"Creativity Expands Your Business" Tomás Mualim - Virtual 3D Studios - Matterpod Ep. 10

This week we are joined by Tomás Mualim from Virtual 3D Studios in Milwaukee WI, as well as an office in Chile.

You can view Tomás' website by clicking here.  

Follow on Instagram @Virtual3D. For Latin America, follow @Virtual3Dchile.

Hello, everybody. We're excited to be joined today by Tomas from Virtual 3D Studios in Milwaukee. He's going to talk to us a little bit about their business that they have there, as well as an office that they have in Chile. So anyway, we're excited to hear from Tomas and some of the insights that he is able to provide.

So thanks so much for joining us today. Today to mark the beginning.

Thank you.

No problem. Want to go ahead and get started, Tomas. We'd love to hear a little bit about virtual 3-D studios and kind of some of the current customers that you guys are focusing on. Maybe just tell us a little bit about maybe how you got started in your business and where you're currently focusing.

So, I got started back in 2015 or 2016 with the Matterport one. The first Matterport, the big camera. And then it was actually a friend from college and he said, Hey, have you heard of this thing called Matterport? We're on a coffee break. And he was sent to real estate, and then he showed me that technology. He wanted to apply it for real estate.

And then I saw like a business opportunity maybe, you know, having other things done in 3D. And then he actually wasn't interested at all. And then I went on and bought the camera of the first one, and then it just started, you know, doing real estate, but also immersing myself in different areas, just, you know, wanting to a restaurant and say, Hey, can I do this for free?

This is new. We have it for you afterward, you know, coffee shops or different stuff. And then I started just building the business up from different market businesses. So it was pretty fun just to see how it was. It's a very versatile tool that you can use all around. So then we started doing cars. You know, car dealerships, museums, art galleries and, you know, all that we do today with the Matterport one.

The first one, is pretty slow scanning. It was different at that time. But yeah, that's how we got started.

Was this in Milwaukee that you got started or was this in Chile?

No. Yeah, I'm originally from Chile and I live in Milwaukee now. So we this year we started expanding to the U.S. and in Chile, we have different types of clients in different countries of South America that use today we have more than Matterport, but we have a lot of tools that are engaging N360 technology, just as we did with Matterport in the beginning.

So that goes from, you know, construction companies to government agencies, colleges. We have a lot of customers. And then we also innovated in different areas that were not on that were not covered in the beginning. So as I said, for example, car dealerships back in the day, didn't have anything like this. They just have had regular photos, regular, you know, videos.

And so there was a time where we tried to just put the plant, the seed in there and just trying to do a lot of work to get the product out there and reach new markets.

Yeah, that's incredible. You mentioned that you've done 3D tours for restaurants, coffee shops, and car dealerships. You've mentioned a bunch of different customer types if you will. And my question for you is what advice would you have for somebody who's trying to expand outside of the real estate and land more of these different types of customers? When you go approach them, how do you sell some type of service to them?

What's the easiest way to get your foot in the door?

Good question. It's curious to me because of the technologies. Well, right now, Matterport is a great tool for real estate, but also for other markets. So if you're really into the real estate market and I know there are some guys out there that have the real estate market really accurately with, you know, they have videos and they have a metaphor for the Dollhouse.

Is now something that they value a lot. But then just, you know, trying new things, I think that's what's most important issue having in mind that if you want to grow the business, of course, and add value to different market niches, I think that's the way to go. Just grab your Matterport camera. If there's a new showroom in town and just open up, just go and say, Hey, can I do this for free?

Or is this something that I would love to explore? And then it's just getting to know the business, the new business that you want to target, and then creating something for them.

Totally.

Yeah, it's like that kind of conversation that you have with the owner. With the manager, Hey, I want to give this to you as a gift. But yeah, I think that's the way.

I think with Matterport Technology and virtual Tours in general, it's difficult to explain in writing form some type of proposition. And so I think like you mentioned, just take your camera and go to the showroom and offer to do something for them for free. I think that's a great way to go about it. When you have done this in the past and you show up, who do you usually try and talk to you and what do you normally try and say to them to get them to allow you to create a 3D tour of this new showroom, for example?

Yeah. If it's a small company and you can reach the owner, it's always good to reach the owner because he or she will see the value in it. If not, I will always go into sales or marketing. And then if you want to step, you know, a little bit more complex. But I think there's a lot of value in operations.

If it's a big company, you could say, Hey, you could use this for training or mapping out the tool or for your employees. That way it would make a lot of sense to them that they're all into operations to have something that they're going to have to use for, you know, a purpose.

