The Calm vs. The Chaos: Scaling a Property Media Business

In this episode of the PropMedia Podcast, hosts Matty and Moses go behind the scenes of Pixlmob to explore how the platform has evolved from a simple editor marketplace into a comprehensive post-production ecosystem. They dive into the "business owner's mindset," discussing how to transition from the "frenetic hustle" of putting out daily fires to achieving calm, controlled business growth through automation and redundancy.

Key topics covered in this episode include:

• Beyond Photo Editing: Discover the wide range of services now available, from video editing and 3D floor plans to headshot retouching and natural twilight edits.
• The Power of Templates and Teams: Learn how to eliminate decision fatigue by building order templates and curated editor rosters tailored to your specific products.
• Streamlined Workflows: How direct integrations with Dropbox and Google Drive, along with a granular revision tracking system, remove the "noise" of fractured communication.
• The AI Revolution: A look at Pixlmob’s "marketplace ethos" regarding AI—partnering with leading models to offer photographers hybrid human-AI workflows.
• Legal and Ethical Disclosures: Understanding the new built-in tools for disclosing AI alterations and object removal to keep realtors compliant with evolving regulations.
• Building Redundancy: How features like ASAP editing and instant AI tools act as fail-safes, ensuring you never have to pull an all-nighter to meet a client deadline again.
• PropMedia Directory: How to leverage a free, SEO-optimized profile to generate leads and showcase your specific technical capabilities to realtors.

Stop being the "hustle bro" with your hair on fire and start building a scalable media empire. Tune in to learn how to reclaim your evenings and focus on what truly moves the needle for your business.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Like that's what I love about the platform that we've built is it creates those layers between the business owner running around with her hair on fire and the business owner that has calm and controlled business growth. And I think that's Pix Mob at its best is fueling that kind of lifestyle change from the frenetic hustle bro to the calm, cool, collected business scaling growth.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hey, I'm Maddie, and this is Moses, and welcome to the Prop Media Podcast, where we talk about property media.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Today we're going to take a little bit of a different take. Um, and we're gonna dive into actually what makes pixel mob tick. Um, when we go to conferences, we went to a lot of conferences last year, and we we continue to. We like to be involved in the industry and engage in the industry. But every time I meet, I don't know, half dozen to a dozen people who in talking with them will talk about a part of Pixel Mob that they had no idea existed. So when Pixel Mob first started, it was just a place where you could go find an editor and have ratings and reviews, and you just put in orders back and forth and share Dropbox links. It's where it started. And there's a lot of people where I think they don't realize that we kept developing for the last three years. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about what's new in Pixel Mob that's beyond that basic idea that I think most people have. Um, and particularly with an angle toward like how do you use these kinds of post-processing resources, whether it's on Pixel Mob or anywhere else? Like, how do you use those in your business to actually grow your business? So, what's one of the pieces that you think or you've literally heard? Like most of these would be literally conversations we've had in the last six months of like, oh, I didn't know you guys did that. So, what's one of those that comes to mind for you, Matty?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, so um, I mean, just high level, if you're not familiar with Pixel Mob, um, is an outsourcing platform first and uh a place to go find editors for photo and video. So that's maybe one of the first things that people that may be familiar with Pixel Mob already know that we do photo editing.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Well, and yeah, that's definitely not something to forget. I mean, and I I don't mind that being known that that kind of human editor component is still the the biggest way that Pixel Mob makes money is there are still thousands and thousands of people who want to work with an actual human. So we also do other things now with AI and stuff like that. But that core, I to me has been surprisingly resilient of people just wanting to find that right relationship to drive their business.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Absolutely. So I we launched video editing um two years ago now. I think so. My timeline is gonna be all over the place, but we're probably gonna get our own timeline wrong. It's it's early, yeah. But um, you know, it was it was the way human editing there wasn't like an alternative, really. Um, either you were doing it yourself or you're paying someone to do it with video. That is one of those things where you oftentimes really want to work with another human that has some understanding. There's a lot of like stylistic um decisions, photo editing, it's kind of uh a little bit more binary binary. It it's edited well or it's not edited, basically. Like there's kind of like there's a lot less choices um with video. Obviously, everything has a choice from the music to transitions and the pacing, and um yeah, if there's voiceovers, all this stuff. So finding a good editor uh for video is has always been a lot more complicated. And so um we've built out a system for doing that, ratings and reviews from other trusted media professionals um that have worked with those people, portfolios that you can see, um, and then a a really easy way to like dial in exactly what you want from your editor. Do you want voiceovers? Do you want captions? Yeah, yeah, do you want titles? Do you want lot line animations? All that stuff is really easy easily defined in our video.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Let's dial that back to like our thread. So like Pixamob grew out of our business, our media company. And early on, when we had the marketplace platform connecting photographers to editors, it was just for photos. And then one of the most common things we heard back then, three years ago, was well, we need a place. I don't want to go to Pixamob for my photos and then somewhere else for my videos. Like I want a single place that I can get the post-production work done. And that's what we started into was that business pain point of I don't want to be logging into six different systems to get my post-production done. And video was kind of the beginning of that, and hopefully easing some of that pain with our core users of okay, I go and I set up my photos, but then I can do right in line with that, setting up my videos in the same order. And that year was the same order, the same project. You have your listing, and inside of it is photos, inside of it is your other specialty edits, and inside of it is your video. And you could do it all in one place, one one workspace.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, I that same historically in the production, our production roadmap, that was all kind of rolled out as one big release. Yeah. Where uh we found that a lot of people were using pixel mob to because they didn't want to have to do the I have to work with this person in my in email, and this person in WhatsApp, and this person uses box.com and this person uses Google Drive. This all kind of collapsed all that into one thing, and you could create a project. So that was like a new concept.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, um, all those orders in one place. Or even like you're saying, like WhatsApp in email. I remember conversations way back then. A lot of the conversation was like, I mean, does it really matter if you're emailing with the editor? Like if that's your normal way of doing it. Maybe not, but when you miss that one email because of a deluge of other things, because your email is used for a lot of other things. Yeah. Like suddenly it's it's a crisis with your best client because you didn't see the WhatsApp message because your system's fractured.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Whereas when you can pull it all together as a business owner where you know like you can actually go down your post-production from last night and make sure that it was all done, correct, easily skimmed through it. Like there's a level of business clarity there that we were trying to give to the industry. Yeah. Um, that I think a lot like our our core users, that's I mean, I I often think that's one of the core reasons that I hear from people at conferences and things like that that they utilize the platform is it calls the noise, gets it out of all the noisy channels with something this important, and gets it in one place where you can deal with it and make sure that the core of your business, your deliverables, is right.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, I I mean I know for me, like we use Slack in our business. Yeah. And um, there was a time where we hadn't quite figured out how to adopt that yet.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Well, in fairness, you use Slack, and particularly back then, you use Slack, and then I would ignore it for like a day, and then then I would try to use Slack, and yeah, but anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

