[00:00:02]
Dan Smigrod: Hi all. I’m Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, January 5, 2023. You’re watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
Does this sound like you?
“I am a Matterport Service Provider and I don’t want to learn how to edit video.”
“I have shot and edited real estate videos, but I just don’t like editing and I don’t want to do it at night.”
“I like shooting video, but the more successful, the harder it is to scale my business and the more I feel overwhelmed.”
If that sounds like you, this is the perfect WGAN-TV Live at 5 show for you.
To talk about this topic, how Matterport Service Providers can add extra monthly revenue with real estate video services from MVLmedia is Andrew Lampman, Director of Sales and New Accounts for www.MVLmedia.com Hey, Andrew, good to see you.
[00:01:07]
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
Andrew Lampman: Hey, Dan. Good to see you. Thank you for having me on.
[00:01:09]
Dan Smigrod: You bet! And thanks for sharing your expertise about this topic today. For context, Andrew, how about taking us through www.MVLmedia.com -- the big picture.
[00:01:24]
Andrew Lampman: The big picture of MVLmedia -- We are a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers.
Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients. The entire platform has been designed with a real estate photographer, videographer and virtual tour provider in mind. From there, we help everybody with their presentation, but also the growth of their business.
[00:01:58]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. I’m reading ahead. I see that MVLmedia offers real estate listing videos up to five-minutes in length. Maybe you’ll describe that, but for $57, it sounds pretty awesome and I’m not quite sure how you can do that, but that’s what MVLmedia offers. Maybe you could show us and tell us an example or two of what those videos look like.
[00:02:26]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely, you just want me to share my screen to show you a finished product?
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Andrew Lampman: Here’s an example of one of our finished products (see more examples: www.MVLmedia.com)
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Andrew Lampman: This video shows our intro. You’re going to see some text layovers and the video outro of this. This property did have a lot of detail for us and the client did want us to come back at night for some twilight video clips.
As you can see, our editors were able to take what we asked them to do and pieced it together quickly for us as it was delivered the next morning. Again, blew, not just our client, the REALTOR, away but his homeowner asked for a copy of this and then they could keep it as they had this house custom-built.
[00:03:43]
Andrew Lampman: Many of the things that you get with every video edit: we do have intros; text layover; the outro piece. And we also have royalty free music. We do all the color correction for you. Everything is delivered to you the next morning.
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Dan Smigrod: For $57, what else do I get? I saw a text overlay at the very beginning. Is that included?
[00:04:24]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. We’ve created some intros so that you can put the address or whatever you want to put at the beginning.
Then as you go through, as you can see in this part of the video, you can do text layovers; every video comes with three if you want additional ones, there’s a small fee of $2 each. That’s for the editors; for the more work that they do.
They do color correction as well. That’s a big piece of it too. A lot of times when you’re shooting video, depending on how the lighting is from outside -- on an overcast day, what you’re going to have is you’re going to bump up your ISO to make it brighter. But the problem is you’re going to start doing things like blow-out windows.
To us, we’d say, hey, keep your ISO down. It’s okay that the video is a little dark. Let our editing adjust that so that we get the proper color correction happening. There’s no Add On cost for aerial footage. If you’re going to shoot drone footage, just like you’ve seen at the beginning of the video. A lot of places will have an Add On.
This is a flat fee to do this. We’ll do that; we have royalty-free music, it will sync the music and the video up with the music as well. We have logo watermarks.
If somebody wants to put the brokerage logo or their own name logo in the bottom right corner -- or top right corner -- wherever they want it, we can do that as well. We will actually do agent Add On as well. They’ll be able to speak as well in the video. Then, as long as you give us some direction on that, we’ll make sure that it’s in the places that you want to.
[00:06:11]
Dan Smigrod: Many of our viewers are Matterport Service Providers. They began -- starting out -- just shooting Matterport; quickly realized that real estate agents, first and foremost, wanted photos, then started asking about video.
You heard a little bit of that angst to say, “oh, I don’t want to buy software. I don’t want to learn how to edit. But, I don’t even know how to shoot video. I get it. It’s $57. It’s complete, it’s edited overnight. It’s delivered by next morning. You try to deliver it by [9 am].” But how can www.MVLmedia.com help our viewers who have never shot a piece of video and give them some confidence about why that’s just not that hard to do?
[00:07:02]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah, definitely. What we’ve actually done at MVLmedia, we’ve actually created a course. It’s free; sign-up for the course. It’ll go through everything from selecting your gear to setting up your gear to teach you different types of shots. You just don’t have a boring little pan. You see that all the time. The idea with video is movement. We break it down to even lengths of clips. Everybody thinks, “oh, I need to shoot a minute and a half.” My number one videographer, his clips might be 3-10 seconds each. That’s about it. He’s the one that just shot that video that we just saw.
[00:07:43]
Andrew Lampman: We’re able to help you with that. We give you suggestions and everything’s in the video or in the course for people to learn, as well as; reach out to me at any time.
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Dan Smigrod: To sign up, go to: www.MVLmedia.com It’s a free course and it includes how to shoot, what gear, what settings for your camera and the MVLmedia order form of how to order. Let’s begin maybe at the beginning. ;-) For the photographers that have angst about actually shooting video, maybe even for the first time, I think you have an interesting story about how you got started and why you got started.
