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Using AI is like your first Google search... but with real leverage · Net Effective

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have two full-time accounts payable people for bills.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think right now we process about 2,500 to 3,000 invoices a month.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And utilities are about it's like two-thirds, almost 70% of all of our bills.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: They were able to automate that process where they can go into the utility portals every night, the solution, and pull out new bills, get rid of duplicates, and not only do that, but enter it into the management system for us for review.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been able to get us our best estimate is that it's gotten both of the employees about almost two days back a piece.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's Nick Virovek, president of Rent Fam in Cleveland.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jonas Bordeaux, CEO and co-founder of Dwalzi, and this is NetEffective, the Rental AI show.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nick, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We came by you in the best possible way, which is one of your clients said this is one of the smartest, most thoughtful guys in the industry, and he's going deep in AI.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: You should really talk to him.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He actually mentioned that on our very first episode.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So thrilled to finally be talking to you, thrilled to get into it on all things AI and rental housing.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do the same thing here, and I'm going to shout him out as well because that's the right thing to do.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want to shout out James Goody on that because that's exactly who it was.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: He and I had a great conversation.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have a similar viewpoint on it, and we we like to similarly discuss often.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, very appreciative of that and happy to be here.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell us a little bit about Rent Fam and what you're uh building over there in Cleveland.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um Rent Fam's a property management company.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Our original model was with the owner fix and flip.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Our I had started in 2022.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: The company started in late 2020, almost 2021.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, the owner, his name's Tom Fisher, he was uh fix and flip uh with a construction company, said, okay, I'm getting some rentals myself.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to have a property management piece.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: He and I go back prior.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he and I have had probably conversations from I'm gonna say 2014 or 15 up until I start working there, where we're meeting semi-regularly throughout the year to talk.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And these discussions, he'd said, you know, you should come.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, no, no.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we finally get to that point where, you know, it's like, let's take the dive and do it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: The thing for me was the ability to build the property management company a lot of the ways as I see fit.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um, he gives me a lot of runway to do that, so I'm super appreciative for that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started with 140 units in Cleveland in 2022.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so the original model was to be primarily a manager for him.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then if he sold property to state investors, we would manage for them as well.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then when the interest rate thing happened in 2023, kind of changed our thinking a little bit to okay, you know, less people are maybe going to want to buy.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we said, well, we like our services, we like what we're building out.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe let's start doing it for some other folks.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when we did that, it completely changed the trajectory of the business, uh, uh for the property management piece at least.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, you know, I stand in front of you today.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're like just shy of 1,500 units.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's been kind of wild.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: The large part of the growth happened uh in 2025.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: We we doubled our unit count, and so uh a lot of that came from some apartment portfolios noticing us, uh referral, great way to get business, of course, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then as Afro mentioned, James and the group that he works with, they had started with us as well.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So in Worldwind and you know, the AI conversation here is good because I think it's helping us grow into that a little bit, like step into some of that to maybe like you know, not feel like everything's on fire sometimes, you know.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm excited to get to all things AI, but I I can't, you know, leave 10x growth in a couple of years uh out there without asking you about that.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That must have been like, you know, grabbing the tiger by the tail.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do you handle that kind of growth?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Two X in one year, like that's bonkers.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, like we we had aspirations and we do.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I big thing that we talk about is where we want to go, right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody needs to know the goal.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've said 5,000 units, we we don't breathe, we don't change our thinking until we get there.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so everybody knows that that's the mountain we're trying to climb.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, getting there and seeing it happen, you don't know how it's gonna come.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so when it did, we obviously you say yes, and you're like, we we want this because this is what we aspire to do.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Great team.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: It starts there with the people.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so incredibly fortunate to have the people that we do have here.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm interviewing to bring people in, it's so much about the intangibles we talk about, like the stuff that maybe you can't teach.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because we might, you know, a lot of different management companies have processes and procedures and they get there, you're doing the same thing, but you get there a different way, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so the big thing for us is what are the things that we can't teach, the intangibles, you know, like like-minded folks.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I say if we can put some like-minded people together here, collective achievement, we can do some stuff.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, anyways, we onboard these properties, bring them into the PM system, and then you find out quickly in the onboarding process that not all the data you get is good, especially from the prior management company, you know, probably part of the reason they're making a change.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've learned a little bit to go, okay, what do we have to do?