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/RealEstate is a bi-weekly podcast where we chat with agents and experts in the real estate space to find out what strategies are working for them, what tools are powering their business, and how they are maneuvering shifts in the industry. Join host and marketing aficionado Chris Whitling as he uncovers the tips, tricks, and tech ambitious agents can use to take their businesses to the next level.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:03
Unknown
Hello and welcome to /RealEstate. I'm Chris Whitling, VP of marketing at Real Geeks, and this is the podcast for the technology enabled agent. We are going to have an awesome episode. This is one that we've been wanting to orchestrate for a long time. And so just to give you like a window into the corporate world, you know, when you're walking around like in the different departments and they all keep saying the same name, like, hey, you got to talk to this guy.
00:00:23:05 - 00:00:42:17
Unknown
You know, you start to like, take notes of that. And so I'm happy to finally be talking to Dustin Owens. And I'm going to let him introduce himself here in just a second. But before we do that, you're probably seeing a QR code on your screen right now. And if you're listening to the audio version, you might go down to the description, wherever that is, and click the link.
00:00:42:18 - 00:01:09:07
Unknown
There's going to be a recipe book for the things that Dustin and I have talked about during this episode. We're going to go deep into AI tools, props, other automation tools. So you're definitely going to want to grab that right now and use it to follow along in the discussion. Okay. So with that out of the way, Dustin, I am so happy to finally be talking to you.
00:01:09:13 - 00:01:29:20
Unknown
Why don't you give people a little intro of who you are and where you are and what you've been doing? I'm Dustin Nolan's. I'm over here, man. Oh, really? We're in North Carolina right in the middle of it. Lexington, High Point, Kernersville is our three offices. We have, been in real estate about 15, 16 years. One of the largest independent owned firms in the area.
00:01:29:22 - 00:01:51:00
Unknown
And I tell everybody my job description over here is the janitor and landscaper of Mantle Realty, because I'm not selling anything. So I'm just here to help everybody out, try to grow a little bit and get a little bit better of what we were all trying to do is sell houses and make money. I love it. Yeah. And we were talking during the intro about your philosophy on, you know, helping out the industry.
00:01:51:00 - 00:02:20:20
Unknown
And I'm sure we'll get there, but, I was getting goosebumps. But here's where I want to start. You've got this thing that my team has just called the Ninja Touch, and without any more explanation, I think that's clickbait enough. Tell me about what you're talking about here. So what we do as a company over here, instead of calling it lead and doing the exact same thing that everybody else is going to do, we know that we have to change it up, or we're just going to get the exact same outcomes that everybody else does.
00:02:20:22 - 00:02:43:17
Unknown
So if you're posting generic videos, you're sending generic emails, you're making generic phone calls. They've all heard this. So one of the things that we like to do is make sure that the client knows we're here more than just the sale. And the way that we do that was we try to find out their story, and that's where the ninja touches come into place of we're going to reach out to people.
00:02:43:17 - 00:03:02:01
Unknown
And instead of asking somebody, for example, what are you looking for in a new property? My very first question is going to be, so tell me what you like about where you're at right now and what do you hate? So they start to tell you their story as a whole, and then you're going to learn a lot more about that person.
00:03:02:06 - 00:03:18:05
Unknown
They're going to feel way more connected to you. And then all the sudden they become a super fan of yours. If anybody's ever had a super fan in real estate, they're better than any kind of advertisement dollar you can actually put out there. Because they're going to tell anybody and everybody they're going to share all your social media posts.
00:03:18:10 - 00:03:38:02
Unknown
They're going to show up to all your events. It's like having an extra grandma. It's just amazing for me to be able to see some of our super fans come out here and be like, you're doing something. We want to be a part. So our our clients slash fans slash, we call. We call ourselves the mantle Mafia. Because once you're in, you're in.
00:03:38:02 - 00:03:58:01
Unknown
And your family. So much so that, I actually have it tattooed right there on my arm. And I am the third person to get that actually tattooed on my arm. So, but anyways, when we go with that, we're doing something for the community. We are trying to sell a property. We're trying to do a community event.
00:03:58:03 - 00:04:25:17
Unknown
Our clients, super fan slash mafia members, they're all going to share it all. So that's that's the gist of our ninja touches as a small little portion of it. Let's let's just paint a picture for people. So, you know, lead comes in off your off your website. You know, it's, you know, Joe, whoever, and you dial that phone and sounds like the first thing you're asking him is like, almost what sounds like rapport building question.
00:04:25:17 - 00:04:50:07
Unknown
So what's the first question? My very first question I actually picked up from Chris Voss. It is to de-escalate situation. It is is now a bad time to talk love it because everybody actually wants to say, are you good to talk? And they want to say no. So if you start out with a negative question, you can actually de-escalate that situation, because a lot of times people are going to be like, oh crap.
00:04:50:07 - 00:05:08:09
Unknown
I meant to say, yeah, it's a bad time to talk. But in my head, I just want to say, no, I don't want to say no. I want to say no. And I feel like they're in control. So you say, hey, is now a bad time to talk? They're going to say no. Like, oh, cool. Well, I saw that you signed up on our website and wanted to see what I can do for you.
00:05:08:11 - 00:05:35:14
Unknown
Could you tell me a little bit more about why you clicked on here? So if you're using the who, what, why? When, how questions. You're going to do way better off. And so depending on where they're going to go, I'm going to ask questions like, so who all is the decision makers in this process. Because then that way I know whether I'm talking to the to the correct person or if I need to put somebody else into the lead system.
00:05:35:20 - 00:05:54:01
Unknown
Because here's a huge step for you. The person who's usually doing the research at the beginning isn't the person who's actually the decision maker. They're usually the worker, be of it. And what usually happens if you have a large company bunch of agents sitting in a real geeks account, what happens? The wife is sitting on there and she says, honey, go look at this property.