But like we had stuff, you know, miscellaneous emails, um text threads, all this stuff. I when you get to a place where all of your work stuff is happening in one place, so you go to Slack when you're ready to work on business stuff. Yeah, um, that starts to change, you know. Like if I see something in messages, I might see it and it might be 9:30 at night, and I may not be prepared to deal do anything about it. It sounds targeted.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

I don't, I don't ever do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, it isn't. It was just our our nature, right? Like you you're not in the mental space. This is if you see it out of the context of your work environment versus all of my messaging around my post-production is in one place, and I go there when I'm ready to handle that, yeah. That gives you versus like it's just this constant barrage whenever it happens and it's in places where I'm using it for other things. That can get uh yeah, it's hard, it's harder to manage.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

Yeah, and if if there's like one com principle in business building that I would highly endorse, it's it's that. And I'm making fun of myself that I don't check Slack all the time, but at the same time, like I have to batch my communication to survive. I only zoom in to Slack for our internal com, usually a couple of times a day. I try to do like late morning, and I really probably should do an early morning nowadays with the speed. But just a few times because otherwise I gotta be in some level of flow on different projects, and that kind of protecting that by getting things into the right bucket is huge for business growth and for not feeling like your hair is on fire all the time. Like feeling like you're gonna get to all the things, and every every thing has its place is pretty core.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah. In the process of doing projects, having consolidated messaging, there's some things that became obvious about Pixel Mob that wasn't obvious when we started it, which was you could work with 15 editors if you decided you wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

