Melissa Coutz on Leveraging AI in Real Estate

0:00As much as I am a, you know, high sea and I go about like, hey, we look at the numbers, we look at the analytics. Every home has a feeling to it. And every time a buyer walks in, it could be the house that did not meet their, like, original descriptions. And they're like, I love it. I don't know why. It doesn't check any of the boxes. I know that I should buy that house over there. But for some reason, one, two, three, Elm Street makes sense. And like, you can't really put AI on that human connection with where we're at. And I do think that that's where a lot of jobs, even in real estate, are going to stay. But how we do our jobs is going to change drastically. Welcome to a private conversation with me, Steve Robbins. I'm sitting down with some of the biggest names in Indianapolis real estate and beyond. I've enjoyed these conversations that I hope you will too. A big thank you to Cunningham Restaurant Group's Commission Row and Mel Speakeasy, located in downtown Indianapolis with an PASER sports and entertain the complex. Check out the show notes to learn more.

1:01Hey, everybody. Thank you for watching or listening to the show. If you are enjoying it, please like, subscribe, comment. And now for my next guest, where of High Gardens own the incomparable Mel counts. It's really exciting, though, because you're the third age and I've had on here from High Garden. Yeah. And Mark Branch and then Kyle Gillette, now you. And one of the things that I love about you being on here is not just because you're a great realtor you are, but you also might be the most technical realtor that I've ever been. And not just a High Garden. And your depth of interest and understanding of how to create systems and leverage technology is one of your many strengths. And so we can't not start there. What are you doing right now as of this last week or two that is new in the tech world as it relates to being a better real

2:02state professional? Teaching Clawed how to do everything for me. So literally putting Clawed Chrome into Teach Mode and actually walking it through the steps of what I do to send a seller update email. And then it will then create a basically instructions and a how to and it could log in and actually pull like showing data and putting it into an email that can automatically be sent to your sellers. So let's back up on that. Most people probably by now know Anthropics Clawed, which is their large language model. So we're open AIs, ChatTvT. What exactly is Clawed Chrome? So it's just Clawed as an extension on your Chrome web browser. Gotcha. Yeah. So very similar to, like you said, ChatGPT, they created their own like Atlas.

3:04But that was only for Macbook where you could pop it into agent mode and it could take over and do things for you. But now ChatGPT is like, OK, not everybody's going to download Atlas. So let's start making extensions too. And then they just rolled out Codex. So Anthropic Clawed extension onto Chrome. It can also be extent, I think an extension on like, or like not so far, but Foxfire. Or they have some other one. Foxfire. One that's Firefox, that's it. I haven't used that one in ages. Yeah. But it really can just take over your web browser. And so what all you mentioned set those like emails to set, you said sellers. Yeah. And so what's that email saying? Like here's the number of showings we have. Here's the activity that we've gotten compared to other listings like in your neighborhood. I pull those reports from broker Bay and just like kind of narrowed down. So I have like those searches set up in broker Bay. So it's just about teaching Clawed to do the same thing. And to see, OK, well, here's where we're at with showings. Like, we didn't have many showings this weekend.

4:04Did anybody else not have showings? Like we're showing just down as a whole. Or do we need to adjust our price? Like it's about taking that and turn in teaching Clawed how to analyze it and create a message to send to the sellers. And how do you go about teaching Clawed there? How is Clawed understanding for the people that haven't used Clawed Code or code X? Is it seeing your screen? How is it going? OK. So when you teach it, yeah, when you teach it, it's literally viewing the screen, but you also have to dictate to it. So you have to tell it what you're doing and why you're doing it. Just like you would be teaching like an assistant. So you go through, you teach it, and then it starts writing a memory. Now, the first time you run it, it's probably not going to be 100% correct. So it's literally a project of like, OK, doing a test, get all the information in, and then tweaking it as you go. And with something like this, you have to almost put a set of instructions,

5:04but also have some fillable blanks, because like each address is going to change where it's going to search. So it's about teaching it, OK, well, how do you search that? And then, all right, well, can you teach it to make a reduction in price? And if you can, how much is it going to reduce? So it's about teaching it parameters and just tweaking it as you go. So what kind of training in terms of time do you think it takes to get it to where you feel comfortable? It's probably like on the front end, it's going to be pretty heavy to get it like going, but the small tweaks should only take like 10, 15 minutes max. OK. Yeah. So this is the newest thing you're doing. This is the newest thing we're doing, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll come back to tech and AI and all that here in a little bit. Let's start with, or maybe transition to how you even got into real estate. How long? It's been 10 years maybe now, or how long? Over 12. Over 12. Yeah. And you think the high garden in 2020? That's what I was thinking.

6:05It was COVID time. Yep, right in January, right before COVID hit. OK. So what were you doing right before real estate again? So before real estate, I was in public accounting. So I was an auditor for a CPA firm. And I audited health care. We audited the deep water horizon trust fund that was being paid out for oil spill claims. OK. And audited, yeah, right. Audited Medicaid payments for the states to see like what were the payment air rates and dish money. So going into hospitals, finding, OK, if they treated Medicaid patients, like, could they get money back from the government based on the treatments and like submission of like contract labor and voices to put it simply. That I'm sure everybody understood that. Yes. And I'm sure they'll understand everything we're going to talk about here today. We're going to try to, I want you to be as technical as you want to be if I'm going to maybe because you are. And that's great. But you know, our ages love here, you speak.

