Insights into AI-Driven Strategies for Multifamily Success

Welcome back to another episode of the Multifamily Innovation Podcast. I'm your host, patrick Antrim, and I've got a great guest today, part of our team now, who has done some really incredible things in multifamily, and we're so excited to have her not only in the studio but here making things better for our company. So we've got our Multifamily Leadership Summits, our Innovation Council, all of the things with the Multifamily Women's Summit and all the different things that we're going to be doing from the studio. And then what we'll talk about later today is our platform, nectar Flow, which you'll hear more about.

So, for those of you that are just tuning in, multifamily Innovation Council is a membership organization and we are a national program for executives that are looking to create a profitable multifamily investment, and so we're bringing together AI, innovation, technology and leadership and bringing together people to move through what's required to build a healthy organization. Now, if you're not yet registered for the Multifamily Innovation and AI Summit, go ahead and do that. That's at multifamilyinnovationcom. Go ahead and do that and then come back and finish this episode. But until then, I've got a great guest in the studio with me, lauren Stinson. She's our vice president of media marketing and all things marketing with Nectar Flow now, so welcome in.

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, and many other things probably right.

Many other things, All the things that the stories that need to be told.

Executive producer, probably writer, all the things. So are you excited to showcase some of the things that you've developed in your career helping other, I guess, operators in the business?

Absolutely so. You know, I've spent the last two weeks really getting involved in your business and what you're doing here, and I was telling Carrie earlier, my mind is just blown at what you, what you have already built, and normally I would say what you are building, which is, it's both, but I, what I find so impressive is everything that I would think of to come in and do just to. You know, get geared up to go. You're already 40 steps ahead of me at every moment, and so I've been, just at every turn, incredibly impressed with what you have built already and where this can go.

Yeah, you know it's interesting.

I don't want to take any credit for it, because what we tend to do here is you know, when you understand the customer and you get into the hearts and the minds of the conversation that customers already have, and you know, if you pay attention, ask them, survey.

Obviously, we do the research nationally on the best places to work multifamily, so that gives us a great insight into what it means to build a healthy organization, what people care about and the difference when you move the needle on some of these engagement practices, what it means financially to a business, and then, with the Innovation Council, what we believe is more, I would say, community driven innovation. It's a collective genius of all these operators, from new developers to hundreds of thousands of units to 1,500 units, and it's exciting to see those conversations unfold, giving way for better results, connectivity and actions that ultimately make the company better. I've always been saying that it's not about information, more education, more information. It's not about information, more education, more information. People need results, yeah, and that's what gets inspired, because all we're doing is just listening and then finding formats that make sense in a modern world that we live in.

Yeah, and that's very true. And you know, from a marketing stance obviously, I come into a company and I see, wow, you have your hand in a lot of different spaces and it's looks overwhelming at first, but now that I've I've immersed myself in it and I see how every part of the business fuels the next part, right, how the, the innovation council, then actually fuels the events where they gather to talk about the problems that have been identified.

You gather a group together, you innovate, you talk about the main core issues you've identified and then you create products to solve those problems. Every single part of the business that you've built fuels the next step, which is really cool to see, and for me, I thought I was innovative as a human. I really don't feel like I knew what that meant until I came here.

Yeah, man, I have the chills. The way that you articulated that is really special, being that you haven't been here that long and the fact that you can recognize that. I'm excited for that and because you know it's difficult today with so much media, so much noise Like, who do you trust? Right, and what I want people to do is not even trust us, like trust themselves, and that's why I keep going back to this If you collaborate right.

I'm spending a lot of time in AI based off of the projects that I'm working on with our teams and developers, and one of the things that's inspiring with that work that I get to do is in the AI community.

It's very I mean, it's very open. People are collaborating, connected, and we don't benefit really from that in the multifamily space and so in things like that we do at the council, when people can trust themselves and their own due diligence, knowing they will find their next big move, their next big idea, from maybe a failure that they did by trying something, not because they trust a big logo, you know, or a logo of somebody else or a certain venture backed company or funding, Like those are great signals, but the greatest signal for their business process for their reasons, not anyone else's is the ability to have the courage to take the action, get into something that you know you have some way to get data and figure out. Did this work? I've done some things that are pretty awful, but, man, it opened up just markets for us and I really want people listening and watching, I guess, to just trust themselves, and the only way to do that is through action, right Taking action.