He's lying. Maddie had this all mapped out on a napkin back in 2022. Every every decision we made, everything we've ever done, Maddie incepted it.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah. Definitely not true. Uh but um yeah, I think the there's this process of unfolding in product development. And you build stuff, realize it creates opportunities. You're obviously working and talking to your customers, understanding how they're using it. Um you do your own tests. And so one of the advantages for us is we actually own a media company. So our company, North Seventh, uses Pixel Mob. So that also becomes helpful feedback as we're running stuff daily.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Funny story. Uh, except you know, this this problem that we're actually addressing this episode of people not knowing what's on Pixel Mob. This week I had to deal with a conversation with our general manager, who's good natured and fine, but I was questioning a line item that had gotten pretty big. He was using Kubicasa for 3D uh image conversions last month because he had forgotten that that's something that Pixel Mob does at competitive marketplace rates instead of locked in in ecosystem rates. So, like, even within our own company, sometimes it's it's hard for different players to remember all the pieces and ways that Pixel Mob can help the company.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, I mean, we've added more and more services over time, and it's easy to yeah. I mean, we've made it a place, hopefully, where if you're trying to do real estate media, you can go there and like, well, maybe Pixel Mob has something and it's just maybe a one-off thing in this case, doing floor plan, 3D floor plans.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Yeah, that's this is not a big part of North Sevenths business. So it's I'm not I'm not actually mad at the GM for running a few dozen 3D floor plans through Kubi Casa. Kuba Casa is great. We use them for a lot of things inside of our production business, but at the same time, like a little reminder of hey, you could have saved like 150 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Um, you know, that this never hurts, right? Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes you need something custom, you've got some very specific idea, or absolutely agent has something, some very specific idea in mind.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Or you want the furniture to match. That's one of my favorite things that some of those editors do is they're like can look at the photo. Oh, yeah, and match it to like make the fake furniture look like the real furniture was one of anyway. Sorry, yeah, yeah, random things that the non-technical guy thinks are pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I think we have uh I I actually kind of lost clown close to 30 um different products. Um, everything from like slideshow videos and property videos, 3D floor plans. We also offer headshot, a whole line of headshot um editing stuff on Pixel Mob um as well, in addition to like the normal just listing photos.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

And that's the same philosophy. Like we we don't we intentionally kind of restrain the impulse to just like add product after product after product. So like headshots is kind of the one that kind of sticks out as like that one's a little different. But the reason we chose to do that one is it's a somewhat common thing that real estate photographers use to get in front of realtors. So in the philosophy of like, I want to manage the post-production of my real estate media business, it actually makes sense for how lots of people run their businesses that having your headshot editing is actually in the same place.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah. One um request that became actually a very popular service from that came from one of our customers was around twilight editing. So not virtual twilights, not data-dust conversions.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Right, but like actual, like I shot this when the sun was going down.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Right. It needs a different level of of attention than just my normal HDR edits. Um, and I want someone that can specifically do natural twilight. So we made a service for that, and it's actually been extremely popular, like a lot of people want that.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

And we've we've had arguments about sometimes it's difficult to for people to realize the difference between natural twilight and twilight conversions, and it can be a little confusing, but that it is interesting, like we do try to listen to that feedback, and if it fits with the philosophy of how the businesses grow and things like that, those are things we love to develop and push out.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yeah. All right, so let's get back to some of the utility things that we've rolled out here um in the past few years that some people may not even realize we do. So we started I started talking about um working with multiple editors. We rolled out editor teams. We already had like a favoriting system where you could kind of keep your favorites in like a little folder. Um, but now you could actually create these rosters of people that do just HDR or just virtual staging. Um, and you can access them um from the order form and work really quickly. And uh we also added templates. So if you've got your essentially, you could templatize any order. So once you've made this is really helpful, like when you're doing video editing, where you've kind of dialed in what you need for your specific kind of video. Maybe you have two or three different kinds of videos, and some of them include lot line, some of them include graphics, some of them have an agent intro. You could kind of dial in like this is video one time, video style one, video style two, and just dial in that order form so you don't have to like rebuild it every time.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

A lot of the most successful like our power users, that is one of the key differentiators is they'll take half an hour. And instead of it it's not hard in Pixel Mob to hit your settings. I mean, it takes 15 seconds. But if instead you take five minutes to go build the kind of the molds that you're gonna use in your business, then it takes that 15 seconds, but more than it's more than the 15 seconds to fill out the form. It's the mental load of like you gotta remember all the settings. Yes and all the things. So even though it's not that hard, it feels hard. But if you choose a different hard and you choose the hard of sitting down and making the templates that actually match your products that you sell to your customers, and maybe that takes you 30 minutes, maybe that takes you an hour. I mean, we're not talking about a ton, but so many people resist, like, and we we do this in all aspects of our business. We resist, like we're just like, Oh, I'll get to that tomorrow. There's just this procrastination impulse because there's always so many things on fire and things to fix and all those, and all the it's the tyranny of the urgent. Never you never get to the important components. But if you take just 30 minutes and go build your templates, like your business will just feel less on fire because suddenly you know exactly what you need to do, you trim your workload, you trim your mental load at the end of the day, and it's really just you log into Pixel Mob, you hit your seven templates that match your shoots for the day. You pick the editors based on whatever quality or relationship you have there in your editor teams, and then you're off to the races and you go to your kids' soccer game or go deep dive and vibe code the thing that you need to message all of your agents. Whatever you're gonna do, you suddenly have more time and and less decision fatigue from taking that time to invest in the process of your business.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