Yeah. Do you normally take some kind of iPad with you to show them how a Matterport tour works and show them maybe some tours that you've done for other clients? Or how do you go about trying to explain to them what the end product will look like?

I Back in the day, I use a lot the iPad and just walking in into places, just showing them what we could do. Of course, I always try to understand their business before I walked in the door and so and have some model 3D models under my arm that could relate to their business. But then today and after the pandemic, you know, our virtual demo as we're speaking right now, is showing them on the screen.

Could be a way to enter, you know, more easily. But it goes both ways. I think to be the one on one relationship in your local neighborhood or local area is important. But also, you know, the technology today gives this opportunity to go, you know, worldwide.

Totally. Now I agree with you you've you mentioned that you kind of started with a customer base in Chile and now you've expanded to Milwaukee. I know there are a lot of people out there who are just getting started creating Matterport Tours or free 60 services in general. What advice would you have for somebody who's just starting out, maybe a one-man team that's looking to expand and grow and land new clients?

You know, I think it's for me and this is my personal opinion and this is what, you know the rest of the team with discussed. I think that there are two factors in growing your business. One is just technology. Of course, you know, Matterport has launched new cameras, and some new technologies. I've seen it for the past seven years.

But, you know, kind of talking in the way of anything, you know, anyone could get hands on that camera or that new technology today. You just need a credit card and just buy the camera. But then there's the other part, which I think in personal opinion, is creativity, which leads and, you know, expands your business to to other regions for other customers.

And so that's why we always put focus on creativity. And by creativity, I say, you know, just getting your Matterport camera, you know, close to a beach under not under the water, but, you know, just experiment, just to experiment experimentation all day and try to really capture new things, not only the business, you know, but try to explore new ways in which you can showcase the 3D.

And so when you have creativity in your business and you want to sell that, I believe it's a big way forward to obtaining new clients.

Yeah. When you go show up to some type of new customer that you're maybe trying to sell, if you have at your disposal, you know, 50 different scans showcasing your creativity of different ways that Matterport can be applied to whatever type of business that the person that you're approaching is involved in. It's almost like you're creating a sales tool or you're adding, you know, scans to the kit that you can eventually open up and say, Hey, we created this scan for so-and-so, and it's kind of similar in the fact that you know, it's doing X, Y and Z type of a thing.

So I think that's a really cool way to look at it, where you're trying to be creative in the applications of the technology so that when you are trying to sell a potential client or a new customer, you can lean on some of those scans that maybe you created for free, maybe you made no money at all and you act like, Oh yeah, we created this tour for.

And so that really it was just kind of a test that you did for free. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a tool in your tool belt that you can pull out when needed. So I think that's awesome.

And also, yeah, it's a good point. And also it's a tool for yourself, you know, practicing marketing and sales is not easy. You've got to walk in there and sell your product. It's training for yourself as well. So you, you just, you just when it's a win-win situation. And then we've always focused as well from the beginning and creating just going into brands.

So that's another piece of advice that I could give you guys out there just, you know, just look for brands that could actually be useful for your portfolio. You know, if you go in real estate, you can do a big, big mansion and you know, that's fine. But then if you go into a new, you know, kind of modern-looking restaurant in your town, maybe that's great as well, you know, and then you can pick it up from there.

Yeah, totally. One other question that I have in mind, Tomas, is what are some of the struggles that you're currently seeing with creating virtual tours and trying to land new clients? What's the biggest thing that you're trying to figure out and solve right now?

Yeah, right now we're having this challenge where we're trying to reach more leads, more potential customers that actually don't know that Matterport or other technologies, three sexy technologies exist out there. We can provide them with a solution for them. So we get a lot of leads from Google ads. I think we're very well positioned. But then the leap from Google already knows they're looking for a virtual tour or a 360 video.

So then we're trying to get out to outbound tail customers that don't know they exist or it could be useful for them. So that's a big challenge because we need to educate new markets into, you know, the benefits of all this. So yeah.

So what you're saying, is it's essentially a two-pronged approach because you've got to try and take advantage of people who are Google searching for virtual tours. They already know what the technology is and they're trying to find the right provider like yourself. But also there's a huge opportunity with people who have no clue what a 3D virtual tour is and the benefits that it could be for their business.

So there's an education piece to it as well. And so what are you guys trying to do on the education side as far as trying to teach people maybe you that don't know about Matterport, why they should consider creating a 3D tour related to their business?

Yeah, we're actually right now we're looking to create some tutorial videos in, you know, explaining and using those keywords for a Google search as well for people that are looking for tools or opportunities for their brands or their companies to grow. So we're doing some we're going to do some videos. We're also going to upload some articles for SEO blogs.