7:06Sometimes they might need you to back up and explain a couple things because your knowledge is just over literally over most people's heads. But you know, coming from accounting and auditing and you're on the disc profile, you're definitely a high C relative to most realtors. And not I would not many realtors are high C's, I don't think. You know, there's some really good ones that are. You're certainly proof of that. How do you go from that to being into an interpersonal sales situation and feeling comfortable with it? Yeah. I'm a little bit unique though. So I got into accounting because I was in college when the financial crisis hit. And I was sitting at that time, I was just a marketing major with a finance minor. And our professor in class was like, look, this is bad. Like Lehman brothers just went down. You guys are not going to find jobs. You might as well go to graduate school. And I'm only a little bit competitive.

8:07So I was like, well, what am I doing here? Like, the whole point is to go to school and get a job. So I converted my finance minor into a major and went down that path. And I actually had a teammate. She was like, count. You do realize that for three more classes, you could get an accounting degree. And I was like, three more classes. Like, I'm in. Like, Mary and where I went, you could pay for 12 credit hours. You can pay certain amount. You get 12 to 20. So I just took 20 credit hours to try and jam it all in. And I taught myself to be analytical. And then I do have the over the top sales approach that comes with that. So that's the basis of getting into the analytical. But then I also already had the personality. The other part too was my mom made me read how to win friends and influence people when I was young. So she would highlight the words of the pages. And I'd have to read the highlighted sections. That's another reason why I love you.

9:07That's my favorite book. And I made all three of my kids read it too. Yes. Yes. This is very important. If you're going to be out, it doesn't matter if you're in sales or you're always in sales. Yes. If you're in the real world and your company or wherever you work for is selling anything. Yes. And if you look at it, you're like, there are sales. Yes. So would you disagree about being a high-see personality? I'm actually three high. One really low. Okay. One or the other two. One or the higher. I think it's the D and the I and my S is like non-existent, I feel. At least that was the last one I took. Yeah, that makes sense, and that's similar to me. I'm a DCS, or DCIS. Yeah. So very similar to you in that regard. So then why real estate? What happened? So my mother was an agent. Yes. And she still is an agent. But she got into it back when I was a little kid. And I think I fell in love with it at such a young age.

10:08Like I would go with her into her homes. Okay. And I just enjoyed doing that. So I always kind of knew that I wanted to get into real estate. Her rule for me when I did graduate was you have to get corporate experience before coming into this. You have to learn how to work and you know go into that side of it before I got into real estate. So that was like that was one rule and then I'd have a certain amount of savings set aside before I joined her. Okay. Those were the two rules I guess before I could join her in real estate. And so in your mind you knew this was that was going to be the path. I had a feeling like I tried doing other passage. They just didn't excite me as much. Okay. Yeah. And so how quickly did real estate when you made the decision how quickly did it feel like the right decision? I actually knew about a year and a half into accounting that I was going to be exiting accounting. Okay. Yeah. I didn't mind accounting. Accounting taught me more of the analytical side. Yeah.

11:08And like the processing of spreadsheets and like how to analyze the data a little bit more. So that that part of it taught me how to get into like the nitty gritty of like okay well how are we analyzing our business? How do we want to break down our data? I did fall in love with that side of it. But I could not just go and sit in an office for 10 to 12 hours, billable hours. Right. And like not see anybody like I knew that I was going to struggle with that. So you pull the trigger you join your mom what were those first six months like? I would say those first six months were me kind of getting into business, but I also took some time for myself coming out of the three years of the corporate accounting. But they were a lot of like see like learning from her on like how the transactions worked. So she buttied up with me on those transactions. The first like few and then she kind of like let me fly the coop a little bit. But it was a lot of me also bringing systems into like her world and us kind of combining those things.

12:14Okay. Yeah. And how how did that kind of relationship evolve with her being the mentor and over time? You know she's not Mary Jane very successful at her own right. How did it kind of evolve over time where you maybe took more of a leadership position down the road? I think that as time went on I started getting a little bit more exposure to things. To break down our personalities would be we didn't mailers. That was like one of the first things she was like well you have to go and get business. You know we used to do farming in countryside and Westfield. Okay. And they had the newspaper slots. So we would print our postcards, cut them, like do the whole thing and put the newspaper. You know and that's over a thousand homes in countryside. At the time it was like a thousand eighty eight. And I used to break down how much each fire cost us to do the farming.

13:14And then we ended up getting business but like that was like I broke that down. And she was just like we need to do this as cheap as possible. And so that's kind of how we started meshing. And as time went on I started getting a little bit more exposure. Started going to more conferences. And I wanted to kind of bring in new ideas. And she's very like I know this works. Right. We're going to we're going to state of the track. And it does it works for her like that is her that is her jam. She doesn't need to change. And so I just started wanting to do growth in a little bit of a different direction. But when we went to high garden it changes the dynamic of the way the teams are set up. So it did allow us to kind of do what we were doing. But then I could also grow on top of that. And it kind of gave me a little bit more of a platform to keep going in that direction. So. Yeah. So what do you remember about making that change to come to high garden? I really remember me and you and your mom Mary Jane and Chris having lunch.

14:15Yes. District tap. Mm-hmm. And that was the first time I met you guys. I was super impressed. You both extremely professional. Both know your craft. And was excited and hopeful that you guys would join. Yeah. I don't know if you remember me grilling Chris on the systems. Oh, I do. I do. And that was part of what I was impressed by. And I was like, hey, you guys, you are going deeper at asking questions that your typical Realtor doesn't ask. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of a little bit of the backbone of who I am is just like, OK, well, if we use this, how is this going to work and how is this going to work? And like, if we print this way, how is this system going to help us get like, for instance, one of my pet peeves, the average CRM. They're based on the individual. And it's like, well, if you have a household like Steve, you and Amy, if you sell your house, you guys are not going to individually sell your house. You and Amy are going to sell the house together.