That's perfect. Along those lines, uh, some things we also made a little bit easier in that timeline there, too, is we made it really easy for you to connect your files to the Pixel Mob system. So previously you just provided a link to wherever you hosted your files, and that was you know, wherever you're you're doing that Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever, and you would provide a link. And you have this issue of like, uh, did I have the permission set correctly? And then the editor's messaging you like two hours later once they actually get started.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

I think that was one of the most common early CS complaints was is the folder set to public?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Right, exactly. So we actually built some direct integrations with Dropbox and Google Drive, which I think has opened up so much for people. Um, and one of the cool things is a side effect is that you can sync your files directly from Pixel Mob when the files are submitted by your editor. So they we we added a hosting system, so you files actually come onto Pixel Mob, um, which allows us to do a couple cool things, but then you can also set up syncing so you can do version tracking of every file that comes through. One of the cool things is part of uh a side effect of that is that the files now live on Pixel Mob, which allows for revision tracking. So we've got a really cool revision ticket system where you can uh ask for your in in track revisions on any given photo or collection of photos.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Very granularly, like where over email it's like we'll look at file seven or even early pixel mob. It was we'll look at DVC 7279 12 digit uh code. That one has some shoddy window poles, fix it. Whereas now you can actually see the thumbnails because we can actually move the files natively in a way that you can do those kinds of revisions.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

One of the things that fundamentally we were trying to work towards is you're working with somebody overseas, most likely. There may be a language barrier, and you don't want to have to be worried that you're talking about the same photo, and you're talking about the living room. Well, that might mean something different, like fix the bathroom one. Well, we've got two or three bathroom ones. Which one do you mean? You know, like any of that stuff could be confusing. So we you know exactly which photos we're on both parties are talking about, and fix this photo, this thing on that photo, um, or these series of photos. So that was a really big, I think, helpful tool um that was kind of obvious from the get-go, but really became powered by getting files on system.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Like any any software, it took a minute to get there. But now that I mean that's been live for a good while, but at the same time, like I don't know that everyone knows that that's a piece of what you can do. Because and and also, like for a while it was something where it depended on which um method you were using to sync your files. But now it's a it's a little more integrated into everything. Yeah. In that same vein, one of the things we worked on around that time was getting integrations live. Um, and integrations are always fun, so uh the integrations kind of sit in between us with Maddie like working on the more technical side of things, and a lot of times me working more on the well, can we find these people and get them engaged to to do an integration? Um but one that was was really early on um was Areo was able we were able to build an integration with them that allows you to see all of your shoots for the day and then initiate orders based on the shoots so that you can just literally have your Aereo shoot list. And if you created your templates, then you just there was my shoot. This is the template it needs, and it's off to where it needs to go. Um, so it's that's pretty nifty, and we're we're excited about building out integrations like that more. Um, just sometimes that's challenging with multiple parties and everyone having to kind of negotiate when they can invest the resources into their side of it um to move it forward. So hopefully we've got more stuff coming there um as our our partners can make space to develop there.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, I mean the reality is that we're all real estate media is not like this big booming tech industry, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

So, like there's a few dozen of the tech companies. There's not you can start owe them all.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

All of them, they're all small companies, like none even Ario, which is uh owned by Zillow now, is like it's that is still a small operation in comparison to like the broad, they're not Microsoft, you know. Like so resources are limited, but they would be like kind of the biggest in in Matterport, maybe like these are the kind of like the really, really bigger companies in our ecosphere, but like uh you know, other companies that they're they're around our size, they've got limited resources. Most of them have um their companies 10 or less people. It takes time, and you they've got customers that want I want to work with both these tools together, and then they got customers that want some feature specifically in their platform that only is relevant to them, you know, and then they've got their own roadmap of stuff. So building out integrations is kind of a it's a long game, and uh yeah, it it's doesn't always move quickly, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Well, I'm trying to be uh Mostly classy, but a little direct. If if there's an integration that you want, you might ping the company because the holdup is probably not on our end. We love integrations. It works perfectly with our our business model of how we function and focusing on post-production. We're not we're not a competitor with these companies in the same way. We're just a resource into the flow from scheduling to delivery. So if there's something that's wanted, you know, grassroots effort of hey, let's do this connection. The more you chirp at the other side, maybe the more they can prioritize it.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yeah, go chirp. Chirp, chirp. All right. So um, I totally lost.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

