How to Build a Winning Real Estate AI Strategy with Ginger Bell

Ginger Bell00:00:00

Fewer people will do more things. We will see that in order to stay ahead, like in anything, you have to become better at what you do. And you can't be.Be complacent to say, you know, put your feet in the sand. It's like, I'm not, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do. It's like, well, you have to do it.You know, it's like I was using a quote from Henry Ford the other day, and the quote was, if I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses. That's not it.

Mike Mills00:00:25

No.

Ginger Bell00:00:26

You will be using AI. You need to open yourself to the possibilities of using AI and you need to embrace it, because it is our world.And I think that's just the cold, hard fact.

Mike Mills00:00:47

Hello. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Texas Real Estate and Finance Podcast. My name is Mike Mills.I'm a North Texas mortgage banker with Service First Mortgage. And you know, my, my quick Pl here is if you need a loan or you need a lender, give me a call.Otherwise, let's get to it because I don't want to spend all day talking about me. So my guest today is Ginger Bell, and Ginger is one of my good friends, my AI compadres.We've been working together and talking together about this stuff for, for quite a while. She was, I was introduced to, to, you know, using AI right when it came out.I was one of the first users on the chat platform playing around with it, but I didn't really understand the power of it and what it was capable of and how to actually use it until I met Ginger. And then Ginger kind of blew my mind on a course she had built on how to use Chat GPT on all of its features.And I went through that entire course and just soaked it all in.And so anytime I really want to get into the weeds on this stuff and kind of figure out where we're at, you know, as an industry, Ginger is always my go to.So I like having her on every couple months just because she always have has new things going on and new ideas and new, new, new, new epiphanies that are hitting us these days. And so I really wanted to chat with her. So, Ginger, how you doing today?

Ginger Bell00:02:04

I am doing great, thank you. And yeah, you know, it's so funny because we were in the green room before we got started. We almost didn't get started in time.No, because we were already talking about all the things you've been doing with AI and I love seeing that because you have taken just this whole concept of AI and the possibilities and things like that and just started implementing and playing around with it and saying, how can I use this and where does it make sense?And, and not just for you and your business, but for your, your referral partners, your real estate partners, you know, to be able to help them in their business as well. So great job, my friend.

Mike Mills00:02:40

Yeah, well, I would, my kids joke with me or make fun of me because they say chat is my, my best friend. Like, I don't have any friends other than chat.And so because I use it literally for everything if my, my gate breaks and I need to figure out how the wiring works. I asked Chat if my condenser goes down at the hot work studio that we bought recently and I have to figure out how to rewire that.I asked Chat if I need to figure out what seed to put on my yard so it quits burning up in the summer. I asked Chat. So, so it really has, and I've got my wife, she's fully on board now too. So, you know, we don't use Google really anymore.We, we just use Chat. And it's not perfect, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have all of the, you know, it's, it's not a perfect system.But, but I tell you what, it, I will say it saved me a lot of money just because you would be surprised at the things that you would hire, you know, somebody to come out and work on even at your home or in your yard or with your kids or, you know, fitness trainers or, or whatever and you just pop things into ask chat questions and it, it gives you a ton of information.So it's, it really, you know, it has changed everything that I do and I, and I think that, you know, and I've said this till I'm blue in the face, but anybody that hasn't got on board with this yet and isn't using it on a daily basis, not just for their business, because using it for business is one thing. And we get frustrated I think, sometimes because we expect, you know, you hear AI and you're like, well, it's just going to do it.And I, all I have to do is just say do this and it's going to do it, I mean, to some extent, but it's not quite there yet. And you have to partner it with other tools to kind of get it to work the way you want. But you can just start using it in your day to day life.You Know when you go to the doctor and your doctor gives you prescriptions or it tells you or you get blood work done or whatever, just load it in there. It doesn't mean you have to take it at its face value.It just means it's like getting another opinion and having another idea that can open up thoughts and open up avenues to stuff that you just didn't know was there before.

Ginger Bell00:04:33

Yeah. And it takes the. It takes the. What used to be so much research.You type something into Google, and then it's like, now you have to go to this side and I have to go to that. That's not what I'm looking for. And. And it takes that out. It's interesting. I had allergies, and so I went to an allergist and they did blood work.And so, you know, I talked to my doctor about it, and he talked in a way. It's like, you know, explain this to me where I can understand this. And I still couldn't understand what he was talking about.And so I took my blood, I uploaded it into ChatGPT, and I said, tell me what this means and tell me what's important. Tell me what I need to pay attention to. And it did that. And then I said, okay, you know, what are the things I need to watch for? And it was. It was.It was easy to understand. My doctor was like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And ChatGPT is like, okay, this is what it means, and this is it. And.And, you know, and it was so simple. And it was just by uploading that in there.

Mike Mills00:05:45

Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:05:45

And that was it. And. And, you know, those are things. It's funny, you say ChatGPT is your friend, and I spend. I mean, how much Tyson weight?Probably way too much time on ChatGPT. And I love your. Your T shirt, Dad.

Mike Mills00:06:01

I got it. I got it for my kids because like I said, that's. That's their big joke.

Ginger Bell00:06:06

But. And this is the thing. It's like, if you haven't. If you're listening to this and you. And you're like, hey, I'm not on the AI bandwagon.I haven't jumped in. Or if you have jumped in, it's like, how else can I use this? You should. Number one, get it on your phone.

Mike Mills00:06:22

Yes.

Ginger Bell00:06:23

Start the very first thing. Put it on your phone. I recommend doing the Pro version. It's 20 bucks a month, so avoid two Starbucks for the month. It's like, whatever.And, you know, when you and I first started Playing around with that. It was like. And we were like, oh, my gosh, can you believe it can do this? And it is nothing back then to what it is today.

Mike Mills00:06:46

Oh, no.

