Episode 376 - Brad Filliponi, Co-Founder, BoxBrownie

00:00:00 - Brad Filliponi

Easier as just getting your camera out and going snap, snap, snap, upload. That's probably the best way to think of it, you know what I mean? Because literally every agent out there has always got a phone on them, and the best camera is the one you've always got on you, right? So it's not another battery you need to recharge.

00:00:20 - Bill Risser

You're listening to the real estate sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 376 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend today we're going down under. Yeah, you know that I know a few Aussies, and we're going to be talking to Brad Philippone, who is the co founder of BoxBrownie.com. It is an amazing tool. The moment I laid eyes on it, I was blown away. And Brad had a vision way back in the day and he was able to make this become a reality. Mel joined him in this quest and they've built this amazing tool. So I'm really happy to have this conversation with him today. So let's get this thing started. Brad, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:27 - Brad Filliponi

Thank you, Bill. I appreciate you having me on board.

00:01:30 - Bill Risser

I can't wait to have a conversation with you, first of all, about your life because there's some cool stuff going on there. It's going to be a lot of then. You know, I had the chance to interview Mel a while ago and Peter even a while ago, and I'm remiss in not having you on more sooner. However, it's going to be cool because you're Brad Filiponi. So let's start there. Right? I know you live in Queensland and I want to say Queensland because if I said Queensland, you would correct me. I know how that works. And I know just from my interaction with Australia that you're in the northeast corner of the continent, that it's where all the heat is. It's very hot. It's in the north, but because you're in the southern hemisphere, it's hotter. That's all I know about the Sunshine coast. What am I missing? Tell me what I should know about where you live.

00:02:21 - Brad Filliponi

Bill. Queensland God's country, I feel. Think of Queensland estate as, like I always say, the californian coast of Australia. We have beautiful beaches. It's roughly 28 degrees celsius here today. Pretty much. You can walk around in t shirts and flip flops, or we call them thongs here in Australia. Literally, you can walk around in a singlet all year round. It's a beautiful place. We have some amazing beaches. Stunning, actually. And of course, yeah, my area is the Sunshine coast, so it's literally sunny 300 days of the year at a minimum.

00:03:05 - Bill Risser

Wow. So look, I did some conversion for the listeners. 28 degrees celsius, about 82 degrees fahrenheit. Like, perfect weather, right? It's awesome. And we're in the middle as we sit here and freeze and go with some of the most snow that's fallen in the last two years in the US. You're right in the dead center of summer as our seasons are reversed.

00:03:25 - Brad Filliponi

Yeah. And pretty much the weather is always good. We do get a bit cold. We never snow, but you might put a hoodie on, pants on in the morning if you go into the gym quite early like I do. I get up pretty early. But look, most of the time I'm t shirts, shorts and just got the australian cheer going on.

00:03:45 - Bill Risser

Look, I know that when a queenslander comes to Melbourne in the wintertime in Australia, they complain a lot because we've got a couple people that work up there and they hate going to Melbourne in July.

00:03:57 - Brad Filliponi

Born and bred in Melbourne. Actually used to play strangers. Football. Pouring rain, they call Melbourne. You have four seasons in one day, so I don't mind the cold. Doesn't bother me. I think I don't mind a good bone shaking, as you call it. It makes you feel like you're real and you're living. I feel nice.

00:04:16 - Bill Risser

A question about the Sunshine coast. Is this true that you have a tiny jellyfish that can actually kill swimmers as they swim? Unless they wear, like, a chain mail swimsuit or something. What are we talking about here?

00:04:33 - Brad Filliponi

Look. Yeah, we have these things called box and blue jellyfish. Yeah, they are lethal. If you do come across one, you can be in trouble. Luckily to say. I'm sure they're in our waters every now and then, but a lot of those are a little bit further north. So our weather is hot, but it's not silly, muggy, sweaty hot. It's more of a dry heat, so it's tolerable. I feel I can't stand nothing more than when you're hot and then you're like, just perspiring like, you're sweating everywhere, and I just think that's uncomfortable. So we're kind of before that, so we don't get a lot of that in the water. But, of course, they are around, and you got to be vigilant, like anything. And, yeah, we've got plenty of other things that can kill you, as you know.