15:17Right. So I don't ever understand why we don't do CRMs as like a household and then break down the individual. Like, that's how technical I get. It's like, if you have two individuals, like, how am I going to create mailing labels for each one of those individuals? And then it's like, well, no, now I have to have mailing labels for each individual and I have to update two contact cards. And so like, that's the nuances that I go into of like, well, how is the system going to work? What's this talk about systems right now? So what system have you created or are you using at this moment? Because you've gone through a few and you're trying to get it exactly the way you want it. What's important to you right now in that system or CRM that's helping keep you organized? So I do have a new business partner, Lindsey. Yeah. And Lindsey is helping maintain the CRM. So right now we are using brividity. I have signed a two year like Lindsey, we get to use brividity. Like, because that helps her stay organized. In the meantime, I do feel like in the next two to three years, we won't necessarily be into systems.

16:20It's just going to be bring your own technology. So I think at some point it would be that we have our own CRM ish or like our own website provider that's hosted on like a super base, or we keep our contact information. But the AI is going to be so like that would be just connected to a cloud or chat GPT and it's pretty much just going to automate. So I do think down the road it is going to be everybody brings their own technology. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and when you say down the road, how most realtors struggle really with even your basic CRM and because they're not database managers typically they. No. Managing that data is not what most agents want to do. How do you think it's going to be simplified, I guess, so that your average realtor feels comfortable with it? I think what's going to be kind of nice about it is that the way that the MCPs are being set up. MCPs. Yeah. So like they're the connection points between like an AI and like let's say an application or software.

17:23Well, Apple and like Android are starting to release their own MCPs. So like right now I could have cloud read my iMessages on my MacBook. And I think eventually what that will do is that if a realtor saves their contact card down on their iPhone, they can just have an AI create the database just based off that contact and run, you know, like well, when was the last time I did talk to Steve and literally give you a summary and like each contact would have like its own project or chat or sit in this like side database. And it will all pull from just the stuff that you use or like to use. I think that's where we're heading. It's actually going to be as much as it everybody thinks it's complex. It may actually simplify what we're able to do. Yeah. And then what Apple's been really far behind AI. Of course they have relationships now with with both open AI and Google to help Siri actually work. Yeah. What we're going to say and Siri will be tied in with chat GPT.

18:26Right. Yeah. Exactly. And that's what that's really my point. And I guess where I'm going with that is to me it sounds like based on what you're saying. Apple for the average agent who probably uses an iPhone will simplify it to the level that they typically do where your average person is just going to feel comfortable. I've been saying probably since 20 some time in early 2023 at some point you're just going to it won't be technical at all. You'll literally just if you have an iPhone talk to Siri tell Siri exactly what you want to do and Siri will go do it. Yeah. That's that easy. It will be that easy. If you can articulate it and even if some now you're going to have to go in there and massage like you're saying earlier. Yeah. Like it's not going to be perfect the way but then you just tell it no I want you to do this. I mean that sounds. I think do you think most people at this point think that that sounds. Science fiction or they sound like it's a reality. I think some people kind of make it sound like it's science fiction.

19:28Others are like it's reality. I think a lot of people are scared about the privacy and like what it's going to have access to. And I think that that's why a lot of people are a little hesitant and it's it is one of those where I think it was a Gary V. And he was like they have your data like they already do. Like that's that's just part of it. But I do think down the road it is going to be like let's say you call and you want to like sell your house. And I tell Siri that you want to sell your house and Siri will come back and say great do you want to put Steve on our nurture list for buyers. And like it will that system for you will be setting up Siri which would probably be powered by chat or whatever. Right. To then come up with the list of like okay well if he goes into the nurture buyer list that means we send them weekly updates. And it will start automating some of those processes for you so that you're basically just going to be an appointment engine person. It's going to kind of eliminate all that. I think the only type of like admin that you may need would be somebody to help you connect those things and like keep that thing running for you.

20:35If you don't have the technical know how. Home is where you plant your roots. The space you feel safest and the heart of your lifestyle. No matter where you go or what you do it's where your day begins and ends. It's where identities take shape and relationships grow stronger. Your home is more than just a place you live. It's where moments become memories. At RUAF Mortgage we know the way home. This is not an offer for extension of credit or a commitment to lend all of them to satisfy company underwriting guidelines for complete licensing information. Visit www.animalistconsumeraxis.org Equal Housing Lender, animal lesson number 141868. One place where I don't know if enough people utilize AI is have it ask you the questions. Yeah. Because you said like it asked would you like to put that on a nurture list. And if you just say this is what I want to accomplish. This can simplify what you're trying to achieve. If you give it the overall view of what you're wanting to accomplish and say you're the manager of this. Now ask me the questions that I need to think about. It's going to do that for you.

21:35Because I think where a lot of people struggle is to come up with the right prompt or with the right question. Well just get to the 10,000 foot view and have it ask you the questions. Exactly. Have it ask you the questions. The other thing that's been kind of amazing to do too is like say I did want to build my own application. Like do you ever go on like Instagram or Facebook and you see all the ads for like what's to say you were looking for a video editor. And like all the AI video editors that are coming out and all the stuff that's coming out. Well that's because people are able to build these applications using AI like the coding is so next level. Everybody starting to pump these things out. And my only hesitation with that is that like eventually you aren't going to need a video tour AI or a that at a tool. You can actually just ask the AI to do it for you. Right. And if you don't know how to prompt it, like ask it what it would need to recreate something. And I think that's going to be the difference.