Ginger Bell00:06:47

But I'll give you an example. So my husband and I recently got an RV. We went on an RV trip over the 4th of July weekend. And we were driving on the southern Oregon coast.And so I would open up my phone and you can. You can talk to it now. So you just press, you know, the little microphone and you say, you know, hi, Dolly. You can name your chat. I call mine Dolly.Hi, Dolly. Can you tell me, I am coming from this point and I'm going to this point, what are the things that I should see along the way?And you can choose the voice. And so my husband hadn't heard this. And it's gotten really good. Like, it's conversational.Like, you kind of feel like you're having a conversation with someone. It's not what it used to be. And so it's like, oh, that sounds like a beautiful drive.You know, the first thing that I would recommend is da, da, da, da, da. My husband's like, what is that? And I said, yeah, it used to be.You had to go, I'm going to type in to Google and if I have Google Maps, and then it's going to give me. It's like I'm just listening to it and then I'll say, oh, that sounds interesting if I did that.Is there a restaurant that's close by that would be good? Oh, yes, there's a couple of great restaurants. What kind of food would you like?And now you're having this crazy conversation like you and I would have, and they're answering you and giving, you know. You know, sometimes this psych is a recommendation and they're pulling this information from the Internet, whatever.It's not like they have an opinion about it. You think they have an opinion about it, but you can definitely put your input into it. And it's crazy.What used to take so much time in terms of just researching something and going down rabbit holes. Now I'm just. I'm holding my phone and it's like, no, I don't want to have tacos. I would much rather have some seafood.Is there a place that has good chowder? And so it's like, now you've gone into this. If you do nothing more than get started on a personal level to do that, that's a great place to start.

Mike Mills00:09:03

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I did the exact same thing. Or I've actually done it multiple times where like the best example I have is we took a cruise.We took an Alaskan cruise about a year ago with the kids. And you know, you have stops along the way, stop in like Sitka and you know, we went to Victoria island and a few other places.And so I, before we left, basically told chat. I told him, you know, I don't have to do it as much anymore now because I've used it so much. It knows me essentially. So.But I still, I told her who I am, my age, my wife, her age, my kids, their ages, what we kind of are into. Like, you know, I hate the word foodie, but they like eating food. So that's, that's a big part of all the trips we take is trying new places.

Ginger Bell00:09:44

And from Dallas, of course, you're a foodie.

Mike Mills00:09:46

Yeah, food tours and, you know, and all that kind of stuff.And so, and then I gave it the itinerary when we were arriving, what time when we were have had to be back to the ship and, and just said, here's all the parameters of my trip.Now I want you to create an itinerary for each day on each drop off on where we should go, what we should do based on what you know about me and my kids and what we're into. And it literally just spit out now there was some refining and I went to a few places and did this and that or whatever.But, but just the fact that, you know, like, I feel bad for travel agents just like any other job that's there now because, because I can literally do that in a couple of hours. I mean, you know, you could do it in 30 minutes if you don't want to get real specific on it. But it just took a couple hours.I planned our entire trip. We had a blast. We got to do a lot of fun stuff that I never would have had. You know, it would have taken me six or seven hours.I would have had to pay someone to kind of give me all those details. Restaurants, you know, excursions. Like, for example, it, you know, there was a train ride that it, it recommended or it didn't recommend.It said this is one of the things it was like, but this is the expense. And if you rent a, if you rent an electric bike and you go down this route, it'll kind of give you the same thing.And it's cheaper to go that way if you want. So it even gives recommendations based off of if you, hey, I want to keep my costs low or whatever. It'll give you Alternative things that you can do.Is it necessary to rent a car? Can you walk everywhere?You know, just all the stuff that you just don't know until you either have somebody that's been there, you go there yourself. And you know, I've done that for almost every trip that we go on.And so it's just, it's just one of those things that once you start using it to, its, to even just a barely, you know, cursory level, just, just surface level of, of what you're trying to do, you know, it opens up so many other things.And, and another example, and this is what you know, because we started teaching classes about building your own GPT and this is where you and I kind of got connected especially.But, but one of the things that I tell the classes that I go to now, and this has helped me in so many different ways, is, you know, we go to a lot of conferences and, and meetings because of our industry. We, you know, talk to real estate or, you know, go sit and listen to Barry Habib and all these guys talk about the market, whatever.So when I went to the conference with you when we did NAMM last year, one of the things that I did when I was there is every, every session that I said, sat in on, instead of having a pen and paper and taking notes, I opened up chat and I just started typing. I would tell it, hey, this is stream of consciousness. I'm just typing in what I'm thinking, my notes. So it doesn't respond every single time.I just want to say, hey, look, just keep this until I ask you to do something with it. And I just was typing in. They would say this, and I would think this. Sometimes I would write in what they said.Sometimes I would take a picture of the screen, whatever, but I'm taking my notes. Well, at the end of that, then I come up and I tell Chad, okay, give me a summary of my notes. Give me action items, things that I want to do.What's a good schedule to put this on so I can make sure I implement it, all that kind of stuff.Whereas in the past we would all go to those events and we would sit there for three hours, write a bunch of stuff down and have all these great ideas. Then we would go have lunch or have dinner and wake up the next day and forget all about it.And then you get back and you've got this, you know, pad of notes and you, if you're really disciplined, you might actually go through everything and look at it all. But if you're not. Then it just moves by the wayside and you never take action on the stuff that you, you know, that you intend to.And, and to me, that's been one of the biggest hacks for all things that I do now is I'll drive and I'll have an idea or something that I'll think of because we all, you know, you're locked in driving, your brain starts going all over the place. And I'll just make a note, hey, make a note of this chat. I need to do this or make a note of that chat, I need to do that.And it's helped me be so much more organized and so much more efficient with my time just for those little things. It's been amazing.

Ginger Bell00:13:20

Yeah. So there's so many things. Let's talk about notes for a minute. And I've started adding this in to my.Because I do a lot of speaking events and it's funny, I'm doing a four hour leadership workshop for a client in October. And so, and it's an interactive session. You know, it's all these different things we're doing.And I said, you know, we're going to record the whole event and then provide you with the notes and the action items for, you know, your regionals to take away and do. And so there's an app called Coco Note.

Mike Mills00:14:01

Okay.

Ginger Bell00:14:02

And Coco Note. And if you're looking. So here's the other thing and I'm going to do an absolutely shameless plug here.We have a website, we created aibhive.com and it's a directory.And I made this, I probably started it about the time that you and I started working on a lot of the AI stuff because I was doing a lot of speaking on AI and then, and then people was like, what, what was that you were talking about? And I would, you know, send them an email. I had one day, honestly, Mike, I probably had like 10 emails in one day. It's like, hey, what was this?What was that? It's like, okay, I'm just putting it into a directory. So go to AI Beehive. We're adding a ton of new stuff on there. But that's their Cocoa note.And so if I find something new, you can use that. So Coco Note, it's on your phone. There's other apps too you can get that are actually like a lapel recorder that records everything.

