Creating a Buzz with 9D Virtual Reality | Tim Pintilie: Triple F | EP05

In this episode, your host Rob Verhoeve welcomes Tim Pintilie into the studio as they delve into his business Triple F, a 9D virtual reality machine that can simulate anything from space rides, dinosaur rollercoasters, and virtual flying to interactive VR adventures. Rob and Tim chat about how he got started in business and sales, the technology behind the machines and the excitement he creates around the 9D virtual reality experience.

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Welcome to the MyBusiness Podcast, Australia's Small Business Podcast. We sit down with entrepreneurs, business leaders and owners to chat about their experiences and pull out some of their best stories and business wisdom. There’s a lot to be learned from our broad spectrum of guests from a wide variety of industries and niches. Join us and lets chat!

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Speaker 0 (0s): This podcast is brought to you by Media eight.

Speaker 2 (6s): Welcome to the My Business Podcast, where we sit down with local businesses and we talk about who they are, where they come from, and what inspires them to be in business.

Speaker 3 (19s): Welcome to the My Business Podcast. It's a podcast where we sit down with local businesses and talk about what they are, where they come from, and what inspires them to be in business. Welcome to the to podcast today, Tim Penile.

Speaker 4 (33s): Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. Please to meet you.

Speaker 3 (36s): Excellent mate. Look, thank you for taking the time to come into the studios here today. It is wonderful to meet you. Tell us a bit about what's the name of your business and, and what do you do?

Speaker 4 (45s): The name of the business is Triple F Virtual Reality. So what I've been doing for the past five years, I've been running a 90 virtual reality simulator. So I've been running that all over different shopping centers in Southeast Queensland. Now I'm expanding two more events and that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (1m 2s): Now explain nine d I mean, I've heard of 3d, I've, I've been to a movie world where they have 4D give us, give us a nine d rundown.

Speaker 4 (1m 10s): Look, I get that question asked all the time. So you would've also heard of 70. So if you go to like Aussie World to have the 70 D simulator and seven D's, like more the old school simulators where you've got a whole room and it's like maybe 10, 12 people in a room. The whole room moves or your seat moves and you've got the screen. Yep. So the actions on the screen synchronize with the motion. You're gonna have like winds, maybe water, maybe some smells pumped into the room. And the reason they call a 70, obviously you've got all the, maybe seven different effects potentially, or something like that.

It's also cool name right? Sounds called 70, even though it doesn't necessarily have any bearing on reality, it's, it's a cool name. Yep. It's a good marketing term. And so they call that 70. The reason they call this 90 is because sure, you get the special effects of wind seed, vibration, et cetera, but you also have a few extra layers, such as you have virtual reality headset. Instead of looking at a screen, it's fully immersive. You can look around all 360 degrees if you haven't tried VR before. Those are the customers that have the coolest reactions cuz their, their mind is absolutely blown. Blown because they feel like they're in another world, another environment altogether.

And so you have the, the VR aspect, which is a whole new technology that we've incorporated into preexisting simulated technology. And you also have the interactive component which you can actually interact if you choose a game potentially. Especially with these newer simulators, the interactive games are quite good as well.

Speaker 3 (2m 30s): Tell us a little bit about yourself though. How did Tim come to be the owner of Triple F, virtual reality nine D, all that kind of stuff. How did you get to this place?

Speaker 4 (2m 40s): Yeah, look, I've always wanted to be in business. I've always like read books and all that kind of thing. I've always, that's always been my, my thing. I think you have more flexibility, you can do more in life, et cetera. And I had people I looked up to that did well in business. And so that felt very natural and normal to me. So my sort of genesis story, when I finished school, I got straight into sales cuz I figured I, you, you need two things when you're starting business, you need capital and you need experience effectively. Right? If you know how to sell, it's a big bonus. You don't have to know how to sell.

But it's like, obviously it's the number one,

Speaker 3 (3m 13s): But does put you one step ahead, doesn't it?

Speaker 4 (3m 14s): Puts you, puts you massively ahead. So I sold cars at a dealership in Gimpy for three and a half years. Yep. Yeah. So you learn, you learn a lot. It's a really good dealership where they really looked after their customers, the rural dealership. So you have to really look after people. So they come back and bring their, bring their kids in and their grandparents and their friends and tell everyone about you. If you give 'em Morrison experience, if you, if they, if people give you a bad raft and you're not gonna continue to sell cars in the small town where it's all about where the mouth Yep.

Speaker 3 (3m 41s): The story passes around quickly, doesn't it?

