering 3D tours. But as we move forward, you need to provide more and more services. And one of the things, I put it in order, right now as we speak, there's a high demand for floor plans, 2D floor plans, and you know how fast you can do it. What is the cost of doing it? And what is the workflow afterwards, after your day to get it? How can you correct them and everything? You will want a solution like Urbanimmersive where you're going to have everything within one platform done super-fast. And again, 3D digital twins. We're talking about, as we speak the latest stats, it's about 20%, 21% of all the listings right now. All orders for photo shoots include 3D digital twins. And I can tell you with certainty that in five years, it might be 50%. The demand is just increasing. So our goal, Lee, is to help you. It's to help you manage a high volume, technology-powered real estate photography business. So from here, this is important that you understand that the platform I am going to present to you, covers all the things you need to do, but, and I say but, you need to have an open mind. I'll tell you why. I have a lot of experience selling my platform and most of the time people will always have this blocker of saying, "Oh, that that is not the way I work," or "this is the way I work and everything." So the platform I'm presenting to you, Lee, okay, it's a platform that is customizable, meaning that the way I'm going to present it to you, I'm going to talk it to you about it, it might not be exactly the way you work or it's not exactly the way your workflow is, but it could be customizable to a certain point to adjust to your business. - Yes, I'm open to changing my workflow. I think part of my challenge over time is putting all these different pieces together. While I think I've been saving myself time, I suspect that I'm actually creating things that consume time because it's not done all-by-an all in one platform. That said, there are some things I'm wondering about whether I need to change or not. I did go look at your previous show on We Get Around Network, WGAN-TV, talking about one of your other 3D solutions, the 3D Video Fusion. I'm presently using a different platform. So I'm trying to understand, do I need to switch? Is there a reason to switch? Do I keep what I'm doing in terms of my 3D digital twin solution? And I should say I did watch that show. I went to: www.WGAN.info/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN It's an excellent show. Love the host. ;-) And watched that full hour, deep dive demo into the 3D Video Fusion and floor plans. So I'm thinking about, do I switch from what I'm presently doing or do I keep what I got or do I switch? I don't have to switch initially? Help me understand, particularly in the case of digital twins and floor plans. - All right, so it depends on your clients. First of all, you always have to put your client first. If your client asks for a Matterport; offer your client a Matterport so you don't have to argue with your clients. But if your client comes to you and asks for a 3D tour, offer him a 3D tour that will fit your workflow and that you do more margins. And this is where if you allow, I will go back to my pre my presentation here and one of the challenges with 3D tours and even with floor plans is the scanning time on site. Because you realize, Lee, that if you pass 30 minutes scanning a house after four houses, you're going to have burned two hours of your day. So the time on site, it's super-important. You want to be able to do some very quick scans. You will have to change your hardware. If you buy a camera, an expensive camera, maybe down the road two or three years, the provider will launch a new camera so you will want to update everything. So you want to have a very cost-effective solution for your hardware. And you want to have precision also for your floor plan. And of course, you will want to offer the best user experience. There's a lot of 3D tours out there on the market, but clients have been used to having a sophisticated, if you want, immersive experience as what Matterport has educated the public to have. This is exactly what Urbanimmersive can offer you in that place. So we will provide you the time and cost of providing 3D tours and floor plans. We have been benchmarked against the biggest brands on the market, and we came up at the top in terms of providing the fastest scanning time on site, the most cost-effective hardware solution. We've been super-precise in the way we were presenting our floor plans. They are editable. So if you have a client that calls you and says, "You know what, I would like to change your room name here and stuff like that," you can do it yourself. You don't need to go through a process of asking for edits and stuff like that. With the 3D tool we're going to offer you, we have two choices. Like you mentioned, you saw the WGAN-TV show about the 3D video fusion, we'll talk about it a little bit later, but you also have the standard 3D tour. So you're going to be able to offer that, that provides a very good immersive user experience as good as the big brands. And of course, this is something super-cool with our system, our 3D tours always come with a lot of features. There's features you don't need, that your client doesn't need. Like UiMeet3D; it's super-cool. There's 3D avatars within the scenes that they're there. So if you need them, they're there. Otherwise just a standard product is there. - Well, actually, I did like that service, the UiMeet3D because I've started to have some real estate agents that are saying, "Hey, can we do meetings within the tour as opposed to using Zoom and by phone? Because it seems to be a little clunky." Do you offer a solution like that? When I was looking at Urbanimmersive, that was actually something that was appealing to me. - Because you're talking a bit, Lee, I'm going to show you what it looks like. So we call this platform UiMeet3D. What you're going to see here is a pretty large video file. Actually, I wonder if with Zoom, it's working pretty well. But you see three avatars right now coming in? - I don't. I see a snowy picture. - Okay, so now do you see the guys? - No, I see a snowy picture. I don't. - You don't see the video? Okay, let me check. - No. - Just behind the bus, we had the... ... - I will reshare everything and see if I can make it work like this. Now? - In the distance to the back of the bus, it looks like there's three images there. - They will come in, they will come in. So basically, you will see there if Francçois. Actually, we're showing this presentation from UiMeet3D to our home, how you say [fire Damage