I had it, I had something that's we were chirping too much and you totally lost it. Yeah, it happens.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Oh, I know exactly what's okay. Well, even if we don't have a direct integration with these companies, we've built this thing to actually work with your cloud systems, and that's actually one of the easiest ways to work with it. A lot of these companies already have they also have integrations with Dropbox or Google Drive. So if your files are are synced on our end to your Dropbox or Google Drive, it is can easily sync to their system. And so it's very simple. Um, and we've tried to make that as simple through third-party integrations that have public APIs and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Maybe we should work on an FAQ for that because those are those are pretty cool. The like off-label uses of because we all synchronize with a I think Dropbox works for all of them, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Most of them, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I feel like that's the overlap. I think one maybe doesn't do Google Drive, but regardless, like if you're if you're syncing there, all you got to do is match up the file architecture of if your editor's dropping it into this and Spiro has created a Dropbox folder for you for your shoot, you should have to match those, and the editor will drop it right there, and Spiro will see it right in the folder. So even if the the broad integration isn't there completely, there's great ways that you can hack that together to still be a really seamless flow for post-production.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

I will say too, if there's a feature specifically that you'd love to see in Pixel Mob that you know would benefit your company, we have a system for getting those feature requests. Yeah. Um, it's right in the footer of uh the app. So you can at the bottom there request a feature. And we've got a system there where you can see where other people are requesting features. And maybe you see something that you like, you can yeah, thumbs up that and all kinds of stuff. And if you don't see it there, then go ahead and put it in. And that uh we check that all the time. And so we try to keep that pretty active.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

That's on the is it it that used to be that it was only on the the very bottom of the marketplace page. So you had to scroll pretty far down. Is it other places now?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

No, it's in the footer of the marketplace.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Where's the easiest place for them to go?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Footer of the marketplace.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

I know, but that you got to scroll down past 50 people. Is that the only place?

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Yes, it's in in the footer of the is all right, never mind.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Cut all that out. You have to scroll down two flicks. It used to be a lot more.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Integrations are a key part of great business, right? Getting your different systems to talk to each other, figuring out the little hacks of how to sneak it to the same Dropbox folder or stuff like that. What's the next piece that we built for Tor businesses to make them run better?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Uh, this is a really simple thing, but we got asked all the time is just some simple reports for tax reporting. Um, so there's a simple reports page where you can access what you've spent that year um and and with whom, and um makes that easy for yeah, your annual tax reporting.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Tax reporting was a was a big thing and still is a big thing. It's very useful to be able to just aggregate everything you spent on editing. And then that was particularly important for our European customers was being able to actually um I'm forgetting what it's called. It's too early in the morning. VAT or something?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, I think you got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Of like having to be able to match up for how they do taxes. Um, you have to match up external vendors and have reporting for that to be able to use the system. So those are early things we had to build, but that's super useful, even if you're just using it to like monitor how much you're spending on post-production versus your top line, your gross profit, all that jazz. So having it aggregated can be pretty cool to be able to uh match up and reconcile with your bank. The disclosure system, as to skip ahead a little bit, is kind of in the same vein of what we've been talking about last few weeks, and that's something we've just been rolling out not into PixelMob, but it has a different home for its front page, and then it's baked into the back end of Pixel Mom. So we've talked about it a little bit, but what is the the current status of our disclosure product for disclosing media alterations and things like that that photographers can use today?

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah, so uh recently we've rolled out a disclosure tool, and it's directly within the Pixel Mob interface when you're ready to download your files. So you've worked with your editor, um, or maybe you've done editing through AI editing on our platform, um, and you're ready to download it. You now see a new toggle that allows you to disclose those photos, um, which is a specific thing in California today as a law. But there's a lot of MLSs today across the US that require some level of disclosure, particularly think like virtual staging, the things where it's like uh editorially changed the actual like what's in the photo.

SPEAKER_02 27:29

Virtual staging is a huge one, but also object removal is a required disclosure and things that you might not immediately think of. Um, but we're trying to make that as simple as possible. Again, all in the same workflow. If you're using for post-production, you now just have a little toggle that lets you have a new value add for your realtors because it's not the photographers that are on the hook for the media disclosures. We can edit photos however we want, right? Sometimes that's super fun. And you edited yourself last week when we showed up at the wrong time, or we're gonna show up to the wrong time to have yourself sitting here in a tuxedo, which I was really disappointed this morning that you didn't show up in a tuxedo because that would have been a great little bow on that. So it's fun to, and you can you can edit media however you want, but if you're gonna deliver it to a realtor, they have reporting requirements. So one of the things that I'm hoping uh media uh media professionals in California pick up on quickly is that you can use these disclosure tools as a value add to your photographer, to your agent as something to differentiate yourself, something different, something that you can do for them that takes something out of their workflow. And we make it stupid easy in your workflow in free.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

It's yeah, free and just in line with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