Speaker 4 (3m 42s): A hundred percent. It's different than like a metro situation. You've got millions of people and it's like churn and burn. You can just go through people, doesn't matter as much in the rural town. It really matters. So that's what I loved about what we did specifically at Darren Gia Pacific dealership. And they've, they've got like four brands. So I specifically sold I Suzu Honda and Mitsubishi. That was with my three brands back. Back in the day. Yep.

Speaker 3 (4m 3s): Back in. And that was, was that straight out

Speaker 4 (4m 5s): Of school? I was 18. 18. 18. Selling cars. Selling cars, yeah. Right off the bat. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (4m 9s): To give you a bit of background, I used to be a bank manager. Yeah. Right. So between a bank manager and a used car salesman. That's it. We're doing, we're doing pretty well. Have you sitting here today? Aren't Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So we, we do have hearts, don't we?

Speaker 4 (4m 19s): To some, to some green, which

Speaker 3 (4m 21s): Try. We try now, I'm sure. I'm sure you do that quite well. So you come outta school and you, you are selling cars. Yeah. And then was is this the first business that you've owned?

Speaker 4 (4m 32s): Yeah. Yeah. I, oh look, I've, I've messed around with different things, but it's the first serious business that I've run for five years straight and I've invested like massive capital into and and done full-time. Yep. So

Speaker 3 (4m 40s): I've looked at your website, your website's fantastic. It's thank you's. All these 3D eggs or something. They called it what? Egg pods. That's what they were. Yeah. Egg pods. Yeah. So I'm looking at that now. How does somebody who's selling cars in Gimpy think to themselves, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna bring in some egg pods that give a 3D oh seven day, nine day, sorry, nine day reality job. Yep. And bring them to Australia.

Speaker 4 (5m 6s): Look, I'll go back to your previous point cuz you asked the question about, about heart and I think I was joking around, obviously, you know, that is the cliche, isn't it? Yeah. But at the end of the day, you can, you can have, you can make some short term money by just like not really caring about your customer or whatever. Just, just being there, just clocking in, clocking off if you're, if you're in a job or if you're in a business, being halfhearted about it. But if you really wanna grow a business properly, you have to give it a hundred percent and you have to really care about you and consumer and the experience, et cetera. So I think that was one thing that we did very well at this dealership.

It was very different than normal dealerships. Like we actually cared about the customer and we really went the extra mile. And then I took that on board with the virtual reality business. So I'll go back to the question that you just asked me. Basically, I've always wanted to be in business and I've been there three and a half years. I've saved some money. I feel like I grounded myself and I'm like, okay, what's it gonna be? So before I sold cars, I did have like an eBay store. I was selling stuff on eBay. I was selling electronics on eBay, lasers and toys and that kind of thing. And so I had that background. I thought, oh, maybe I'll start some sort of e-commerce. I w I stumbled across the concept online.

Yep. And then I saw the concept, I saw the machine, I saw what it could do and I saw the videos of people screaming and it just got my interest straight away. I was like, this has gotta work. And I then I found, I did a bit of research and I found out no one had taken it to Australia. Really? Not in the big, there's probably like one other person doing it like far away. And I was like, this could be quite good because I could see it was quite big. If you go to Asia, if you go to like Dubai, you can see 'em like in a lot of places. You go to China and Guo, they're everywhere. A lot of countries, even America, there's a whole bunch. So a lot of countries are like, I felt a step ahead in some, to some degree.

It was like a lot of massive business concepts revolves around the idea of seeing something that works very well overseas and you bring it into your country and that's and that's what you did. That's what, that's what I looked to do. And then also had experience in the dealership with the vehicle in a shopping center.

Speaker 3 (6m 54s): Okay.

Speaker 4 (6m 55s): Okay. Right. So when I first started very early on, when before I was like really selling cars properly, I was kind of like, just very, very fresh, very green. They were like, oh yeah, we'll chuck him in the shopping center with a vehicle to kind of try to gather leads from customers and that kind of thing. And I was blown away, just a little shopping center in Gimpy, how much interest came through to, to give their details to learn more about the vehicle. So everyone walking past it was just a method to generate leads for the dealership. But everyone walking past thought I was selling car tickets, tickets, tickets to win the Honda hiv.

Yep. So, and I, I did a bit of quick math afterwards. I was like, obviously I would never do this. But I was like, I could have made a few hundred bucks every day just selling, just selling, selling tickets, just make up some tickets, selling them if I wanted to. Obviously I wouldn't do that. Yeah. No. But, but then that, that came back to me when I saw that concept. I was like, if I could sell just, just raffle tickets that easily because people were asking me for it when they didn't even exist. Imagine if you actually had a futuristic spaceship looking like machine in the shopping center. Imagine the attention you draw and, and how you could actually do quite well if people have never seen it before.