22:36And then like say you do have something that you want to set up. But you want you're like I don't know how to save the data. Well ask it to look at platforms to help you save the data. And if you don't know how to set it up, I always cheat. I'll switch it back over into like back in the day before we had co work. I would actually have like called write everything. And then I would actually go into the chat GPT web browser at list, put it into agent mode and have it actually hook everything up for me. So like even a website like if you didn't know how to set up your DNS records. You just have the chat GPT at list and put an agent mobile hand. You just set up the DNS records. Here's the I have the two tabs open. Go. What else do you need for me? Maybe say that again in a way that a lot of people might understand it. So basically let's say Steve you're trying to hook up Steve Robbins dot com. And you have a new website and square space.

23:36Well you have to get the DNS records and everything set up to take the site live. And you want to create a email that is Steve at Steve Robbins dot com. Well basically to make sure that everything flows and that you can actually send emails. You have to get all the settings right in the background. And like I'm not a programmer. You're not a programmer. And you can literally ask the AI to come in and fill that out for you and make sure that it's operating properly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you think agents should start with AI today? It's not where we're talking about it will be in how many months or years. It's not there. So if what advice do you have for newer agents or even agents that are experienced that just maybe are as technical. What do you think they should be using AI for just as table stakes just to at least be in the room? I mean your starter is going to be getting your emails constructed and like just doing the writing side.

24:37I think chat GBT is fantastic at writing for marketing pieces because it has a 33% bullshit rating. That's great for property description like we want to pump it up. Yeah. But you also need to just stay factual. So I would tell an agent to try another AI source other than chat. Whether that's going to be Claude or you just get a perplexity like account which has chat, Claude, GROC, like it has all of them. And I would just recommend playing with each of those. But then also go into the go into YouTube. There's so many like videos out there that Claude like even anthropic has released to even show you how to use those. Yes. And then another thing too it's like I actually switched back coaching back over to Will Draper my original coach at Tom Perry. And so between him and I were he's teaching me some of his school sets and that we're also learning like okay well how do we set up these MCPs.

25:37So it is it's about learning and like starting from zero and just be like literally just Google. Yeah I want to get started with Claude and I'm a real estate agent. There's tons of videos for you to watch to just give you those basics and I recommend just understanding the basics of it. It's worth the 10 to 15 minute video to just hear it out. Sometimes if I if you want to sit and watch it I walk with it and just learn those basics. But then also like open up a Claude or I use GROC as great for research. And it's like ask it. I forgot that you were being coached by Will Draper. He's a great follow for this stuff on social media. I just switched back to him in May. Okay. So that was a that was a process of me like making a pretty big decision like do I want to leave the network and and go with somebody who I know knows how to coach me. Yeah. Yeah. You haven't mentioned much Google Gemini. I'm a huge proponent of the concept that Google might win all of this.

26:40I use and Gemini much. I do use Gemini. I haven't trained it as much. But I am very very like notebook LM which is Google's like research AI. I use that a lot. That is a very fact based like research project type thing. So like if I haven't appraisal that short instead of me taking the hour to dissect it. I have Google. I have the notebook LM dissect it for me. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. notebook LM is a very very cool tool. Yeah. Have you created podcasts with it where you listen to the podcast from the data or you know whatever you uploaded? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can do the podcast. You can do like study cards or you know say you need anything. But like a lot of it too. It's like I for some reason like I hate reading about zoning. And I can't do it. Okay.

27:40So I can't, you know, like if I need to figure out how to like how do we get a short term rental and carpal. I use notebook LM to sort through all the websites and it's now able and now does have a web search on it. And it's like, okay. Well what do I need to do? And I was like, what do I tell my client? Can you give me a step-by-step plan of what my client would need to do to apply for something like that? And it does. It fills it out. And it says, you're your resources and you can copy and paste and send them all the links and say hey, here's what I found. How are you using AI right now as it relates to social media or whatever content or creation you're putting out there in the world? Working on that now to set up templates and then just started playing with the cloud design side of things. So right now, like Will and I are building out the weekly email templates so that I can help automate that process to like so I don't have so much time being built into those.

28:41And so that's we're doing that and then there are next ones going to be all right with the cloud design. We already have, we've got a brand voice, we have a target audience and we know which channels those are going to go to. So that's what we're working on right now is to get those videos going and like what's that brand going to look like for each channel because it's going to hit a different audience that we've collaborated on. Yeah, I've been speaking with A just a lie here lately about the importance of at least establishing a brand and then of course building it from there. And what's the brand you're establishing at the moment with your clientele? So our brand is going to be our our tagline is making moments matter. So our brand is actually going to educate our clients to make sure that they have a memorable experience and that they know that like each timeline actually matters to us as much as it matters to them. So it's about bringing in and educating our clients and making them move in a way that they still feel comfortable and they still have enough like information in front of them

29:45to make decisions. So we want to also provide data driven decisions. That's our brand. Our target audience is going to be basically we're right now at move up buyers and downsizers. Those are our two target audiences. Okay. How would you decide that? I actually looked through all of our past sales and how old our clients are and like where they're at in life's transitions and where we have the most opening and then also what we found with like who's coming through our open houses. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Who is coming in? What what audience needs to be served and also looking at like the stats like which which demographic is buying right now? Where is there a need and what problems have we heard that they're running into and how do we solve those? What are you seeing in the market right now in any in apples area general like what you're overall take on what kind of real estate market we're living in?