Yeah, and I think to your point, having been in the industry as long as I have especially, I've been on the supplier side, I've been on the management side, right, I've hopped around in the industry and there's a lack of best practices in general and I think it comes from this kind of idea that we can't collaborate with our competitors. Necessarily. There's this vibe and it actually has created an industry where we can't innovate very easily because there aren't just general best practices that are in place for the industry as a whole. So I think a lot of what you're doing here and getting the council together that might be from totally different companies that might not have the same views that's actually bringing people together to establish a standard that we're going to hold ourselves to. That needs to be in place to innovate.

You know you bring up a great point. If you think of medicine, doctors are saving lives. I mean, the stuff we're doing is it's really not that complicated. And if you get out into the AI communities, you'll realize that the world that we're going to is far more advanced than we may estimate. And in the medical community you know, you have these clinical trials, you have the Journal of Medicine like to understand the patient experience and knowing that that collaboration is entirely necessary for total patient care. Right, nobody knows everything anymore, and I've been saying this a long time around apartment owners and operators that they're far more technically advanced than they take credit for. They're far more technically advanced than they take credit for They've been developers far longer than there was even code to develop.

What I mean by developers is having a vision for a business buying the land, digging holes, getting utilities, going to city count like making things happen way before there's even revenue things happen way before there's even revenue and then understanding those disciplines that need to come together from architects to engineers. All the I mean it's and you know this in the lease up process it can get ugly, it can get messy, there's problems, and I think that the way those businesses startup businesses, which is a lease up are structured is it forces the operator, the owner operator, to know and to have a longer term vision, even if they are exiting after they lease it up or stabilize, they know there's a vision for that. And with technology we're not that collaborative. And you think building code is Python code. I mean you need to. You know everybody needs to have the same set of plans, right, and so I agree with you that there are some opportunities where we can improve upon this collaboration and opening up networks. Networks so data can flow, so that best practices can be shared.

And people you know they make decisions for their own reasons and their own investment objectives and, to your point, the best practice is very difficult because the investment timelines are different, the investment structures are different and investment goals, you know, and the people and are different. The investment structures are different, right, and investment goals, you know, and the people, the culture, right. And when I was hiring management companies, I mean I've hired all of them that are great, local, the largest, all that and at the end of the day it came down to how good that regional manager put good people on site. Yeah.

And I think the AI stuff that I'm leaning into, everybody's going to have the AI right. Everybody's going to have this sort of automated life and it's going to get people to think differently about even how they value contribution in society. And it's really exciting in many ways and it's scary in many ways because it's scary in many ways because it's unknown. Nobody has the answer. I don't claim to have the answer, but what I do know is that people are going to need stability, they're going to need a little bit of certainty, and leadership is how we differentiate, because what I'm studying and learning about is that AI and this conversation that we're having with customers the differentiator going forward is probably going to be a human experience. Right, right, it'll swing Right now. It's nice and we've been told it's the customer advantage and all that stuff. But who knows, it may be people are paying premium to have special access. I mean, you think about it?

It's true.

Yeah, well, and you think about the individual and this is why I'm excited to dive into the software piece individual who might be concerned where their next move would be or what would happen if you know, the industry innovated to a way where I was no longer relevant.

Right, that's an individual's fear when it comes to AI, and I think a lot of what you built, from what I can see it actually makes AI palpable to the individual. To say, it elevates the individual for, say, a copywriter, right, like, I'm blogging and I can automate that piece, but which pieces of it do I still control? And it teaches someone how to work alongside AI. And I'm now elevated as an individual. I can go into any company and say, hey, I'm a copywriter, I can, I can automate 70% of my workflow and I can actually also now do X, y and Z and I'm learning to elevate myself and work along AI, which is coming right no matter what. And so it eliminates that fear factor that you're talking about, I think, from the individual stance, but also from that leadership stance, to look at someone's workflow and understand which pieces they can automate.