Documentation]. - For home insurance for contractors, they want to appraise the damages. - Yeah. So basically this is UiMeet3D. So it's a video conferencing system built in with our 3D tours. We use coins . So basically, it's video streaming. So the faces you see in the coins are the video streams of their webcam. And you can navigate through homes like this and have some sort of a meeting altogether. So we've been having that for multiple years. We launched a new version two years ago. But you need to have in mind, Lee, that you don't have to run for a plugin or you don't have to pay extra to have that. It's part of our 3D tour solution. - Okay, so that's cool. And that may be something different that I can offer our real estate clients, particularly those agents that are asking to do virtual tours where it's a kind of a live guided tour within the tour itself. - Exactly. - So I totally get that. - So I just want to do a quick example of a 3D tour where you see that our 3D tours are immersive. [This is the Urbanimmersive experience.] There's the map at the top left, so you can see the floor plans and where you are within the environment. And of course, we do also offer the famous Dollhouse. So it's a little bit useless, but there's a wow effect that comes with it. And from the 3D tours that we create, whether it's a 3D Video Fusion tour we're going to see later or this is the digital twins, we offer the floor plan that goes with it. And when you offer floor plans with our platform, it's all integrated. You can offer this floor plan which offers some sort of an analytical report of the house kind of the site plan of everything about the room names and dimensions and stuff like that. We call one of particular things with our technology that you can do very large floor plans. So you're not limited to 25,000 square footage, 40,000 square footage depending on the provider. There's no limit in terms of the size. [This is an example of a 360 camera.] I don't know what hardware, if you are already offering 3D tours, Lee, but the hardware is pretty simple. You need a tripod and a 360 camera. Here in the picture, you see a RICOH camera. We like it. But I think Insta360, there're a little bit cheaper in terms of the acquisition cost and the [www.WGAN.info/Insta360_ONE_RS_1-Inch_360] is super-good. - I happen to have a [www.WGAN.info/Amazon-Ricoh-THETA-Z1], [www.WGAN.info/RicohTHETAX]; an [www.WGAN.info/Insta360X3] in addition to a proprietary 3D camera. So that's why part of this was of interest to me because it seems like I already have the gear if I decide to make the transition. Yeah, I understand it. Any of those in Insta360 cameras or Ricoh THETA the cameras work fine with your platform. - Another key feature of our platform is that you don't need an app to scan an environment. So you can use nearly any 360 camera, just record a video and you'll see the results. We call it touchdown the green points that you see on the map. I'm going to show you a video of how to do it. You transfer your file on our cloud and you're going to have your 3D tours. We're also providing an app. So the advantage, Lee, for you to use the app is that all your scheduling is there, all your tours, ID, the address and everything. So you arrive on the shoot, you just put the address and you're going to know exactly what you need to do. So there's a couple of advantages. It's more for the high volume businesses, actually the app. And you'll see the video here, I'm just going to cut the sound, but it's very simple. Here, I'm going to use the app. So I'm going to select the floor plan if I want to do a floor plan. And you will see I'm just going to take the tripod, the 360 camera, and I will do some touchdowns on the floor where I want to put the... When the 3D tours, you see the white spot, the blue dots or the white dots on the floor. So it is as fast as that, actually. So you just touchdown... touchdown the tripod, and you move it. And you can open doors. - So for clarification, you're showing floor plan creation here. And if I wanted to do a tour with me not in the image, I just make sure that I'm not in the image for some period of time and your AI presumably would figure out, "Oh, that's a 360 where I'm not in the shot." - Exactly like this. So as you can see right now, I'm hiding myself, but while I'm creating the floor plans, the system is creating a 3D tour. I'm right now using a 3D tour. - Okay, so I get that. I did watch the full hour on these solutions. So I did go to: www.WGAN.info/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN So I think I have a pretty good sense of the 3D/360 floor plan solutions, the Urbanimmersive UiMeet3D live guided chat. I am interested in just making sure that I hear about all the different Urbanimmersive services. - You got it. So for that side, you will be covered with us. So now look at the ecosystem we're going to present here with that particular slide. So this is what I like to call the platform. So we just talk about the top left, the Urbanimmersive media solutions, which includes the 3D tour, floor plans and property website. We have one of the best platforms for the property website on the market, I think, in my own opinion. You're also going to have features to render videos from your 2D pictures. We're going to talk about the prints a little bit later and the UiMeet3D live guided tour video conference. At the bottom left, what you see is a business solution, which includes the CRM to manage your relation with your clients, online scheduling, ordering. We are going to offer you the payroll management, so to pay your photo offers if you scale and you have multiple photo offers, and you're also going to have some functions for the photo editing. - Can you talk a little... I mentioned that I'm interested in hiring a freelancer, one of the things that's holding me back is the thought of paying that photographer and then how do I deal with taxes and cutting checks. I mean, it sounds like it's a little bit overwhelming for me. So I'm trying to understand how Urbanimmersive makes it easy, fast to handle paying a freelance photographer and even the mechanics of like, "Oh, am I paying him by the hour? Am I paying him by the square foot? Am I paying him some other way?" Can you talk a little bit about that? - Yeah, I can even show you how it works pretty fast without training. But we have the payroll section of the platform here. So basically where I am right now, I'm within what we call the dashboard where you're going to have all the features to run your business. And among those features, you don't want me to go into the details of the feature because it's going to