Mike Mills00:14:53

Okay.

Ginger Bell00:14:54

And I just spoke at an event in Atlanta and one of the speakers, he had that on and it was recording and then it will put it into the Cloud and then when he's done, it'll give him his notes and everything and so he can learn from the less sessions that he did. You know where to improve.But Coco, note a lot of students are using it and it'll record their professor's lecture and then it'll give them what they need to study and what they need to, you know, and test questions and things like that. And so when I saw that someone had shared with me, like that'd be great. You go to, yeah, you go to a conference.How many times you go to a conference and you're taking notes? You did, you know, great, I'm going to open it up, I'm going to, you know, add my notes in there. Now you don't even have to do that.All you have to do is open your phone, hit record, it records the whole thing and then it'll give you a summary. And if you wanted to do the action items, then it'll do the action items as well.

Mike Mills00:15:58

Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:15:58

And so those, the kind of things, it's like finding those places in your life where you can use that to be able to streamline some of the things and you're doing a lot of that. You have created your own custom GPTs, which was part of the course that I wrote is how do you create a custom GPT?I have GPTs, I call them agents for every single one of my clients. I have it for every single one of my projects. And, and you can teach it to do the things that, especially repetitive things to do that.And I know you're doing that in a lot of, of your business and helping out your real estate agents do it as well.

Mike Mills00:16:40

Yeah, yeah.And, and like I said, the, the thing that I really, really used it for in, because the notes part is great as far as like recording stuff and bringing it back, but I, I, I think there's a difference between what somebody else is saying. Right. And what you are thinking in relation to what they're saying. Right. How that impacts what their statement is and how that impacts you. Right.Can somebody say, you know, I don't, can't think of an example but just, just they'll make a statement about somewhere where the market is right now. You know, we're seeing first time home buyers or we're seeing dissipate and we're seeing more investors or whatever.So that's a statement of fact and what's happening. And so you have that down. But really and truly you're going, what does that mean to me?Like what, what is it, that, that what am I going to do with that information? Right? What, what, what are my, what can I take that and implement that into my business?And so for me that's been the biggest help because I have ideas and thoughts that just roll through my brain non stop all the time.And, and so if I can put those down somewhere and, and, and keep them in a place where they don't just disappear and, and then refer back to that later when I'm ready to actually sit down and start working on that or coming up with the plan for that, that's where it's been such a benefit for me because just putting, you know, everybody has the notes in their phone, right? You put notes down, but you also don't, you might write a few words, just, you know, okay, I think I'll remember what that is.And then you actually do it. You're like, what was I talking about? I remember what I was, what I, at that time.

Ginger Bell00:18:01

Right.

Mike Mills00:18:01

So it's been such a help for me just kind of organizing my brain and everything. But anyway, we're, we're, we're kind of stringing along the path here.What, what I want to talk to you about because obviously, you know, we are in the real estate space. You know, you do a lot of help with mortgage companies. I'm a lender. I do a lot of work with, with local agents.So one of the questions that I get all the time, and you're a great person to ask, is everybody is terrified for their job.Like I'm personally a little concerned about because we're, you know, we have a lot of documentation, a lot of process that's on our side of the thing. Sales. I don't know that that's ever going to go away because you still got to get fish in the boat.How those fish get cleaned and prepared and everything else. I think there's a lot of things that AI can handle there, but you still got to get people through the funnels. Right.So there's some limitations there.But when you talk to title companies, when you talk to, you know, mortgage professionals and real estate, real estate agents, you know, and people are concerned about their jobs, what are you, what are you telling them? What are, what are you, you know, honestly, like where it's going to go and how to position yourself.So you don't feel like in of front three to five years, you're going to be out, you know, you're going to be out on the street looking for something new.

Ginger Bell00:19:07

Yeah.And that's, you know, it's like when the Internet first came around, and everyone's like, there's going to be no sales people because everything's going to be bought on the Internet. Well, we know that's not true. There will be jobs that will be changed. I don't know that they'll be completely eliminated.There may be some, but it definitely, definitely jumps will change. And I'll give you an example just for our industry. We're seeing now AI being really used in underwriting.And I know that there are some organizations that have been able to really start leveraging between AI and the human aspect. Some of that, the underwriting tasks of, you know, reading documents, reading bank statements, calculating income. Calculating income.And so those are the things. And so I don't see underwriters going away because we'll always have that human element of it. Right.But what it will do, and especially for organizations who embrace this and say, this is where I can use, will reduce costs. It will reduce costs, it will streamline, it will bring efficiency.And so, you know, you have to look at where in my job function can I use it to leverage what I'm doing to become better at what I'm doing, become faster at what I'm doing, become. To not be replaced. And, and I think that's, that's the main thing. So, you know, underwriting.Yes, we are definitely seeing that already that organizations will need less underwriters. We'll see some of the processing streamlined. Doesn't mean all processors will go away. It just means that that will change on the sales.

Mike Mills00:21:11

Fewer people will do more things.

Ginger Bell00:21:13

Fewer people will do more things. We will see that. And, and that's a given. So in order to stay ahead, like, in anything, you have to become better at what you do. And you can't be.Be complacent to say, you know, put your feet in the sand. It's like, I'm not, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna do this. Like, well, you have to do it.You know, it's like I was using a quote from Henry Ford the other day, and the quote was, if, if, if I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. That's not it.

Mike Mills00:21:52

No. Yeah. Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:21:55

So, you know, it's like you, you, you will be using AI. You need to open yourself to the possibilities of using AI and you need to embrace it because it is our.That's just the cold, hard fact for real estate agents. They need to definitely use it and they need to find out how are their buyers and sellers using it and put themselves in the middle of that.And then also, and I think this is very important in the world we're in right now, where we're in the world of the Quickens and the Redfins coming together.And so if you are, and you know, I know you have a lot of real estate agents, if you are an agent, broker, owner, you need to pay attention to this right now because what's happening is a huge change. And this is not just AI, but this is, is obviously what's happening in terms of our industry.