00:05:16 - Bill Risser

My favorite one I heard from someone down at raid, my agent, was the drop, that you got to watch out for the drop.

00:05:23 - Brad Filliponi

Do you. Do they drop out of anywhere? No, but not the case. That's a bit of an urban legend, to be honest. I've never had a koala fall on me. But as I just said to you earlier, I took my two young sons to Australia zoo, which is about 20 minutes from my hometown. So if anyone visits Australia, come say good day, and we'll take you to the zoo. But, yeah, you can literally pat a koala and you can pat kangaroos, and it's pretty awesome.

00:05:49 - Bill Risser

That's great. Now, you personally look, you have a wild side to you. You know that, right, mate?

00:05:57 - Brad Filliponi

100%.

00:05:58 - Bill Risser

Okay, good. Let's start here. Motorcycles moitai somehow tied into photography. What am I missing from this list of passions?

00:06:12 - Brad Filliponi

What else? I love camping. I've recently got my family into it, and they're really loving it. So I'm an outdoors sort of bloke, and I think life's a bit more fun when you're sideways. So I've got plenty of. Couple of fast cars. I've got a couple of motorbikes. I've always been into that. Let's call it crusty demons of dirt lifestyle or Travis Pastrana nitro circus. I've got lots of friends who used to be professional riders. I also wakeboard. Got plenty of ex pro wakeboarding mates. And, yeah, I do a bit of wake surfing on the side. So anything that gets your heart pumping, mate, on the outdoors, I'm all for it. But then I love a leisurely stroll through the forest. Or we've got a couple of cool little mountains here that aren't too crazy. But I just like being outdoors, mate. I'm stuck in front of a screen so often in my life, so to get outside and just get amongst it, I'm all for it.

00:07:11 - Bill Risser

That kind of makes it really easy to see why photography was kind of natural for you, right? Because first of all, most of it is outdoors. Portrait photography is a different beast, but that's not what you did for a long time. So let's talk about that. How did you come out of school? And what was the driving force for you to then really take photography on as your career?

00:07:36 - Brad Filliponi

Great question. I actually fell into it to be honest. So I went to what we call a tafe here in Australia. When I finished high school even before then I was actually doing bits and pieces, I was working with a photographer and then when I finished school I did a TAFE course and then I started working for him full time and back then real estate photography was not a thing but he was doing it and I'm talking back on film camera days so that's how long I've been a real estate photographer. So what I love is not many property photographers out there, I'd say less than 5% can say they started shooting paid jobs, paid real estate photography jobs on a film camera and I did that for at least a year or two.

00:08:19 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:08:19 - Brad Filliponi

So I'm getting older now, I'm close to 40, I'm 40 this year actually but I think someone at my age there's not many people I don't think who can quote that I've been probably a photographer at least I was driving. So 1718. So close to 20 years I've been taking real estate photos and it wasn't university, think of like a college. I went to a college and studied diploma in photography. What was cool though bill, it was the transition period so obviously digital cameras had just come out so they had to modify the class. It was the first time they did so six months of my class I did darkroom and film.