[00:08:36]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely. I’m a 13-plus year photographer with my own business that I still actively run. I have three full-time photographers. I have two part-timers. I’ve been able to scale my business all during this time. It doesn’t matter who goes out because they get the exact same thing. That’s the beautiful part about what’s happened in my business.
I was shooting photos and panoramas then everybody wanted to get the Matterport. I was reluctant. I didn’t necessarily believe that people would pay for it. Then all of a sudden I started to notice I was losing clients.
I started to look to see what my clients are doing. Everything’s on the REALTOR website. I noticed that they were getting Matterport tours and floor plans. I either got to ‘bite the bullet’ and buy one of these cameras, which is a little pricey at first; when I compared it to the other companies.
Dollars and cents; with the volume that we do, it just made more sense to go with Matterport. We bought the Matterport Pro Camera. I instantly saw my business grow. At the time there were two of us shooting full-time. One part-time or at the time, the Matterport instantly grew fast. It took over 50 percent of my shoots. I gained 30 percent in growth in more shoots because I was doing it, as well as maintaining my clientele base.
From there, again, things moved along. I was reluctant to do video and the problem was that I had a videographer on staff. The only problem that I had was when he was done shooting all day, he didn’t want to edit all of them. Lot of people, when they start to get into this, a decent video editor takes 40 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes.
Let’s say about an hour on average per minute for editing when it comes down to it. If he shot two videos, you want to shoot a three-minute video, he’s 4-6 hours at night to turn it around the next day. What you’ll see out there is a lot of people advertising and 48-72 hour turnaround time. That’s because they are trying to do everything.
The reason why my guy didn’t want to do it is he didn’t want to burn out. That’s the number one thing. Like I said, when you get two full timers and a part-timer, you just start to generate some volume. We did try to do it. Just the editing just didn’t work out.
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts
MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
I had to pull back. I said, this is where we’re going to go. I actually bought a second Matterport camera pushing that. Then again, I started to notice I was losing clients. I was actually losing longterm clients I had had for years.
[00:11:41]
Dan Smigrod: Because you weren’t offering video even though you were capable of offering video, you weren’t because it was burning out your photographer or videographer?
[00:11:51]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. I wasn’t happy with the edits and nor were the clients. If you’re not necessarily a video editor, it’s hard to do it and it’s time-consuming to learn. I know my wife’s a graphic designer by trade and so she would even tell me like, she looked at me and she goes, “it’s not your thing.” I can take decent photos. I don’t take great photos because I don’t do it all day. I run the business. That’s what I do, and I shot lots of photos too, so I could do that, but as far as the editing part, that’s the hard part. Typically people that edit videos, that’s all they do because they enjoy that. It’s not the fun part, to me, at least.
[00:12:36]
Dan Smigrod: It sounds like the keyword here is outsource-outsource-outsource! Really the only way you’re going to be able to not burn out your team; deliver next morning; and scale your business -- is to outsource.
Let’s just assume that our audience actually “gets that” because they’ve already decided, “I don’t want to be in the editing business.” “I don’t want to buy software.”
Maybe I’ve even done editing but decided I wanted to stop offering video” (just like you did) because it was burning them out (or a team member). Let’s get to the gear that you talk about in your course at: www.MVLmedia.com -- which is free. In that free course, you begin with gear. Just as an overview, do I need to use a DSLR camera? Is a smartphone okay?
[00:13:32]
Andrew Lampman: Well, smartphones have come a long way, but for me, the business side of me kicks in and it goes, “why would I ever pull out my iPhone to shoot photos and video of a house with a REALTOR standing right there.”
They’re just going to go, “why am I not doing this?” They’re smart enough to search around, they know about virtual assistants so why would they not search around? Then that would ‘kibosh’ my business. I’ve never done the iPhone stuff or cellphone thing. We do use DSLR cameras.
[00:14:09]
Andrew Lampman: The reason why we’ve gone that route versus video cameras, because as you know, every client wants photos too. The DSLR is good. Typically anything that’s capable in low light just to help with the video as far as little more brightness and depth.
[00:14:29]
Dan Smigrod: I’m going to assume even if you’re a Matterport Service Provider, you’re going to have a DSLR camera because even if you got into this business thinking, “I’m just going to do Matterport!” The first thing you learn is: agents really want photos first and you had to make that leap to go buy a DSLR camera. Now that I have this DSLR camera, do I need to buy anything else or is that sufficient for video?
[00:14:54]
Andrew Lampman: We’re going to highly suggest you get a gimbal. We like the single-stick gimbal. It’s better for movement and mobility. We’ve had the two-handed one where people move around. Just limits you with speed and movement and shots you can capture.
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Dan Smigrod: I’m new to video, so what’s a gimbal? What does it do?
[00:15:15]
Andrew Lampman: The gimbal, it’ll stabilize the camera on it for movement. It’s not perfect. You still have to be cautious as you walk around and move, but it allows you to get into tight corners and do some nice reveals as you come around a corner, nice and tight, things like that.
Like I said, depending on what you get, I highly suggest getting one of the DJI Ronin gimbals. I’m not getting paid to say this. We’ve used a couple of different ones. They haven’t burned out, and you’re talking about a $400 investment.
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Dan Smigrod: In one of your training videos, you mentioned the DJI Ronin RSC 2. There’s actually a DJI Ronin RS 3 now. Are you still perfectly fine with the two?