00:05:54:01 - 00:06:11:06
Unknown
She shares it with her husband. He goes and makes another account and guess what? It didn't get assigned to you because you didn't ask all these kinds of questions. And so somebody else is fighting with you for the exact same lead in your office that you started the whole conversation with. So the more I can get to know about them.
00:06:11:06 - 00:06:34:14
Unknown
Yeah, it's simple question that the, you know, save some, some headache internally. Oh, another internal question that I ask all the time is is this your primary email? Because a lot of people sign up with their Facebook, which is, you know, mine still connected to my college. I mean, as you can tell from my gray beard, it's been a long time since I've been in college and I don't want to get all those emails.
00:06:34:14 - 00:06:52:17
Unknown
But again, they'll come in, they'll sign up with a Facebook link or something like that. The junk email. They find out that you're an awesome person. They want to deal with you, but guess what? They don't remember your name. Nobody knows. Like, tell me the last salesperson that you answered the phone that you remember. Hey, this is Jeff with Window World.
00:06:52:17 - 00:07:10:21
Unknown
No, you don't remember their name, so you just remember it's Window world. Don't click back on the website. They'll say that they're talking to the exact same person. But because you didn't ask if this the best email to send you things, things like that, then you're not going to keep those leads, or at least you're going to be fighting for.
00:07:10:21 - 00:07:41:06
Unknown
First of all, the Christmas never split the difference out there. Audience. If you haven't read that book, then that needs to be next in your playlist. We actually train internally to real geeks on that material as well. So that is an awesome, awesome tip. Our, our VP of sales, also named Chris, loves to talk about, you know, using the no to put them back in control of the conversation, essentially, as you then gently guide it where you know it needs to go.
00:07:41:08 - 00:07:58:05
Unknown
So I love these tips. All right. So you you say is now a good time to talk. And you do a couple of housekeeping like is this the right email that kind of thing. How do you how do you really start that like kick that rapport into high gear? So I'm going to find out more of where they're at straight from the get go.
00:07:58:06 - 00:08:30:10
Unknown
The more that you let somebody else talk and they're controlling the conversation, the better that you're going to find out their whole story and situation as a whole. So depending on the person, depending on the demeanor, you know, things like that. Other things that I might do to de-escalate the situation is try to make sure that they, they hear other things going on in the background and so I don't want it to be a sterile environment of asking questions and things like that.
00:08:30:12 - 00:08:52:13
Unknown
And. Well, what's your how much are you looking for in a property? That's what most people go to. So I have a whole flowchart and I'm more than happy to share it with you guys. You know, if they don't answer, we double down. If they do answer, then we go to their. If they don't answer off the second double door, we just say, hey, this is Dustin.
00:08:52:13 - 00:09:21:23
Unknown
Call me back because I don't, you know, people are nosy. So I have all this as a whole flowchart of a of a paper that would start you going. And then whenever it comes down to the who, what, what while when, how questions. That's whenever I want to start asking things. So tell me more about your story and I'm going to ask what your timeline is, because then I'm going to know what's going on instead of asking questions like, are you pre-approved?
00:09:22:01 - 00:09:40:18
Unknown
Because where I come from, over here, if you ask somebody, how much are you pre-approved for? There's a lot of country boys who wear a lot of overalls that have more money stuffed in that front pocket than you can carry around in your bank account, so they get a little bit offended off of that. So I'm going to say, how are you going to pay for the property?
00:09:40:19 - 00:10:02:08
Unknown
What's your plan. And and then I can start seeing what's going on. Because let's just take for example, how are you going to pay for a property? And somebody says, oh, I'm a, veteran, I'm going to use a VA loan. Well, triggers to start going off in my head of what's going to qualify for, a VA loan versus a conventional loan or cash deal.
00:10:02:10 - 00:10:27:00
Unknown
You know, we're going to have something that's got to be in good condition, good repairs. So you've got to be building the backstory for this person because they really don't know what they want. If you've ever had a clot who's actually said, I know exactly what I want and bought that, well, go buy scratch off, take it all at the exact same time, because usually they say, you know, I want four bedrooms, two baths, and I want five acres of land.
00:10:27:00 - 00:10:48:03
Unknown
They get out there and they say, oh, this is way out in the country. Well, no. Does five acres like you can't have that and have a Starbucks close by, or at least not where I live and not pay an arm and a leg at the same time. So you've got to start thinking on the back side of things, of the taking those who, what, why, when, how questions and building that.
00:10:48:05 - 00:11:10:01
Unknown
And one of the things that I've done talking about here is I've started talk. My biggest tip is I'll tell everybody whatever chat bot you're using, talk to it, don't text it. Because you'll get so much more detailed with somebody. It's sort of like having a conversation. If you send somebody a text message, you're not going to get as much out of them.
00:11:10:03 - 00:11:32:09
Unknown
The exact same thing with the lead. If you're texting somebody, hey, so you sign up on our website, what can I do? They're going to shut you off. But whenever I talk to a chat bot, I'm going to say, hey, I've got a client. He's looking for three bedrooms, two baths in this area, that area. And like, I'm now using that Zillow plug that they just put against itself because my clients don't know about it yet.
00:11:32:09 - 00:11:55:09
Unknown
And I'm letting Zillow do all the work. And then I'm going to go find the properties and look like a hero. But I can put a whole story about what kind of things my clients are looking for and everything else. And that's why SEO is so important for a lot of your landing pages, things like that. If you're not putting in great descriptions on your MLS, you know, I wasn't going to pick up what school district it is if you don't put it in there.
00:11:55:11 - 00:12:15:07
Unknown
If you're not having great remarks sections, if your pictures don't have captions in them, things like that, you're you're missing the boat for your sellers. But I'm just going to just build a report, just like I said. And it's not just one single answer of which question I go to next. I guess it's pretty much where I want to go.
00:12:15:07 - 00:12:32:05
Unknown
At the same time, I'm I'm usually researching people. If I can get them online, I'll look them up. Let's see, like if I've got any mutual friends, things like that, see what their photos are. If there's kids in, and then I can sort of run with that of like, what are you looking for? What you like, what you don't like.