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting contracts set up, you know, we are getting saying how are we going to get the tenants on the portal, communicating with us, bank accounts making sure that it's gonna come to the right place, who's gonna set up all of the utilities for these places.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's like this myriad of questions.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And once you start taking those on, like we're set up to do it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think originally it was a few at a time, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get slapped with like a you know a 400 unit portfolio, and you're like, okay, we're gonna stress test these things.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we like anybody else, you build on the go, you do what you can, and then you go, we remember for next time, this is what we're gonna do to be better about it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's gonna flow into the AI conversation again.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much time saving that can happen there.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how is AI saving you time?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you doing with it?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: How is it factoring into your workflow and the workflow of your team members?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I, you know, so for me, the biggest thing is I think there's analysis is a huge part of that.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the old way, if you want to call it that, would be, you know, you open the financial statement up and you go through it and maybe you're making notes of the variances, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're looking at what you expect and then what happens.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Look, there I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I still think you have to do that to an extent.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: But what you do now is, you know, you're you're feeding the the T12 in there or whatever the data set you're looking at is, and you say, here's what I'm looking for.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Pull me out these types of variances, whatever it is.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it takes me right to the things that maybe I need to focus on.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then so getting to the decision point or the thing that we need to worry about remedying or having an explanation for, I can just get there faster.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I can do that in so many different ways, you know.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then obviously, like we do KPI reporting with ourselves every Wednesday with the teams.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: One of the growth things that happened for us was is we said, okay, we have these apartment portfolios that we take care of, and then we have what I call like scattered site communities and where it's one to four unit properties just all over the place.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we found out that as we were going, that it wasn't one size fits all in terms of like the processes and procedures.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So what we did was is we built out different divisions for them and kind of gave them each one a team lead.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're letting them then build their stuff.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But so we'll meet with these teams on Wednesdays and we'll go through like, you know, resident activity change, move ins, move outs, what's the net change?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And now we've been able to track it with trends.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's the week to date?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's the month to date?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's the year to date?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And coming across that used to be very, you'd use an admin or somebody to help compile, you hope they did it right, you're checking it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And not that you still won't have to check, you know, with whatever, but you can do it so much faster, right?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can get to that information quicker, where I can get to the next level of thought of instead of okay, is this correct?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have good information faster now.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: What do we do with it?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like let's make decisions with it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big thing.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the operation side, uh, tenant response is another big thing for us.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, everybody, all the PM systems, like we use this app folio currently, and they have templated letters.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: You create some, there's some boilerplate ones.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I use Claude.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Claude does a great job of, you know, once it's fed in there, understand the tenant, the situation, maybe give a more tailored response with still keeping in terms of, hey, here's the lease violation or here's the issue, but maybe tailoring it more because when it's a one size fits all, you're editing or you're changing, or maybe you're not.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the tenant gets a letter and it's like, what is this?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, it fits, but not really.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another thing we've done to more maybe personalize the approach with the tenant.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's again, all in a timely fashion.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about saving time.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're covering a lot of ground there for sure.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, on the analysis side, I think that's a really interesting application because property management is not a high margin business.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you've got a huge bench of analysts sitting around waiting for work.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's always been a challenge.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I certainly remember when I was an operator, uh, a huge challenge to try to get enough resources together to do the work around the analysis so you can make better decisions.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's got to be just a huge advantage.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, like the prompt can be put it in plain language so that we can share this with everybody else to understand to be able to do that on the go.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Again, if you had to do that yourself, there's further review, more time involved, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like that can't understate how fast we can get to what we need to.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know your audience, like we know our team, and we say, okay, here's how we want it to look.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how like they like they love spreadsheets.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, all right, put in a spreadsheet form so that they are ingesting the information the way that they want to see it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, and it just does that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's great.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually one of my favorite use cases is spreadsheet generation model generation.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's shocking how quickly and how accurately it can do that kind of work.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, how is your team adapted to AI in their world?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's uh you know been a challenge for a lot of folks, you know, even if the leadership is enthusiastic, you know, how do you make sure everybody on the team is alive for the ride?