[00:16:06]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely still good with the two. If you’ve got the Ronin S, that’s still good as well. The SC is still good. The models change a bit.
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Dan Smigrod: Whatever you truly feel comfortable with, you recommend getting a DSLR gimbal, and in your case, you happen to recommend the DJI Ronin line. That’s all the extra gear that you need to buy?
[00:16:31]
Andrew Lampman: That’s it.
[00:16:33]
Dan Smigrod: Then you have some settings that you suggest when shooting. You watch the video. Find out about the settings. Now, in terms of shooting, you mentioned that your lead videographer is shooting clips. Even in your training course, I think you mentioned shoot clips that are 3-10 seconds, 3-15 seconds. Why is that? Why not shoot longer; have more video available for each shot? What’s the disadvantage of overshooting?
[00:17:05]
Andrew Lampman: Well, I’ll tell you this. The first time we shot, we shot about 200 clips. Then to bring 200 clips down to a 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minute video, you’re spending a lot of time just to filter that out.
The other thing is that because we’re outsourcing to have somebody do it, if we shoot the clips on how we want and in the order we want, we know exactly what we’re going to get. To me it’s an efficient piece. I do have a videographer. He’ll take long clips. He’ll shoot clips for a minute and a half. When he starts and stops, it is very apparent where his clip stops. I don’t necessarily suggest that because a lot of people, you’ll start to overshoot, and overshoot is just going to cost you time and that’s the whole point that we’re trying to save here.
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Dan Smigrod: I imagine after you’ve done a video with www.MVLmedia.com -- you realize that if you overshoot, it’s taking you longer to download, to upload, to sort through. This really is a very important tip -- technique -- for creating video is: don’t
overshoot and keep your clips short. Now, you mentioned shooting them in the order so that the video editor really gets them in series. I could imagine you have two choices.
You can either shoot them in order or you could organize them before you upload them at: www.MVLmedia.com Do you really race around the house shooting in the order? Do you recommend doing that?
Because it seems like it may take you some more time to say, “Oh! I need to get from the kitchen, then I want to get to the master bedroom.” It may be shorter, less time to shoot the rooms as they come to you as opposed to shooting them in the order that you want to present. Let me see. I’ll give a better example.
Maybe the bathroom. You want to show the bathroom last, but the bathroom was one of the first rooms that you were walking through because you went from the master bedroom. Do you literally go back and shoot that master bathroom last because it’s not where you wanted it in the video?
I’m trying to understand efficiency for the photographer. Is it better to really take the time and shoot in order or is it better to just shoot in the order that you want and then label the video clips for the editor?
[00:20:03]
Andrew Lampman: Well, so let me be clear on this too. Our editors have been trained. They’re in-house. We’ve done extensive training with them. They know what the front shots are. They know what are basically the common area shots.
They know the bedrooms, they can tell the larger bedrooms, they get that part, but there’s always that little bit that we want to help them. I’m huge on efficiency and I know you are. We all get your emails, we know how efficient you are, so I know you can appreciate this piece.
It’s one of these things. We’ve all seen the condo when you first come in the door, there’s a bathroom right there. To me, that’s the last thing I want to see. If I was to come in, do the opening scene where I see the front, I hit all the common areas and then I hit that bathroom, that is going to save me time in the way my brain works.
Now, not everybody is like me. They’ll come in, they’ll hit everything they can and go home and quickly [order the video clips] this is how I want it. Now, again, you don’t necessarily have to do that when you shoot these.
Obviously, if you wanted to create a folder with exteriors, we know front and back. Common areas, you put that for your interiors, you put a folder for upstairs. My suggestion is always for everybody and this is how I’ve trained everybody that works for me and even other photographers I talk to that aren’t in our area, it is the efficiency part.
To be honest with you, we can go in and shoot a 2,500 square foot house with nobody in it for photos in about 15 minutes and we could shoot video probably less than that, just on the efficiency side. Then when we come home, we upload to our Dropbox.
We’ll pop onto www.MVLmedia.com We login, we create our order, we share our Dropbox link and we’re done. That’s the efficiency part to me is that I don’t have to touch as much. Now, we’ve all shot houses. And we might be lucky if 50 percent are in order.
[00:22:15]
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts
MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
Dan Smigrod: There’s people still sleeping in the second floor bedrooms. That no matter how much you send a checklist in advance and you tell your real estate agent, client, and hopefully they told the homeowner, you still show up and the kids still are not awake, so you’re forced to shoot the rooms in a different order than what you were planning. Stuff happens.
[00:22:37]
Andrew Lampman: You know what? Stuff does happen. I’ll say this, the one thing I’ve really noticed, and it’s funny because we’re just talking about this. I’ve never actually said this, and Greg [Paterson], who’s my partner with MVLmedia, I didn’t even tell him this too, is the quality that we provide changes the agents that we get.
I just got a call yesterday from a guy. He used me before he left because I didn’t have a Matterport. He’s back because I do video and he’s seen the video, but he’s got a builder and his builder just said to him: is comparing myself against the guys that I have. I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve taken over the Number 1 and 2 agents in my city (and area) that provide a lot of business, and because of the quality that everybody’s seeing with them, I’m getting other people, other agents contact me for more business. The growth is there from the quality.