be a three hours presentation but- - Yeah, I'd rather schedule a separate meeting, separate Zoom. I presume I can go to www.Urbanimmersive.com, go back there, schedule a deep dive on anything in particular that you talk about today, even if you just give me a quick overview on how to pay a photographer. I'm not necessarily interested in a demo or how it's done in detail. Just really at the top line. - Just the top line, Lee. So this section here will enable you to set the rate and it's very... Right now, because I'm a super admin, I have access to multiple agencies. But let's say I'm selecting this guy here, it's very detailed and it's customizable. So depending how you work, we're going to customize your grid so that you're going to define how you want to pay that guy the base price, the minimum per photo, the mileage. And you can see all the features you can set. This will, once it's done, provide how much you owe to that guy after a week, after a day and stuff like that. And you're going to have all those reports here. you can have the report for your specific photographer, a specific order from two dates. You can make the payroll automatically approved, depending if you have the proper profit margin you're looking at. Right now with HomeVisit, if they have between 30-60% gross margin on shoots it's going to be approved. - And just for clarification, HomeVision is a division of Urbanimmersive. It's an agency that you all own. - Yeah, exactly. It operates with close to 180 photographers. So it's one of our biggest agencies. And once you're going to have an... If we have time, if you want to see in detail, I can launch the report. - Not today. That's okay. I kind of get it. And just seeing that one screen shows that there's many variables that I could choose to pay a photographer on. I get that. - Exactly. - It's one-size-fits-all. You can really detail every photographer that you have. - Can you go back to the chart that showed the business management solutions in one corner? So we were down in that left corner. - You know, Lee, if you want to scale your business, you're going to need some help, not just from the tech, because we're going to provide all the solutions you need, but you're going to need some new clients. And this is where the platform from Urbanimmersive is quite interesting because we have a marketplace. I would like to add "s" because we have multiple marketplaces. What are they exactly? So basically, they are totally integrated within your business solution. So it's an option for you. You can define the option of offering your services at the price you want. So you decide your pricing, you decide your services, you decide the options, and we are going to add you within our marketplaces. So basically the marketplace, which is going to go back there, it's the aggregation of all our clients who want to participate. So we have our competitors, we have ourselves and everything. Actually, we want to build a community where agents will find the best photographers for a photo shoot through a specific address. And the marketplace works step by step. It's a very standardized process that will work with our own real estate photography agencies like HomeVisit and you. So you're going to be present all the time. We're not favoring anyone. It's the best price at the best place. And one of the things also is that when you are part of our marketplaces, you can get commissions from the upsells we do with our prints. We do run a print operation. And if you don't mind, I would just go back here. We'll, when we talk about vertical integration, the only thing we outsource at Urbanimmersive is the photo editing. We're outsourcing it to Esoft, which we think has one of the best quality services. But you said at the right here, Lee, you see a book with all the images of your photo shoot in it and the floor plan. This photo book, it's a one-click solution for you to upsell to your client. And this is feasible because we do everything from printing the photo book, doing the floor plans, getting the floor plans in the system, and putting it in the photo book. So it's very easy to sell and there are revenue, additional revenues for you. I want to go back to the mark. Do you have a question, Lee? - Yeah, I actually did back on that screen that had the book. And really, the first question is on the marketplace. I'm in Atlanta, Georgia by joining, getting involved with Urbanimmersive, signing up for the marketplace. Is that going to account for half my business, 10% of my business? It might be 0%. Is there any sense of how much incremental potential business that represents? I don't know if that's a question to ask in the next year, 5 years or 10 years. - Actually, we've been running marketplaces since 2015. Here in Canada, we are one of the largest marketplace for real estate authors with a centrist marketplace. So it's actually running. And I can tell you with certainty that we have created businesses actually. So photographers who start alone on the marketplace with us and build their business A to Z with the marketplace. And the percentage of the business you're going to get on our marketplace really depends how much you charge. Because if you're at the higher-end of the pricing, you will get less jobs. - So that's great. I'm in control of my pricing. So if I'm particularly busy and I am not necessarily encouraging some more business, then I can price it accordingly. And I imagine this kind of... It syncs my Google calendar presumably, so you know my availability, is that right? - Absolutely. Everything is- - So I have those two features to control both my scheduling and my pricing. Okay, so that's great. And then back on that book page that you were showing, we're not presently offering any kind of print solution. I think my concern of offering print was, "oh my gosh, that sounds super labor intensive of organizing my photos and printing and working with some other company." I think you started to tease me and that you do the whole thing on our behalf. So that sounds kind of intriguing. How involved... I mean, is this just a feature on a portal for my client and they see it's something that they can order and they just place an order and I'm not even in the conversation because it just automatically happens and I get commissioned on the jobs ordered by my client? - But to start with, you need to opt-in to offer the print products. - Yes. - They're going to be offered at the end of the process by Urbanimmersive for your clients. So your clients will have two invoices. And the reason we do that, Lee .. is you don't want to manage the taxes related to tangible products sold in the