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I think the first thing is telling them it, like at least for us, I don't know how other people feel, but we say it's not in a replacement, it's but it's like an enhancement.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think, you know, you read all of the stuff out there, yeah, it's gonna come and take all our jobs in you know a few years or whatever it is.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so for us, we say, like, look, we're dedicated to the people.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know if I've talked to you about this before, but real estate's one of those industries that it's one of the models left that's so dependent still on relationships and the human touch.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not going away.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Our hope is that this can help us do more of it, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of what we like about it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the first thing is to say, like, look, we're not here to replace people, we're here to hopefully enhance.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's an enhancer beyond that.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we start there because that's where you want to try and get the buy-in from.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then if there's a tool that we that I can use to them to show them, hey, look what this did and look how fast it did it, they go, okay, then they go, there's value there, but then there's the fear of the unknown.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's the um, well, I don't know where to start, I don't know how to do it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like that, just start anywhere.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, think about your first Google search, whenever it was back then.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's not all that different.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then everybody has that moment where it does something for them, I think.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you go, aha, you know, like we you know, we've discussed.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it starts there, but like our like our team leaders, I've probably pushed them more individually and one-off conversation, uh, where you're like, hey, that thing that we're doing, or you have to write this or do that, put this together, try it, see if it does whatever for you.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're still gonna do it the other way if it doesn't.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, that I mean that would be some real use case scenarios.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I our payables team, you know, we've had them using it for bank reconciliation.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's another really good place.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, find me the differences, you know, those types of things.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: On the finance side, so many applications for this.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Reconciliation is a great one, the analysis as well.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, has anybody on the team been resistant?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you work with that?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll put it this way, that not vocally, if I think that it happens.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anybody is like, you know, they're saying this is the hill I'm willing to die on.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm it's it's no AI, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think that's what it is.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: If anything, then it's maybe apprehension is probably the better word to use.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do we do again?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing that I was saying before, where you know, we say, hey, try it, or you show you a real use case where it's saved us some time.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, um, another example I'll use is coming to mind now, it's delinquency reporting.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we like with the scattered site, especially.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll have um different like buckets or groups because if you look at it by owner, we we represent over 90 owners right now, and so you go, there's a lot of people that we have to keep up to date.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of look at things in buckets.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you run a bucketed report for this one group, and you see the descriptions with the amounts due, and it's um okay, well, find me the words in the descriptions that say this, and that can pull me out a list where I go, these are the ones we need to focus on.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I did that in three minutes, and you show that to them like spent you know the last hour or whatever with pulling all this out of there, so you know, and you're trying to make believers out there, you know.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So but yeah, that would be another place, but it it's like anything else.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you probably need to show first and then say, hey, go try it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's no wrong, you can't break anything.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think everybody needs to have that aha moment.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: 100% somewhere along the way.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Out of curiosity, what was yours?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: What was your aha moment with AI?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think so I was using Chat GPT originally, and I think um it was just through casual conversation, somebody had said something to me where they're like, I was able to do this.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And again, same thing.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, well, okay, like what do I gotta do?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got in there and I it was like personal.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, hey, let me look up this thing or whatever it is for me.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it gave me all this info, and then it was like, well, now the next thing was what if I do that?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was like spits it all out, and then I was like, Well, what if I used it for work?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's say I want to use it for work, and my big thing was is I think when I was getting to it, it was prompts.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: What's the prompt?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to tell the prompt to be?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for work, I I went through some of our apartment groups, our portfolios, and I'm like, here's this group, here's about the ownership setup, here's what it is.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I give it the backstory, and I mean, like, I what I was able to get from that in terms of, hey, decision points or this data from there with a little bit of context.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is amazing.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's always listening to me.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't forget, so to speak.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably what it was.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's just like you're the realm of possibility just opens up and you're like, oh my God, I could go down this rabbit hole here where I could just be trying to set all this up, but I'm not actually doing anything yet because I could just be trying to set things up in every direction.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is the risk to try to set things up in every direction, and then you've got dozen things that are output.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, a dozen things that are a quarter done or three quarters done or whatever, and you know, not getting any uh results.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I fell into that trap early on in my own journey with this, where I had all these incomplete things and I that's uh waste of time ultimately.