[00:23:35]
Dan Smigrod: I would say in terms of growing a business, you really want to have inbound calls that are referrals because those are the calls that take the least amount of time to get to yes. “Hey, I saw your video with Greg. Greg said I should give you a call. I loved your video, I loved how it was edited.”
[00:24:03]
Dan Smigrod: Then the conversation is relatively quick because it’s a trusted introduction. It sounds like -- not only is video an Add On to offer -- but it’s also a business development tool that’s super efficient because other agents are looking at what their competitors are doing.
[00:24:28]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely. Video is also used for marketing for the REALTOR. It’s a huge added advantage, especially if you can get them to talk on the screen, even an intro. “Hi, I am Andrew Lampman with such and such brokerage. Welcome to my listing, come take a look.” That’s all they need, but it’s a marketing piece.
But on top of that for us as the photographer’s, it’s business growth and income revenue growth. Especially like I said, even if we’re shooting a house in 30 minutes and we’re taking 20 minutes to do video, we can generate an extra $200, $300, $400 (Canadian dollars) depending on your area. That much more income.
That’s a huge income growth in a small amount of time. Because we’re also not just doing our photos and our Matterport tours and floor plans.
We’ve introduced video. We’re gaining back those clients that we lost or just haven’t looked at us because of this? Like I said the guy that called me yesterday, he actually called me because his current photographer only does photos, floor plans and Matterport. They didn’t do video. He’s back because we do video.
[00:25:40]
Dan Smigrod: Congratulations.
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Andrew Lampman: Thank you.
[00:25:41]
Dan Smigrod: You mentioned dollars. I’d like to stay on that. I very much do want to, again, a demo of the back-end to see how one takes all these video clips, logo, watermark, whatever digital elements are going to be used in the video, how that gets uploaded to the www.MVLmedia.com website (platform) to have the videos edited. But you started talking about money, so let’s stay on money.
[00:26:18]
Dan Smigrod: You’re in London, Ontario, Canada. I’m not sure how to compare that in terms of Chicago, New York, LA, Des Moines, Iowa, in terms of market size, competitive, and it’s gone. I’m going to struggle here because you may be talking Canadian dollars and I’m thinking most of our audience maybe US dollars.
That said, could you talk a little bit about pricing? What you can charge and is the pricing for your videos different based on ordering different services from MVLmedia?. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know if it’s the length of the video.
Maybe you could say, well, “Dan, it’s $57 flat to deliver 1-5 minutes. But it took your videographer longer to shoot a five-minute video than a one-minute video. Even though your cost is a flat of $57 US, are you charging differently?” It’s an open-ended question. Can you talk to me a little bit about pricing for real estate videos?
[00:27:33]
Andrew Lampman: Where I am, we’re about 400,000 people, my area might cover 450,000 people. What I’ve noticed in the last few years is that quality competition probably has 4-5 people. As far as multiples, there’s probably about 30 people that are competition around here, they’ve just so many have popped up.
Quality has got to be the big thing and then price. Like anybody else, you want to look around, you know who your competition is in the area. You need to find out what their pricing is to structure yourself inside there. I know I’m cheaper, I’m not the cheapest, but I do that so that I can grow the volume for my people and then I can increase some pricing from there.
[00:28:30]
Dan Smigrod: Do you mind, could you be specific and just take us through some examples of how you price video?
[00:28:38]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah, definitely. I’m more of a package person. I don’t and I haven’t billed on square footage and I know a lot of people do that due to my area and the competition. I’ve always avoided that just to not squeeze. I don’t want to nickel and dime.
[00:29:00]
Dan Smigrod: Let me ask you a little bit differently. Let’s assume that the package includes photos; floor plan; Matterport; single property website. Now you come along and add video to that. How much more are you adding to that first package?
[00:29:21]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. The original Matterport; floor plan; and photos with a single property website, I charged CAD $300 for that.
[00:29:28]
Dan Smigrod: CAD $300?
[00:29:30]
Andrew Lampman: CAD $300.
[00:29:32]
Dan Smigrod: I just quickly Googled the exchange rate here. It’s about 0.75 cents to the US dollar. In US dollars, three-quarters of that would be closer to $200 if I’ve done my conversion right. USD.
[00:29:51]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. I would say this, I wouldn’t necessarily look at the Canadian dollar versus the American dollar. I’ve probably been on about 300 photographers’ websites in the US and I’m low compared to what I’ve seen. It depends on the area.
[00:30:07]
Dan Smigrod: Let’s just assume: Matterport tour; photos; floor plans; single property website; no aerial video is $300 Canadian. Now, if you add video, can you talk a little bit about how you price the Add On of video into that package?
[00:30:30]
Andrew Lampman: What I looked at was as I was new to it, and there’s probably about 15 people doing video. There’s one guy that said CAD $700. I know somebody that’s at CAD $600 for that package type thing. I really wanted to drive some business and to really blow up to make two people very busy with video. I went low. I’m at CAD $475 for that package to add that. I added in an extra CAD $175.
[00:30:59]
Dan Smigrod: Is that with Aerial as well?
[00:31:02]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. I’ve thrown in the drone footage there, a little bit of drone video.
[00:31:07]
Dan Smigrod: Is it CAD $175 added regardless of whether it’s one minute or five-minutes?
[00:31:15]
Andrew Lampman: Correct.