Mike Mills00:23:08

Yeah, a lot of consolidation, a lot of big companies coming together and they're coming together.

Ginger Bell00:23:14

And it's not just because they're coming together because they can or whatever. They're coming together because consumers want that. So again, Mike, it's just like following the path of AI isn't here. I. AI is here.It's not a matter of, oh my gosh, is this going to work? Yes, it is. It's. The Internet is here. You know, it's like Uber. My gosh, whoever thought you would have gotten in a car with a stranger, you know?

Mike Mills00:23:41

No, it was never a concept.

Ginger Bell00:23:44

Told you that it would have been crazy. Right?

Mike Mills00:23:46

And two, you know, I, I did a, I did a, I read a story the other day and did a, did a video about it where, you know, recently chat has really opened up into shopping, where they are doing queries and, and helping people find goods and services on through chat. Now, it was always there to a certain ext, but now it's gotten a little bit more focused on it.And if you don't think, you know, it's kind of like, you know, we've been, everybody in our industry has been saying for years that if you're not out there on the Internet, if you're not, if you're, if your Google profile isn't dialed in, if you're not on Facebook, if you're not on Instagram, if you don't have these profiles and websites and all this other stuff and people can't find you, well, then they're less likely to use you. Right. Even if it's just for third party validation. You get referred, you know, from a friend of a family or whatever.The first thing everybody does is go look you up online. Who is this person? What do they look like? What are they into? Right?So now we have this massive tool, these, these large language models, whether it be chat. You know, we say AI, but AI covers a lot of, a lot of, a lot of things.Whether it's Chat GPT or Gemini or Grok or, or, or these individual softwares, whatever it is they are, and I mean, heck, Amazon's using it too. They all have it built in to some degree on the back end of things.But if, if now chat, when I type in, I'm looking to buy a house, you know, I'm looking for something, some parameters and I'm getting some details about it now.It's going to be able to recommend agents, it's going to be able to recommend mortgage lenders and, and if you're not online, then it, it doesn't know that you exist, it can't find you.So the person that has the biggest presence on there and is in the most places, that has the most content, pushes out the most information, it's going to be aggregated within chat, so they're going to be able to find you through Chat GPT.And if you don't think that Gen Z, which is the next wave of buyers is coming through the market, doesn't use this technology every single day along with every social media platform, then you're crazy because that's where they're going to find you. And chat is now diverting people. It's got a billion searches just every single day for different shopping items now that it's looking for.

Ginger Bell00:25:43

Yeah, and great point. The, the whole idea is, yes, you've always had to have an online presence. Having that online presence is very important.But also you need to start using ChatGPT because it's the chat GPT.It's a large language model, it's collecting all the information and someone had sent me, they had put into Chat GPT give me the top and influencers within the, the mortgage industry. And my name came up and he sent it to me, he's like, that's cool.It's like, it's probably because I'm in Chat GPT all the time, you know, I would not consider myself one of the top 10 influencers in mortgage industry. There's a lot of other people that have, you know, much more than I am, but I'm in Chat GPT all the time.So it knows me and I've uploaded and it's like, so that's part of it.The other thing, to your point of, you know, being able to compete with the Quicken and Redfins and the larger, you know, organizations that are out there and we'll continue, this is not the first we'll see it again. You have to lean into who you are on a Local level. And, and especially for our real estate agents, because you are more hyper local than this.You know, I mean, you can obviously lend in a variety of, you know, cities, states, as opposed to real estate, but real estate agents, you have to. Gary Vaynerchuk has always said this. Be the mayor of your own town.And so as a real estate agent, you need to be out there doing videos, talking about, hey, you know, living in, you know, Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas, Irvine, Texas, wherever you're at, and have a presence about that that is so important right now. Because as people are looking, they're looking for that local.We're seeing a huge shift that people do want to work local, but they want to have it be easy. And so it's kind of that combination of, you know, being that all and being it within your own community and, and having that presence is important.

Mike Mills00:28:01

Yeah, yeah. And, and you had the. Being the mayor of your town is, you know, it's, it's a saying that's been around for a long time.I think it's Brian Buffini, who's a real estate trainer, he's used that term quite a bit. And anybody that's gone through that training, you know, knows, knows that phrase. But it's so much more impactful now too, than it ever has been.Just because you can reach so many more people on a regular basis.Because used to, you know, if you wanted to connect with people, you had to go to lunch and you had to go to happy hours and you had to go to networking meetings and you had to physically be everywhere. Well, you, you know, we all get 24 hours in a day. There's only one you, you know, you're just going to be limited by that scope. Scope, right.And so then people did mailers and they put stuff in mailboxes to get in front of people, whatever.And so, you know, nowadays you say, okay, well, you can do a mailer, you know, to a certain zip code and it's going to cost you X amount of dollars to do that. And you're going to get 2%, you know, return rate on that or 1%.Or you can spend an hour making a video and editing it and publishing it as a, you know, as a reel on your page and make it hyper local to your area about a local business or about, you know, anything in your, in your town and you might get 500, a thousand views.Well, that's most of those views because the algorithms are very specific on where they put you in front of people are going to be people around Your area especially, you know how to tag things, right?And used to be if you wanted to properly optimize your videos and you wanted to make sure it had dense keywords and could be found and all these other things, you had to hire an expert to know what to do there. You had to spend tons of hours on research.Now you can just dump it into chat and say, hey, look, here's what I'm making, here's what it's about, here's who my target is, here's who I'm trying to get in front of.How can I build out this, this, this video or this, you know, flyer, whatever it is and then, and then properly, you know, stack it with keywords to make sure that the people that I'm trying to reach find it. And oh, by the way, I'm going to build a Google Ad or a Facebook ad along with that.I need to know who to target, where to target, where I want my market set up. So there used to be consultants on this that would get paid thousands of dollars, you know, to, to do this stuff for you.And now you have a tool that costs you 20 bucks a month and it'll take you 30 minutes to put it together that can do the exact same thing.And yet you still have a ton of people that are, either they're scared of it or they don't want to, you know, they don't trust it, which, you know, I can understand that a little bit.Or, or they're just trying to stay away because they're so nervous about not knowing how to use it because they don't have the, the, the, the confidence to be able to, you know, put it into action.And that's where it goes back to what we're saying earlier is like you have to start somewhere and just use it, it on a simple day to day basis in your personal life and you'll start to really feel the impact of it and then the opportunities for your business will just explode in your mind because you're like, oh, I could do so many things with it.