00:08:59 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:08:59 - Brad Filliponi

The other six months was digital so I was really on the cuffs of it mate. And I'd already been doing paid jobs for a bit before then. So yeah when you look back it's been a pretty long and steady ride but I really feel that I know personally I've done the whole loop so for me to come and be called a disruptor I feel no one probably has earned that respect more than myself or people like me if you know what I mean. Like a one trick pony. I've been doing this forever and this was like a dream for me to almost get off the tools bill. So I'm the founder of the business, it was my brainchild and it was realistically just to get me off the camera because I wanted to start a family but I just felt like I was stuck in the rat race and it was just me and I was too scared to go on holidays mate, every year I was too scared to have time off because unfortunately the industry is not loyal at times and that's only because people need things back yesterday. I understand because I actually worked in a real estate office as well for about two years. I was a customer service agent. Was kind of in the crossover. When I finished college, I worked in a real estate office. I was shooting real estate photos in my part time. So I've got my full australian license. It has lapsed, but I could renew that and I got that when I was like 17. So we used to sell deep waterfront canal properties here on the Sunshine coast and also beautiful beachfront homes. So I knew that from an early age what it took to make a house sell. And let's be honest, it all starts with let's, let's.

00:10:42 - Bill Risser

Let's talk about that original because box Brownie's gone through a couple of different iterations. But let's start with the first one. What was your goal? What were you trying to build when you first set out to start the company?

00:10:54 - Brad Filliponi

I won't lie, I was just trying to make an income and at that time I was stressed out, mate. I had my mum doing my accounting for me, like I was sending invoices out. But back then there was no accounting software. It was all very manual and I'd have agencies that wouldn't pay me for three or four months, you know what I mean? And me just running a business. I was always a solo operator. I never had employees. Now I have over 419 countries, Bill. It blows my mind, mate. And I don't like people calling me boss. I actually don't like it because I'll clean the windows at work or if there's something on the. I'll pick up the vacuum cleaner. I'm just that sort of guy. I'm hands on and I do like being in the trenches and I don't want any special treatment. I'm not special, I'm just another guy just having a go, if you know what it was. Really. Realistically I wanted to get myself off the tools and do something different. I was going to go the mines here in Australia and underground and make some good money and week on, week off style thing. But my wife said, you're like this, bill, no long distance relationship. She's a hairdresser and she's seen bad things happen with couples and know fast forward a bit. And that's what made me think of box brownie. And then I never imagined that I'd honestly travel the world, meet people like yourself, mate, and just be doing what we're doing. It's still pinch myself a lot of the time but I don't think about it. That makes sense as well.

00:12:22 - Bill Risser

Yeah. So the original idea was to make it easy for other people to do the editing, which would get you off the tools of the editing part, which is the toughest part of it. Right.

00:12:34 - Brad Filliponi

What I thought is, look, I'll tell everyone. At one stage, I was scared to outsource Bill as a real estate photographer. I was busy, and I was doing up to nine houses a day. To give you an idea how busy I was. That's a lot. And I created my own theory. Back then, there was no YouTube channels, there was only dodgy forums. There wasn't what there is now. So literally, with the experience I got from working with this amazing photographer. His name's Greg Gardner. I'll always give props to Greg. He's just an amazing guy. I wish I could hang out with him more often, to be honest. But he really showed me the ropes and said, hey, you should get into this. It's a niche thing. Not everyone's doing it. And back then, mate, I always say that we call it the property week. Like, back then, the local property newspaper, I guess, or flyer, was inside our local newspaper. And let's call it the first four pages and the last four pages, because obviously they're all joined, were color, gloss, and the rest was black, white. So I was taking photos for usually the glossy areas. I'd get the photos printed, I'd throw the shitty ones out and keep the good ones, because obviously you couldn't see what was what, right? And I'd give them whatever, you know, obviously they didn't get the bad ones. Know something's overexposed or underexposed, et cetera. And that's really where it all began. But, yeah, look, Bill, I needed the service editing. I was editing photos. I was on the graveyard shift. I was getting photos back overnight, which I know in the US is getting closer now. Like, it's been a standard thing my whole career, so I'm used to it. I tried outsourcing, mate. I tried, let's call it 100 or 200 different editors, and you'd tear your hair out and you'd be like, it's all terrible. Yeah, I wouldn't put my name to that. And then one day I found someone decent, trained them up. And I won't lie, I was paying $5 a photo.