[00:31:16]
Dan Smigrod: You’re really -- as a photographer, videographer on site, you’re not looking at “oh, the client’s paid for a minute or two minute or five-minutes.”
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Director of Sales and New Accounts
MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
You’re looking at what amount of video do I need to do to tell the story of this house for the agent to do two things: 1) help them originally get the listing. Just the fact that the agent was going to offer a video. 2) is to help them with the sale of the listing, get the most offers for the most money with the least amount of stress for the homeowner. Then 3) having that video work as a marketing tool to get the next listing.
[00:31:59]
Andrew Lampman: Exactly. It worked.
[00:32:04]
Dan Smigrod: That’s about CAD $175. So, at some point you are losing business because you weren’t offering video, you now are offering a package, how are you doing? Do people buy your biggest, fully loaded package most? Is that resulting in more business for you?
[00:32:26]
Andrew Lampman: That is. So in 2020 my business grew 30 percent. Again, I’ve been fortunate on that and the growth and in terms of that the revenue is: 50 percent of my clients actually ordered that big package. It was my goal for January 2023 to increase it by another $50.
I truly believe that increasing your prices in increments and I have in the past, there’s no question mark, depending on what the product is, this is the big package. Another CAD $50, probably by the end of the year I’d like to bump it up another CAD $50. So I believe that I could easily get CAD $575+ for this package.
[00:33:10]
Dan Smigrod: For the package Canadian dollars (CAD). I’ll point out today is Thursday, January 5, 2023. Just in terms of that dollar conversion for those that want to do it, $0.74 Canadian dollars (CAD) to US dollar (USD).
[00:33:30]
Dan Smigrod: When you started offering video, or maybe even today, can you talk about the impact of offering video as an Add On for a photographer that’s not presently doing video?
[00:33:47]
Andrew Lampman: I think that what you’ll see is; you’ll probably get into similar lines as me. We have become an on-demand, media-driven culture.
So if you take a look at -- my wife and I were looking at stats before and it was like, on average, people are on screens 6-7 hours a day, in the US it’s even more and three-and-a-half of those hours plus, you can Google stats all you want.
I don’t know who is a good place or not, but I looked at multiple, like we’re in the 15, 20 different stats and we’re looking at or places that provide these stats. Three-and-a-half hours is streaming, video watching.
So to me this is where everybody’s going. I believe they said that in the majority of these stats it’s anywhere between 40-60 and they cross paths. But let’s say 50/50 time is on their cell phones or tablets or laptops. Or cell phones or laptops or computers So everybody’s on them. So they’re looking to watch videos. I’m sure we’ve all caught ourselves just watching those videos. Watching those videos.
[00:35:01]
Dan Smigrod: I would say, in my mind the statistics that matter as a service provider, 1) are you losing business that you clearly know that you lost a client because you weren’t offering video. 2) are you losing clients and you don’t know the reason.
It just might be because you don’t offer a video. Then I think the third is probably, 3) could you be proactive about getting more business by offering video as an Add On. So you have first your existing clients to offer video as an Add On and hopefully a way to remain sticky not to lose clients, and then to be able to use video to get clients.
Did you end up hiring, and yet one or two more people as videographers, photographers because video is starting to “blow up” your business in a good way?
[00:36:07]
Andrew Lampman: Yes. So I’ve had to hire one more person who’s that one of my part-timers sees, he only comes on to help me with doing video shoots. So he’ll do the full package as well. So one-and-a-half people that I’ve had to do that since May 2021.
[00:36:27]
Dan Smigrod: So congratulations on that. I could imagine that some that are watching the show are probably saying, maybe this is an edge case for those that are watching, but I think there might be some that say, “I really enjoy editing video.”
But I want to say, “are you interested in growing your business?” “Are you interested in enjoying editing?” Because this was probably two different things. You either want to be an artist or you want to be a businessperson. Could you talk a little bit about scaling your business and why outsourcing matters?
[00:37:09]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah, definitely. So a couple of things. I want to hit that too. I do believe in sticking in your lane of strength. My wife calls me, “the business guy” because I seem to look at everything in the business strategy “head”... I underpriced to fill up -- to make people busy. Now I can increase my price. So that’s kind of my strategy.
So I don’t want to discount anybody that’s creative in photography and videography. I don’t want to take away their want to edit, but at a certain point, you’re going to be stuck with capping your income. That’s the only reason. So the outsourcing piece to me is again, it gives me a consistent look.
I do my photos too. So it doesn’t matter who goes out, choose my photos and my video. I’m getting the same delivery and I’m getting the same delivery every day. So that’s the other part. I’ve never had anything go beyond 8 am. The other bonus is that MVLmedia puts the photos and video on a single property website for me, so I don’t even have to do an upload.
[00:38:21]
Dan Smigrod: So I want to say that MVLmedia promises video the next day, the next morning.
[00:38:32]
Andrew Lampman: Next morning.
[00:38:33]
Dan Smigrod: Before [9 am] local time, but has been striving to deliver the videos by [9 am]. It sounds like you’ve been superbusy, super-productive and it turns out that you have not had any deliverables that came after [9 am]?
[00:38:52]
Andrew Lampman: I have not. All my videos to be honest -- and I don’t want to over-promise, but I’ve had everything way before that to be honest with you. I’m a 6 am guy and I think the latest I’ve actually had something. Typically, I have all my videos before I wake up.