And functionally, what it does is gives you two images. One has a watermark that is compliant with how AB723 requires the disclosure, and then the other is the actual original image. So the one, like, hey, I removed some chairs from this image. There's a little watermark here that links to the photo that still has the chairs in them, and that keeps everybody completely compliant, and it's a great value add to the realtor where they're not risking their license or a fine or anything like that. Because one of the challenges in the system right now is that even if they flag that as media altered, they can't control how it ends up on all the syndicated portals. So even if they put it correctly in the note or they put a Dropbox link to the unedited photos, like things that are technically compliant in the law, those don't necessarily translate depending on how the syndicated portals choose to display the data. So by baking it into the image itself, it keeps them compliant no matter where that image ends up, um, in a way that they don't have the same risk and liability exposure, which is something that photographers need to start talking with their agents about. That this kind of disclosure in California is a legal requirement, but everywhere I think is an ethical requirement and is a great way to position as the cutting edge of the industry is like we are aware of AI and its implications and its challenges for real estate, and we're getting ahead of that. It's a great look for the realtor, it's a great look for the photographer.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

I I definitely agree. I from as a photographer now has an opportunity to showcase their understanding of what their their customers are thinking about and dealing with.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Care of the realtor and what they need in an area that we're strong and is just a step in their process. Yeah. So make it easy.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

So actually, you brought up some good topics there. Um, what about AI editing? Um a lot of we have a whole outsourcing platform making it easy to work with humans. What does it look like to do AI editing on Pixel Mob?

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Well, I I mean, like it's probably evident if you've been tuning in with this whole episode, like our core philosophy behind a lot of what we've built, maybe everything we've built, is a philosophy of how does this make a photographer's business easier? Like, how does it streamline it and that sort of thing? So we had a kind of a identity crisis a year ago of like, all right, well, AI editing is starting to be a real thing. How do we do that? Do we go develop that ourselves? Do we go invest resources into developing these models when we're tracking two or three of them coming into existence? And then we really got to a place of like, well, I don't think that's actually Pixel Mob's ethos. So we started playing with that and experimenting with that, and then eventually we started having conversations with Matt Gia and I think Matt was maybe the first conversation, and then started having conversations with Fatello and Auto Enhance and others of well, I think the ethos or our ethos is the photographer gets their post-production done however they want to get it done. If they want to use an AI tool, they can do that. If they want to use a human, they can do that. If they want to combine those into a hybrid, they can do that. But our core customer is the photographer, and how do we streamline their life? And so that led us into a space of okay, well, I wonder if these other platforms would be interested in partnering with us in our marketplace ethos. That instead of us having a proprietary pixel mob AI, generative AI, that we would instead sink our resources into what we love, which is the how do we make business for photographers easier and develop their and partner with these guys to provide their tools, give them exposure and a channel, give a la carte pricing, give all the things that make people like to use pixel mob and create it in a space where you can do that in the same project workflow that you could do photos and videos and alterations and disclosures. You can also build your AI generative AI workflows if that's what you like for your photos, and build that right into the same project templates. So just trying to give as much optionality as possible, and also just you're not locked into a model. So you can like it all it all matches with how we think about this with our core user of the photographer. We want to give you options, and AI is just a new technological option that allows you to run your business the way you want to run your business.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

I think you nailed it. I think there's uh some other stuff that we've started to see with advanced with in AI that we've been uh really trying to create solutions for as well. And one of those is being able to do AI um like image to video, uh actually creating video clips from your images.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Oh, and that's blown up in the past year. So you're seeing lots of people doing that with lots of different platforms. I mean, nanobanana has been in the news and all kinds of things, but we were developing that at the beginning of last year, and we saw a need in our niche for a particular application of that, I guess. So tell me a little bit, how does AI clips work? So, why would why would someone use AI Clips instead of going straight to nano banana to do a image generation?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah. So, well, the reason why is because you can't do that in nano banana. So that's true.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

You also have to I'm using the wrong model. Yeah, that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

But but there are lots of ways you could go do this yourself in some ways, but it uh the major differentiation with using EI Clips is that we have a team of people that are trained to use these tools and they will give you the finished edit as close as possible to it's not always uh uh pure science, um, but the big difference is that like it's not just I have to pay a dollar for every generation or 25 cents or whatever model, and just whatever it gets, I I work with you're stuck with our system. There's actually a team of people, and they're gonna generate, and sometimes um, and when we started, I was doing this myself. Um, I was the only person doing this.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

When we launched, there was an agreement of you will only do this yourself for like a month.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Yeah, and that mostly worked out. Um, but it was a long month. Um, but we've hired a team of people that do this today, and um, but yeah, I mean, sometimes you're rendering it 15, 18 times because the ceiling fan is getting these really janky movements or it's adding fires in random places, just all kinds of random stuff.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