00:12:32:05 - 00:12:59:15
Unknown
How are you planning on paying for it? Who was in the decision making and what's your time frame? And then from there, you're going to know whether they're renting, if they need a sale, if it's a family, if Mom and dad or buying the property or giving downpayment money, what kind of loan? Or if they're using cash, those kinds of things, because you can build a whole profile for somebody.
00:12:59:15 - 00:13:18:05
Unknown
And about a 15 minute conversation. Okay, I want to there was so much in there that this is going to be like a four hour episode. Or they'll be like part two, 3 or 4 on this, yeah. Because, I mean, just a bookmark to come back to. I've been asking people about MLS listings and how do you, like, tell a story with a listing?
00:13:18:05 - 00:13:38:09
Unknown
I think maybe you're the person that, is going to answer this for me, but maybe rewinding the conversation and and sticking with, you know, kind of the initial question of like, okay, you're you're on this call. You know, I, I thought it was also interesting, the thing that you just said, about like doing a little quick search on them and seeing what information you could, you could find.
00:13:38:09 - 00:13:57:04
Unknown
So what what sort of like, what tools are you using? You know, where where are you doing the searching and then, like, what do you what are you looking for to, like, try and round out, you know, maybe the profile of things that is building a picture of, like, who this person is for you that, you know, is maybe the things that they're not telling you on the phone.
00:13:57:07 - 00:14:12:20
Unknown
Couple things. First of all, if I have an incomplete lead, I love them because an incomplete lead or, incorrect information means they don't want to be contacted because there have been on so many real estate websites. So I'm just the opposite of every other person that you're going to see on a forum. I get crappy leads now.
00:14:12:20 - 00:14:38:19
Unknown
You don't. You just get leads that actually want to buy something. You're too lazy to actually research them. It's so I see people all the time and I'm like, if you just realized you have a goldmine sitting right there, it's amazing how many new agents will come in and start researching leads. And like my Real Geeks account, I have a dummy account that is just my dead lead folder because I'll let people stay in there.
00:14:38:21 - 00:15:00:10
Unknown
And so many people will. Mark is dead and I'm thinking this person is searching. They just don't want to be contacted. They're not dead. They're just a ghost. One of my favorite questions and sorry to take us off track here again is what what is the longest period of time you have? Either had someone in your database or nurtured someone before, like from the time they entered to the time you closed them.
00:15:00:10 - 00:15:23:22
Unknown
What's the longest period? I had one that came through our system. That was just somebody that we randomly knew, from social media stuff like that. Sports, four and a half years. Yeah, yeah, it was four and a half years that they they'd come to our events and do things like that. And, you know, we send out little blasts, a social media, event, reminder calendar, things like that.
00:15:24:00 - 00:15:44:11
Unknown
Sometimes they show up, sometimes I don't. You just love on them. You don't ask them if they're need to buy or sell real estate. Ever. That's like a huge naughty word. And in our office we don't ask that question. It's so interesting because, you know, we we hear this from agents frequently where they say things like, oh, well, I got this lead and they weren't ready to buy right now.
00:15:44:13 - 00:15:59:17
Unknown
And it's like, oh, it feels like you're missing the forest through the trees. They're the way I explain it to my agents is, if I could tell you that you had to make ten phone calls for the next year, for this person to make you $5,000 would just do it.
00:15:59:18 - 00:16:20:22
Unknown
And usually the people are going to say, yeah, some people are going to lie and say no. But as a whole, everybody is in that situation. The thing that you got to think about a real estate website is there's either 1 or 2 people, people who are really wanting to buy it or people who are just nosy. The quicker you get those nosy people on the phone, they're going to hang up on you and everything else.
00:16:21:00 - 00:16:40:17
Unknown
Not want to discuss anything. Say they're looking for, you know, a family friend, yada yada yada. Sometimes you can't get past that. A lot of times I'm like, hey, that's cool. I'm going to help them to, so it works that way. But, you know, sometimes you get those tire kickers kids get on our website because we do so much in the community, things like that.
00:16:40:19 - 00:16:58:20
Unknown
They yeah, I know that they're just going to search. Okay. So coming back to this, you know, all right. So you got to lead. You know, the information is not complete. And so you start looking them up on, you know, I don't get Google, Facebook, you know, all the places, you know, what are you what are you looking for.
00:16:58:22 - 00:17:24:11
Unknown
I'm not going to lie is that's them.com. And what that does is you can type in phone numbers, you can type in emails, you can type in names, think it's like ten, a day that they let you use, you know, go in incognito mode, you can get another ten, but hopefully you're not so far behind that you got 20 leads that are just sitting there that's been neglected.
00:17:24:12 - 00:17:40:12
Unknown
And so you can use that same it's going to give you a huge list of phone numbers you got to have. The kahuna is enough to call every single one of them, because some of them are going to be grandma's phone number. Some of them are going to be their cable providers phone number that's got attached to them somehow.
00:17:40:12 - 00:18:04:04
Unknown
I've noticed that a lot lately. Same thing with emails. And so they'll give you all those, another thing that I'm going to go with is, we have forewarn which is provided by our MLS, and that will give me a lot of phone numbers and addresses, so I can sometimes go backwards off of it and say, I've got a good phone number.
00:18:04:04 - 00:18:28:11
Unknown
I can tell it's a good phone number, put it in forewarn and then see what the name that pops up off of it from the name that pops off off of it. I can get the address. So it's just a huge connect. The kind of situation, and go from there. And then I am if I find out what the person's real name is, let's just say that they put in, ABC one, two, three and Gmail, but a real phone number.
00:18:28:13 - 00:18:54:02
Unknown
And then their name is John Wayne. So then I'm going to look them up, go from their find their name. I'm going to go on social media accounts and start looking up. You know, do I have any mutual friends with them? And, can I sort of see what their lifestyles like? Like you can see if somebody from somebody is one social media profile photo like for man, I think it's me holding my boys at a football game.