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's hard.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to focus on just like one thing, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, once you understand you're like, I can use this in so many different directions, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard, it's almost you have to like harness it in and just focus on that one thing.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny you say that because one of the things that I am most challenged with AI is the waiting and the balance between that and focus, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like I, you know, Google always prided themselves and like you could get an answer in a fraction of a second and would tell you, like, oh, that took 0.73 seconds or whatever, right?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that was what we were used to.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now it seems reasonable to wait a couple of minutes for AI to go do something, but what do you do while you're waiting?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And do you remember what you had that you were waiting for by the time it comes back?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Happens a lot.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, uh, I think in the recent past here, again, and I use Claude a lot, so that's probably where my examples will come from.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, like I am using Sonnet in the medium on medium for most of what it is, and then you're like, okay, this one I need souped up, so I want more effort or I want more whatever.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm used to the cadence, the waiting, whatever it is for like the regular, and then I'm like, I want in depth on this, and then I look back and still thinking, and I'm almost like disappointed, you know, as I've been able to do something else completely for however long it was.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you get spoiled, I think, a little bit.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I um I I've migrated to a point where I now have three monitors, um, so I can keep everything kind of within view, and so so when something's done, it's visible to me.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have two huge monitors, like I gave me like two 43-inch monitors like facing me at this, and yeah, and I yeah, yeah, I sit in this word space where I'm like, do I have enough room to see everything that I want to see?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's hilarious.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, it's kind of I I think about it like a team member, if you will.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Used to be that I'd ask somebody to do something, and three days later they'd come back.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now it might be three minutes or 30 minutes, but still waiting for that person to come back.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they don't mail, and I joke.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I say they don't, you know, it doesn't mail it in, doesn't take any sick days, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I joke about that with people too.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's very reasonable.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, uh I haven't seen it start complaining that it's not getting an attention.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're not there yet.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we're I'm sure we'll get there.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: They'll have more personality over the time.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I remember hearing uh I don't know a couple of months ago about somebody had set up a uh a chat area for their AI bots to chat with each other, and some of them started complaining about the users they were working with.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought that was pretty funny.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: See how that goes.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, you mentioned you're an app folio shop.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I always think of App Folio as kind of the uh the apple of our world here in property operations, in that it's a very prescribed system.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: They tell you how you're gonna do things.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do you combine AI with Appfolio and that universe?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: How does everything play together?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: They use their stack partners a lot.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of it has to go through that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think they've tried to expand that base, if you will.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I think like any of the others now it they're big on exporting, take the stuff out and then put it into AI, right?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know that at the recent user conference they had talked about um a cloud integration, but I think the, and again, I could be wrong about this, but I believe there is an integration piece with it, but they use their Realmex workflows that's kind of like their AI, if you want their automated task agent.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's almost like it has to get filtered through there before it will give you what you want.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that said, I think we had talked about this previously too.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are most likely going to make a software conversion, and AI is one of the reasons why we're doing it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we are looking at Rentvine.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And again, um, when we get to the shout-out section, I want to shout out some people there too.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, with Rentvine, theirs is an open API and there's a native integration with Cloud.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and again, like again purpose case, I like to use that.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um, so you go, all right, I can live in the best of both worlds in this scenario, or at least I believe so, where either I it's a universal adapter, right?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can hook whatever I want to into it, or if as time goes on, it comes up with the solution.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Either way, I I feel like I hold more flexibility.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for them personally, I mean, we're just talking, they have about 250 employees right now, and I believe a third of them are like engineer development.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they're huge into making it work for the user.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, two of our team members went to their user conference in Tampa in in October, and they just came back blown away by their ability to appeal to the user on the go.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: The support is, you know, I think tout 30 to 35 minute response time, and it can be from a person, not you know, a chat agent.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: So these were things that when we were weighing it, we really thought, okay, this might be worth the headache because software conversions are a headache.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So again, I told you we have 90 owners.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have 90 owners and we're gonna have, you know, 1,500 units that are gonna all get set up on new portals and you know, the muscle memory for the team of how to get to things is gonna change.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then, okay, Claude's hooked into it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have to find the report?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or can we basically ask the query and can it pull out the information?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So these are all things we're gonna be dealing with here in the near future, I believe.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a big decision to switch from one property management software to another.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I know I um I thought about it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say I was seriously considered it uh at one point.