30:50On the north side competitive but a hesitant market. I feel like things are moving but some people are very hesitant. They're taking their time to make a decision or to make a move. And so it's like how do you get that person enough information where they can either continue forward and is there a big enough why for them to move? And what are the breaking down both the buyers and sellers? What are you seeing right now with buyers that you can generalize? Generalize I would say with buyers it is it's about like okay where do I want to live? It depends on which type of buyer but it is it's like breaking down. So first time home buyer is going to be okay I'm paying rents right now but right now with the rates being a little bit higher it's not necessarily that they're saving too much money by purchasing. So it comes down to an equity game for them. Where do they want to build equity? Where can they build equity? Well a lot of the surrounding markets we're still improving in Indiana but you also want

31:54to put yourself in a position where if you go to sell and like five to seven years where do you want so that it actually was like kind of worth your time to even be in the home versus renting. So that's one of the hesitancies of like okay and if you're younger you may want to live downtown or broaderful. And it's like well which market is going to give them the most like equity back and like it is it's kind of a gamble and like where we're at but it's like well what kind of property is this for you? Is this one where you're going to live in it? You're going to turn it into a rental or you're going to try and sell it in three years. But that's going to determine on where I may try to position you but at the end of the day it also comes down to where do they just want to live. And so we just provide the data for that. For the opposite end of the spectrum the boomer a lot of them are wanting to move back towards family or coming closer to be closer to grandchildren. The biggest thing that we find is they want to be in a city that is tough because they don't have enough inventory for that demographic.

32:54So even if they move they're finding out that their home is worth the same amount of money as the 1600 square foot house that they want to live in to be closer to their kids and grand kids. But the city that they want to go to doesn't have enough inventory so they have to hit a surrounding city so there's still 15-ish minutes out. And it's about like well is that a big enough why for them to make that move or make the hour drive to be closer. Now if it's out of state that they're definitely coming but if they're moving from another city in Indiana to be closer there's a little bit more hesitancy there. Sellers? Sellers? Yeah they already own they don't want to leave the rate that's it. I mean we- I've become up with the solution for the rate lock-in effect yet. Basically I do tell the sellers depending on where they're at. It's going to be if you're on the north side it's where do you want your equity to grow. Like you can stay in your small house and like you know grid it out with the three kids

33:57in the home that you bought as a starter home. But where do you like yeah you can say it that little payment but eventually you're going to need something. It's like we've had clients who I met with two years ago and they haven't made that move yet. Well the prices and where they're looking have already gone up 30 to 50 thousand and it's like well it's still the same rate and now the price is higher so that's the battle that that seller's going to have if they do need to move. All there's people out there that think they're waiting for the prices to come down to buy because they keep here and this from whatever nut cases are saying it but- The attention grabbers? Yeah the doers what what do you say to those people. If you are in a market that is still moving your price is not going to come down like we would need a pretty big economic turn in order for those prices to come down and when I say economic turn I mean we need a vast amount of inventory in the surrounding counties

34:59definitely and in certain pockets of Marion County. We would need way more inventory to see those prices to start really dropping down. If anybody's looking for a 2009-2010 like deep discount we're not there and a lot of the parts of where we sell. That's just not going to happen. Your discount may be 5 to 10 thousand and at that rate it would be like well what's it worth to you because you're talking about 5 to 10 thousand on a home that's typically going to be 300 to 600 thousand that's nothing. Well you might as well make that move because it's not worth like the risk of losing out on like what you could build with your life for that. You know my background's economics and I can assume a lot of content around mainly macro economics but there I can't listen to a podcast or read something that's not talking about the bifurcation or the k-shaped economy of the haves and the have-not you've got the people that already own a home or the people that already have some money their wealth going straight up and then the people that aren't.

36:03Just playing itself out to a great degree in the real estate market. You're seeing luxury homes or higher priced homes have more competition than sometimes those 3, 4, 500 thousand dollar homes. What do you see out there as it relates to that exact point? I do see that. I do see that anybody who has not owned a home or does not have like the means to it they're struggling to get into entry points or they don't want to live in the areas that they can't afford. And so that's where things do get a little like tough because we are seeing that. Like a lot of our first time home buyers right now they're in the 400 to 600 range which is like it's nuts. Yeah it is. That's nuts. But I think part of that needs to be like you know how do we how do we get creative with like you know if I had to redo everything and I I started buying homes at a different time but if I were a first time home buyer right now I would heavily look at like okay how can I get into a home that I know that I can afford but also somebody I can I would

37:04bring in a roommate and like help pay off like that equity like at least start somewhere and it's it's very interesting to me that some of the first time home buyers like they're coming from an apartment they had a roommate and they're like I want to buy a home but I don't want a roommate and it's like I understand but you could buy a home that actually situates into a roommate. Another thing that is completely looked over are condos like I don't know if you know what your first home was but a lot of people I know mine was a condo and everybody is like oh the HOA and what a lot of people don't understand is that HOA covers like your maintenance it covers some of your insurance on the exterior so like your insurance when you go to buy is going to be studs in that's going to be a fraction of what it would be for owning a home and I think it's about just trying to get more creative to just get your foot in the door that a lot of the people who haven't bought they're they're just thinking about that long term house and it's like no this is a stair step economy it's a stair step market and like you're we're not going to be able to duplicate what your parents did

38:07in the 80s like when they bought their home and just like sat on it and it did find you have to stair step your way into a family home. There you have any luck with first time home buyers taking some of that advice or just getting in the game whether that's farther out whether that's having a roommate whatever the case may be. Yeah we are we are job with the first time home buyers to expose them to like what they can't afford and we try to honor where they're at and it's like if they have a budget of 275 we are we're going to get creative on like okay well when is your lease up maybe we enter the buying market in October November where you're going to have a little bit more buying power right like can you do a month to month until then or can you you know take take that like wrist so we just we also talk about timing especially depending on which market they're looking to move to. Okay. What's important to you right now and in your business in terms of the direction you want

39:07to go and the goals I really don't know we're off top my head right now what your goal is for say three years down the road you're building something and you already have something great but where do you want it to go. I think where we are heading now is going to be more so and like how much can we have automate for us not necessarily do for us but it's like getting that preparation done so that we can get a little bit more time back to focus our energies on like other sources and to be like more in front of clients. My goal in the next three years is to have a whole back end system completely running on AI to then be like okay well here are the seller report drafts and all I have to do on Monday morning is read through them potentially add to it and send like that that is my goal is just to make how do we create the best client experience without like backlogging our time to do so and still making sure that everything is met.