US. Highly complicated. So this is why, because you could invoice them if you want. Like HomeVisit, they are invoicing the print products separately, but you need to open tax accounts and there's some specific conditions for the quantity, the place and everything. Taxes are kind of complex. We do that for you. So it's a turnkey solution. - So print services are not white-labeled for me, but there's a reason why it's not white-labeled in order to avoid the complexity that it might create for me. But that said, if I opt-in, there's a button that says essentially the real estate agent can place an order directly with Urbanimmersive to get whatever print materials that you offer. - Exactly. - Without necessarily showing, can you just run off a list of the kinds of print tools? - Yeah, the standard, the thing that we sell the most right now are the cards like the direct mailing cards, photobook. It's a new product that we just launched recently. So the photobook is built automatically. So we take all the great pictures you took. If you solve our floor plans, if you use our technology for creating the floor plans, it is automatically added to the photobook. Agents love it because you don't need to... like what François is showing it right now. I don't know if you want to... So you see in the photobook, at the end of the photobook, you have the floor plans added. So you don't need to play with the files, you don't need to send the file somewhere else. You don't need to wait for it. We're going to put it in the photobook. You have different- - I noticed the cover is black. I just want to be careful I don't get caught in customization. So if there's font decisions or color decisions or style decisions, are all those templates driven and determined by the customer themselves so I don't need to get involved in that? - Both. Actually, we like the standard product we're going to offer ... I think, two templates. You can play a little bit with it. And if the client says, "Ah, I would like to build my own flier," then you can take another path and create his own book and select the pictures he wants to put in and so on and so forth. - Okay. And just for clarification... I'm sorry, François, you were going to say? - Yeah, within the platform, the customer has his own account, so the real estate agent will be able to enter details like pictures and contact info. So when that is printed, like everything will be right and rightly placed. - So really for clarification because I don't want to open up this labor intensive process for me. This is the exact opposite for me as a real estate photographer. It's another service that I can offer my clients and Urbanimmersive takes care of the templates, fulfillment, printing, fulfillment- - Revision. - Billing, It's like mailbox money. I just get remitted a commission for any print orders. - Exactly. - So we happen to be, as I mentioned, a very busy photography agency. And Just Shoot Me if you create this logistical nightmare for me. I want to stay away from that. But all of a sudden, I think I'm really excited about the potential of offering an entirely new add-on for existing shoots that doesn't take any of my time, doesn't involve me in the logistics, the fulfillment, the billing. And literally, I just get, I'd say mailbox money, but I imagine it gets credited to my account some way. - Dan, we're managing agencies of over 200 photographers on a daily basis, so we want to make sure that that works because if it doesn't work, we'll be the first to be impacted by that. - Oh, okay. Cool. All right, anything else on print before you talk to me about some other Urbanimmersive solutions? - It's proudly printed in the US so there's nothing offshore in this regard. So we have a printing operation in Chauncey, Virginia. And we take care of the shipping, boxing, everything is super-professional... It's professionally packed and shipped. - It sounds a little bit new. So do you have any metrics about what percent of real estate agents do this as an add-on or is it too soon to ask you that question? - Actually, it came with a HomeVisit. We kind of just integrated printing in all our operations, but at HomeVisit, it's about 25% of the revenue. So it could be a major source of revenue depending on what you sell, but it can be a game changer for you. And also it makes you kind of stand out from the competition because it's an easy add-on. You just need to be in our system. - Cool. Are there other add-ons like that that Urbanimmersive offers that's just they opt-in and then agents can order it directly? I think it depends today. - So I know that one of my challenges is that we're busy, but there's certain times of the year we're not. And then I'm kind of focused on business development and I'm working on redesigning my website for the umpteenth time. Struggling a little bit with my email marketing. My first love is out shooting and so all this other stuff kind of ... I know I need to do it. Could you speak to website hosting, designing, and email marketing? - Yeah, actually we offer all this. There's two templates for the photographer website if you want that you can take on. And the advantage is that you're going to have within our solution access to add blogs, news releases, FAQs, and you're also going to have a built-in gallery of all your photo shoots that you're delivering. If you want to see an example, I mean we take HomeVisit, HomeVisit website. If I can go there, [Lee], it's a standard website. - I'm sorry, I think Dan's the host of the show. You were talking to me, Lee. - Yeah, sorry. Kind of confusing sometimes. So, Lee, this is one of the templates we have. So it's pretty slick, actually. And you have the prime... If you want to opt into offering a monthly subscription, you have all the services, you have your gallery. So the gallery is built automatically, you just opt-in to add it on your website, the FAQs section also. And if you look at the FAQs section, if I'm going back within my dashboard, you have access to all of this. You can even see what people have seen within your website. The FAQs section if I go there, so this is all the content that you can manage from there. So the website itself, you're going to have a first initial fee to just brand it to yourself. And I think afterwards, I think it's $10 or $20 per month. It's very cheap. - Yeah, I think I saw on the website it was $9. - Yeah, $9 a month. It's very basic pricing. And also the key advantage is that- - Do you design the website initially? I just tell you that we offer photos, videos, tours. - Yeah, exactly. Actually, if you use all our technologies, you just need to say I'm using all