00:14:28 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:14:29 - Brad Filliponi

We're now doing it for a dollar. Oh, that's australian. So let's call it $4 us, and now we offer a dollar 60. So to give you an idea, like, it was one of those ideas, or concepts, Bill, where I physically needed it to myself. And I was over my career. And then conversation with my wife, a penny dropped one day, and I have not stopped working at it since. People think I'm crazy. I know my own family and friends did. It's all I talked about. But, hey, who's crazy now? You know what I mean? I think brandy's, like, my third time lucky. I built two prototypes before I met Mel, who's my business partner. Amazing at technology, I think, where you could not get more yin and yang than myself and Mel. And I think the opposites attract and everything, you know, in small doses. I just feel that it's my journey, mate. You know what I mean?

00:15:19 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I know. You've been with Mel now. It's nearly a decade. Do you know that? It's almost been ten years?

00:15:26 - Brad Filliponi

Yeah, I should count. But I'm bad. I just work. I think we've had roughly seven christmases together. That's Christmas parties, if that makes sense, seven or eight. So getting up there, the concept myself, of box brand has been over a decade. Yeah. For me personally, yeah.

00:15:43 - Bill Risser

Good. And as you mentioned, what Mel was able to bring to the table was a way to put that tech over what you were trying to accomplish. And, boy, you guys are able to scale, like, it's incredible the way things have scaled for you. I think it's 114 countries that you're in.

00:16:02 - Brad Filliponi

I think it might be 170 now, but look, yeah, let's call it 114. People say they're global. We're a true global business, Bill. We are self funded, so we've taken no vc, which I think is cool as well. There's only a very small amount of businesses that can claim that. And we're rubbing shoulders with the big dogs in the industry. And we're just trying to stay true, mate, and do the right thing by our clients, do the right thing by our staff and editing teams, and no subscriptions. We just try and make it really easy. We're the most cost effective way to sell your biggest asset. We've got some big plans for vox branding. Like, editing is just the start. We've got some amazing things, blue sky, ideas for the horizon. And we're just here to make the average real estate agent's life easy, mate. That's what we want to be.

00:16:52 - Bill Risser

I think that the thing that I show more than anything when I show someone box brownie is what you've done with virtual staging, making that as affordable as it is. That is crazy. Talk about that a little you, mate.

00:17:04 - Brad Filliponi

So you know, I'll start off by saying, and I never thought I'd ever say this, Bill, but box, brownie, our business, right here, right now, we do the most virtual staging in the world.

00:17:16 - Bill Risser

That's a fact.

00:17:16 - Brad Filliponi

That's fact one, fact two, it's all real life, human editors, not AI. AI is going to get terrific. I'm not going to lie about that. And that'll be an option in the future. But right here, right now, it is not up to scratch. There's numerous reasons I won't get into it, but it's not as good as the real thing yet. It will get better. And when it's better, we'll be offering it. You watch. You know what I mean? So, virtual staging, it's a great tool. I remember our first ever show was Inman, San Francisco. I think I'm bad with dates. It might have been 2017, I think. Don't quote me on that. But it was our first time in the US. First time. One of our first conferences, too, to be honest. And we didn't know what to expect. We couldn't afford the flights as a business, let alone the drink bills.

00:18:03 - Bill Risser

I'm glad you brought that up. I didn't have to do.