00:18:54:04 - 00:19:17:08
Unknown
So you know that we have, like, white trashy haircuts and we love football. So that's what you can sort of see right there. But if their profiles locked up, you still can get that from one image. And so you can get a long way with a lot of stuff that way. You can also see who they're married to, with, with some of the apps, things like that.
00:19:17:08 - 00:19:42:13
Unknown
They're aliases. And I will say forewarned is great for knowing whether somebody is a bad person too. So it tells you their arrest records and what kind of car they drive, things like that for safety purposes. Why? So I ask all my agents to look them up in the first place. Whenever a lead comes in, you're the first person to talk about using forewarn almost for like, filling out lead details.
00:19:42:13 - 00:20:01:16
Unknown
You know, most of the time I hear about that in the, in the, you know, sort of completely logical sense of like, you know, hey, is this a is this a bad person? Should I, like, not take this, you know, this, meeting, I will say terms of service wise before dawn and might be a little bit on the gray scale of, you know, looking at phone numbers, things like that.
00:20:01:16 - 00:20:28:10
Unknown
But if they come into your, your site, things like that, you're good to go. But if you're looking up somebody who said on Facebook that they needed to buy or sell a house, then yeah, you probably breaking the terms of service off of that. Don't get mad at me if they. Yeah. You know, well, the other thing that you said, that we hear from our founder as well, is, you know, it's okay if they have, like, incomplete information because maybe they're just not, like, ready to roll all that out.
00:20:28:10 - 00:20:55:02
Unknown
So, you know, I Kevin likes to talk about how he's built features into real geeks that identify names like Mickey Mouse. And then it'll let them in and view listings. But then a couple listings later, it'll ask them, like, hey, you want to, like, change that? Because we know that's not real. And so the idea is it draws them in, gets them, gets them engaged, rather than, just being like, no, we know that's fake.
00:20:55:06 - 00:21:10:12
Unknown
And then have them, like, go to another website where they can get what they want. Now, the thing that I do that's a little bit sneaky, I'll delete their phone number out too. So they have to put in their phone number again whenever they try to log back in. And then sometimes they'll put it in the, the correct way.
00:21:10:14 - 00:21:38:07
Unknown
So like, it I like sneaky. All right. Okay. So let's actually I want to ask you the question about MLS descriptions because you said that, you know, you want to design MLS descriptions that are getting picked up by the AI. And I like, you know, if you if you are out there in SEO and, you know, there's this new idea that it's like AI optimization, I don't think we even have like the an agreed upon acronym for that yet.
00:21:38:09 - 00:22:01:11
Unknown
And yeah, you're the first one to talk or that I've heard talk about like optimizing these MLS listings, which obviously the eyes or are sucking up because they are consuming all of humanity's written, you know, works, whether that's a good thing or bad thing. But obviously MLS data would be in it. So talk to me about your strategy for constructing that listing so that it gets traction.
00:22:01:11 - 00:22:26:09
Unknown
So I have a little bit of a different thought process and some people do, I don't like to repeat information as one of the things because then I've got more characters, things like that, to be more descriptive. My biggest tip off of MLS descriptions is whatever's most important to that potential buyer. Put it at the beginning of your description.
00:22:26:11 - 00:22:55:07
Unknown
If you know anything about SEO work, it's going to read from the top down and say, okay, this is great. Okay, now this has gotten garbage. We're not going to even read anything else because, you know, even before large language models that came out, it's it's hidden just your h1, h2, h3 tags for the most part. And you could rank for anything and in your paragraphs and it wouldn't really matter which we can't do that whenever we're putting in the MLS listing.
00:22:55:09 - 00:23:18:18
Unknown
But we can come in and put put the story behind the property. If it's, lakefront property, I'm not going to wait till the very end to say that it's a lakefront property. I'm going to mention what the name of the lake is, the area it's at, right at the very beginning. So, like, for example, I live close to Lake Norman.
00:23:18:20 - 00:23:43:22
Unknown
And I would say that, you know, property located at the Peninsula and Lake Norman, anybody who wants to buy a property in Lake Norman always is dreaming about living in the peninsula, because that's where all the rich people, NASCAR, Panther players, all that fun stuff live. So they're like, oh, that caught my eye. Or if you say, you know, are you looking to entertain?
00:23:43:22 - 00:24:07:16
Unknown
Look no further. This place has got a huge kitchen. The other end of it is you got to think about the descriptions that pop up on even Google searches, things like that. Right now, it's either the meta description, which is something that we have to type in, or it pulls it from the excerpt and it's going to push straight from the beginning because they're all lazy right now.
00:24:07:18 - 00:24:36:10
Unknown
Other things that I'm going to mention are important features of, like, if it's a good school district, I'm not going to say in the great school district, half, I'm going to say in Huff School District somewhere in there, so that I was going to pick up a little bit more of it. I'm going to be a little bit more descriptive of, of anything that I can't put in the detail section.
00:24:36:10 - 00:24:56:18
Unknown
So for the click boxes, I got to paint the story right there. And I will help you do that. Like you can use it against itself as the exact same time. All right. Talk to me about prompting that. How does how does that work. All right. So my prompts always start out with the pretend. So I'm going to pretend I'm an SEO expert.
00:24:56:20 - 00:25:23:20
Unknown
And here's the property that I have at one, two three Main Street. And I see that it's a family style property that's great for entertaining and has a huge kitchen and give it all the remarks that I want it to. And then, a bonus tip right here before you all get in trouble, because you're going to say you said a family in there, I'm going to tell it to follow the guidelines of fresh corn.
00:25:24:00 - 00:25:44:21
Unknown
If you haven't taken real estate exam in a long time, that's our guidelines of of things that we can't talk about. Family relation, whatever else has been too long ago for me, but I tell it to follow. Fresh corn. Is that acronym the same everywhere in the country? Yeah, I'm pretty sure fresh corn is. It will work for everywhere.