You know that to have that also running. And yeah, those are the two ways. And I know it's not the easiest. Probably it's going to take some time. So it's kind of the way that you don't want to, you just want to invest, you know, the money is going to bring you back more money. But I think it's it's the only way to grow.

That's what our conclusion is that we just realized. Yeah.

I'm excited to hear that you guys are creating content in videos just from our personal experience at Openhaus, content can be kind of a beast, and creating videos that people actually care about and want to watch and are going to search for is tricky. But I can't tell you how many times I have talked to people who are now paying subscribers of our product that found us because they Google searched how to add a video to a Matterport tour and because we had created a tutorial and added a transcript to that video that was recognized by Google, they were able to find Open House has a solution for adding videos to my Matterport tours. And so it's hard because creating content takes so much time, but and it's hard to rely on spending the time to create that content right out of the right, out of the gate. But it definitely adds up over time and is for sure, probably one of the most effective ways that we have acquired new business on our end.

Just creating videos and blog posts like you mentioned to improve SEO. So I think that's incredible.

And I think that putting that creativity into that video is also awesome. This, you know, we're talking on our podcast for, you know, Matterport providers. That's awesome. I mean, you know, a few years ago that would be unimaginable. So it's just going out there and creating new ways to deliver the message or deliver, you know, this technology.

I think that's the way the world for sure.

Yeah. One last question I've got for you is how you try to in terms of education and explaining to people the benefits. Have you tried to lean on how Matterport or 3D virtual tours improve SEO when you add them to Google Street View? Have you had any experience or luck trying to go that route?

We used a lot of Google Street View in the past, but then I guess they were the clients, at least the ones we had. They just wanted to get away from it a little bit or just have that, you know, it wasn't too relevant for their business. So yeah, we haven't done a lot of work in that in that site.

Gotcha. That's one thing we've been thinking about and trying to consider more. Sometimes it's hard to get concrete metrics on how advantageous it is to add a virtual tour to Google Street View, but I feel like that is kind of an easy way in to land new clients and say, Hey, if you upload a 3D tour to Google Street, view our customers two times more likely to come into your store than they would otherwise.

So yeah, I just was curious to hear what.

But then again, we always say some customers will say, you know, how would this affect my visibility or my ROIC ROI? It's it's actually pretty up to them in the way that they use the virtual tours or the 360 images or whatever. So we do one part that's the creation of the content. But then if they had an agency or sometimes we would act as the agency and just deliver the whole thing, trying to give metrics and all that.

But here's another piece of advice I think you should stick to your own business in the way that if you want to be more specialized in content creation, just deliver it to the client and then, you know, try to give some tips and all that. But sometimes they would ask you for further information on metrics, and then that's another business.00:18:33:00 - 00:18:39:21Tomas MualimThat's what I'm trying to say. So it's interesting, some clients would actually look into that and some others wouldn't.

So yeah, it's interesting because there is for sure a gap between just creating the tour and actually showing or helping the customer derive value from the tour and it's like if you just give them a matter for the link and say, Here you go, here's your tour. A lot of times they're like, Well, what the heck are we supposed to do with this?

And so I do think it's it's kind of interesting. You can either stay in your lane and just focus on the 3D creation aspect or you are looking to provide additional services and expand and grow. I think there's a huge opportunity on the implementation side to make sure that once you create the tours they're doing everything that they can on their end to get and extract of all the value that they can out of the three tours.

I think a lot of times people just don't know how to do it from what I've seen personally, it's.

True in a tip maybe for that situation is how are they marketing their current digital content? Because it's no different in that perspective from, you know, a video or corporate video or training video or images that they have for their company. So it's a good question to ask him. How are you guys doing today with your current digital content?

Yeah, 100%. I agree with that. So the bottom line is there's a lot of opportunities out there and you just got to kind of pick and choose what you want to go after and where you want to start. And I think it's really easy to try and be all things for all people. And you see so many opportunities that you can get overwhelmed with.

Yeah, where do I even start? How do I even get into this? And so I think like you said, kind of pick a lane and go after it for a while and then kind of pull your head out and reassess is a good way to go.

Thomas we really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us on our podcast to be your guest. And I think that our listeners will glean a lot of awesome insights from your experience and the things that you've said. If anybody wants to reach you after this podcast, what is a good way for them to get in touch with you and ask Maybe some additional follow-up questions?

Sure, our Web site is Virtual3DStudios.com or Instagram is @Virtual3D. So you guys want to reach out, free to talk and, you know, discuss some more. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. Go give Tomas a follow @virtual3Dstudios. And reach out if you've got any questions at all. Thanks so much, Thomas. We really appreciate it. Thank you.