And now they're understanding what's expected of their, the people that are working for them yeah, uh, you know, in many ways we've failed our industry and what I mean by that is there's regulation, there's lawsuits, uh, they're, they're the. The brand isn't strong. I mean they're making movies about how we tear down, build like it's. It's it the industry, the people that I know the industry are is remarkable people, especially when we go through like our best places to work programs. I mean, you go through that research. These companies do so many incredible things for the communities that they operate in and for the people that they bring together employees, residents, all that stuff. And unfortunately, that's not the brand right, the brand is we're the ones that raise the rents and there are challenges with that and most of those challenges because right now that's the only path to income. There's some alpha return you can get through adjacent income and efficiency and stuff like that. But Wall Street and Silicon Valley don't really look at our industry because they can't access our industry right.

I mean Amazon, skirted around, but where's Tesla, where's Apple, where's American Express? And so, until we understand that data problem and we realize that data is our competitive advantage to not only create an experience for employees and customers, but also unlock other ways to get to the yield, so the investors' return and risk is protected, but the customers. We don't take away purchasing power, we give it back to them. Right.

And there's a lot to this conversation. We don't really have any leadership around it. There's a lot to this conversation. We don't really have any leadership around it and we're just taking the same linear things, trying to fight and write letters and PDFs to Congress, and it's not working. It's never worked and there's a lot of money going to those resources. So innovation will win and innovation will be that answer.

So, for those of you out there that are listening or watching, if I'm a leasing agent or a maintenance technician or a regional manager right now and I'm concerned about AI or automation, or if I'm in marketing, you know marketing is probably the easiest target. You know, if I'm sitting here wondering what my company is going to do with that stuff number one you don't know what your company is going to do because they may be in reaction mode. It may get ugly before it gets better. I mean, to your point, build a great brand, work in public, let people know how you think and have great energy right, talk about the solution, be part of energy, which is scarce and leadership is scarce. So if you can be positive, you can be a great leader and you can bring energy to a team. People will find a spot for you. That's when we found a spot for you.

We knew right away, like okay, we knew that Now what I would think about in terms of the tech and the AI and what's going to happen with my role and centralized and all that stuff. Don't be afraid, I'll tell you why. This technology gives you the ability to have a team of world-class geniuses next to you to do your job. So, for example, let's say I'm a leasing agent and I need to do a report. Now it's my third day on the job and the asset manager is doing an inspection because there's a refinance and it's messy and things are going on. Now I have the ability to understand the financial part of the business or access information that otherwise people would fear doing. They're not going to call, on the third day of their job, the vice president of the company or the CFO and ask a question of what does this NOI word mean? Right.

Right. So now you've given the person the power to have access to supreme intelligence, to then go into the next meeting with better conversation and then have control over their own outcomes. So it's not my company didn't train me, it's not any of that stuff. Now I will say you know, as an organization, especially enterprise with fair housing, and you know we have regulatory bodies of industry that is tricky with compliance and stuff. When we're in chat, gpt and these types of things, we have to be careful in terms of how we communicate, because these things are training the large language models and, to your point, around our technology, the multifamily GPT stuff.

You know we're using these things at the API level. So it's where you could give a company access to a conversational assistant that would retrieve using what we call retrieval, augmented generation, which means at the API level, we're systematically or programmatically using the API to retrieve our own documentation, instead of looking through 97 pages of a document which, by the way, nobody would do. They would just make up the answer and get the answer that they need, whatever that may be. So I think it's going to help people do a better job. And if we take artificial and replace it with assistant, what's wrong with that? Did you not want to have an assistant going through all those roles?

I want an AI assistant that's not going to have typos and errors.

I don't worry about any of that anymore and you know it's interesting because you know this is our second shot at the internet. So we looked at when, when the internet and I think it was 96, somewhere on there we had like 110,000 websites or whatever, and then 12 years later, it was like just an astonishing number. Like at that point in time, nobody knew then that that was going to play out. It's. This is exponentially greater than that, yeah, and I don't know. I think us, I think our authentic self, however we describe that. I'm still trying to figure out what that is is. We have to be curious, we have to be focused on connecting and that's why we do that. Friday meeting. Yeah.