00:25:44:23 - 00:26:10:19
Unknown
It sort of stops from saying family friendly home in a great school district. All that stuff in the remark section that's going to hurt you later on. And so many agents are so dumb. Don't just say, write me a description for this. And and ChatGPT or perplexity. They don't know anything about that. So they're just going to write it as you're writing a blog post as a normal person, or maybe a homeowner, they can.
00:26:10:19 - 00:26:30:19
Unknown
Then I'll say that we can't. So that's how I'm going to start it, and then I'm going to tell it how many characters I want it to be, how descriptive I want it to be, and then I'm going to tell it to optimize it for SEO purposes. And then lastly, I'm going to tell it to humanize it, a sort up for the debate right now, whether it actually works or not.
00:26:30:21 - 00:26:49:19
Unknown
And so that's how I'm going to write my prompt for my MLS. So do you do these in stages. So you let it come back with the result and then you give it the next stage and the next stage. Or do you give it all in one blob and say like, hey, I need you to, you know, one, two, three meet these criteria.
00:26:49:19 - 00:27:15:02
Unknown
Here's the base information and see if it'll One-Shot it. I build projects for everything, so I don't really have to worry about as much of, the different steps. I do have in my project instructions to ask me any questions at any time before you answer, if needed, and then that way it'll, it'll ask me. Well, it, you know, does it having a fenced in yard.
00:27:15:02 - 00:27:38:00
Unknown
You said it's great for you know, entertaining or do I need to talk about how big the, the lot is, things like that. So it'll ask you random questions sometimes. You know, and asking so smart that you can actually just put in the image if you're, if you have nothing else, you can put in the address and it'll make something up for you, but, it'll get you started at least.
00:27:38:04 - 00:27:58:23
Unknown
Well, I want to rewind a little bit because you said use projects. And so I'm assuming this is the, ChatGPT projects feature. Do you want to describe that for people that aren't familiar with that? Like, maybe they're just used to, like, you know, go into chat, you know, openai.com and then like, starting to talk, you know, so but projects is like a little bit of, like, okay, now we're starting to get into some advanced stuff.
00:27:59:00 - 00:28:17:19
Unknown
So what's that do for you? All right. First of all, projects is a paid feature. If you're not using the $20 paid feature, you're probably missing the boat of after AI in the first place. But think of projects as, like, different friends. So, like, for me, for example, for me, I have one for my own personal workout program.
00:28:17:23 - 00:28:34:03
Unknown
It knows every bit of equipment that I have in my gym. It knows when I want to work out where I live, to be able to check the weather, and all this stuff is inside of the instruction notes and ask me questions off of that. So if I get a new piece of equipment, I just put it in the instructions and then ask me questions from there.
00:28:34:08 - 00:28:58:22
Unknown
So I have I have different projects from MLS descriptions to HTML content to real estate video ideas to personal video ideas. I've got MLS descriptions, I think, so that, I've got work work related ones for training and things like that. So think about it as a different friend that's an expert in a different field for every single thing.
00:28:59:00 - 00:29:18:10
Unknown
And so everything I have goes into a different project. And I'll tell you the best example I have of how projects work is anything that you put in the instructions, it usually follows so much. So that my son is a bomb and he uses my account. And so he has the TT's page and inside of his instructions.
00:29:18:10 - 00:29:33:02
Unknown
He doesn't know this at anytime. He brings up his golf swing, it tells him to stick to basketball and does a burn for him. And it's been going for about a year now, and he has no clue because I know he's not going to watch this podcast. So I can say this, but so it'll give you whatever you want every single time.
00:29:33:02 - 00:29:48:07
Unknown
So it tells him to go work on his layup instead of his pitching wedge. That is hilarious. Does he bring this up or, is he has he has no clue about any of it. I just watch it every now and then. I'll look at ChatGPT and I'll tell him that he swings like Charles Barkley or something like that.
00:29:48:08 - 00:30:18:07
Unknown
It's it's amazing. Well, I think there is actually a term for that, which is sort of like a hacker term that's called, like prompt injection. So, yeah. No, that that is hilarious that you're, pranking your own son, doing that. So. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Okay, so I want to actually connect something because, you know, it's funny, I was actually thinking about this this morning as I was working on, my own AI project, and I was also talking to, an engineer at one of the big tech companies who's working on these sorts of things.
00:30:18:07 - 00:30:56:19
Unknown
And, you know, he was confirming some, some information, something that you just also like, confirmed from another source, which is the the preparation is almost more important than the execution of this. So like that document that you're talking about, like, this is all my gym equipment or this is how I want to do, you know, the, the MLS listings, or even the thing that you were talking about earlier, which is like the flowchart for how you manage calls like all that, like basic preparatory information makes the execution so much better because otherwise you get like very vanilla results.
00:30:56:21 - 00:31:23:16
Unknown
So maybe my question for you is like, how do you start assembling that stuff? Because it almost seems it seems like when you're looking at a blank sheet of paper, like this is a huge burden to, you know, like start like, oh, I got to go out to my gym and I got to write down everything that's in here or like, well, how do I make an MLS listing, you know, so how do you start to build that, that, you know, base, you know, system prompt or that base information for the AI.
00:31:23:16 - 00:31:48:13
Unknown
So two different things I would say of this one, like I mentioned earlier, I'm going to use AI against itself. So I'm going to start a simple prompt not in a project and say pretend you're a prop engineer and you need to build out an instruction for a project that is for MLS descriptions and animal MLS descriptions alone.
00:31:48:15 - 00:32:15:00
Unknown
I need to make sure that it follows all discriminatory guidelines. I want to make sure it's SEO friendly. I want it in this format. And so I talk to my ChatGPT or perplexity, whatever I'm using for the day, because some of them are better than others for different things. I talk to it more than I type. I challenge myself on the way home.
00:32:15:02 - 00:32:39:11
Unknown
I will tell it about my things that are going on and say, hey, do you have any ideas about this? What could we do to automate some of this? Or what am I missing right here? And so it'll build out a whole prompt for you just for the instruction for that project. But you always have to tell it to think like an expert prompt engineer, to think like an expert real estate agent.
