Joe:  Hey, good morning. Welcome to REI In Your Car podcast. I'm Joe McCall.

Joe:  You may not recognize me because I'm not wearing a hat. I forgot to get one today, and it's funny. I was at my daughter's volleyball game a few weeks ago, and the coach saw this strange guy that he's never seen before from the bench, and he's like, who's this weird stranger watching our daughter's volleyball game?

And then he realized it was me. So yeah, I do not wear a hat occasionally. But anyway, you're not here.You don't care about that. You're probably listening to this on audio. So hey, I'm glad you're here.

This is a continuation of the last podcast I did talking about the Citroen Research article. And this was fascinating. If you just Google Citroen Research, I guess you would call it the prediction where they went pretending it was 2028 and went backwards and predicted what's going to happen in the market.Really fascinating. But it also, instead of just giving predictions, it gave some suggestions of what we could maybe do about it. And so I, in turn, went to AI and asked it, hey, what can we do about this as real estate investors?Help me find some ideas. And then I did some research outside of AI and just started thinking about it. And I've been thinking about it a lot.

I read this article probably three, four weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it a lot ever since. Of course, everybody's talking about AI. AI isn't necessarily going to replace jobs as much as it's going to replace the people who don't know how to use AI.I think AI is actually creating a lot of opportunity out there that's going to generate a lot of jobs and revenue and money for people who know how to use it, who can learn how to create new AI tools and learn how to use AI tools that are out there to help them create new things. How do you like this shade right across my eyeballs? All right.

So you need to learn, number one, you need to learn to use AI tools before your competitors do. And the people who win in this business because things change so fast are the early adopters. So start using ChatGPT and Clod and Manus and Google Gemini daily, not occasionally, not here and there, but start learning to use it every day.I built a custom GPT last night. This is getting for a webinar that I was doing. And one of the things I was teaching people in the webinar is how to discover your why.When your why is big enough, the how will find a way. So sometimes people have a hard time figuring out, like really defining clearly deep down, what is your why? Why do you want to make more money in real estate?It's not just enough to say, so I can quit my job. But why do you want to quit your job? Why do you want to make more money?

Why do you want to spend more time with your family? Why do you want financial freedom? And so those kinds of things are really important.I went to ChatGPT and I just started typing. I said, hey, help me develop a tool that helps people discover their big why. And I explained a little bit of everything I just said to you there.And I said, OK, great. And so it created a bunch of questions that I can then send. It's like I send people a link to a custom GPT thing that I built.ChatGPT walks them through all of these questions. And I was playing with it. And I'm not a coder.I don't know any code, but ChatGPT was just asking way too many questions, you know, and it was going way down too deep. And so I went back to it. I said, hey, don't ask so many questions.

Don't try to go so deep and give them suggestions. You know, if people are having a hard time coming up with an answer, then give them some multiple choice. Give them some yes, no questions and make it faster and easier.And so it adjusted it and made it really, really good. In fact, if you'd like to try it out, go to joemccall.com slash why. joemccall.com slash why. W-H-Y. And it will, maybe if it's still, if the link's still working, depending on when you're listening to this, it'll walk you through that. And so that's something really cool.Like you can build those things in AI right now. So go start using it every day, not occasionally. All right.

Number two, use AI to analyze markets. I play fantasy baseball and fantasy football in our league. I'm friends at church and stuff.And so the other day was our draft for fantasy baseball this year, and I used ChatGPT and I would send it screenshots of my current roster every round. I'd say, okay, who do I need to draft next? Well, first I had it help me come up with a strategy and a game plan and it gave me, all right, so you want these positions first and then you want pitchers there and then you want, you know, as I was building my roster and said, okay, great.Your pitching looks great. You need to get a catcher. You need to get a first baseman.And so it was just helping me kind of with that. I could have figured it out on my own, but it was kind of cool. And then I had a list of, you know, I knew I wanted to get a second baseman, let's say.

And so I took a screenshot of all the second baseman that were available with all of their stats in the previous year and predictions for the future. And I sent that screenshot to ChatGPT and I said, all right, help me figure out who I should pick. And it would give me the top two or three recommendations.And many times it was cool. And I would sometimes have to ask, hey, go back and research, you know, how are they doing? How are they, how did they do in spring training?Are they healthy or whatnot? And it would go and do this research and give me some recommendations. And I only had two minutes for draft time to do that.So you could use AI to analyze real estate markets, stock markets, crypto, your fantasy baseball leagues. It's pretty cool. So go to AI.