We have to stay connected, and we do have to do that in person, too. That's why we have our yeah in person stuff, but uh, I don't remember your question. It's okay, but a lot of information, you know what here and here's the.

The great part is that I feel like I'm here as someone fresh, you know fresh into this, this world and this product and what you've been doing, and I think that's where I can help translate, right Like you're. You're so big, high level, big picture of what you could do and it's so incredible. But the actual translation is what this software can actually do, and so I want to take a stab at explaining to you and explaining to our audience what that?

is Two weeks in barely even knowing AI. To be honest with you, I was just as uncomfortable with AI conversations as anyone else. I'd been in all of the webinars, the, you know, the conferences that discussed it, but did anyone ever make it palpable really for anyone to understand? I mean, honestly, not until now for me. So that's what got me so excited is that I feel like after two weeks, I understand AI better than I could after watching a million webinars yeah, actually seeing it.

So what the platform does is there is basically a central hub, a platform where you can create scenarios. You're calling them scenarios. They're almost like a workflow of any given task that any of your employees has. So the example that's very easy to digest in the marketing world is blogging, and so within those workflows, you have your apps that are basically speaking to one another, like a Zapier um, that you're creating connections within. That you're placing AI within the structure of that workflow where it makes sense.

So so essentially, my blogger is going to we create a, a multifamily specific but even further, a company specific agent that is going to speak to that large language model and teach it my company, my brand, my guidelines, how we speak. We want to create wins for our clients. Whatever that is, from a marketing perspective, that I really want to train that large language model on. Now I'm creating blogs that are relevant to me as a company, that's relevant to my industry, but still pulling in language that I want to use, all while optimizing SEO, using all the keywords that I need to appear first in a Google search and then generating a blog for me that I then only have to review and post.

Yes and wow. I have to say what a great job you did explaining that and you know, we hope our employees do that and what do they do?

They get distracted and they should because a customer comes in Right, or they get promoted, and then you have a new hire and then maybe they don't know the brand identity or the ideal customer or the persona for that lease up. Another thing that I thought was interesting the way you described those apps so you can think about the bubbles in the workflow. Let's call them four or five of them across. A scenario is, if you had an agency blogging for you or a property manager writing an article, then they you know they're doing all of those tasks. They may not be experts in all those tasks, but what I love about this is you can have one bubble in the workflow that's great at writing the article because it's retrieving, as you mentioned, all that information and it's knowing that because we get it privately for that company and that customer they're after, and then that data and action goes to the next step, automated, without any employee involvement, and that would be maybe they're doing seo, so now it's trained specifically on seo, right, and most employees, right, they're not thinking through this like at that level, so you have to bring in a team to do that and then the next thing is like okay, okay, let's talk about social right.

So now it's writing for LinkedIn or it's writing for Instagram and it's writing for X right or Facebook, and each one of those has its own expert multifamily GPT that's narrow and specialized in that aspect, and I think that's really where you cannot expect that of a human and you don't want to hire all those people because it's too expensive, and so what we end up doing with that process and that use case is it's about generating new rentals right, being in control of the demand and being able to be discovered where people are doing these searches right, and then you know, maybe even reducing advertising costs right, and then ultimately giving other. If you're doing other things in the business, like nurture tools and things like that, now you have other assets that then can be used in other things you've invested in right, and so it's exciting, and that's just a very simple use case, and I love the way that you explained that, because, man, you are a fast learner. I mean it's one of many.

But I just remember seeing the software. I told you this I was driving home and I literally—I'm usually driving home I got the windows down, I got a song on, I got my podcast, whatever it is. I literally drove home that day just and my wheels were just spinning on how far this could go and how many possibilities and how many, and I just got into the weeds of how many of my processes could I have automated to create room for me to do so much more in my career, in my job, if I just had a tool like this. And I like, honestly, my mind was kind of blown and it really took some time to process, and I think that's why you know, coming up with one tool that makes sense of all of it the blogger is is the way to go, because then now, now we get it and now we can also think about how many more of these can I build out that can automate everything in my business to where my people know how to use AI in a responsible way.