products that Urbanimmersive offers and your website, all the pages you need, like the 3D tours, the print and stuff like that. And of course, yeah, the initial fees for the design. So we are going to change it for you accordingly. And you're also going to have the logins. So people will be able to log within their account, your clients and place some orders. - Yeah, I end up doing like these WordPress updates, keeping stuff current. Can I get out of that business of WordPress updates and having to pay my designer to constantly keep the website up to date? - Indeed. Our website is built-in within our solutions. So you don't need WordPress anymore. - Okay. In email marketing, are there templates that already exist? Do you like pre-written stuff so I don't have to reinvent the process? - Yes, actually you don't need to have a Hubspot or a MailChimp account whatsoever. It's all integrated in the business solution again. And the beauty of it, you have some tools to create to quickly create your email templates. You can customize. You can do whatever you want. But the cool thing is that you can also automate your email campaigns based on different triggers. And we have about a dozen triggers. Basically, I'll give you an example. I want to say thanks to a client that reached 100 orders with me. So automatically when it's going to order is 100 ish, the order is going to receive an email saying thank you, or you can also have an email that clients will receive once they create an account. So you have different filters or we like to call it triggers that can be set up. So the email- - Do I have to write any of this or it's like pre-written and all I'm doing is approving and you're doing some kind of email merge with my logo, my company name, my name, my email, my mobile number, et cetera? - Exactly. So you have tools to quickly curate your templates and all the filters are just pick and choose. So the interface is quite simple. I don't know if we have time, but I can maybe show you what it looks like. - I think what I could do is schedule a deeper-dive demo on that at the right time. I think I'm pretty close to just saying, "well, let me just sign up for Urbanimmersive." Is there some kind of onboarding process when I get started? I saw when I went to the [www.Urbanimmersive.com] it said sign up for an Urbanimmersive account. It's free to set up an account and I get 10,000 square feet free. I guess we haven't talked about pricing, but it looked like nearly everything on your website is priced out at pay per per project. Is that the case? - Yeah, everything is per use. - So I'm presently paying a recurring fee, monthly fee for my 3D virtual tour service. So sometimes we're really busy, that seems to make sense, but sometimes we're like... Right now, November, December, it is slow, which is the reason I could even do this call with you today. But I still have to pay that recurring charge. So is Urbanimmersive set up so that all these different services typically are pay per project? Pay per tour? - Yeah, exactly. So we built the revenue, the pricing the way we would want to be priced a charge if we will be a photographer. So everything is at a cap. So everything is pay per use, all the features. We haven't talked about it, but we have pretty good features for optimizing your route, your shoots during the day. Each time, you're going to ask the system to reschedule all your shoots and send the notification to your client and everything is going to cost like 75 cents, something like that. So everything ... all the features are pay per use. So at the end of the day, you won't have to pay. For instance, if you don't use the email campaign system, you won't have to pay for that. If you don't use the route optimization system, you won't if you don't use this and that. So it could be very cheap using your platform if you are a big user with 100 photographers, but the cost will come with it. So it's a fair pricing model. And again, November, December, January until mid-February when you know the market goes down, you don't stress about paying the monthly fee that comes with it. Yeah, it's sometimes to be careful, the monthly fee will increase, particularly when you talk about the 3D tour. You will have to support the active spaces during those slow months [with competitors] if the houses and listings are not sold. So you don't have that with us. Just for clarification, kind of in your media solutions category, the following things, correct me if I'm wrong, are pay per project. 3D digital twins; 3D Video Fusion; 2D schematic floor plans; and single property websites. Not quite sure what a 3D Pocket Website is. Premium photo editing; virtual staging; media content delivery; these are all things that I think the only are pay per project. I think the only thing that I saw on the website where there were some other kind of charge was 3D Video Fusion where I am making a decision about how many video segments are within -- and even that's still pay per video I suppose. And then maybe the UiMeet3D live guided chat, I think, was the only service that I saw that had a recurring charge if I decided I wanted to use that. Is that? - Yeah, I think that's probably a mistake on the UiMeet3D stuff because it is right now included, but it's not used anyway. But the thing is that the most of the things that we have is pay per use. The website, we're talking about the website, your website is going to be $9 per month. - Yeah, that was recurring. Okay, I get that. And then like how about even in terms of email marketing campaigns, am I paying a flat monthly fee? Am I paying per blast? - It's a per blast, but it's per email that you send. - Per email. - Yeah, I have not memorized the price list. - Yeah, that's okay. It's very detailed on the www.Urbanimmersive.com website. - Well, we try to be very transparent. By the way, we have photo editing services with ESoft, so you can use it and benefit from our volume or you can maybe just connect your ESoft account to it. - Yes. I'm familiar with Esoft. And I've been buying all my different services solutions out of our cart. So I guess I could go to Esoft and just buy directly. So just could you again tell me why it just makes sense to do that under the Urbanimmersive umbrella? - Oh, it makes a lot of sense. - It's going to be way less expensive for me to get photo editing solutions by Urbanimmersive powered by eSoft? - Because of the workflow. Actually, I will tell you that most of our brands or photographers, when they come at night downloading our pictures on our system, they will use buckets, they will put all their brackets in the bucket, and it's sent directly to