But I still remember you sending me some of those. Like early on, some of those were even more rough where they would just stick fire in really amusing places of things that they thought were fireplaces.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Uh there was one photo. This is an awesome house. Uh, I will say I did enjoy doing this because I got to see the houses in some really cool things around the world. Yeah, we're not usually I'm not usually paying attention to every order that's going through Pixel Mob and like investigating like that. But this is like I was seeing all these houses every day.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

The one with the ski lodge on top of the supermarket or whatever it was. That one was crazy. Yeah, it's like this beautiful chalet, but it was literally built on top of like a Costco or something.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

It was like in Sweden or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

But there was uh I don't think it was a Costco, but probably not a Costco in Sweden, but but there was it was an Ikea. It had to be an Ikea.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

There was this really cool, I think it was like an LA home, this kind of like mid-century modern, but it had this glass garage that was open to the living room and had this like Camaro, like vintage Camaro in the garage with the colour. No, it didn't light it on fire, but I couldn't get it to stop animating the car moving, like the car would like roll into the back is like and you can't like get it to like there's not a human on the other side, so you're like, stop moving the car, you know. Like, anyways, uh AI clips. I mean, uh our our our editors, the uh very patient people uh because they do have to deal with that kind of stuff a lot. Um, but that is the big difference, is that hopefully when you're getting this back, you're also our our team is trained um to give these uh realistic camera moves that are also move within the limits of what's reasonable of not making up a ton of information.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Yes, because if you throw it into a rant, like one of the problems with generative AI is it doesn't have a lot of limits, right? So you can just yeah, you can, well, for one thing, make a Camaro back out through a garage door or whatever. But perhaps more importantly and relevantly for the real estate industry, you can choose to do a pan out move where the model is gonna completely fabricate everything that wasn't in the original image, which has serious ramifications in real estate and the reality of real estate.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

We've thought through a lot of that kind of stuff, yeah. Um, to try to limit um even the kind of like arcing moves and stuff like that. So it's making up the least amount of stuff on the sides of the frame.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Which that's really important if you're a business operator, because if no one else is doing that, and models are still at a place where they do this kind of I'll go with an error for this application. It's an error to make up a lot of information about a photo. In that world, the best solution that exists, if you don't want to be involved in it, is having somebody else check it, having somebody else check that the fans were animated or not animated, having to make sure that the banisters didn't get animated as fans, like all that stuff. Like, yeah, you can do it yourself. But if you're a business operator, go find some new clients, pay somebody else 50 cents to do that check for you so that you can go focus on stuff that actually matters to the bottom line of your business. And that done for you idea is a really key part of pretty much everything that we're talking about. We're trying to produce products that truly meet a business owner where they are, where they want to be able to ship something off and then have limited interaction with it and be able to deliver it to their client. So that's one of the things that I'm I'm really zeared in on in our development is that that just because AI can do something does not mean it's the best application for your business if it puts you back into the flow in a way that takes you from growing your business. So there's some philosophical components of that that I think are actually really important as we evaluate what we choose to develop. And I hope as customers are discerning how they want to do their business, and then they can zero in on this lets me actually get out of the flow. This lets me focus on the core of how my business grows. Um, instead of just looking at, well, I can do X, Y, and Z on my own. That kind of DIY thinking is where businesses go to stall and to not continue growing, spend the money to get the automated system so that you can grow and scale.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

One of those things, um, which is definitely a a bit of a departure from our core stuff has been. Last year we launched the prop media directory. Maybe you can explain kind of our thinking behind that and what we hope that can mature into over time.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Well, that's definitely another one that some people don't even know exists. But we have an entirely other channel that Pixel Mob operates called Prop Media. You can go to propmedia.com. And functionally, one of the things we kept hearing was well, okay, this is great. My post-production is solved, but my core problem, and in our industry, a lot of times that core problem is lead generation. It's exposure. It's you don't have enough actual realtor relationships to engage with at all. So we kind of put our heads around that last summer to launch a SEO optimized page with as many of users and photographers and media companies around the world as we could gather. And then we've been encouraging people to claim their profiles. Totally free, claim your profile, make it showcase like your business, some key hero images, your pricing, all that just in your um your card on prop media completely free, back linked to your website. There's no downside. And then there's also a structure where if you really want more exposure, anyone who's looking in your area, you can pay an annual membership into prop media that is dirt cheap for marketing to just rank at the top of anybody who's searching in your town for what you specifically do. And it's tailored into our industry. So if you want to showcase that you do matter port 4K as opposed to just Zillow 3D tours, you can actually search for, if you're a realtor, like I need someone who does Zillow 3D tours, I need somebody who can do a matter port for a huge space. You don't have to call a bunch of people, you can actually tag yourself appropriately with your actual capabilities and people can zero in right to you. So if there's 75 providers in your market, but you're one of three that actually have matter ports on prop media, well, that just narrowed the field for you dramatically with some of those core things that you've invested in to be able to grow and scale your business. So I'm actually, I mean, Prop Media isn't always propmedia.com isn't always the headline of some of the things we're launching, but I think it's an awesome resource that we've been building in the background that is sending out leads to photographers all across the United States and hopefully soon beyond the United States.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