Ginger Bell00:30:33

Exactly.

Mike Mills00:30:34

Now I wanted to get into some specifics because one of the things that you're great about is you're always kind of on the edge of the tools that are available. And again, going back to when we say AI, you know, people kind of roll their eyes because it's like, what are you talking about specifically?It's just like this all encompassing thing when the reality is, and this is one of the things that I learned from you too is, you know, AI Isn't, you know, what do they call it? Skynet and Terminator? Like, it hasn't, it hasn't taken over the world that we know of. It isn't, it isn't going to soon, supposedly. So, so then very.Most of what AI tools are now are very specific to specific tasks and they do very specific things. There are AI software that can do voice cloning. There's AI software that can generate avatars.There's AI software that can do research on, you know, sales in your area and build out, help you build out your, your market analysis for a house, for a new listing. You know, all of these things that are very specific tools. So what are you seeing out there in the market that you think.You mentioned the, the Coco cocoa note earlier. Earlier, but what else are you seeing out there?What other tools do you think that you know, are very beneficial, very helpful that people could use to implement their business?

Ginger Bell00:31:52

So a couple of things most recently and, and I review, you know, probably a good five to six different new AI apps a week and, and they're always changing. One of my favorites right now is called hey Jen Familiar. And hey Jen has been around for a while. It's an avatar. So they, they have an avatar.You can create your own avatar. That's not great yet, but they do have some good avatars in there. And with the avatar you can upload a script and it will record the script.And so if you want to, let's say for example, you want to, you know, start a Facebook group in your area. And I'm going to use. Some years ago, I had a client in Austin who had brand new loan officers and they wanted to.They were just out of college, hadn't even gotten into the industry yet. And so we were getting them in, they had a very large database.

Mike Mills00:33:06

I want to show you something here. Keep talking. But I want to. Where is it? Go ahead, keep going.

Ginger Bell00:33:13

So, yeah, so we branded them. Love my Austin home. And there you go. I still saw that. These ones kind of still terrify me, Mike.

Mike Mills00:33:26

I know, I know, I know it's crazy. And you know what's crazy about this? So if anybody that's listening to this, you know, isn't watching it on YouTube, this is.I have an image of me that I created through hey Jin as a baby and because, you know, like I saw those baby podcasts where the people are talking and whatever, it's just so funny. So I made one and you know, I won't play the whole video that I made with another guest that I have.But now that I showed this to you, I'm definitely gonna have to make one for us.

Ginger Bell00:33:49

I know, right?

Mike Mills00:33:50

I'm gonna make a ginger baby to get back to it. But, but they're crazy, man. It's. It's amazing what you could do with this stuff.

Ginger Bell00:33:57

Well, and so, so, so that's another technology, hey Jen. Is very, very similar to where they it. I mean, I've done it and it'll. It'll record a script, it'll create the video.There's video which will create a video. Doesn't have the. The avatar that'll put the B roll in there, you know, and so those are the kind of things that'll do that if someone's popping in.Hey, Ethica.

Mike Mills00:34:26

Hey, Ethica. I haven't heard of that one before.

Ginger Bell00:34:27

I haven't heard of that one.

Mike Mills00:34:28

Chris, check that one out.

Ginger Bell00:34:30

Yes, yeah, we will check that one down. And so those are kind of things on, you know, the marketing side, on the video side that you can do. There is an AI technology out there.It's called Macy 365.

Mike Mills00:34:45

Okay.

Ginger Bell00:34:46

And this is great. It from predominantly in the mortgage industry. I know you can use it in the real estate industry.But Macy becomes your assistant in doing phone calls. If you go to aibhive.com you can find it.So all of these are on aibhive.com and so you upload your call list in as far as prospects, you know, past clients. She'll follow up on abandoned applications, and her whole goal is to have a conversation with someone. It's very realistic.She has quite a sense of humor. And so, you know, her whole goal is to follow up and set up an appointment with you. So you think about. And again, time.So if you hadn't, if you were to hire an assistant that would just make your phone calls for you, you know, make your phone. First of all, you'd want to know they knew what they were saying. And so she has all that. All that is entrained in there.And she knows you and she knows your products and she knows all of that. And so she's just the one that's always following up. And you have an abandoned application. It's like, you know, and she'll, she'll call you.She can send you a text that says, you know, hey, Mike, it looks like you didn't complete your application. You know, did you have some questions I can help you with? Yeah, and she doesn't quote rate.She doesn't recommend make, you know, any recommendations or Anything like that. Her whole goal is just to be that follow up for you. You think about all the time, how many have fallen through the crack.I was talking to a client the other day and he's had more applications and more prospects than he's ever had in his 20 year career.But he's had the least amount that have actually pulled through for a lot of different reasons because of the market we're in, you know, timing, you know, programs, whatever. What he has is now a huge pipeline of prospects. And so his job is to continue to stay in touch with those. So those are kind of things.It's like, where can I use AI to continue to stay in touch with those prospects?

Mike Mills00:37:06

Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:37:07

And so those are the kind of things that are very good to do that.