You might have to upload a Google doc, some screenshots and things like that, but it'll analyze all that stuff for you and give you some really interesting findings and results. I'll say this too, when you do use AI to research, you always need to double verify and check to make sure that the information it's giving you is correct. And sometimes I'll even ask the AI, hey, double check your answers to make sure you're correct.Make sure, and I'll tell it, do not make anything up. Do not lie. Do not exaggerate.Tell me the honest truth. Don't make anything up. And I also sometimes will tell it, don't tell me what you think I want to hear.Tell me the truth. Challenge my assumptions. So, but with AI, you can ask it to analyze trends, patterns, job data, price trends, based on history, what's going on in the news.And so AI is amazing. Just start asking it questions.

All right, number three, no matter what kind of business you're in, use AI to start automating your lead generation, doing your marketing for you.What if you get a specialist in a certain market? You know, maybe it's houses, people who are delinquent on their taxes. Maybe it's eviction notices.Maybe it's utilities that have been shut off for land. Maybe it's, you know, people who have owned land for over 10 years who live outside of the state. Well, go to AI and ask it to write you specialized, personalized, direct mail pieces. And don't use what everyone else is sending out. Use something simple and creative and think about that. Now, give it some direction and tell it, hey, listen, don't make this look like it's junk mail.Make this look like it's personal and I'll help you.

Okay, number four, use AI to underwrite your deals. So when you're looking at a deal, use AI to kind of help you with finding the comps in the area, finding rent data, or figure out your expenses if you're doing a bigger deal.And ask it to like do some due diligence for you. Even with Manus, Manus is a tool that has a Google Chrome extension. The cool thing about Manus, I think you might have to pay the $20 a month version for this or something.You can let it have control over a tab in your browser. And so with Manus, I can sometimes tell it, I'll say, hey, go to this link, go look for all of the comps in this area, and I'll give it a link. And it'll go to that link, and it'll scrape everything on that page and analyze the data for me.Now, I have to click authorize. So I'm giving Manus permission to operate my browser. But that's cool.And so you can use that to analyze deals for you.

All right, number five, use AI to build your online presence. Use AI to write blogs or social media posts, you know, Instagram posts, Facebook posts, emails, if you have a list of customers, of buyers, of sellers, or whoever, right?Use AI to write emails for you, write posts for you. I take these kinds of podcasts that I do, and I turn them around into articles and blog posts and emails and written forms. So you can take stuff that you've actually spoken and then have AI reproduce that for you, okay?Consistency builds authority, and authority builds deal flow. Important thing to understand there. So if you're consistent with your online presence, your social media presence, it helps you build authority, which then gives you more credibility so you can do more deals.

Number six, stay informed with AI as a research assistant for you. So when you find things in the news that you like or that are interesting, I like the website Inman, I-N-M-A-N.com. It's kind of like an industry news thing for realtors, talks a lot about what's going on in the real estate world in the United States.And so when you find interesting articles, or a lot of times those articles link to other articles, and I think that might've been one of the ways I found this one that I've been talking about on Citroen Research, but ask AI to summarize these economic reports. The Fed releases all these statements and I don't understand them, right? So you could ask AI to analyze or go out and figure out, have it go look at all the different Fed reports, the news stories, the housing data, and ask it to analyze it for you and give you the results of what it finds out.

So make it like a research assistant. I use this all the time. I'm looking at maybe I want to pick a new market and I'm looking, trying to decide between Florida and Tennessee for doing land.And I say, all right, so look at these two markets and which market would be a better market to wholesale vacant land in? I want you to look for recent activity. Where are there more buyers recently buying vacant land here?And inside those markets, where is the demand happening? What county, what zip code is all the activity happening? And it'll help you find that out.

The other thing I do a lot is I willgo, I subscribe to other services that give me a lot of data. And so I might pull the data from an entire state into a spreadsheet and I'll upload that spreadsheet to AI. And I'll say, hey, analyze this spreadsheet.And what I want to know is this and this and this. Help me figure that out. And tell it what you're doing and tell it why you're doing it. Say, hey, I'm trying to wholesale vacant land. I want to find vacant land deals that I can turn around and sell quickly. I want to find cheap deals.I don't want big expensive properties. So where should I focus my efforts based on all of this data? And it'll do your research for you, which is pretty cool.