00:32:39:17 - 00:33:01:22
Unknown
Think like an expert website developer. Think like an expert. Real geeks. Email workflow developer, whatever you want to use. I've built all my workflows out of there, and all the merge fields are sitting right there. I just copied and pasted and went over and it was amazing. So just reverse anything that you have until her to always pretend like it's something out.
00:33:01:22 - 00:33:25:07
Unknown
Are you using exclusively ChatGPT or are you using any of the other AI's? My whole home is automated. I have motion sensor lights and most of my rooms, come down the driveway, outside lights come on and stuff like that. So I've got a lot more, I than most people do, and I know that, but it's okay.
00:33:25:09 - 00:33:47:07
Unknown
I would say ChatGPT is probably the easiest to sort of work, especially if you're brand new. I don't quite like the layout of perplexity, but it can give you some great answers. And so and sometimes I will compare it to the two. Like perplexity does a better job on social media captions for videos and postings and things like that.
00:33:47:09 - 00:34:08:16
Unknown
ChatGPT is going to give you some crazy off the wall hashtags that are just terrible. So it is what it is, but, you know, use them all, see what you like real quick. Let's talk about meetings and using AI to do transcriptions and follow ups, because I feel like that is a huge opportunity for absolutely everyone.
00:34:08:16 - 00:34:30:11
Unknown
And then I really want to drill into this automation because the automation stuff is going to be fascinating. So meeting meeting transcriptions, talk to talk to me about like, you know, okay, so it sounds like this application that you're using will set up a calendar. You know, you join the meeting. What what happens after that? It actually is a plug in for anything.
00:34:30:12 - 00:35:06:13
Unknown
So you can use it for zoom, Google Calendar. You can actually do it inside of there. And it pretty much is pretty much just the assistant that's sitting there. And it'll tell you everything from the engagement level of the people to your speech rate to words you might not should have used. So it's going to give you a whole long transcription, for me as a broker and charge owner, we do a Tuesday morning training, and I can see everybody who has been in the meeting off of that and gives me all my attendance records, things like that.
00:35:06:13 - 00:35:33:21
Unknown
And then it also gives me a summary for everybody, records the video, things like that. One thing that I have sort of moved up to, is this is the Insta 360 wave, and it connects to the Insta360 camera because we have some people that are, in person and not. And so it has a 360 microphone built into it that it will move my webcam to whoever's talking that's in the room.
00:35:33:23 - 00:35:52:19
Unknown
And so it's allowed us to be able to see, you know, we've got agents all across North Carolina. You can get a little bit more relatable and and learn what that person looks like, versus me taking a webcam and turning it to the other side. And then with the relay, like I said, it takes all that transcription.
00:35:52:19 - 00:36:14:12
Unknown
Then it will send it to everybody who was in the meeting. And then I use Zapier to actually send it to other people if I need to. And I take that the transcription and put it into and I surprise, surprise, my ChatGPT Tuesday morning meeting notes. So then I can recap from the last Tuesday automatically from the transcription that's sitting right there.
00:36:14:13 - 00:36:35:06
Unknown
Have you used it to maybe like debrief on, you know, conversations you've had with people where it's like, wow, I got this impression that, you know, this thing might have been happening in subtext, right? You know, it seems like, you know, they were offended about, you know, this sort of thing and try to get the AI to give you feedback on, like, you know, maybe social cues that are happening.
00:36:35:08 - 00:36:55:04
Unknown
I use it for multiple ends of that. One thing that I'll use it for is I'll take the, the, the, transcription. And actually load it up and say, what can I do differently for training meetings of where I lost engagement purposes and things like that, or to make a graph based off of this for a recap purpose?
00:36:55:04 - 00:37:21:06
Unknown
Because a lot of the trainings, I'm going to redo things like that. Some people actually are using it, this isn't there yet, but I know it's really close of the Real Geeks dealer coming soon. Everyone. I want to be able to take that and actually take the transcription and actually throw it in there and then build my profile for the lead that I just talked to on the phone, and just drop it in the important notes section right then and there.
00:37:21:08 - 00:37:51:03
Unknown
So, but I'll use it for that. I'll use it for issues with clients and, and maybe even agents, agent, own agent, arguments in the office. And what can I do to change this sop's that I need to change for our offices, things like that. I'll throw it in there and say, hey, what can you just gather from this and then be like, this person doesn't talk a lot, or you probably miss this point and you want to bring that back up on your next meeting.
00:37:51:08 - 00:38:10:04
Unknown
I love that, you know, maybe I'll just put a plug for the dialer in there, which is it's coming, November 4th, the first version of the dialer and everything that you just described there is absolutely on the roadmap. So we're, we're pretty excited about, all those features landing, in real geeks, like, with it a little bit already.
00:38:10:06 - 00:38:31:12
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know you're on the moon, I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, I, I really appreciate that. You can just sit on your computer and just go to town. Yeah, we'll talk to me about that, because I've been kind of curious. You know, we'll go down this tangent here for a second, but I'm one of the things that I thought was a big advantage of having the dialer just inbuilt into the CRM is you're not switching between your phone.
00:38:31:12 - 00:38:50:07
Unknown
So it's like less chaotic, less context switching back and forth, less opportunity to get distracted and just like a lot more focus. But yeah, I mean you told me 100% it and I know that there's been a little bit of tweaking and things like that. So you might see something that's a little bit different by the time that the, the, beta test done, things like that.
00:38:50:09 - 00:39:11:00
Unknown
But for you to just be able to sit there and click on somebody and then put the notes in and say whether they answered, they didn't answer things like that. It's a game changer off of your production level, because let's be honest, that's all is for for us is to be able to increase our production, save us time and energy, things like that.
00:39:11:02 - 00:39:36:14
Unknown
A spoiler alert. I've been with real geeks for so long, and I'm not paid to say this that I used to. Actually, if you wanted to make a phone call and you're on the road and call a lead, you'd have to go into the website because there wasn't an app at all, and you would have to go in and click on it, or you'd write it down on a sheet of paper and then go back at the end of the day and, and have to rewrite everything inside of there.