[00:39:08]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. So Greg Paterson, the Founder/Owner of MVLmedia, likes to under promise and over deliver, under promise is by [9 am], next day, local time. Maybe the over-deliver is being consistent to deliver it earlier than promised?
[00:39:36]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. I believe our target is actually 9 am.
[00:39:40]
Dan Smigrod: 9 am. Okay, cool.
[00:39:41]
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts
MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
Andrew Lampman: Not noon. Yeah, 9 am. That’s the goal. Then secondly, he’s probably like you, customer service is the biggest key to it all.
[00:39:51]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. Awesome. So I would like to see the process. But before you do that, were there any other videos -- or just segments of videos -- that you wanted to show to say, “hey, here are different kinds of endings, or different colors or different styles.”
I could imagine if you’re a successful, busy professional real estate photographer, you have many different clients who all have different nuances. I could imagine that you end up creating templates for specific clients. This is their picture, their logo, their contact info that belongs in every video.
I don’t need to provide that every time. I just need to or how do you deal with that or I’m sorry, Andrew, I’m asking you a lot of questions all at once. If we could look at some samples of other video elements and maybe point out how that’s treated in the upload process.
[00:40:57]
Andrew Lampman: Actually, we have everything in the upload process. If somebody does have a specific outro that they want or something like that, they’ll be able to provide that for us and then we’ll put it in there. When we go through the order process, I’ll show you we’ve got six templated options for the intros.
[00:41:18]
Dan Smigrod: Well, let’s take a look at it. Let’s walk through that because I think this is a super-important process to the workflow because anyone who’s watching the show says, “Okay, this is good. I don’t have to buy software and I don’t have to learn how to edit. You’ll tell me all I need is a gimbal to add to my DSLR.
You’ll tell me my camera settings, I’ll watch your free course in shooting video. You’ll give me techniques on how to shoot the video. Some workflows, suggestions of ‘shoot your clips short 3 to 10, 15 seconds. Try to shoot video in order to make your workflow easier when you go to upload to give instructions to the editor.’”
Let’s actually take a look at this workflow piece because this is so important that I think if our viewers can understand how easy, fast, and simple it is to actually place an order for a $57 video. I think that would be awesome.
[00:42:18]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely. So this right here is the MVLmedia photographer dashboard. This is my own business, Club Tours, anybody wants to look me up, I am real. So this would be the admin piece. So this is where you, the photographer, would control everything. You can add in your team and everything like that. But I’ll save that for another time, Dan. We’ll just quickly go over to
the photographer dashboard here where we’re going to click to create an order. Here it is. We talked before.
We do have two options because we do have the single property website and all the features that come in the back-end of it here. So if you do want that, there’s an Add On -- monthly fee. But we won’t go too deep into that, but this is where it would be here you get a single property website with it. If you just want editing services with no single property website, this is where this is.
[00:43:10]
Dan Smigrod: In fact, I’ll point out. We did a show with the Founder of MVLmedia also known as My Visual Listings with Greg Paterson a little over a year ago, we did a deep dive overview of all the services. (podcast.wgan-tv.com)
We really wanted to do a show today specifically about video and that’s why I’ve tried to be on the straight and narrow, specifically on the video service.
[00:43:40]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah, definitely. So I’ll just quickly go through here. I did this so that people can see just the ease of everything that’s on there, including that single property website. It’s really quick, so I’ll be fast on here. Quickly in the ordering process, we would select who our agent is, our client. I’ll just go with the guy that was in the video.
[00:44:07]
Andrew Lampman: Shahin, property is going to be for sale. Who was our photographer? Will claim that it is me. We’ll put in our address. In our case, it’s province or you can put the state or city. I’ll just put in the generic postal code here.
You can add bedrooms or bathrooms into the single property website if you want. If not, just leave it as is. We have property types, so residential. We’ll go with a two-story home. There’s multiple different styles in there. You can add in descriptions or leave it to the agent, as well as special features. We have our different single property websites skins. I always like the luxury one. I’ll just click on “Next.”
[00:44:51]
Dan Smigrod: I should point out here that the single property website is free. When you place the order for the video, you get the single property website at no charge. Is this correct?
[00:45:02]
Andrew Lampman: No. You’re not going to get a single property website on that. Everything’s now on the monthly subscription piece, which is just $99, unlimited.
[00:45:12]
Dan Smigrod: The video does not require any subscription, no other services. If you want additional solutions, they’re available to you, but if you just want to order videos all day long for $57 a pop, easy-peasy.
[00:45:32]
Andrew Lampman: Exactly. Sorry about that.
[00:45:38]
Andrew Lampman: I’m just going to click in here. This is just on our stats page just as we log in. Then we get into our editing services that we do. I’ll quickly click on the video that we want to do. Yes, we want to move forward, so we’ll click on the “Order Editing”. Then this is our editing form, nice and simple.
Depending on your client, I’ve got a client that only likes a one-minute video. I’ve got other ones that say, “hey, give me the three minutes.” We’ll select our timeline that we want. The order of the clips. This is where if you have any specifics that you want to put in here for them,
[00:46:14]
Andrew Lampman: any details on how you want things ordered. Typically, I have clips in order, so I just let them know that the clips are in order. If you have your exteriors in a different folder, you can just say, “hey, my exteriors are in this folder. Put the front ones, front, back one’s back.”