I know how my people are using AI. I don't have to ask questions well, did GPT write this or where did this come from? And I just think it just creates this very palpable way to use AI.

Yes, and you know, for Nectar Flow customers. You know we look at it like so. When I was running large real estate companies and even recently, right, I mean you watch work get done, you see the people working, see the people working and when things are done differently from remote locations and things like that. This is a great way for a leader to understand how work's getting done, where things are breaking, where there's redundancy, if they want to use first principles thinking and look at really really getting efficient. It's a great assessment tool as a way just to understand how the organization functions.

So most of the larger REITs would have millions of dollars invested in these types of platforms, with CTOs and teams of people to work through this, which is wonderful because they have to. They understand that there needs to be enterprise value for the organization. They need to be able to control their data, how it flows, have access to it and be able to do things even if people don't show up for work, and so what we are doing with Nectar Flow is we're giving people the opportunity, regardless of the size of your company, to be one, like you would have a platform that is millions of dollars, you know, on your platform. You just you look at it like Amazon, where you're renting it on demand, right, so you can access that. And then we set aside a team for those that want to lean in and get the most out of this managed services, ai developers, technology orchestrators and a team to really help them what we call crawl, walk, run and start. And I think that blogging thing is a great way to start, because who doesn't want more rents?

Right, and who doesn't want to be that? First thing that appears when you search best apartments in Atlanta.

Right, and they may have a cost to that already. That completely makes sense, right.

Yeah, no, I think it's really brilliant and you know, like you said, there are there are people that will only want that tool, or there's people that will want this whole platform in their hands to build out every single tool they possibly could want, Right? So, um, I think it's going to go more that direction where they use one and they, they get hungry for more, Um, but, but. But, to your point, I mean, and to both of our points. You know, telling this story publicly is is hopefully going to make it as palpable as it was for me to see. You know, this is how AI can be managed, this is how a workflow can be managed, and it doesn't have to be as hard as we've been making it traditionally right. My mind is still blown thinking about how complicated we've been making all of these elements and the software just solved for all of it yeah, that's true incredible.

Yeah, um, you know there's a lot of different places we can take this conversation to. I think with um, you know the ability to reduce redundant task for an employee, provide that employee experience where they may not want to quit now because work is a little more interesting. I'm actually thinking and doing different things maybe interact with the customer, or maybe I can have the day off or something like that. Right, that's useful. The other piece of it is you know you can't not have data in your business. You can't not have data in your business.

I mean, it's just we've been able to get away with it for I don't know how long, and you just can't be an effective organization without the understanding of the insights and the data from your customer. And the trouble that I see now is that, in many ways, the way that we authenticate API connections can be troublesome for some people that want to do things that are an up and coming startup, those types of things, and so I think the ability for a real estate operator to have their own API to their own data, like most software out there, all they would need to do is have an endpoint on our platform and they'd be able to pull whatever they needed to do to do the thing they wanted to do, and sometimes it's not moving it into a core system, it's doing something so they can provide a unique thing for an investor or they want to know more about their customer, how long a tour is happening virtual versus self-guided or video tour and you cannot expect even a Microsoft to come in and save the day. You cannot have a software that's built uniquely for every company, right? So what we're doing is we're giving real estate owners and operators, and also our vendor technology companies the ability to develop micro software solutions that solve certain problems, and then we provide them this development team to make it happen.

And those are the types of problems that are not going to ever enter the market. People are not going to fund a venture-backed company on how to do leasing commissions or track them or what have you. It's not going to happen. It's not big enough of a deal of a problem to happen. It's not big enough of a deal of a problem and so.

But a company it's spending thousands of dollars on the problem, right, and so that's where I really think it's special is an executive can think like this isn't for IT, this is not an IT thing, this is critical business. This is the ability. Like you know debt and equity and JV deals and real estate and people. You need to know how business works with technology, and we're trying to support people in the council for that. But those are the executive leaders that win tomorrow is those that bring technology together with their disciplines of real estate and they create that competitive advantage winning company that winners want to work for, and they have a vision set for the future. And if you don't think you need data for that, then you know I have a few articles to share to people for that Right exactly.