00:39:36:16 - 00:39:59:17
Unknown
So it it's leaps and bounds better than what it used to be. And I'm sure it's going to get even more creative and, way more productive as an agent, things like that. I just I'm excited about it personally. Yeah. I think as, someone that's seen the roadmap and maybe you as a beta tester, we probably won't do anything more than just tease.
00:39:59:18 - 00:40:17:01
Unknown
There's a lot in the roadmap that this really opens up a lot of capabilities of, you know, the stuff that we're talking about in this episode. So, you know, if you guys are not real geeks, customers. Yeah, you might want to go talk to the, you know, the Real Geeks team about like what what is going on with these features and how it could change your business.
00:40:17:03 - 00:40:39:05
Unknown
So anyway, that'll be my plug for the day. There you go. Producer John Boom. Done. So I wanted to come back and, ask you about automation. Right. So I feel like this is where people go from, you know, it's like the, galactic brain, meme, you know, where it's like, great, I, I like vanilla, I it'll write a bunch of stuff for you.
00:40:39:05 - 00:40:57:01
Unknown
Great. Okay, now, if I give it a bunch of, like, you know, basic information about what I want to do, like, it'll give me much better answers. But then once you start layering in, you know, Zapier, Macomb Webhooks and start automating stuff. And so things are like flying around, like maybe without you touching, touching the keyboard or voice controls.
00:40:57:03 - 00:41:20:19
Unknown
Then all of a sudden real magic starts to happen. So I'm curious, you know what you're cookin behind the scenes here, and you might want to just start by describing, like what some of these tools like Zapier and Macomb do and then what you're using them for. So Zapier and Macomb are pretty much just connectors from one, software to another software for the most part.
00:41:20:21 - 00:41:46:10
Unknown
And I would tell you, for me personally, I am self-taught, so I'm barely scratching the surface. I mess up a lot of stuff. And so it's a lot of time consuming, efforts that are there. One thing I'll tell you is if you don't have the time and the energy to do it on your own, pay somebody because it's actually going to make your life so much easier.
00:41:46:12 - 00:42:03:18
Unknown
So I've got so many different automations, the way I look at everything for my agents because like I said before, at the very beginning, I'm the janitor and landscaper. My job is to make sure that I do stuff that if I don't do it, you know, I didn't do it, but if I did it, you didn't know I did it.
00:42:03:20 - 00:42:30:12
Unknown
So it is everything from, let's start with a simple one. If somebody puts a Google review out for us, if it is a five star. So I have it filter to a five star, it automatically takes the Google review, puts it into a ChatGPT model, and and gives a prompt of make me a, Facebook and Instagram post.
00:42:30:14 - 00:42:56:14
Unknown
And then I have, photos stored in my Google Drive folder that randomizes which Google review five star image it post, and it posts a different one from Facebook or Instagram. And so it'll say, you know, Mary Jane said Dustin was great. So in real estate and everything else, I don't copy it exactly because nobody wants to read the exact same review.
00:42:56:16 - 00:43:16:10
Unknown
And that's part of the prompt of the, ChatGPT that's built inside of Zapier. And it's taking a little while to do that, but whenever it does that, then it automatically post on to my Facebook page. So how many times as you, as an, owner or broker wanted to repost something because somebody shared a Google review and you didn't have to?
00:43:16:12 - 00:43:36:12
Unknown
I don't have to do that. And then the last step in it does it actually, replies back to the review for me. And like I said, I do have it set up as a filter that if it's four stars or below, it's not going to post. I'm not going to have somebody say how terrible of a company we are that don't like me and everything else.
00:43:36:12 - 00:44:07:20
Unknown
So the workflow and this will probably be in the cookbook, everyone. So like, you know, go get it because I love the like it's after, you know, totally my jam. So a trigger would be Google review on the Google my business and then a filter block that says if it's five star and then an AI block that does the prompt that you just talked about, and then two more blocks for posting on, Facebook and then a response, on the Google review.
00:44:07:20 - 00:44:28:09
Unknown
Right. So it's like basically like a 5 or 6 step workflow, something like that. Somewhere right around there. Yeah. Depending on if you want to, use one standard picture or if you want to randomize it, there's another step for there. And I am spread out for Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. But again you just start somewhere and then branch off to it.
00:44:28:09 - 00:44:48:10
Unknown
Don't try to do everything. You know, it's sort of like saying that you want to play baseball and you've never picked up a baseball bat. Just go with one at a time. The nice thing about using like a recipe book like this is Zapier can be kind of daunting for someone that's never used it before. It's once you get into it, it's really not that complicated.
00:44:48:10 - 00:45:06:20
Unknown
It really makes like really what it is underneath is like sort of a universal API layer between all these all these, you know, applications. And if that didn't mean anything to you, then Zapier is the tool for you. Because it just simplifies that. It's like, you know, Lego pieces, you know, like, hey, I need this thing to talk to this thing.
00:45:06:20 - 00:45:27:00
Unknown
And, you know, it's just like building blocks. And so following a recipe like what we just outlined and getting that set up for the first time is a really great way to get into automation. You mentioned webhooks, right? And webhooks are an extraordinarily powerful tool. What are you using those for? I have a webhook based off of.
00:45:27:02 - 00:45:56:17
Unknown
It's a form on my website that I have for my agents. It is a buyer under contract form and it asks every question. Buyer one buyer choose name down to are you using a TK? How much money they're putting down for earnest money? The due diligence days, the earnest money deeds, closing dates, the attorneys and on the, before that, I'd actually even say I'm using, custom fields for my agents profile.
00:45:56:17 - 00:46:19:02
Unknown
So they have their preferred attorneys that are automatically going to pop up. If they have a transaction coordinator, it's automatically going to pop up is all their information is automatically popping up with custom fields that are built into these forms. So it's like if it asks for their license number, it automatically pops up on any of my forms, but it builds out this, buyer under contract form.