Speaker 3 (8m 0s): And people should check out your website because they'll see those futuristic spaceships there. A hundred percent. And obviously that's how you get a lot of interest out of that. Why do you do what you do? What's the, what's the motivation for you? What gets you up in the morning?

Speaker 4 (8m 15s): There's a lot of reasons at the beginning, I, I just thought it was a cool concept. I have to do this. Yep. Even if it doesn't work, I'll spend whatever, whatever it costs. 20, 30 grand at the, at the beginning obviously it's costing a lot more with the, with the newer machines and that kind of thing. And I've bought the first egg pod back then and I bought another egg, double egg pod and then now I'm buying this 360 spinning virtual reality machine. So at the beginning it was just like, really cool, I have to do this. Even if it doesn't work, it'd be worth the try. Right. And then it's evolved from that where I see customers' reactions and how much fun they're having.

And just the feedback that I get every single day when I go to, whether it's a shopping center or a show or, or wherever I might be, right. Events, festival, whatever it might be. Be. And just the, the customer reactions just, it's just exciting every single day to see that. And a lot of reasons, like obviously I always follow, I was always big into technology, so I always followed basically when Oculus was bought by Facebook back in the day and what Facebook was doing like even 5, 6, 7 years ago in, in vr and they were like sort of pi trying to be pioneers, whatever. I kept an eye on things and you know, it's, it's being part of a very exciting industry that, that most people have, don't even know exist.

Speaker 3 (9m 21s): So who is the end customer? Who are the people that get the biggest benefit out of the, out of your service?

Speaker 4 (9m 27s): Right. That's, that's a good question. I didn't notice that at all when I bought the machine, I was very much flying blind. Right. So now I've very much figured out who he was. I thought my main customer would be like teenagers. Oh yeah, this looks really cool. Teenagers would be all over it. They're not, they're too cool to do it.

Speaker 3 (9m 43s): I get you. Yes, yes. That was

Speaker 4 (9m 45s): The biggest shift in the business. I was kind of blown away by that. So I first set up in Runaway Bay, but I had no idea like anything about Dera Runaway Bay. Yep. And about a few days later I, people were saying, yeah this is kind of like a retirement village.

Speaker 3 (9m 60s): I wasn't gonna say anything but yes. And

Speaker 4 (10m 2s): I was like, what am I doing? And I wasn't even running it in school holidays. So I paid all this money cuz usually pay rent two grand rent per week

Speaker 3 (10m 9s): To be at the shopping center in

Speaker 4 (10m 10s): A shopping center. Yep. I got a bit of a discount. This was five years ago. Back then, things were cheaper, whatever. And so I paid all this money, I paid thousands of dollars to be there and

Speaker 3 (10m 19s): He and you were getting nothing out of it.

Speaker 4 (10m 20s): I was getting nothing out of it cuz it wasn't school holidays. School holidays. And people were saying, yeah, this is a bit more like older people, more of a retirement village. I'm like, this is not my right demographic. And so yeah, I had to cut a show and come back to school holidays.

Speaker 3 (10m 32s): It's a lesson, a lesson learned isn't it? And that's what it's

Speaker 4 (10m 34s): All about. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So I messed up a lot along the way.

Speaker 3 (10m 37s): Yep. And who is the end customer now? So

Speaker 4 (10m 39s): What you said it's not who it is. So it's, I go minimum three years old. So three years old up until 13 is like my, these kids can't walk past it. They have to do it. Yep. So school holidays, all the parents are like, yeah, cool like that. And parents want to, parents see it. They're like, wow, that is really cool. Especially if I'm in a more rural area like Sunshine Plaza or Sunshine Coast, or now that I'm doing all these shows, this is all rural stuff that I'm doing with or with these country shows. Yep. So yeah, parents have to like, they're like, we don't really see this much and it's, it's once a year we have to do it. So yeah, I give massive interest.

Like probably 70%, 80% of kids walking past either want to do it or actually stop and do it.

Speaker 3 (11m 17s): Now what about, what about us older people? Do they get involved?