[00:46:32]
Dan Smigrod: I’m confused. Am I uploading video or am I linking to a Dropbox or Google Drive?
[00:46:40]
Andrew Lampman: You’re going to link to a Dropbox.
[00:46:43]
Dan Smigrod: I’m going to provide a Dropbox link that has all my digital assets, which in addition to video, may also be a watermark, a logo, or a client’s photo.
[00:46:59]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. As we go through here, you’ll see that you can actually just upload those to those spots where needed for the watermark and that. Or you can make mention of it and just leave it in the Dropbox folder and they’ll grab them from there.
[00:47:11]
Dan Smigrod: Okay.
[00:47:16]
Andrew Lampman: I’m very specific on everything I do, so I like to include every video that I supply. My one photographer that I said that does longer clips, he does overlaps, duplicates, things like that. In there we’ll just rule.
For him, we always say exclude some of the clips and we leave that to the editor’s discretion. They haven’t failed me so this is good. They get it. In here this is where we will select the intro text layer over an agent outro side of things. If you do want one, these are the samples that we have. Like I said, I’ll just click on this one here.
[00:48:01]
Andrew Lampman: (I’ll just turn the audio down.) We can see how the intro is going to look. In here also, we’re going to show some text layovers that show-up down here. Sorry, it’s in the video clip so as I go over to the MVLmedia piece comes.
Then it will show you how an outro will look as well. This is all part of the service. If you do want the agent’s photo in there, there’s a spot just below that will upload that in there. If we want this one, we’ll select.
[00:48:28]
Dan Smigrod: Excuse me. With the (animation) of Samantha’s name, is that part of the service?
[00:48:35]
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. That’s exactly it. As you can see, we have six different templates in here that you can choose from. What we’ve done is that we’ve gone with the same font and texts, and we’ve incorporated that into the text layovers as well as the outro. So we have consistency across there for you. It’s nothing you have to worry about. You just have to select it and put it in there.
[00:49:04]
Andrew Lampman: Then this is where we can have our address that we want to put in here that we want if we don’t want it in the intro. If you do want to put in beds and baths, and square footage, you can put that. Just say you only want to show the bedrooms and bathrooms on the intro piece. You only put that. Don’t worry about square footage, we won’t put that in.
[00:49:26]
Andrew Lampman: These are the text layovers, so if you do want one, what you would do is you would put in the text that you want. As you’ve seen in my video example, I had that spa-like master bedroom.
You’d put that and then you would tell us what the clip is, that the name of that clip that you want there. Like I said, you can do up to three (text overlays) if you need more than that, they are $2 extra. Depends on how many. Three is the sweet spot so you don’t need anymore if you do like those. Part of the agent outro here, so do you want it? Their contact info, typically it’s a yes. This is our client. They are selling themselves.
Then if you want to add a photo, you can say “yes or no.” If you say yes, you click on the “Upload” and then you’ll upload their logo. Alternatively, you can put that in special instructions at the bottom when we get there, put the photos in there. This is the Add On watermark, if you wanted it, don’t want it.
[00:50:27]
Dan Smigrod: If I can just stick with that agent for one second because I think that on one of the videos that you showed, I believe was a picture of the agent. It had their name, their title, their brokerage, their phone, their email address. Is that built by MVLmedia or is that a video clip provided by the photographer? Or it could be either?
[00:50:59]
Andrew Lampman: It could be either. I would say in this scenario that the majority of people won’t have any custom outros to provide. If you do, you’ll have those in the Dropbox and just make note of it. But in this spot here you would put it in here.
My client’s name is Shahin. I put his name in there. I would put it in a broker record. If I wanted that or if I just wanted to put it in his number, I’d put in a cell number, his email, and then we will then take that and put that into that outro at the end.
[00:51:33]
Dan Smigrod: But I could imagine that after you’ve built it once, I may want to take a previous video and say, “this is the way I like it done.”
[00:51:44]
Andrew Lampman: Yeah. Because we have all these different options here, the outro could change. It’s easy enough. Now, like I said, if you did have a custom outro, then you would just leave that in your Dropbox folder and just make note of it so that we’re aware that you have an outro in there for us already.
[00:52:03]
Dan Smigrod: Okay. Great. [00:52:07]
Andrew Lampman: Does that make sense?
[00:52:08]
Dan Smigrod: Yes.
[00:52:09]
Andrew Lampman: Sorry. Thank you for stopping me to get clarity.
[00:52:15]
Andrew Lampman: This is the part where I said about uploading the agent’s photo which will be taken and put in that outro. Do the same thing with the watermarking as well. So if you do watermarking, I’ve only got one agent that actually likes it. He has his own small boutique brokerage and so he likes it just watermarked in the bottom-right corner.
So we’ll upload that and then I’ll always make note of that and special instructions. If you do have your own music, you’ll just click on the button here and then gray it out and so then that way you’ll just put that in your Dropbox we’ll. Use that.
If you don’t, we have our own list of royalty free music. We’ve got a ton of selections in here for you, and we add in every month more and more music, so that you’re never at a loss for music as well.
You want to hear anything, you click on ‘’Play’’ and listen to it. In these special instructions, this would be the point that you say, “Hey, I’ve got a customer outro. It’s here. I want you to use more speed ramps because I liked that. I like slowdowns here. Reverse this clip.” Anything that you want to add in to give the editor some direction is in there as well.