ESoft,. The next morning, if you have a photo shoot, you can ask the system to deliver automatically to your clients. So when ESoft is completing the photo enhancement, it triggers our system to package – to wrap up everything you need and send it to your client automatically with a private website, the video rendering, everything is triggered and your client receives an email with the delivery page. So for you, it's very convenient because you can be on the road and the system will deliver for you. - Oh, I could get that one, just by ordering it directly from Esoft. - Yeah, but it is done. It is linked to your order with the historical, the address invoicing and everything. - Ah, I get it. So I enter my address once, or the client, in fact, can enter the address when in the ordering system. So when the client places an order and puts in their address for billing that address, an email address is used for content delivery, for shipping, the printing, for pre-populating single property websites. I feel that pain today because I'm copying and pasting the same information over and over and over again depending on what it is that I'm delivering. And there's a lot of manual steps. So I thought Dropbox was "oh, this is cool," I can just quickly put everything in a Dropbox but still have to send an email to the client. I have to wait for me to upload things to Dropbox. So I always have these manual tasks way early in the morning for clients that are expecting something before they walk in the office. - We have a configuration that you can decide to control what's going to be sent to your client, but everything will be prepared. And if you have an opt-in for print, then once we get the visual content, everything is kind of triggered so that your print is already ongoing with the floor plans and everything. So we know when the floor plans will be ready, but the photobook will be waiting for the floor plan, not you. So it's so convenient that it's kind of having a co-pilot doing everything for you. - Exactly. Lee, when you mentioned Dropbox doing as a delivery tool for your customers, we still have to assemble everything together to have something that's deliverable to the customer as opposed to our solution, which all the media are coming from one place. So once the picture is edited, they're there. Once the 3D tour is completed, it's there. Once the floor plan is done, it's there. The single property website also comes there. It's a much easier task for you to manage to know what's delivered to the customer and when and how to deliver it. - François, are we setting up our clients with a login and all their assets are delivered there? Or are they getting a notification by email and/or text that it's now within their account? So when they're ready to sign in, can you help me understand that workflow? - Yeah, it's both. They're getting notification when everything's ready and they can go into their account and go and see the media delivery page and have access to all their information, all the medias there, - But just a detail, within the notification, they have a link that we call a public link. If they click on it, they're going to have all the deliverables in it. - So are they getting that link in an email or text? - Email. - Now, it's an email. - Email. And are they also getting it within their content within their account if they sign in? - Both, yeah. - So they have a choice. They can either wait for the email or they can just sign in and manage whatever downloads they want to do. I mean, one of the challenges I have, gee, even two years later, sometimes I get clients that say, "You know that we're going to do something with those pictures that you delivered two years ago. Could you resend them to me?" So does this mean that the client could just sign in and then do it themselves, so I don't need to jump in to do that manual task? - Exactly. And you bring a good point, a good question. We have a feature that all the content related to an address can be accessible. So if you did a shoot last year and you did a new shoot and you want to see the pictures, the last shoot, you can have access to it as long as you know they belong to you, of course, - Yes. So I mentioned early on, Just Shoot Me is the name of our company. Our clients obviously have a lot of fun with that. They enjoy that. When these emails go out, when they sign into the portal to check their account, are they going to see my brand or are they going to see Urbanimmersive? - It's all white-labeled. So it's all your brand. The URL, your pictures, your logo, your colors, everything is branded. - Mm-hmm. I really just have a few minutes remaining. I got to jump on another call. I thought, if you don't mind, maybe you could just explain the onboarding process. So I say, okay, let's do this. Then what happens? I mean, I understand going to: www.urbanimmersive.com I can set up a free account. I get that there's a little free offer for the 10,000 square feet free offer to apply . But, okay, I want to move past just ordering images to be edited or use your 3D tour solution or order your floor plans. Your business management solutions, the marketing solutions really do appeal to me. I think there's an opportunity to really take my business to the next level. How hard or easy is the onboarding process? What's that look like? How does that work? - You log in here. Just want to show it on our website. So let's see. I am going to sign out. So I'm just going to unlog. So if you go there, I'm going to- - I go to English, yes. - Yeah, sorry. - So- - je parle français je parle français Probably- - [I do not speak French.] - Yeah. - You don't have an account now. - Yeah. If you don't have an account. And if you want to order now without an account, it's like a Guest kind of sign up. So actually, you're going to decide between you creating an account, you're going to create your account. Here's the trick. You won't have access right away to our platform because it comes with a free offer and services. Like you said, we're giving 10,000 square footage of free processing for the 3D tours, but also we want to vet photographers. We are offering our platform to professional photographers. We don't want photographers who do beauty shots of marriage, weddings, stuff like that. So you're going to have to present your company, provide some photo samples and everything. Why? It's also because we are going to offer you to be in a marketplace. So we want to make sure that during the onboarding process, we are talking to real, real estate photographers. So it's exclusive to real estate photographers. - And I can appreciate that because I also saw when I