00:18:07 - Brad Filliponi

Look, you know, we're all about. That's the australian way, mate. Have a beer, have a know. You get to know people pretty well. But Inman did an editorial on us, and I'm forever thankful it was on our virtual staging. And next minute, we're like, boom. All these us sign ups going crazy. And we're like, whoa, what's going on here? And we track down the blog and Inman what's know. We had no idea what it was. Next minute we're on a plane. Next minute we've got people coming to our booth who already know. Minute, you know, this lovely lady named know. Tiffany Callanaugh was sending all these people to us, and we're like, who the hell is Tiff? And then next minute, this person comes up, she goes, oh, my name's Tiffany. Well, you're Tiff. And it just went on from there, mate. And the love that the US gave us was just incredible and forever grateful. And that's why we spend, as you know, we've spent so much time traveling across the world doing more conferences over there than probably most, and we're coming all the way from Australia for it. But virtual staging, I remember there was another company at the time offering it. That's all they did. Won't name names, but I remember it being $80 us per photo, I'm pretty sure, per virtual staging, we entered the market at $32 us. And everyone's like, whoa. And what's really cool is since then, we've dropped that edit 25% in price. So with Box Brownie, there's never going to be subscriptions. And as we scale up, we want to be the fair guys and bring prices down. So that's sort of how we work. So pretty proud on that because early days, everyone said that we had to have subscriptions. It's never going to work.

00:19:47 - Bill Risser

There's a commercial aspect to what you're doing as well, too. When I say commercial, I mean commercial real estate, because renderings are something that are incredibly expensive. Once again, you've found a way to make this super affordable, right? Especially in that world.

00:20:01 - Brad Filliponi

Yeah, really, everything. And we were doing virtual renovations before it was a thing, before that was a product. But renderings we do a lot of. So whether it's a residential house, whether it's commercial, whether you're selling a multifamily complex or commercial complex, we've got you covered. So literally, for all the listeners out there, what's a render? Brad? It's an artist's impression. It's pretty much a computer generated image. Think a photo of a building or internal that's not built yet, but you can see what's going on. We've even gone one step further, Bill. And actually, we did create the world's first rendering. Automated service, upload your plan, select options, hit submit. We work on a proof and send it to you. That's another world first we've done, which is pretty cool. But we also do render 360 virtual tours. So think of Matterport tour of something that is not built yet. That's the best way to put it.

00:20:58 - Bill Risser

It's been fun watching box brownie grow, right? Because there's always something kind of, you mentioned there's things on the horizon, and I'm going to ask you a question about that in a minute. But first you got to talk about Snap. Snap. Snap.com. First of all, was snap and snap, snap taken. So you just went, snap, snap, snap. I'm just curious.

00:21:17 - Brad Filliponi

No, well, look, Mal come up with that name, and I didn't like it at the start. I had something else really cool, I thought. But no, I'm really down for it now. Foxbrowny.com, I bought that domain before I even met Mel. I bought like ten years ago with a dream. So to give you an idea, like, I did have a dream for all of this, think, mate. It's as easy as just getting your camera out and going, snap, snap, snap, upload. That's probably the best way to think of it, you know what I mean? Because literally every agent out there has always got a phone on them, and the best camera is the one you've always got on you, right? So it's not another battery you need to recharge. Your phone's got a phone charger in your car. Actually, on my second prototype, we had a camera app. It wasn't anything like it is now, but it worked, so that was cool. And I remember coming back from a conference. It was an exp conference, and I said to Mel, I said, dude, I'll be on his case for ages about the app. I'm like, dude, we need to pull our finger out and get this app. Just. I know it's what's needed. At that time, Bill, we had set up here in Australia. Like, all that travel we did. Crazy. When we first would have met, we used to have an uber based photography system where you could book photographers through our dashboard. I'd trained 300 photographers here in Australia. I'd organize their patches in all of our major areas. And you could book a photographer, let's say, if you're like, hey, it's 10:00 in the morning today. I want to book a photographer this afternoon at 230, and I want ten photos. You could hit a button and do it. So we had that. But I always felt as a bit of a dying breed because of the app, because the phone technology is getting so good. So as soon as I saw the iPhone eleven with that wide angle lens, I'm like, dude, the time's now. I've tested the cameras. Two out there, iPhone eleven and 15. If you got an iPhone eleven, don't rush out by 15 thinking you got a better camera. It might be a little bit better on the photos you don't edit, but if you use snap, snap, snap, which we can talk about more and why it's so good, mate, the results are pretty similar, so that's a good tip for everyone listening. Don't think you need the latest phone to make it happen. Not the case. Yeah, the app is incredible, mate, and I'd love to tell more if you need.