40:08How much do you think real they're being a realtor is a safer job than being other things. I think just like any other job our job is going to change that's just going to be the fact of the matter I will say this much you can do the AI showing you can do the AI inspection you can do all of that that's totally fine but the end of the day how many times does an agent right now have to call the AI our legal hotline and that is so it's not black and white it's very gray and it's open to interpretation the other thing you can't do a virtual tour and know how the home smells like notice the small things of how well the home was taken care of there are certain things that like we are still going to have to open doors maybe we don't have to open all of the doors but I'm as much as I am a you know high sea and I go about like hey we look at the numbers we look at the analytics every home has a feeling to it and every time a buyer

41:08walks in it could be the house that would did not meet their like original descriptions and they're like I love it I don't know why it doesn't check any of the boxes I know that I should buy that house over there but for some reason one two three Elm Street makes sense and like you can't really put AI on that human connection with where we're at and I do think that that's where a lot of jobs even in real estate are going to stay but how we do our jobs is going to change drastically yeah I feel very confident that being a real tour and other jobs that require human trust those are the safest positions I to me the word trust is the most important thing that we have moving forward yeah it already was super important but it's even more important because of AI yeah you can't do you can't duplicate that with because what do you think about when I say trust is going to be the most important thing moving forward in society what comes to mind I think that

42:12it's going to be that side of like trust is the most important thing and what comes to mind is like how do you remain and like stay like I think about like the athletes with like no like how do you keep your brand trust worthy yeah I do think that I do find it very fascinating um will and I have done some dives on like Instagram accounts even local ones and these young agents that are getting hookbait and I'm like all right like every young agent can do their thing but also like it's amazing how much trust they've built without having enough like not I shouldn't say enough but a ton of experience and what we do and I do think that I've been doing this for 12 years Brian Hawley gets annoyed with me because of how many questions we ask because there are just so many legal sides to things and it's just like man you have somebody that will trust somebody who's been doing this for 12 months and it's like well how do you build that trust in just making videos

43:16I don't just want to make videos I want to make like things to build trust and that comes from education and I feel like that's a big statement in like how we keep moving forward and that's going to be like it's not just about clickbait it's going to be also educating and making sure that the client's still comfortable at the end of the day it's all you know it's all about exposure and repeated exposure and if you hear the same person say the same thing and you keep tuning into their content it doesn't I mean that's how these conspiracy theorists actually get an audience and how people actually buy into this bullshit because they they've decided to follow that person they've heard the same person say the same thing 100 times and by now and next thing you know they believe it it's not because they have any actual credibility it's just that repeated exposure it is and I think what's also interesting to think of it's Alex Ramose also announced like last week or the week before and Will and I have been talking about this for a while the content isn't necessarily going to be like mass production like it's no longer

44:22going to be just like you have to post something you have to post something to feed the algorithm their Alex Ramose is actually going like not based on views but actual content that's going to drive results and I think that's more of the position of where we're heading to like how can we produce content that's actually going to result in like helping people and like obtaining clients and that's the positioning of like where we're we're like directing everything as far as marketing it will be like our content will be directed to a target audience to actually educate a specific client versus doing a TikTok dance that's just going to get like you know views right yeah obviously your wealth knowledge here I'm gonna ask you a few questions that I've asked before of other guests but where do you think the average agent should start if you're a new agent and and you want to break into this business what advice do you have for that type of person to break into the business yeah to be new to be new my advice would be that you almost do need to

45:25like have a megaphone on everything that you do until everybody that you know that you're an agent this entire industry is based on relationships whether you have social media even if you do a video on Instagram and you you start to build that trust that person now has a you know online relationship with you but does that mean that they're going to transact with you and so it is it's going to be how do you get yourself in front of people who are actually going to work with you and it is it's about letting everybody know that you're in real estate yeah and um I feel it is because I think we're taught at a young age like if you played sports and you were like the captain it'd be like Steve don't glow Steve don't you know like you shouldn't just be like sharing your stats like it's actually like that's frowned upon like I feel especially in the Midwest like it's very like you just keep your cool and you slide under the radar and you're like the unspoken like hero like that's kind of like the mentality that everybody comes into and what I've always found is that the squeaky wheel gets

46:29the grease and it doesn't matter what you're squeaking technically because it that's what's you're getting grease so if you let everybody know that you're in real estate that tends to help your sales it tends to help build your trust what advice do you have for the agent that's somewhat established but now is trying to get 10 million a year or whatever dollar volume that requires you to actually become a professional at this I think the the hardest jump is that when you're at that five to eight yeah to get over the 10 because that's a number of transactions and as a person who has built a team and stripped a team completely down like completely down and then is rebuilding I would say you want to hire at least some type of help in order to get you over that well that like bomb and what a lot of people don't realize is like yes it is going to cost you money but what is going to cost you is going to get you a bigger return but the other

47:30side of that is make sure that you train them the way that you want to train them and not we as agents we are like the most like cannot wait we want to make sure that we have everything that works the first time we run it like we have zero patience and to bring somebody in and to train them is going to take time and so it's about setting that realistic expectation that you're going to be training somebody and getting it going I mean or you can train the AI like it's going to be it's going to be either or but you're going to have to make an adjustment to have somebody or something help you with that automation so that you can keep growing the sales numbers the only other way that you could grow that sales number is going to be well if I only want to do 20 transactions within your price for transaction better be up there and so that's that's always the thing that people get run into about like hey why can't we break this barrier it's because we need to hire or we need to add some type of automation to help alleviate our time to bring on more transactions and then how do you do so and still maintain that client experience yeah well it's interesting to