went to watch that other Urbanimmersive show at: www.WGAN.info/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN you also made an offer to receive three free Urbanimmersive 3D Video Fusion tours with floor plans when you set up your first free Urbanimmersive account at: www.Urbanimmersive.com So I can understand, but once you go, "Oh, okay. Yep, Just Shoot Me. I've heard of them. I've looked at the website. That's great. You enable my account. Now what happens?" - By the way, if you saw this, We Get Around Network 3D Video Fusion offer. You need to write it in the comments. So I think it was specified in the WGAN-TV Podcast. - Yeah. Just write in: WGAN - Dan's WGAN-TV Podcast. - Write in: WGAN - Yeah. - Okay. - Once you are approved, which normally takes about less than 24 hours because we have multiple demands, we also have some bots to get some accounts. But anyway, once it's going to be approved, your credential that you created for your account will work with the app. So you can go right away in an Apple store or Google Play download or scanning app if you want to use the 3D tours and your credential will work right away with the app. So you won't have access to use the app if you want to use the app if your account hasn't been approved. That's a detail. And after that, when you are approved, you're going to have an invitation to take the onboarding, the free onboarding. So again, we approve photographers because we offer free onboarding sessions. - Yeah. This a one-on-one onboarding session? - It's one-on-one. And I'll tell you that we are refusing basically half of the photographers who come on our platform. Because of all this, we're giving onboarding and the onboarding, it's personal. It's not just we're going to have a one hour together. No, we are going to take the time to customize the platform, so it runs. We want a win-win situation. - Okay. How long is the onboarding process? Is this a- - As long as you need it, Lee, as long as you need it. If you need an hour because you catch everything super-fast, it's going to be an hour. It's a minimum of an hour because there's a minimum of multiple things that you need to kind of discover. We're going to make you discover. We're going to customize your logo. We're going to help you with URLs and stuff like that. But if you want to take more time, we're going to take more time. We have approved you, so you're part of the family once you're approved. - Okay. Is there a charge for onboarding? - It's free. - It's free. Because I imagine if I get involved in the payroll management of a freelance photographer, particularly if I start offering or including more than one, I mean even just setting up payroll, is that something I can do on my own and it's just obvious or no, I really should be onboarded? - Yeah, you should take some time with our onboarding team, just at least to understand the concept behind it to be able to create the rate grid and stuff like that. You can figure it out. There's some people that are super computer literate, they will figure it out. But it's always better to take it; it's free. - Can I do the onboarding in different sessions? For example, if I'm particularly interested in the Urbanimmersive 3D Video Fusion and I have specific questions, or I want to talk about the business management, the invoicing or order online scheduling, I could do that separately. If I wanted to talk about the email marketing solutions, the website, I could do that separately. - Absolutely. And it is preferable to do that separately. There's so many things. It's an ERP and it's a very complex system. We took 10 years to build it. There's so many things that you want to do separately. And I'll tell you why we're giving our support free because the support is still free also. So you have the onboarding and the ongoing support. It is because there's a lot of chances you will receive a job from us. So if you cover a place, a region where we don't have any one and on our marketplace we receive an order, you're going to be contacted. So we want to be sure you know how to operate our platform. - So I have just two last questions. One of the challenges I have is I have, oh, I would call it legacy clients. And I got special pricing for them, but it's now time for me to increase my pricing. So I really kind of envision that I have new pricing come the first of the year for any new clients and even some of my legacy clients, I got them on different forms of pricing. I've somewhat created a nightmare for myself of all these different pricings for different services with different clients and with an intent to offer different pricing to new clients. Probably overstated, but does the Urbanimmersive platform help me in some way deal with what I've created in terms of my pricing, various pricings? - Oh yeah, absolutely. You can have group pricing. You can have specific agent pricing, special pricing. And you can also use promo codes. That could be for one shoot or for the full year for our clients. So each time he's ordering, he's using the same promo code, stuff like that. So yeah, we got you covered on that. - For a client that does four to eight listings a year with me versus a client that's doing double, triple, quadruple, that I can do different pricing for different clients. And one of the ways I could accomplish that would be offering discount promo codes off of a [List Price] rate card. - Yeah, actually. And if you want to see the screens or compelling the- - Not today, it's okay. And can I do those promo codes, coupon codes? Can I do it as a percentage? Can I do a specific dollar amount? There's sometimes- - For specific products. - Specific products, sometimes during the year, like now it's slow. So I might want to encourage people to do a job now. Can I do time-sensitive offers? - Yeah, you can do that as well. The promo code system we have implemented this year, actually one of the best from the market. - Okay. So I think really my last question - - one of my last questions, I always seem to have questions is -- why should I do this today rather than waiting till tomorrow, next week, next month? - The best time to change your workflow, your system, is definitely December, January, I think. So this is also where we are the busiest on our side. So if you want to start right away, it's a good time. You have no risk. You have no engagement with us. So that's our philosophy. So you come on our platform, you get free onboarding if you're approved. Like I said, we're not approving everyone, but if you're approved, you got all the onboarding for free. You're going to pay only for what you use. And I can tell you with certainty, you're