00:23:36 - Bill Risser

Let's. Let's talk. So as an agent downloads the app, they sign up. They probably tie it to their Apple Pay accounts. Real simple. And what does it look like? How does it work? What would I be using it for most of the time?

00:23:50 - Brad Filliponi

Snap, snap, snap. Right now, it's on iPhone only a few reasons for that. IPhone had about seven cameras for us to hack into. Androids have about 150 plus, so there's a lot more work in it. That's why, just so everyone knows. So Android, it's pretty much built now. I would say that February to next month, if anyone's listening and they want to try it out and be one of the first beta testers, reach out. Brad@boxbrowny.com I am not scared to give my email address out, even though I am the co founder of what we are, but I'm here to help, mate. But snap, snap, snap. It's amazing. It took Mel three years to hack into Apple's camera algorithm. And the reason is there's a lot of smarts behind it, mate. It's very technical. What it does is that you open up the app, you press little plus sign, which activates the new shoot. You put your property address in there. Always use your property address that way because everything's saved and you can look at the shoots anytime. Then you start shooting, and as soon as that camera opens, mate, there's no settings to put in. Everything's done behind the scenes. It actually opens up at 0.6 times on the wide angle zoom, not the 0.5 times. The reason is because I'm OCD, mate, as a photographer, and the 0.5 makes things look too big. So you're misleading a little bit there. That's the reason why you can zoom in, zoom out accordingly. But you press that button, mate. It takes seven HDR bracketed shots. And for those that aren't camera savvy, bracketing or HDR photography is you need a tripod for best results. And every professional photographer uses a, you know, that's why we do it. Me being one, it takes seven different photos at different light gradients. So dark all the way to light. And the reason is, Bill, a lot of the US photography, professional photography, I see, I challenge everyone, all the listeners out there on your professional photos, on your interior shots, can you clearly see outside the window? I know now it's a bit more of a growing trend. We've educated the market a lot, but a lot of photos, I see. I remember Nagle rep. I don't think that's a conference anymore at Palm Springs. And I was chatting to a gentleman there and I said, look, yeah, your photos are great. He goes, oh, my photographers are the best. Don't need you guys ra, that's cool. I said, do you mind me having, can you bring up a shoot you like and have a look and I gave a marketing health check there and then, and I said, look, I saw beautiful mountain regions in that pool shop. I said, why can't I see that? I know the mountains are just because I know photos and where they position. And I'm like, why can't I see those mountains from inside that beautiful living room? And he's like, his jaw just dropped, mate. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, dude, I can't see outside that window. It's a white haze in Australia. I'd be fired. I would not get work for that. And he's like, I've never thought of. So, like, that's what HDR photography is, team. It's the ability to see in a photo how our amazing human body eyes see in real life. We can control and balance the light, whether it's really sunny or it's dark and in shadowy. That's what HDR photography does, because you're capturing every lighting aspect that's needed. And then our editors, by hand, real life humans, edit that photo and pretty much layer them, rub out what they want, keep what they need, replace sky, do actually 17 Photoshop tasks to your image for a dollar 60. So that's one aspect of snap, snap, snap.