48:33get to be successful in real estate first you have to be able to manage yourself and that's very difficult for a lot of people they just don't have the self-discipline to get to that over the hump we're talking about then you probably have to not just be good at manage yourself but then also good at managing others yes and either those skill sets are just growing on trees I found that I'm really good at managing like necessarily the business side or like being in front of clients like that is I'm good at the sales side of things I have found that because I only have the two and a half years of three years of corporate experience I am good at training in front of an audience but like one-on-one training I will skip steps like it's just my nature I patience or what is it I have ADD so like I'll be like oh and then you go here and then you come back to here and then so like I explain it in a way that makes sense to me right but does not

49:35make sense to the average person so for me it actually helps to go ahead and like drill down the steps on like whisper flow yeah and then pop it into AI to be like well how can I make this something that I could train somebody else and that's something that I've just kind of uncovered about myself like more recently okay always learning always learning I was like I'm maybe good at this side but you may not always be the best at like bringing on people and managing people it's not easy it's not easy yeah talk about whisper flow a lot of people probably don't know what that is whisper flow is a I guess it's an app but it helps with dictation so like as I like if I want to draft an email and I you know if you do it like you know just through like Gmail or whatever on your phone it's gonna pick up your S and OMS and everything so a lot of times if I'm drafting an email I'll pop it into whisper flow and it will take all my text and then edit the AI edits it so that you can actually put it in a structure and go ahead and send it it saves significant time as far

50:41as email so like for instance on my way my walk over here from Starbucks I literally got up I got a call from some random lady about a property that I have no idea okay and I took down her name and her last name I said hey I'm actually out like on the go do you mind texting me the address that you're looking at so she did I copied the address I plugged it into Claude I dictated in Claude that hey I just got this call in I'm I need you to look this up and see what's going on with the property and you know do the search so it goes in it finds out like it's not natural property for sale so I then go into Claude and I'm like okay if it's not a property on sale let's get like like literally write me a text that I can send to her that says hey I didn't see it online I'm heading into a 1015 let me let me get back to you around like 12 12 or 1 o'clock after I get a chance to see if I can see what's going on on my computer and the tax record and it just types it up for me and then I

51:45then just copy and paste that back into the lead that came in okay and so so you're using that daily oh yeah yeah yep what other apps or tech are you using daily that might fall into a similar category I mean outside of your big LL homes we use we use AutoAI but I've actually been just using the Apple voice memos now because it does the same thing now yeah so that that's been pretty helpful and a lot of times like if I go into a listing appointment I'll let them know and say hey I do have a note taker that I'm going to use to help me keep track of like everything that you tell me about the home because I can only write and walk it you know so much so a lot of times I tell them ahead of time and they'll understand why I'm like furnace is gas 2020 carrier unit and like so I take those extensive notes about a property setting expectations I think is maybe one of the

52:47most important skills in this job and tell me about your process of helping to help yourself down the road by setting proper expectations up front setting expectations is 100% like a big key to be able to help you move forward because if you don't set the expectations up with a client unlike when you're available and we've gotten a little lacks on this as well and like it's about trying to build that back in you become 100% accessible to that client and they it it allows them to then message you at all times of the night and I'm okay if you want to message me at 930 I am asleep and if you message me really late I will message you back at 3 a.m. when I'm up so that's where it's like setting that expectation to say hey we're going to do this and like we work between these hours and we try to get back to you as soon as possible does help especially on that client experience because they know what to expect of you yeah and I do think that that's a key between what's a

53:52successful transaction versus one where the client has just taken over with like their own anxieties and moving forward and that's part of why like we've hey let's set up that expectation then also like that back end of like well here's your daily update and here's when it's going to come and it's like how do you set that up to help automate that because think about it like if you have a doctor's appointment and they now send you the text and it has the address and it has here's the time you need to arrive and it's like it's just an automated message you know it's an automated message but it still is nice to have and it's like set the expectation that hey you're going to get automated message here's here's what's going on or here's what's doing it and say it and sending those hours otherwise you'll run yourself ragged and you know that I I flirt with that all the time running myself ragged like yeah and like how like where do you where do you draw that line for the client so that it's still a good experience and I think that expectation is like the biggest thing to help maintain your life and that client experience how you doing on running

54:58yourself ragged hey I just got back from vacation did you relax yes I did yeah that it help you know just it does that's what I like to go I do sometimes like to go international just because it does a limit like it limits like what you can do I did relax and I've been doing better about it like I actually do take time for myself the one thing that I'm still doing terrible is I do I wake up probably 2.33 a.m. at least three times a week not on purpose I just you're up I'm up I'm ready to roll like and I wake up with like actual clarity of like what needs to happen it's like my flow state but it's also the time that nobody's bothering me right so I get a lot of yes I get a lot of my back end building done in the morning yeah probably heard I like to ask this question but what music are you listening to a very eclectic mix that's what I like to hear what I let's hear

56:08the set list I have right now it's anywhere from like shine down to Charlie booth to um like travel around like it is all over the place 90s grunge uh 80s like I am all over the spectrum country 90s grunge on big Allison chains guy oh yeah yeah yeah like I think I a man in the boxes like on the playlist that I'm right now yes it is um and then 2000s wrap is always a fun one okay yeah I can do some wrap yep yeah just you know you guys sprinkle it all in for me it's as much as I love music I listen to podcasts have kind of killed me on the music sometimes yes I'm sure you're listening to podcasts what do you recommend oh man um there's a couple ones that I love Alex from Ozzy um and then I also listen to um I would say founders