going to pay less than anywhere else. At the end of the day, you're going to save. - I do have some colleagues that have also been looking at Urbanimmersive with me, but they're kind of at the beginning of their... They're just starting out as real estate photographers. Is Urbanimmersive appropriate for real estate photographers that are just starting out real estate? Maybe you've done a handful of shoots, maybe you've done it as a part-time job ready to go full-time, but realize there's like a lot of operational issues. - I would suggest they join one of our brands. So they're going to be coached, they're going to know how to use a system, they're going to receive more jobs also because we're dispatching with our clients and everything. Otherwise, yeah. I mean, they can start right away with a system, but it's a lot for a junior photographer. And of course, keep in mind that to apply and to get to our system, you need to kind of present a portfolio. So you cannot be just your house if you haven't shot any houses yet. So if you don't have any clients, the onboarding will be a very kind of dull session. - Okay. So if I'm hearing you correctly, that Just Shoot Me, Just Shoot Me Real Estate Visual Media Services that I've been busy doing this a long time successfully, I'm actually a good candidate. Do you have other clients - photographers -- that have had all this kludgey kind of business where they went, "Oh, well today I was just offering photos, Well, now I know I needed to offer floor plans and then I needed to offer video," and all of a sudden, I have two dozen different providers of services where I'm ordering from all these different platforms or companies? Is that typical? - Oh yeah, I mean it's most of the time because it's kind of the industry's evolving. There's more and more platforms that provide multiple systems, multiple features together. Of course, you're talking to the one that has the most features and the most vertical integration, but you have more and more options today. So most of the photographers who came on our platform were using third-party floor plans, third-party 3D tours, scheduling third parties, and so on and so forth. - But I'm not unusual. This is what Urbanimmersive does is to say, "Oh, a busy, successful photographer who's kludged together two dozen different solutions for handling the plethora of things that Urbanimmersive does is not unusual. This is typical. - Exactly. And like you said, solely the burden of switching platforms is not really there because without realizing it and adding the different third-party providers, you have complexified your workflow a lot without realizing it. So by switching everything to a simple workflow, a simple platform that simplifies that, so the transition will be easy and then the workflow after that will be a match made in heaven for you. - Okay. As I was thinking about this, all these really... I think I counted, it was like two dozen different third-party tools, solutions, services that I'm using. I'm thinking I could actually save money because I could start to eliminate, I get rid of my eblast platform, my webmaster, my web hosting. Presumably, my image editing is going to be less expensive or cost me less. - Or less time consuming. - If I can do the 3D tours in half the time, that means I might be able to add another shoot or two or three. So conceivably, I might even be able to double the number of shoots that I do and my freelancers do. If I can get rid of what I pay for separately ordering property websites, my Dropbox account- - WordPress website. - Yeah, it sounds like that moving forward with Urbanimmersive, particularly with all the different solutions that Urbanimmersive offers, that I may be able to save money, make more money just by printing as an example, and then perhaps participating in the marketplace. I think I would probably join without any expectation of new business, but anything that actually came in and filled up my schedule when I had openings is kind of gravy. Just a nice surprise. So save money, make money, and have more efficiency. Are there any other ways to look at Urbanimmersive other than saving money, saving time, making money, improving workflows? - Offering more products to maximize every real estate listing that falls on your plate. - What does that mean? - So with that, so if somebody calls you for pictures, then you'll be able to offer many services that you already offering or not, so that way you're making sure that you can offer everything like from pictures all the way to the print, so that way you're making more money with every real estate listing that you're getting. - Cool. I'm going to come out of character here. I'm back from Just Shoot Me, still might want to Just Shoot Me, but Dan here with WGAN-TV Live at 5. Before we say bye, Ghislain, François, is there anything that we haven't covered that you want to talk about? And I'll start there. - One thing, Lee, before we leave, we haven't got the time to talk about it, but there's on We Get Around Network WGAN-TV Podcast, there's a great podcast about the Urbanimmersive 3D Video Fusion that could really bring you a different perspective of your work by becoming some sort of... Yeah, that's a different kind of way of working with your clients. - Awesome. You can see that show: www.WGAN.info/UrbanimmersiveOnWGAN Was there anything else that we haven't covered that you want to talk about? It's good. So the last thing I really want to ask you, Ghislain, François, is in the big picture, you only have 30 seconds or a minute for all the busy, successful photographers that are watching: why Urbanimmersive? - The answer is quite simple. Like I said at the beginning, you are within an industry that is rapidly evolving to a tech driven, high volume business. So we're going to ease your job, you're going to have a better life balance between your work, your workload, actually, particularly during the evening when you come back from the road. So we're going to ease the transition of your business and make it possible to become a high volume business, make more money, and offer a comprehensive set of products and services. - François, anything to add to that? - No, Ghislain summed it up really well. - Thank you for being on the show today. - It was a pleasure. - We've been visiting with Urbanimmersive President and CEO Ghislain Lemire and Urbanimmersive Executive Vice President, François-Hugues Liberge. For Ghislain and François, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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WGAN Podcast-Intro to Urbanimmersive Services for Real Estate Photographers19298