00:27:34 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:27:34 - Brad Filliponi

One last fun fact. The algorithm, it doesn't just take seven photos, it actually takes 70, up to 70 micro photos, just to give you an idea. So that's what it does for the dollar 60. So that's why it's a true world first, mate. It's everything I knew as a photographer in an app that's just a push button system. On top of that, it does data dusk, or our twilight effect, which is our second most popular edit globally. You can also remove items, kitchen clutter, cars out the front, rubbish or skip bins, you know what I mean, out the front of a property, things you can't actually have control of moving. You can remove it all off the app, you what you want, submit. And lastly, Bill, you can do high quality, our best selling virtual staging off the phone. No other app does that right here, right now. So, look, know we're going to give all the listeners a free coupon trial at the end. We'll have a code word for you. As we spoke about. If you're an existing box brandy user, I want to hook you up as well, so we can talk about that later. But that's why the app is so good, mate. It honestly turns your smartphone into a secret weapon. It's DSLR, professional quality. And when you marry the photos up. Like, I've done tests and you know me, we do blogs and we're all about training. I love it. And I've taken photos on my old camera setup, Nikon compared to the phone, to be honest, everyone actually says, I like the phone photos better. But what they all say is I can't tell the difference.

00:29:03 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:29:04 - Brad Filliponi

And I'm talking a laptop photo. But then when they shrunk down the property portals, things get pixelated and lower resolution, mate. You physically can't tell the difference. It's wild.

00:29:14 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:29:15 - Brad Filliponi

And we're not here to replace photographers or nothing like that. We're just embracing the technology. And I don't like. I'll pick up the scraps if you want to call it or. There's always room for a professional photographer in the industry. 100% biggest asset as an agent. But you've got to call them. You got to fit in their schedule. You could have a rural property that takes an hour to drive there. There's no photographers. I've heard it all. This app is available 24/7 photos back in 24 hours. Guaranteed standard edits and average turnaround time for our image enhancement is 3 hours. At the moment, that's what the system tell us.

00:29:53 - Bill Risser

I'm a little behind. I'm a little behind on box brownie. You guys have really come a long ways. Let me ask you this question as best you can because I don't want you to give away anything that would help anyone else. But what's next on the horizon? Is there something you can tease us with?

00:30:11 - Brad Filliponi

What's next? What's next? We're really just trying to secure a lot of. We're just trying to streamline what we do. Okay. You know what I mean? AI is coming. Artificial intelligence. We can't ignore that. Things that we do do that people don't know about. We've got some products coming. Probably not a lot I can talk about, really. But what's really cool is we have switched on our booker photographer, Uber based system again, which is quite cool. We're pretty big in Japan. We've got 30 photographers on the ground. Japan, which is pretty fun. Wow, that's going on. We've just switched one on into my local town again, just to sort of get it rolling around Australia again. That's something we're just playing with. It's just a bit of fun, really, mate. But I think what we're really trying to do this year is streamline what we do get. Always improving our systems. We aim to give the best customer service available we get really comments all the time. We're just trying to tighten our ship. And being self funded, we can pivot pretty quick. And we've got our ideas there of where we need to go. Really cool too. On our editing. I just got off a call before you. I run a quality control team. So we secret shop our editors, which is pretty cool, and look at about 100,000 images a month, which is not all of them, but it's scratching the surface and it's random. So obviously the founder is in the trenches still doing that because I care about our clients. So what that means is the good editors get work, the bad editors get suspended, and our clients just get top notch work. So we'll fix the photo, mate, even if you haven't seen it. So with box brownie, you can do free changes yourself. If you're like Brad, I dislike that furniture, change it or I don't like the sky you've used. It's all free. But we fix things as well behind the scenes, even if you don't know about it, because that's just how we roll.

00:31:56 - Bill Risser

That's cool. Look, I'm watching the clock. I got to get you back to work. It's nighttime where I'm at, but your day is starting. Final question.

00:32:06 - Brad Filliponi

You're probably going to get to bed. I've got all the time you need, mate, and I'm here for you.

00:32:10 - Bill Risser

All right? Final question that I always ask every guest. What one piece of advice would you give a new agent? Just getting started in the business.