[00:53:33]
Dan Smigrod: I’m going to say so far it’s been super-straightforward about uploading and checking boxes. This is the opportunity that if you like to give a lot of direction, you can and if you don’t, then you just want to leave it up to the editor, that’s fine too.
[00:53:54]
Andrew Lampman: Exactly. I’ll say it again, we’ve extensively trained our editors. They are very aware of how to put these together. They do exclusively real estate videos with us and we’re on them about it all the time.
[00:54:10]
Dan Smigrod: Sometimes even less direction may be better, meaning, be careful about over-directing someone that’s supertalented, that already has a lot of experience doing a ton of real estate videos. Give them an opportunity to take a look at your content and do what they do best.
[00:54:33]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely. I agree with that. And, if you do have something specific you want and it’s hard to articulate that in writing and you’ve seen the video, link a video in there. Give us the link to look at it and say, “that’s exactly what they want.” Hence they’ll build and deliver that. They’ve done that for me a few times without question. They do it.
[00:54:57]
Andrew Lampman: Next part is that we do create a social media teaser video as well. It is an Add On. So you click on it. It’s an added $17. It will show you how it shows up on the social media side as far as your Instagram and TikTok and things like that that you can post it to. Then that same video can play on here.
[00:55:22]
Dan Smigrod: The teaser video is not any longer than what the platforms’ allow. If TikTok or Facebook has a 30 second limit, then you’re going to make sure your video doesn’t exceed the limit of the platform. I noticed there were two sizes there. So for $17 extra, you get both horizontal and vertical teaser videos.
[00:55:52]
Andrew Lampman: Exactly. Just so you’re aware too is -- everybody is aware that Instagram only does a 60 second video that you’re allowed on their real. They’ve actually just bumped up to 90 seconds. So not necessarily that you want that on the social
media platform, but this is how important video has become. The big players are pushing more time as well.
[00:56:20]
Dan Smigrod: Are you offering square format?
[00:56:25]
Andrew Lampman: Do we have a square format?
[00:56:27]
Dan Smigrod: Yeah.
[00:56:29]
Andrew Lampman: What would you need the square format for? Or is that just a question?
[00:56:34]
Dan Smigrod: For Instagram?
[00:56:37]
Andrew Lampman: You can actually take the MP4 file that you get for the video and just paste it in on the vertical side. It’ll shrink into that.
[00:56:47]
MVLmedia [is] a software and editing service for real estate photographers, videographers and virtual tour providers. Our platform was created to save you time, provide professional editing service, increase your monthly revenue and get you more clients.
Andrew Lampman
Director of Sales and New Accounts
MVLmedia www.MVLmedia.com
Dan Smigrod: Got it. Super-straightforward. I think what I’m hearing is USD $57 up to five minutes of video and includes everything that you’ve described. The only optional extras on the video are if you’d like the teaser videos horizontal and vertical, $17 as an Add On; and if you would like, more than three overlays USD $2 each. Delivered by 9 am next morning.
[00:57:27]
Andrew Lampman: If you upload by midnight Eastern Time, you’ll have them by 9 am.
[00:57:34]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. In terms of getting started talking about going to your website: www.MVLmedia.com -- If our viewers have questions, they can email you at: Andrew@MVLmedia.com and in the We Get Around Network Forum: @Andrew_Lampman is your Member name.
[00:57:56]
Dan Smigrod: I think the next steps would be, if you need help, you have a couple of options. 1) sign up for the free course. It’s very short.
Take the training on, here’s the gear, here’s the settings for your camera, here the shots, techniques and here’s even the process for uploading, even though you’ve walked us through that. Then I think that the next thing is 2) actually to talk to you. You’re super-receptive to actually hearing from people doing one-on-one video chats.
[00:58:31]
Andrew Lampman: Definitely. I’ll do anything, calls, video chats, texts, e-mail. I’m good with it all.
[00:58:41]
Dan Smigrod: Andrew, do you feel like there’s something that we haven’t covered that we should have covered during today’s show?
[00:58:48]
Andrew Lampman: You’re very thorough, Dan. I don’t think we’ve missed much here at all.
[00:58:53]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. Andrew, thank you for sharing your expertise with us today. I appreciate it.
[00:58:58]
Andrew Lampman: No problem. Thank you very much. Just to regurgitate what you were saying there, is that I’m always available to help anybody. I love helping people. I love watching people grow. The goal with MVLmedia, is the fact that we want to see photographers make more money and get back time.
The outsourcing of the editing side has saved me and my photographer’s time. When you grow your business and you bring on photographers, you can have with us, you can bring in as many photographers you want.
The goal and the hope is that you will grow, but you’ll also see it doesn’t matter who goes and shoots, because the editing is our
same editors. You get consistency across the board and that’s what will help grow your business. Because you’ll see more and more of your videos out, more and more of your photos out, things like that. I get calls. Today I still get 10 calls a month from real new REALTORS because they’ve seen them or they’d been referred because of the quality that we provide.
[01:00:07]
Dan Smigrod: Awesome. We’ve been visiting with Andrew Lampman, Director of Sales and New Accounts for MVLmedia. Again, the website: www.MVLmedia.com -- for Andrew in London, Ontario, Canada.