All right. Number seven, use AI to find off market sellers. So AI tools can actually go online and scrape data and help you identify motivated seller profiles.You know, I know a lot of people are doing this right now, using AI to scrape Zillow or Realtor.com or Redfin to find properties that there might be some good signs of motivation. I was having AI the other day look into all the counties in a certain state. And I was asking it, all right, find the counties that have the biggest spread, the largest spread between what properties are selling for and what they are appraised for.What does the county appraise those properties? Now, why would I do that? Because like, what if you find a county where everything is being appraised for like $50 an acre or let's say $5,000 an acre, but they're selling for $10,000 an acre.

And so when you're talking to a seller and they're trying, they don't know what price they want for the property, you could tell them, hey, listen, it's appraised for $5,000. You want to start there. And so you could start your negotiating right at close to what these properties are currently appraised for.And then you can turn around and sell it for what they're actually really selling for. Does that make sense? So what if you could find a way to find these zip codes or the counties that have that biggest discrepancy on what they're actually selling for and what they're appraised for?Because with vacant land, for example, you can't just, Zillow doesn't do Zestimates for small, cheap vacant land like that. So use it to find the hot markets, target the right people and the right zip codes. You want to drill down, be laser focused, not spray and pray marketing.You want to be focused.

Number eight, use AI to automate your follow-up. Oh, this is amazing.Because you know this, most deals come from your fifth or sixth, seventh, eighth follow-up. 75%, 85% of your deals are going to come from the follow-up. So what if you had just AI do it for you?And there's some new tools coming out that we're testing right now with AI voice agents that will call your old leads for you and follow up with them for you. And it doesn't pretend to be a human. It says, hey, I'm Joe's AI assistant just following up with you.

Have you sold your vacant land yet? Have you sold your house yet? We're also using that AI to answer the phones when people call in.So it's really good. And you can have AI then send text messages and emails for you to follow up using some of the notes that you've used before in the past. AI can write that follow-up and automate it for you.So it happens for you in spite of you, which is an amazing source for using AI.

All right, number nine, learn enough AI to spot the opportunities that others miss. So what if you could use AI to figure out, okay, which jobs is AI killing in which specific markets?In other words, like, take a look at the U.S., ask AI, what parts of the country, which cities are going to see or are seeing right now the biggest disruption in the labor workforce, because maybe that would be a good area to start targeting motivated sellers. And there are neighborhoods where distressed sellers are going to start appearing really, fast if they haven't already. I know in St. Louis, the International Data Headquarters for MasterCard is in one of the suburbs in St. Louis. And I don't know what's going on with MasterCard, but I have a sneaky feeling that AI is slowly replacing a lot of jobs there. And I know this too. In the suburb, there are a lot of people, thousands of them that work for MasterCard that may become motivated sellers really soon.So where in your market are those kinds of pockets? You can use AI to help you kind of try to figure that.

All right, finally, number 10, future-proof your own income streams.Don't rely on one skill that AI could replace. Simple as that. So if you're a bookkeeper, you know what?

Maybe AI is going to replace that someday. I don't think it's going to happen as quickly as everybody is predicting, but it could happen. So make sure that all your income is not reliant on one skill that AI can replace.And the same with software. If you create software, be a little nervous, right? Because AI, if your software is popular enough, if it's not unique enough, AI, somebody can create an AI that can do all that.

Now, the reason I love FreedomSoft, and I think Rob Swanson, the guy, my friend who owns FreedomSoft is going to be safe for a long time, is because FreedomSoft does more than just manage your leads. It's more than just a database. You get your lists.It will build your websites. It'll give you your phone numbers. It'll do your direct mail for you.

It has AI in it. And so it is integrating things that, you know, AI, if I were to build something like that, it would cost me still, even though AI, I could have AI build a It's not going to do my direct mail for me. It's not going to get me access to hundreds of millions of records that are, it costs, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get this data.

It's not going to give me all of that data that I need, you know, and then to get the phone numbers to do integrate digital signatures and emails and texting and automated follow-up. If you have software that's likereally simple and you've been selling it for a while, be careful because data, I mean, AI is going to be able to replace that soon. So make sure you have things that can't be duplicated very easily and you'll be around for a long, long time.

Okay. So don't rely on one skill that AI could replace. Don't rely on one software that you're selling that AI could replace.

Build systems and audiences and assets that work for you while you sleep. All right. So I know that was a lot to throw down.

I hope you got something out of it. This was way longer podcast than I intended it to be. I need to hurry up and get off here because I'm at a coffee shop.

I got a coaching call in 10 minutes with my peeps. What's up? So look forward to talking to you again soon.Take care.