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we estimated in our context it was going to take several years, uh, maybe as long as five years to make the transition.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was with no owners.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we owned and operated all of our own units.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even imagine that level of complexity and you know, just bringing all the owners, 90 owners along uh as well.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, and there's another gentleman that works with me, and both of us in previous roles have done one.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that helps a lot is in terms of the experience there.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're gonna set up your chart of accounts, and then we're gonna, you know, move the data, you know, the property, static data, the tenant info, and then we're gonna start worrying about bank balances, and then we're gonna let everybody know and get their stuff set up.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So like there's steps to it, but I'm that said, not easy.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not easy.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a lot.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good luck with that.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm sure it'll be a heavy lift.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's you know, uh opens up new doors, hopefully, to be able to operate and the way you want to be able to operate.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, more efficient.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, name of the game.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, a couple of quick questions for you.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it sounds like I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like cloud is one of your favorite tools right now.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: What are the AI tools you really are enjoying that you recommend?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so like I've leaned recently more into the cowork, and you can see that they're making a push towards that as well.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, like I was talking about the idea of um like automated reporting, right?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: You want a the schedule report comes out.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: We use OneDrive, we use 365.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So getting it into 365 and then having the cowork agent.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like in the background, working to put the report together for me.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's something I'm working on currently that I really like with it.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then from the code perspective, and this is probably why I like it, there's a tool that I think we're we're working on internally right now with uh receivables, you know, where the traditional way of doing receivables is somebody calling, texting, emailing, whatever it is.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And even with that, beyond the phone call, there's templates you can send out, you know, these things.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it's again, it's like kind of one size fits all, and it's, you know, it's as good as the message that went out, right?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then, you know, like I think Elise AI does this where you know they'll do collections, but it's it's really pricey, you know.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what we were looking for was maybe like an internal tool will create a link and uh the link will go out to a tenant in their portal or in a text, and they get it, and it's like a tool that's personalized to them.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I've used Claude to try and come up with the function for it or the user interface, and it takes you through hey, you have to put in who you are, and it has to recognize that you are this person, and then it you get in and it sees your balance.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, let's set up a payment plan or tell me how you plan on taking care of it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a live set, so it would pull the data from the PM software and use you know these weighted factors, their tenure, maybe credit scored application, payment history, rent-to-income ratio, these different things.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, depending on the time of the month, it would let you kind of choose how you want to go about it and would create like a binding plan at the end of it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've looked in the space to see if there's anybody that does this uh or does it well.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I think Elise does, but I think it's pricey.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we said, hey, why not try to use you know clawed code to you know give us something to use?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So working on that right now, and uh, you know, it's a work in progress.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But again, once I was able to do that, I think it's a comfort level.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: You get comfortable, you go, okay, at least I know what it's gonna give me.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I know how to get there.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was big.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: You highlight a really exciting uh opportunity for where we are right now, which is the ability to build your own software.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's unbelievable.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a lot of times, you know, whatever's available in the market might be great, but it might not be quite what you want for whatever reason.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so rather than choosing something that's 70% of what you want, maybe you can build 100%.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And look, the idea to do something like this, I believe it was like nine o'clock at night while I'm sitting on my couch trying to put on the new episode of whatever on Netflix, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember sitting there going, you know, wouldn't it be cool?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then you start, you know, inputting and ask, and then again, it rabbit hole.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: You just you go in, you know, yeah, and and I'm like, oh my God, I gotta go to bed, you know.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: That was me last night, 10 o'clock, still building.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: So again, you know, you know.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: What would your recommendation be for somebody who's just getting started?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's the starting point?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing to do to perhaps have that aha moment?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you think about the things that you do, and again, whether that's personally or professionally, and you know, you're going, What where am I spending a ton of time?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's time spent that I don't enjoy spending time on.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like in my personal life, it's you know, finances, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're looking at your budgeting, personality.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have a family, cash flow, paycheck comes in.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: What does it go towards?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: The help it can just give you relatively quick, and whether documenting something or my following what I said we were going to do.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Personally, is I think where most people are gonna find comfort in at first.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, uh, and and even professionally, what's the thing that the time sucks?