Mike Mills00:37:11

Well, people give, people give pushback too. And they'll say, oh well, you know, you're taking the human. People want to talk to humans. And you know what, that is 100% true. They do.But what humans are terrible at is the followup. Like you just said, things follow through the cracks.You get somebody, they call you one day, they say, hey, I want to, I'm looking at buying a house. I need to know, you know, what my house is worth. I'm thinking about selling whatever the case may be.You communicate with them for a day or two or whatever. Then they get busy, you get busy. And then all of a sudden that lead has just fallen off your radar.And, and we don't even think about a lot of times too. I think as, as professionals is that, that, that people, they're in, they're, they're, they, they react in the moment, right?They are, what's the, I can't think of the word. But it's, you know, you're reactive, you're, you, you have something you want. Spontaneous. They want to do stuff right now, right?So one moment they're thinking about selling or they're thinking about buying or thinking about something else, and then their kids come home and you know, they had a bad day at school or you know, their husband is angry at them, or they, they got, you know, they got to make dinner, whatever the case may be, like something happens and then that thought and that motivation for that item goes away and they forget. And if you're not reminding them, hey, remember you wanted to do this thing, right?And you thought, oh yeah, yeah, I forgot, I needed to get back on that or whatever. And so if you have a tool that can follow up with people and check in with them occasionally, reminding them, hey, and not an email.Like, you know, text messages that are interactive, that have a little bit. They will eventually get to the human. Because eventually they'll say, okay, now I'm ready to talk. I want to go through all the details.Okay, well, let me get you on the calendar. Here's a date. You can pick or let me get you in touch with so and so. And then now you have that human connection.But if you didn't follow up with them, you didn't stay with them on a regular basis, then a lot of times people just forget. They move on. And, you know, you don't realize that you missed an opportunity.

Ginger Bell00:38:53

Yeah, so. So that's another great way to do that. Another AI technology. And I actually, I joined a group.It's called the AI Collective, and it's now an international group. And it's. It started out of just a group of people who came together in, in Palo Alto just to, you know, kind of like what we were talking about.It's like, let's talk about what you're doing. And it started off with five and somebody's, you know, house. And then it grew and grew and grew.And now they have these meetups that are happening across the world. And so I was on a meeting with them online and they had the founder of Rome.And if you don't know about Rome, Rome you will know about, because it's absolutely phenomenal.

Mike Mills00:39:46

And Romero Am or Rome, it's R.

Ginger Bell00:39:50

O A M. So if you go to Rome, I set up a website because it's kind of a funky thing. So if you go to Rome, Roam rocks. So roam Rocks.And I'm going to start creating some training about it, because for us in the industry there this, this one platform, and I think, honestly, Mike, I think it's like less than 14amonth. It replaces Zoom, it replaces Calendly.

Mike Mills00:40:17

Okay, I have heard of this. Yes.

Ginger Bell00:40:18

The script. You can set up different rooms for just your real estate agents. And so when they have a buyer, they can come into their own room.You can like, like, I can add you to mine and you could like, knock on my door. It's like having your. A virtual office.

Mike Mills00:40:38

Okay.

Ginger Bell00:40:39

Part of. And, and so, and then they just, they just released last week, an AI assist assistant that is part of it.So the AI assistant becomes part of your account and your business and it can connect with, especially if you're an organization with everybody's calendars.And so, you know, say we're having a meeting and we have some action items we want to do, then you can, you know, say okay, and you name your assistant. So you say, hey Jessica, I want to follow up with Mike on the application that we just took and send the items that he needs to upload.And so they will take the meeting that's recorded, they'll give a summary, it'll give automatically give you a summary of that meeting that you recorded that the borrower was on. And it'll send an email to them. Here's the things that we need and send. And it'll say, and set up a follow up meeting on my calendar.And it'll set, it'll set all of that up for you automatically.

Mike Mills00:41:53

Wow.

Ginger Bell00:41:54

I mean it's just, it's, it's crazy. Super brilliant. Love it. I'm just starting in to, to get to know it.And then the other thing, it replaces your, your GoToWebinars or your Zoom webinars and it has a theater. So now you can do even bigger meetings to where you want to do your, your lunch and learns or your borrower education or things like that.The other thing it has is you can record your screen and it'll record you up in a little corner of your screen and so you could explain loan estimate for someone. It'll record a video and then you send them a copy of that video.

Mike Mills00:42:32

Oh, wow. Kind of like Loom. Loom, Like a version of Loom.

Ginger Bell00:42:35

Yeah, it's just like a version of Loom. And then it also can create like your Slack.So if you have, you know, slack messages that you're doing with a group or things like that, it combines all of that into one. Wow.So and those are the kind of things, those are the tools when you look at expanding beyond what you're doing with chat gbt, those are the things that, that can change what you're doing. Prudent AI is another great tool in the industry which has automated the reading of tax returns, documents, things like that.And so that's where we've seen a lot of, you know, the time saving within that. And so those are things, you know, when we first started out getting into AI in 2020 23, we said, okay, this is really cool.Now over the past two years we've seen organizations really taken what OpenAI did for us in sharing this.And that's the whole idea is by what they did and opening this up, it allowed other very creative people, people way above my pay grade to start developing and creating a lot of these tools. And so that's why we're seeing this now. And so those are the Things, you know, listen to podcasts, like what you're doing.You know, I'm starting a podcast, AIB Hype Podcast. We'll have our first episode out next week. If you're listening to this, it'll be on July 16th is our first one. And I have Paul Gelati, who is the.I think he's the. I can't remember his title, but he's with Prudent AI. And that's of kind to be our very first one. So these are things as far as.Let's start looking at these. You know, these are the things, these are the tools you want to bring into your business. These are the things that will streamline your organization.So looking beyond that, okay, this is what I can do with chat gbt, but what can I do to be able to, you know, streamline things with something like Rome? And you can, if you go to Rome rocks, you can find some information there. We're.I'm creating videos for it in training videos, because when I saw that, it's like, do you know how, how much we can use this in our industry?

Mike Mills00:44:55

Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:44:55

And I had a call with them. They've already actually been talking to some people. They do have clients within the mortgage industry. So. So, so, yeah.So lots of fun things happening.