00:46:19:04 - 00:46:40:13
Unknown
Whenever you submit that it does everything from, like how many people actually are dealing with a family friend member that they didn't put in real geeks because they forgot, and so they went under contract. And you're thinking, I need to be able to send them a Christmas card at the end of the year. And then you're thinking, then I put everybody who is under contract as a buyer.
00:46:40:15 - 00:47:06:00
Unknown
Well, that's one of my very first steps. That's off of that webhook from the form submission, is it? And puts buyer one. If there's a buyer too, it does them too. And then it does everything from I have a complete, asana project. So what asana is, is a task management system. It's like Monday.com, Trello, things like that.
00:47:06:02 - 00:47:33:20
Unknown
It recreates the project based off of if it's a residential property, if it's, vacant land, commercial, things like that. So there's different ones that I've built out, but it gives you a step by step guide for you to be able to send out emails to your clients. So, for example, if you said in the form that you are going to do a home inspection, it's going to send an email out to the home inspector and say, hey, Mr. Home Inspector, here's my client's information.
00:47:33:20 - 00:47:54:23
Unknown
That's right here. So Joe and Suzy Smith and their phone numbers right here, here's the property that they're under contract with. We would like to do a home inspection and a septic inspection. And here's our due diligence date. Let us know if that works for you. And so it's sent the email to them. It sends the email to the lender.
00:47:54:23 - 00:48:20:04
Unknown
And the attorney if they're under contract, is saying, here's our executed contract because you're uploading that into the form. It makes Google events for, your due diligence period, your earnest money, additional earnest money date. Sometimes people do that around here. And your settlement date, it invites your clients to the closing for the settlement in a Google Calendar invite.
00:48:20:06 - 00:48:48:06
Unknown
So you've done all this work by submitting one form. So it saves my agent's problem about two hours by filling out one form. And it does everything from surveys, water tests, swimming pools. I've built it out completely. But again, if you just started it with putting in your real geeks people and maybe your your calendar invites, then you can decide how far you want to go with it.
00:48:48:07 - 00:49:11:03
Unknown
But my agents pretty much have a guaranteed TC sitting right there. And then even goes to the fact of introducing myself as the owner and broker in charge. So if they've got any questions that they're here and ask for a review on behalf of my agents from me, because sometimes they're not going to want to give a review because you ask.
00:49:11:03 - 00:49:39:07
Unknown
But if I ask, they'd be like, oh, yeah, sure, I want to help you out and make you look good in front of your boss, doesn't we, need to wrap up. This is going to we're going to have to have, like, multiple of these conversations because, you know, I'm realizing right now that you, like many of the just absolutely, you know, most awesome customers that we've talked to are almost like more process engineers than or, like, process reverse engineers than, than anything else.
00:49:39:12 - 00:49:57:03
Unknown
Right? It's like you have a clear strategy in your head of the way that you want to attack your market. And then rather than just like pounding your head against the wall, like trying to do it through brute force, it sounds like you're spending a lot of time breaking down what the components are and then automating those so that it just gets easier.
00:49:57:05 - 00:50:21:05
Unknown
Does that sound about right? The way that I look at anything in life is if I have to repeat it even once a month, I'm going to try to automate it, even if it's something that is, hey, we got you started here. Do you want to send this? I have everything from my words of affirmation that I have for myself because I talk to it so much, it sends it to me Sunday night at eight.
00:50:21:05 - 00:50:55:19
Unknown
At 8 p.m. so I can write it on my mirror, but it sends me something. And, you know, sometimes I'll change it. But it's everything in my life revolves around that kind of situation. So the more I talk to it, the more it knows about me. Same thing with your real estate world. If if you're stuck on something, if you're wanting to make a, onboarding for agents or landing pages or, you know, tell you to how to make new landing pages inside of real geeks, you know, you can go through, I know, say all this, and then you say, I don't understand anything that tell it to explain it to you like you're ten
00:50:55:21 - 00:51:28:03
Unknown
and it'll give you something that my kids could actually, go through. So, so I, I enjoyed the reverse prompting of everything that's around me. So it's just sort of the nerdiness of me coming out. Why don't you tell people where they can find you? Companies names, man or realty? I'm Dustin Owens, if you look up either one of them because I am a geeky technology person, I can promise you every single social media site, it's Dustin Owens or Mantle Realty because as soon as they put something out, I go in there and grab it.
00:51:28:03 - 00:51:48:15
Unknown
I don't care if it's something that we never used again, like, telegraph, but, so you can give me on any of those, my emails. Dustin owns that mantle. Realtor.com. I'll be glad to answer any questions. Like I tell Chris earlier, I don't get paid for any of this. I just want to make better agents and better people and be successful across the world.
00:51:48:16 - 00:52:06:16
Unknown
Because then something's going to come back to me later in life. I don't really care about the rest of it. So I'm not getting paid to say how great real geeks, dealers are or even be on here or whatnot. So I just want to help everybody out. So shoot me a DM message, things like that. I love that, I love your philosophy.
00:52:06:16 - 00:52:31:00
Unknown
And we have a mental academy on YouTube that is more agent. Oh yeah. And it is literally just for agents knowledge. Some of it is real geeks related. A lot of it is, rebuttals and how to talk about, networking or neighborhood content, things like that. So, red flags are real estate, things like that.
00:52:31:01 - 00:52:51:09
Unknown
What I wish I knew my first year in real estate. All right, everyone, definitely go check out Dustin's real, YouTube channel. Also, the Real Geeks Mastermind Group is an awesome resource that Dustin has clips in as well as coming soon to the Real Geeks Shorts section. So go hit subscribe over there! You are seeing a QR code on your screen right now.
00:52:51:09 - 00:53:11:02
Unknown
Go get the recipe book from this episode. That's going to be a killer resource on how to build out the zaps and the other AI tools that we talked about throughout this episode. With that, give us a like, give us a subscribe and see us here every other Wednesday for more forward slash real estate.