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what it's supposed to do for us at the end of the day, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to get you information quicker and with possibly more accuracy.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can be accurate, but it takes a long time, right?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can throw something together and not check it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: This can give you somewhat of the best of both of those worlds.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I go, hey, what?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: So to answer the question, like what's something that's a huge time suck for you?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, ask it a question.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just ask a question and start.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I love the personal finance example.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's been an aha for me because you know, tracked our personal finances rigorously for years.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you do with it?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's been more of an accounting exercise.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And to be able to really understand it, I feel like until I started working with AI on that, I didn't really fully understand our financial picture.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: But now I feel like I have much more mastery of it, which is pretty cool.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And look, you know, for me personally, I know I was joking with you that our very first conversation, I think I had to push us back a half hour, and which I thank you for being graceful about that.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I was on a college visit with my daughter, and you know, that was another place where we're on we're searching colleges, what's the data on that?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then then maybe the next layer was just at your fingertips, what are the grants or scholarships that are available to this university or for this state or wherever it was at?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was able to get me that stuff just so quickly to where while we're talking about it and it's relevant, we can have some substantiative conversation about it.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the research aspect, personal, professional, whatever is is amazing.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone you want to give a shout out to who's doing interesting things with AI, Nick?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, yeah, I ate a few of them.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I was actually I I loved like the format we were looking at it.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, very first guys I think we used with AI is a group called Ledger.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's um, you know, shout out to Josiah, Brian, and John.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Great guys.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: They have helped us automate our accounts payable processes.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of different um solutions out there of people that do it.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: App Folio even has one that integrates with their software, one that comes with it, and one that's an integration partner.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't quite fit our need base.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we had been out there looking and we found, you know, them again.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: James Goody had introduced me to them or said, hey, you might want to talk to them in one of our conversations.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's so great about them is that they took the time to understand our business model and what our pain points were, and they were willing to get the product working for us before we entered even into a contract.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like they were like, let us show you.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so they showed us, loved it.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's an even a metric put to it at this point.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have two full-time accounts payable people for bills.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think right now we process about 2,500 to 3,000 invoices a month.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And utilities are about it's like two-thirds, almost 70% of all of our bills.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were able to automate that process where they can go into the utility portals every night, the solution, and pull out new bills, get rid of duplicates, and not only do that, but enter it into the management system for us for review.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been able to get us.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Our best estimate is that it's gotten both of the employees about almost two days back a piece.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're talking of substantial amount of hours.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: We we were data entry, data entry, data entry, you know, and again, there's definitely better ways to it, but we said, okay, let's go that way and find the automation when we find something reliable that works for us.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's we're so happy that we held out for them.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I shout out those guys because I think they're doing great work.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then I ran vine, our guy, Sassin at Renvine, our sales guy, he's amazing.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just talking to us, understanding what we're trying to do.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think, you know, we're forward about that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think from just talking, Jonas, you can tell that you know, we have our aspirations, we're very clear on the way we want to do certain things.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so for the people that have been out there like Sassin and Renfine that are willing to listen to us, been amazing.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, and again, I talked about a third of their base being, you know, developers.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think we're in a scenario with a company where we can go, wouldn't it be cool if?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've found a partner that we can share that with.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: So love those guys.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, I told you James, and he introduced me to you, you know.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the gift that keeps giving, I guess.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to shout out James whenever I get the chance.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's great.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Great collection of folks.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, really appreciate you making those shout outs.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Nick, this has been such a pleasure.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, really appreciate this is fun.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I told you we could do it all day.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, I feel like we could keep going for a lot longer.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's been fantastic, though.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate your time.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I really appreciate yours, Jonas.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for letting me come on and talk about it.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's NetEffective.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes weekly.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're running rentals and figuring out AI, hit like, subscribe, follow, or whatever your app makes you do to get more of the show.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to come on as a guest or subscribe to the weekly updates, go to neteffective.show.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jonas Bordeaux.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.