We've also made it really easy, and I think it's helpful to let people know that um if you want to be at the top of that list in your area, um you can just like Yelp, you can sponsor in your area and get uh to the top of that list, have a bigger card, um, um more build out your profile more. And then there's also another benefit there, which is we've built into this pro membership um 20% off of AI editing. So if you are interested in AI editing, um, you can work right within the Pixel Mob ecosystem and work with the top three models um in a very affordable rate at 20% off of the listed price. Um, so we're that's with auto enhance, auto HDR, Infotelo right within Pixel Mob, as well as all of the other editors that are there. But that the discount is exclusively for the AI um AI editing. And it's the pro membership is$250 a year,$249. Um, and that's just a one-time per year price.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

The cheapest SEO optimization you could do is be at the top of that, optimize your profile, link it to your site, and get traffic through a new channel.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

All right. The last thing I have on my list that uh we haven't talked about in a while um is ASAP editing.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

Oh, yeah. Well, it's a cool resource that we built and people love and use. So like ASAP editing is was came from request, business owner requests for when you do revisions, like the fairness to the editor is that I mean they Can't just drop everything to do your project. Like it's it's urgent for you because photo seven, eleven, and seventeen are a problem and you don't want to deliver the order, right? Um, but the the editor who lives on the other side of the world realistically might be going to sleep because they just worked 12, 15, 18 hours editing all of your photos and all that stuff. And if there's just a mom and pop on the other side of the world, they do actually have to sleep. They are human. So what we just started to design was a way for editors to raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm done and I'm still working. Like there's I'm done with my cue of work, but I am still ready to go. And we developed a way to float those individuals to the top so that when you need something, it's not within a 12-hour revision window or whatever is human and fair. It's actually targeted toward, no, I I need this in the next few hours because I still want to deliver this by end of day today. And so you could sort those with the editors who raise their hand and you can get your your um HDR blend or whatever you're you're needing done for that kind of delivery within three or four hours. I think even faster sometimes, but that's kind of the general window of what they usually are, which is great because if you send those off in the morning, you can deliver those the same day really easily without it really getting in the way of your workflow.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yeah, I think it's an interesting, it was definitely a game-changing thing when it came out. Now with AI editing, you can use that for those instant edits too. The thing that I think is uh where we're gonna see this evolving and where we know we can make that better is we want to launch video as part of the ASAP editing um stuff because that's still one of those things like ASAP is great where you've said basically we know Pixel Mob that they have nothing left in their queue. Yeah, fallbacks, and they've they have turned it on and said, I'm ready to do work right now, and so you would be the first thing and the only thing that's in their queue until that job is done. And so video is definitely one of those scenarios where um people need that, and so we're working on that as well as um yeah, there's still always so many things to keep working on.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

There's so much stuff, and like as we're going through this, like there's so many pieces and modules that we've added to Pixel Mob. Like, it's it's understandable that people don't understand all of the pieces of how Pixel Mob can plug in to their business, but hopefully, it's helpful as an overview and hopefully sparking some thinking of like, okay, well, that is a piece that could buy part of my evening back. That is a piece that creates a redundancy so I don't have to deal with it anymore. And maybe that's the last thing to end on here is what we're describing here at the end is redundancy. It's fail-safes, it's making sure that you can actually deliver your work. Because let's say, God forbid, something goes wrong with an editing order and you need it changed. Well, you've got a revision window, you can submit the ticket there if you've set expectations with your clients that revisions take 12 hours or whatever your editor says they take, that's an option. But then let's say you need to wow that client because something else went wrong and somebody tracked mud into their backyard or something, and you're like, I need this one, I need to go over the top. You got ASAP to push it forward, or you've got instant AI tools. So, but instant AI tools aren't 100%. So maybe you go there and then you go to ASAP, and you've got multiple layers of redundancy before it actually gets back on your plate. So, as a business owner, those kinds of things where I know I'm never gonna have to do that again are so freeing in your brain to just be able to focus on new things and new development that I'm I'm hopeful, like that's what I love about the platform that we've built is it creates those layers between the business owner running around with her hair on fire and the business owner that has calm and controlled business growth. And I think that's Pix Mob at its best is fueling that kind of lifestyle change from the frenetic hustle, bro, to the calm, cool, collected business scaling growth. Cool. Are you calm and cool? Are you collected?

SPEAKER_00 48:10

I'm not sure how to wrap this one up.