Speaker 4 (11m 20s): Surprisingly, yeah. So there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a slow patch. Yep. After 13. But then once, look, I, I have a lot of older people, especially if they're like really old, if they're like 70, 80, they've got nothing to lose. Yep. They, they look at it, they're like, yeah, I might look stupid, but stuff it, I wanna, I wanna go to space, I wanna go into spaceship, I want to, you know, I wanna see what it's like to fly Dragon sort like stuff at that age, you don't care. You just, you just want enjoy your

Speaker 3 (11m 45s): Life. Interestingly, I worked in Runaway Bay for quite a while. Oh,

Speaker 4 (11m 48s): Righto. Shopping center or

Speaker 3 (11m 49s): Somewhere else? The shopping center. Oh really? So I know the clientele you're talking about there and the branch that I was with had a lot of technology involved with it. Right. And I said to them at the time, I said, this is crazy. Yeah. It's all the old people. It's, you know, who brought, who took it on the best. The old people, they all wanted to give it a go. Yeah. So, you know,

Speaker 4 (12m 7s): I did have a lot of grandparents doing it. Yeah. And kids going with their grandparents. And when he, when he comes to say, say 2030s and forties, it's often time the kids will do it and, and the parents

Speaker 3 (12m 17s): Will hand

Speaker 4 (12m 17s): Back. Parents will stand back. But then also if they've only got one kid, they'll jump in with the kid. So that's, they want to do it secretly, but the, the child is an excuse to do it. So now they can do it in the way that's culturally accepted.

Speaker 3 (12m 28s): That, that is awesome. Isn't it's a way it should be too. Hundred percent. What is the, what's happening next, I guess for you with the business? I mean you, you talked about before that shopping centers, school holidays, but beforehand, before we turn the record button on, we were talking about the other times of the years and what you, what you look looking at now.

Speaker 4 (12m 48s): Yeah, good question. So I mainly did shopping centers the first few years of the business. And then with Covid, it was actually a massive hit for the business. It was a really bad time for us because shopping centers were closing. I was running two locations at the time and you're paying a lot of money in rent, you're burning through 400 bucks a day, potentially employees. Like you got all this stuff going on with zero income coming in. So it was a bit difficult at the time. And so I kind of like stood back for a while. But then after Covid I tried a country show and then I found that that's a perfect clientele for, for myself because a lot of kids are there, kids go there for the rides.

And I, I get the perfect demographic. I've been, a big mistake that I made in business was actually taking advice on board from clients and customers. Cuz they were like, yeah, these shows I hit at like these events I kind of like hit Miss. You might get rained on. Like they was talking about like different people were saying about all the negative sides of it. Then I tried a few events and it turned out to be not like small events, not very big ones, like less than 3000 people. And so all the stuff that I did wasn't that great. So I never really explored that avenue. But now this year I've st I did that one and then I, I did the childers's like Childers, Bundaberg, Meara, sunshine co show, all these different shows in every single red Cliff odea, like every single one was a hit Gold Coast show.

So they all did really well. So now I'm trying to get the bigger ones, like di is more difficult to get in. Yep. Sydney Royal Show, et cetera. So

Speaker 3 (14m 10s): What about, what's the best country show that you went to? Do you have one that stood out?

Speaker 4 (14m 14s): I only started middle of this year going to the shows. Right. So that, that gives me a limited perspective cuz you have to do it over a 12 month period to, to know for sure. So Bundaberg was really good, Bundaberg was really good. But I haven't even done, like, say if you do the, the cans run where you do all the little shows all the way up to Cannes and then back, apparently Dash stretch is really good is what I've been told. So I'm very keen on next year. Beautiful

Speaker 3 (14m 36s): Part of the world as

Speaker 4 (14m 36s): Well. Hundred percent. Yeah. I go there all the time. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (14m 38s): You do. Excellent. What, what are the things, what are the bug bears in your industry? So Covid would've been a, a big hurdle for you. What are the things that, that you need the most help with, I guess in your business?

Speaker 4 (14m 53s): There's a couple of things as far as Bud Bug bears are concerned, there's always the, the potential problem of something like this happening again. Yep. Because I was, I was doing like, I wasn't doing that great for two years. Like

Speaker 3 (15m 7s): It would've been tough.

Speaker 4 (15m 7s): It was quite, it was quite rough. And I'm considering like, dude, if this goes on for like a very long time, I'll need to do something else. Like that's how bad it gets. So, and now I've invested much more heavily. So like now I'm like all in, all in. Yep. So if something like that happens again, that would be really rough. So that's one thing that I keep in, keep in mind. Then there's other problems as well. There's, there's, there's regulation, there's a lot of things like insurance, there's a lot of things that you have to keep in mind. There's potential people coming in and saturating the industry. There's a lot of things. But that's true for any business, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (15m 38s): That's exactly right. You've obviously seen a lot of people come through and, and usual product and service. Yeah. I was told that a guy from the Shark Tank, Steve Baxter, might have used your service at one stage. He

Speaker 4 (15m 49s): Did, he did that. This is a classic example. This is very early days. This is a classic example of a lost leader because, so what happened, right? This was some initiative put on, I think it was in, was it in Bele somewhere along, along the way. Yep. And I lived, I lived in MPI at the time, so I drove all the way out to Bean Lee was, I was like, fine, I'll do it for free. So some sort of event where I did the whole thing for free, just let people experience at at at basically it was some sort of entrepreneurship Kickstarter sort of event. Yep.