00:32:21 - Brad Filliponi

Look, if that's a tough one, mate, get yourself educated. There's a lot of beautiful prop tech, property technology out there. It is crowded though. Let's face it, there's a lot of technology out there these days. But look, I suppose I always like to say don't become the next Nokia, you know what I mean? I think you've got to try and innovate. And not that Nokia haven't, don't get me wrong, but everyone's on an iPhone or a Samsung these days, you know what I mean? So I think just be sure to keep yourself educated, go to conferences or listen to podcasts. And I think educate yourself is a big thing and just back yourself, really. I think you are who you hang out with and I suppose the harder you work, the luckier you become, mate. So that's probably one aspect, of course. And this is not selling us, I promise. But obviously good photos sell property. Let's face it, that's what makes your phone ring. So not saying just use us. But there's lots of ways out there to be seen and to have good marketing. It's a bit of a down market at the moment. I know there was Covid, there was some stupid prices and I think they still getting that. But I think these days there's fierce competition. There's been some big stats of all the agents who have left the industry in the know. Nar have done some statements and I think now more than ever, even during COVID when things were selling quickly, you still should have given a damn about how your marketing looks. Don't be sloppy because on these types of markets, this is where you're going to pick it up. So I think your listings are your online presence. They're like your window card to the world. So much like having a beautiful suit and a clean car. I think having beautiful looking marketing is another step towards selling a home and then getting other listing as well. So I think it's all those little 1% mate that all add up, doesn't it? Education and doing what you say and just delivering on what you do I think is a big thing too.

00:34:31 - Bill Risser

Good. Love it.

00:34:33 - Brad Filliponi

Was that answer all right.

00:34:34 - Bill Risser

For good? I love it. I love it. Brad, if someone wants to reach out to you, I think you already told us it's basically Brad at also. So you said you have something special for the listeners. Let's talk about that real do.

00:34:49 - Brad Filliponi

I do. So obviously rate my agent, another fellow australian sort of prop tech company. Kudos to the Aussies. But look, we want to give back. Of course, obviously rate my agent. You got a profile picture? We do profile retouching. So take a photo on your phone. Phone cameras are pretty awesome. We can retouch it. Whether you want to remove wrinkles, remove a pimple or braces, whiten your teeth, change your tie, anything like that we can do. We can even remove the backgrounds as well. If you want that sleek studio look, we've got a code word. So if you haven't signed up to Boxbrowny.com, that's the website, boxbrowny.com, sign up, there'll be a coupon code area. It's pretty easy. Rate my agent all in capital letters, no spaces. It'll get you $25 australian credit, which is a big sort of giveaway now from what we usually give away, and $20 American. So try that out if you want to try. Snap. Snap. Snap team. And you're an existing user, guys, email me. Brad@boxbrain.com. I will physically give you a training session on whatever you want. If you want an office webinar, a one on one training session with anything we do, I am here. Okay? Honestly, I'll do it myself. I won't handball it. But yeah, if you're already a user, that code where it won't work, email me, we'll catch up. I'll put it in your account and I'll help any way I can.

00:36:16 - Bill Risser

That's awesome. Brad, this has been fantastic. Everything I thought it would is passion just oozes from you, which I'm sure you've heard before. You are very passionate about what you do. And I love the fact that that passion comes from a place of service and help and making it better for people at an affordable price. I keep using that phrase, but it's amazing. So thank you so much for your time today. This is amazing.

00:36:39 - Brad Filliponi

Likewise, Bill. Just very grateful to be in the position I'm in. The real estate industry has been very kind to, you know, it's great to be able to give back and I think the universe always gives back in marvelous ways. So whatever I can do, I'm just here to help. I'm just stoked and just living the dream, mate. You know what I mean? Yeah. No. So just whatever I can do to assist, I'm here for anyone.

00:37:01 - Bill Risser

That's awesome. Cheers, mate.

00:37:05 - Brad Filliponi

Cheers, mate. Hopefully we get to cross paths again soon in the US or maybe over here and. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for having us on today.

00:37:13 - Bill Risser

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