Mike Mills00:45:06

Yeah. I mean, well, and that's. Things like that are game changers for the small guy.Because when we go back to what we were talking about with the Redfins and the Quickens and, you know, these big conglomerates like, coming together and really kind of of.I don't want to say they're trying to squash the small guy, but I mean, kind of are, you know, and, and consumers are going to, they have billions of dollars to put behind these things and technology that they can build and they can create proprietary stuff. But big organization, big organizations still move slowly, right? They still have to take a while to get there. It's turning the Titanic. It takes time.But when you're small, if you're a small real estate brokerage or you're a small lender company, whatever, you can take these tools you can't build to compete. Like, if you think that you're going to hire an AI guru and you're going to build out your own proprietary software, good luck.You're going to be so far behind the curb, it ain't going to happen.But you can take these cheap, affordable tools that are already created and implement into the, implement them into the workflows within your company, and this is going to help you keep up and not only just keep up, but especially if you then partner that with, like we said earlier, becoming the mayor of your, of your area and, and really staying in front of as many people as possible. It makes you maneuver quicker, it makes you get in front of more people. It makes your, like you said earlier, brings your costs down.What used to cost thousands of dollars to get marketing stuff out or, or, or prepare.I mean, imagine you could have a weekly meeting with your team and you guys go over, you know, the impacts on the market, what, the threats, the possibilities, et cetera, that are all coming through. Then you take that transcript and you create a blog and you publish that blog for your area about what you talked about in that meeting.You didn't need a script writer, you didn't need someone to go in and proofread it.All you had to do was dump your transcript in there, it'd pop up and give you a blog article that you could write, that you could publish every single week.And it's just more content that you're putting out and, and it's, you know, today especially like when we were talking about going back to looking at chat and it, it being able to search for people and give you recommendations for shopping items or lenders or realtors or whatever, the more content you can push out and have available online, the more likely they are to find you.And so these type of tools just help you easily create stuff that you can push out with very little effort and very little work in order to constantly stay out in front of people as much as possible, because that's how you win. The way that you're going to win in the long term competing against the big boys is that you can stay out in front of people.You don't have to be generic. You're selling yourself, your brain, your knowledge, your brand. And I'm not the big boys.And I'm not, you know, the 1, 800 number where you're not going to talk to a human.I'm here, I'm just using all these tools to kind of help enhance my, you know, presence out there in the most efficient and cost effective way possible.

Ginger Bell00:47:48

Yeah, exactly. That's the key.

Mike Mills00:47:50

So I want to get into your, your new role. You just, you know, you're out there, you're selling businesses, you're getting, getting hired for consulting.I mean, it's just, you know, when it comes to the, the AI landscape, you are the, the queen in the mortgage industry. So you just took on a new role with nam, the national association of Mortgage Brokers So tell me a little bit about that.What, what, how did that come about and what are you doing for them?

Ginger Bell00:48:16

Yeah, so that's a very exciting role. I am the growth officer.And so, you know, NAMM, if you're not familiar with NAMM, NAMM has been in existence for over 50 years and has been a long time advocate for mortgage brokers. So it's the national association of Mortgage Brokers. And I have worked with NAMM for 25 years and been a member for a long time.And they do so much for our industry, whether you're a broker, whether you're or, you know, working retail, I mean, whatever for our industry, they are the ones that, you know, go and do lobbying in D.C. and who provide education and who, you know, have discussions not just on a national level, but very much on a local level for a lot of organizations as well.And so by me coming in as a growth officer, my job is to be able to help them first of all grow and second of all, to really share what they haven't done a great job of in the past is letting people know what a great job they're doing.

Mike Mills00:49:36

They don't toot their own horn very well. Huh?

Ginger Bell00:49:38

Don't toot their own horn very well.And that speaks to the type of volunteer that lead this organization who are the kind of people who aren't tooting their own horn, who aren't, you know, causing disruption, who aren't, you know, laying claims, who just go and do their work for the industry. And so for a long time I've told them, you guys need to be better about sharing these accomplishments and these things that you've done.And so, so I'm excited about that. We are going to start a podcast for namm. I'm not sure what we're calling it yet, but I'm going to be doing that. And then we have a.It's an online group and it's free. Anyone can join. It's Nammhive.If you go to Namhive.com and it's bringing in really a resource to be able to bring people together to ask questions, to bring in different vendors. Vendors are members of it.We're having our first call next week as far as we're going to be showcasing different members, different vendors, different account executives, and just raising awareness of people in the industry who, you know, do a really good job on a local level or on a national level and just letting people know who they are. So if there's questions about underwriting, questions you can Go into namhive, you can put those questions in there.You know, this morning I was in there. We have some, some questions. I did a call on Monday with Valerie. We're just talking about building a local presence.So there were some questions in there on that. And then answering those and, and just bringing everyone together as a resource.You know, there's not really a collective place because we're all remote for the most part. I mean, you're in, in Texas, I'm in Oregon. And you know, we get to have this conversation.So it's a place to be able to have that conversation on a more consistent level. That's what NamHive does. And so that's, you know, bringing that together as well and then also increasing membership.You know, everyone needs to be a member of an association in some capacity. If it's mba, fine. If it's aim, fine. If it's nam, fine.You know, it's like, but, but we are all in this industry together, no matter what role we play. And so it's important for us to make sure that our industry standards strong and continues to learn and to grow and to thrive.And so being a member of an association, it is, it is our industry. And so part of that is raising that.And as you know, you were with me at NAMM national last year and coming together and the things you learned and being able to sit in and have conversations with other people, those are things that, you know, we need that because it feeds our soul. It also re energizes. So getting to those events are important as well.

Mike Mills00:52:34

Yeah, you have to get your, you got to get your battery recharged off.And it's, it's an important piece of what we do, especially because sometimes the market can get you down as it's been doing for a lot of folks lately.Before we wrap up, I do want to, I want you to, to break out your crystal ball and I want you to, you know, used to, I say, where's our business going to go in 10 years? But with the way things change and how fast everything moves these days, I think 10 years is too far out. So if you, you know, you. We don't know.Nobody knows. Right. There's a million ways it could, it could work itself out.But based on what you're seeing now, when you look at what AI is, how it's impacting the, the real estate industry as a whole, mortgage title, you know, realtors, etc, and then you look at the experience from the consumer side of things, you know, even with the cost of homes, which is, you know, astronomical these days. And, you know, the amount of homeownership is starting to decline and the, our industry is shrinking.There's less agents, there's less loan officers or less title companies. It's all coming down. Where, where do you see, you know, our industry in the next five years as far as what's the consumer experience?Like, what are they going to do when they're ready to buy a home and how's that going to look and who's going to be the person that's buying that house?