And people were there big personalities, like Steve Bax was there, different people. And, and when I heard that, I'd seen the shows and stuff. I was like, oh, I have to do it. I I might get to meet him stuff. So yeah, I met him. He had a go. Yeah, it was really cool. There's, there's videos on my Instagram off, off him, like putting the headset on, having to go, he freaked out. He only did it for maybe 20 seconds. It was too much. He took it off. Not everyone can handle it. And I went all out, went with the craziest, craziest ride. Yep. And yeah, like after, after 20 seconds it's like, oh, too much, too much, too much for me. He

Speaker 3 (16m 48s): Didn't wanna invest

Speaker 4 (16m 50s): Invest.

Speaker 3 (16m 50s): He should, you should have hit him up to invest. Do your own little shark tank there on the spot. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (16m 55s): That's it. Should've done that. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (16m 56s): That would've been fantastic.

Speaker 4 (16m 57s): I've always been self-funded. So I think every business should, the best way to run business is to make money and then you can pour that back into it. That's the best ways to be organic. That's, that's what I'm a fan of. That's what I've always done. And that's what I think people should do. That way, that way you know, it's more sustainable. Yep.

Speaker 3 (17m 12s): And we're sitting here in the lead up to Christmas 2022. Where are you gonna be in the near future?

Speaker 4 (17m 17s): Not far from here. So Pacific Fair, I'm very excited about Pacific Fair. I've done it, I've done it there a few times, but I've only had to double egg pods, which is, like I said, it's, it's a bit older technology now. And I'm bringing this machine that has never been imported to Australia before, ever. So it's brand new technology, it's very cutting edge. It's, I'm just excited to see how consumers react. I'm also trying to break through my sort of 12, 13 year barrier into like an older demographic, which I think I can do with this machine. That's, that's a big, that's a big thing for me to, to explore and see.

And I'm excited about getting to an older do demographic.

Speaker 3 (17m 50s): I can see it in your eyes when you're talking about this new machine that you are genuinely excited about.

Speaker 4 (17m 54s): It cost a lot of money. So I'm gonna be excited

Speaker 3 (17m 56s): About it. You're excited about making some money with it too, aren't you? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17m 59s): Getting it back. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18m 0s): That'll be fantastic. So Triple F is the name of your company? Yes. How do people find you on your socials and that kind of stuff as well?

Speaker 4 (18m 9s): Yeah, so just, just Google Triple F virtual reality. The name of my website is, so T R I P L E triple and then the letter F for fox.com au. That's my website. Then you'll see all my socials from there. I'm on Facebook. If you typing triple virtual reality Facebook, you'll see me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, everywhere.

Speaker 3 (18m 26s): And if somebody wants to hire you to come out and do their event, they can do that there too.

Speaker 4 (18m 30s): They can do that on website. They can gimme a call, whatever they wanna do.

Speaker 3 (18m 33s): Well Tim, it's been absolutely brilliant to have you on the My Business podcast today. Have you enjoyed your time with us? A

Speaker 4 (18m 39s): Hundred percent,

Speaker 3 (18m 39s): Yeah. Nice and easy. Wasn't too bad.

Speaker 4 (18m 41s): You're fun.

Speaker 3 (18m 42s): You're a good host, right? It's a good fun. So look, look out for Tim. He's, he'll be at Pacific Fair obviously in the next, when, when do you start there?

Speaker 4 (18m 49s): 12th of December. So one

Speaker 3 (18m 51s): Week. So I'm coming out, you know that now. Yeah. I'm gonna have to see this in operation. So we'll come out and have a look at, have a look at

Speaker 4 (18m 56s): It there. I'll, I'll have to cut you a good deal on the rides.

Speaker 3 (18m 59s): Excellent. Thank you very much for coming in. Beautiful. And look forward to seeing you

Speaker 4 (19m 1s): Soon. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Thanks Tim.

Speaker 3 (19m 3s): Cheers.

Speaker 2 (19m 7s): Thanks for listening to the My Business podcast brought to you by Media eight on the pod fire platform. If you wanna be on our podcast, please reach out to the team on all our socials at my business dot pod.