57:08and that's the podcast about like the business owners and how they like built their brands I always find those stories just fascinating uh it also kind of motivates me a little bit I do still listen to the Tom Ferry podcast I listen to um uh what is he mine is it mindful mentor yeah or something there's one I think there I think I know he's he's got the British accent yeah and he lives in Austin Texas I listen to his as well what about any guilty pleasures in here this is all still working this is all still yeah what do you what's the entertainment the entertainment yeah what about entertainment here I do a lot of music for entertainment okay yeah like just the the playlist um I'll do movies but I find that my attention span is you know kind of short uh I love the show shrinking on apple I think that's hilarious I've seen only like the first one or two episodes yeah that one's that one's pretty funny I like very witty comedy yeah very sarcastic dry I can do all of that yeah

58:15yeah absolutely shrinking I've had multiple people tell me to get back in there I need to and then I'm uh I do a lot of audible okay time out of all have you just have you gotten completely away from reading a book not not completely I still read like if I listen to an audible that I'm like all right I like that I do the kindle app yeah and then if I really really like it I will buy a hard copy but anymore in the kindle app they let you do like 10% download into notes so like if I want to mark up a book then I just download it into like my good notes and you can pop that into like notebook LM and just create like whatever you want out of it yeah yeah so like yeah if you do seven levels of communication you can you know take your notes on like what you want to pull from the book and take that transcription and dump it into cloud and say hey I'm want to build this out to help maintain my database and it will just draw out like a SOP if you will

59:18what are you most excited about moving forward right now I think I'm most excited about the cloud with the MCP connections and like what that's going to enable us to do on my vacation I just heard the saying that just kind of like triggered it of just like somebody was like my mother always said if you have to do it twice you're doing it too many times and it's like just thinking about how agents in general I mean I talked to you about my nuances with the CRMs yeah it's like I gotta update everything like three times or four times and like all these systems well with an MCP you may be able to help automate that and I know the ZPier can automate things too but you're paying for those apps but it is it's just like if you can get everything into just one system and it's all connected as like a hub I'm excited about the you know some of that less data entry and that there's going to be a way more streamlined process probably in the next couple of years of like how we can maintain our client data and the access that we can get from that data of just

1:00:23all right so I had a transaction with you three years ago I'll be able to take those emails and kind of combine them in to know the ins and outs of that transaction so say you had a question about the roof on your inspection I would be able to go into cloud or some AI and be like hey Steve Steve texted me today about the roof or the MCP is going to connect the text message and say on my dashboard Steve that texted about his roof here's what I found in his inspection and here's what I found in those inspection responses do you want me to reply with this and like that's where it's heading what's your time frame on this stuff being in place oh man it's going quick like the AI capability is just building I would say we're a couple years max from something like that being completely available similar to your mom's quote that you said there you ever heard John Woodens quote if you don't have time to do it over I'm sorry I messed that up if you don't have time to

1:01:23do it right the first time when you're gonna have time to do it over that's true yeah it is true yeah for me because I'm detailed oriented and sometimes overly OCD and detail oriented I tried to get it right the first time instead of just throwing a draft out there yeah and then improving it like I'm trying to write write or create perfection from second one yeah that's challenging for me yeah because it can keep you it's so hard to do that you sometimes don't get to the end yeah so how does that how do you measure those two against each other of like try and you know I've time to do it right now when you know I've time to do it over versus being an overly perfectionist type person yeah you have some perfectionism and yeah I do how you how you struggling without or how are you working to improve so my biggest thing with the perfectionism is that

1:02:24we're perfectionist because we don't want to send something that's incorrect so it's knowing that I'm dragging this out to be perfect because there's a fear of me sending this email or sending this message or putting it out into social like what's the fear the fear is always what rejection or negative feedback coming back in so how can I ground myself to get there the other thing that I found was my fear of posting was also like why just hired somebody to do it so I just sent them the content and then they just posted yeah and that tended to work out and that would be like that's how we got to the end product but the other thing that I'm playing with now is like you talk about the perfectionist with the draft and it's like well have the AI do the draft and then all I have to do is tweak it I don't have to create it I can just take what is there and go ahead and process it and then tell the AI to send it and it sends so it's like I even the message I said that I had

1:03:24called type up it said send message and then it literally popped up do you want to send a text message where do you want to send it and it's like yeah right there that's what I want to do what are you most proud of what am I most proud of right that's a tough question to answer right like what are you most proud of because we all try not to like gloat I would say I'm probably most proud of like how I've been able to grow personally like with the technology and like my ability to take on some of the understanding of like where it's heading and like I actually found that I love getting in there and like learning about that and I think that I'm also proud of just like being able to understand who I am now and like how I work and it's still a learning game like I know that I suck as much as I like to build systems I suck at planning because I get

1:04:27so lost in those details that I if I have the flow I will go for hours and so I'm proud of the fact that like I'm still learning and being able to understand those aspects of myself and like how I can propel myself forward to like overcome some of those things instead of just like kind of floundering so it's about like you know making that progress I've also come over a lot of life challenges in the past like five years too and it's a you know just trying to navigate those and like keep moving forward I I'm pretty proud of like that my my ability to be able to do that you have you're flourishing flourishing you are trying to yeah well I can always tell you that I'm unbelievably proud that you work at iGuard and yeah thank you for trusting us yeah and thank you for having to sit down with me and help thank you for inviting and I'm sure everybody's going to really get so much out of it

1:05:43you