Ginger Bell00:53:46

Yeah, a lot of lot. A lot of different variant, I think who is going to buy that house, honestly, Mike, depends on a lot of the education we as an industry do right now.And this is part of that. We have an opportunity right now to have an influence to educate consumers on the importance of home homeownership.And I think the more you do individually and collectively within your communities and with your sphere of influence to continue the conversation about home ownership, then the better off you will be. Because when you look at the conversations that have been happening, it has not been in favor of homeownership.And so we need to take responsibility for that as an industry and we need to have a dialogue, do the education, talk about the planning, all of those things. Because at the end of the day, we all know home ownership is powerful.It's been a beneficial, it's always been beneficial for me and I think probably for most of us it's like we've known, it's like it's different now, but you know, when you own something and it's yours and you know, the long term of it, first of all, it's going to lock in that payment, right? And so that's the other thing. Those are things you need to talk about.I think we need to talk about, you know, kind of where the options are in terms of buying homes. And some of it may be multi generational, some of it may be amongst friends, it looks different now, some of it may be investment.I have this conversation all the time with my son, who's 31, and his friends as well. We have just helped three of my son's friends buy homes. And so anyway, and they come to us because they know I'm an educator in it.And so it's like, what do you think we should do? So you need to become that person where somebody's going to come to and says, what should we do? And I think that's the key.People will always, people are going to always be Buying homes. And if so, okay, is it investors then good, then do education around investors, teach them how to be, become really good landlords?

Mike Mills00:56:31

Well, and that's the thing not to cut you off, but that's the thing that I think as professionals, when we look and see, okay, you know, the, the first time home buyers are, you know, oldest they've ever been, you know, they're the smallest section of the market that they've been in a very long time.And so the overall sentiment for the consumer that owning a home is a good thing has really waned a lot because of costs and you know, everything that that comes along with that and, and that's unfortunate, but when you look at the share of investors buying real estate and the people that has gone up, right, you've seen that increase.So when you stand back and just go, okay, so the people whose job it is to make money off of real estate are the ones buying the most real estate, what does that tell you?

Ginger Bell00:57:20

You know, listen, somebody's gonna own that house, correct? So it's a matter of, are you gonna find that person who's gonna own that house?And if you are, then you need to have your content and everything that you're doing based around who that buyer is. So I think finding out who is that buyer, is it investors? Yes. And so maybe it is changing that.I mean, the Gen X, the oldest they ever have been, you know what they're interested in. They're interested in good investments.

Mike Mills00:57:54

Yes.

Ginger Bell00:57:55

And I think that's part of what we need to realize. You know, what used to be that, you know, picket fence and the house and all that other stuff, that's not there anymore. But it's changed.And I think there is a lot of multi generational.I was just having dinner last night with, with a friend who has a cousin who is looking to buy a multi generational house because their kids are moving back from Boston back to Oregon and they want to be together. So it's like, okay, what does that look like? So, yes, the landscape has changed. Our landscape's always changing.So find out what it's changing to put yourself in the middle of it. You know, my friend Carl Wright always said says, find a parade and put yourself in front of it.

Mike Mills00:58:43

I like that. Yes, yes, there's a parade somewhere. It's, it's, it's not, it's not nobody buying. You know what I mean?It's, it's somebody, it's just, it's just who and where and when and, and.

Ginger Bell00:58:55

You know, maybe it's a different home. It's like, you know, manufactured homes. I live in Oregon and we have manufactured homes. Her here. I. My son has a friend who he. Long story.His dad passed away. We helped him sell his dad's house, and he didn't have a ton of money from it, but I said, I want you to buy something. I want you to own something.And so he bought a manufactured home. He paid cash for it.

Mike Mills00:59:20

Yeah.

Ginger Bell00:59:21

And so now he owns that. Will that go up? I have a feeling it probably will because people always say it's like, oh, manufactured home. That value is not going up. Yeah, it is.Because. Because it might be the only affordable option right now.

Mike Mills00:59:34

Correct. And you won the land in most cases for those too. So, you know.

Ginger Bell00:59:38

Yeah, so it's like, you know, look at that. What does that look like? So you, you can find opportunities. It's a matter of making sure that you put yourself into what people are looking for.

Mike Mills00:59:54

And to put a nice little bow on it. If you want to know where the opportunities are, are, and you want to know how you fit into those opportunities based on your.Your knowledge, based on your expertise, based on your market, based on your competencies as a professional, there's a place where you can go and find all that information and it'll give it to you very quickly and easily and spell it out. You can ask it all kinds of questions. And that's chat. GPT.

Ginger Bell01:00:19

Yes.

Mike Mills01:00:21

Not dad. GBT.

Ginger Bell01:00:23

You better get that. Dadgpt.com yes.

Mike Mills01:00:26

Yes. I don't know. I feel like someone may already have that. They made a T shirt about it, so. Well, Ginger, as always, wealth of knowledge.Love our chats because a helps me learn more and, and find new ways to kind of innovate with what I'm doing. And then also, you know, it gives, it gives hope to people to, to say, look, you know, it. It's dark right now, it's tough. Transactions are down.You know, people are leaving the industry. It's, it's, it's a challenge that you're dealing with. It's not the first time our industry's ever had challenges before, by the way.But, but it's, it's different when you're in it. And so you just have to find new ways to innovate. You have to find new opportunities.You got to make your business more efficient and, and bring down costs.And the way that you do that is leveraging the technology that's available to you, finding the tools, educating yourself on it so you know how to use it. And know where it impacts you and, and you can survive and, and that's, you know, it's, it's. Everybody's in the same boat right now.It's just a matter of what kind of ore you're paddling with. You know, some people are still using their hands and other ones got a motor in there they're really chugging along.So it just kind of depends on which route you want to go and if you want to learn about all of this stuff. By the way, Ginger's a great resource. The, the Beehive. It's, it's. What's the website?

Ginger Bell01:01:42

So it's www.w.aibhive.com. so you go to aibhive.com you can, it's a directory. You can search there. We have other, you know, resources there. It's a great place to start.

Mike Mills01:01:53

It's the AI encyclopedia. So I definitely recommend everybody go check it out. So, Ginger, thank you so much. I always appreciate your time.Thank you for hanging out with me for a little bit. We'll see everybody next week. We'll be back.We're still going to talk AI and real estate, but we're going to make sure that you guys are prepared coming into coming out of the summer of2025, because rates might be coming down a little bit, markets loosening up. We're in a buyer's market in a lot of places now, so there's a lot of opportunities out there if you know where to look.So everybody have a great weekend and we will see you next time. Thanks, Ginger.

Ginger Bell01:02:23

Thank you.