Well, and I love that too, because I will say, like I consider myself, you know, a humanitarian and I very much see that in you too. And and what I loved is, in looking at this platform, I was like, okay, who stands? Does anyone stand to lose here? And I was, and I was kind of shocked to say no, everybody stands to benefit. Because I was thinking about our vendor partners and how, actually, by using these integrations so in in the way I explained it before, with my two week knowledge, um, in these scenarios, you can actually filter a vendor partner into these scenarios as an app that is now working as a part of a workflow. So here is where this vendor partner fits into this workflow and we're, almost through this platform, selling on their behalf.

For sure.

And so I was like, wow, what could this do for them? You know, get their name out there immediately, see where they fit into the big picture of a business and which workflows they best fit into. And oh, by the way, x company has built this beautiful workflow now and and other people can use that workflow as a best practice. What we were talking about developing best practices, and so now you're creating best practices. Just naturally, these suppliers are not having to explain what they do. It's already there and it's very easy to digest in that way.

So I was like, wow, that actually benefits them. It benefits the employee to know how to work along AI and what's expected of them. It elevates them as a person and as an individual, and I just couldn't see anybody who loses in this scenario. It gives a company ownership of their own workflows and their own data. To now say to your point, we haven't even touched on this, but here, like, I can integrate my PMS, but I'm not solely reliant on my PMS to integrate with all these different supplier partners, which is a pain for them too. You know, I'm not I'm sure the PMS isn't, you know just just chomping at the bit to create nonstop APIs out to these, you know, just chomping at the bit to create nonstop APIs. Out to these, you know, supplier partners. So now you're owning that hub, which is just fascinating and incredible.

Yeah, you know it's interesting and maybe I can take a shot at this. You know these API connections right now are point to point and there's a lot of frustration around them and I got to tell you you talk about like I would say, like a Yardi or a RealPage. These are big companies in multifamily and you know you got to hand it to them. I mean, they've built incredible businesses. I mean, think about that. And the Yardi story is just an incredible entrepreneurial story, right, and my understanding is they have a great culture as well and they do some great things and goodness. They are robust, financially successful and people rely on them. And I know, when I was a user, I mean it was because we had portfolios of multifamily and we also had commercial office, right, and so there are real reasons, reasons and especially like Wall Street, I mean there are people that are locked into status. I think most people are scared of their accountants more than anything. That's really what it comes down to, because our platform can connect to anything with an API, and what's fascinating is there's going to be some bias around what they think like we don't actually need to integrate with the PMS. We're just allowing customers to integrate their own things. Right now, the vendors are the ones paying for the integrations and doing the integrations. My vision is that the real estate operators I think I can make the PMSs more money on API integration fees, which someone would say, what are you talking about? And I'm saying, yes, but there's more opportunity for those PMSs to get maybe a little bit higher tier from the real estate company right, and allow them access to their data, and what that does is it unlocks thousands of people to charge an API fee to, instead of just a few vendors that in some cases, they're in competition with and they've got stuff going on and all that stuff. So it's tricky, but you know they've kept our data safe and good, to our knowledge at least and so I think that we have to be grateful. When you think big and you have abundance, and you have to know that we've collected rents and we've been able to achieve returns and hire people and do some great things, and a lot of people that complain about these things have never really built anything and it's hard things, and a lot of people that complain about these things have never really built anything Right, and it's hard, it's constantly changing, and so anybody that's complaining about the PMS system. That's not the solution to complain. So we created a solution that we believe will help them reduce support on band-aiding and doing APIs and those types of things, because we can do some really awesome stuff in here that just goes beyond. Like a REST API, we can transform data, we can structure data, we do all kinds of things that allow for— we can go backwards in time, you know. And so what? I think the PMS stands to benefit the most if they're open to it and someone will be open to it. I mean, we can build our own if we wanted to. We can open source it. Right, we have the resources to do that. So I don't know that that's the priority.

When I first through the Innovation Council, which is more than 2 million units and growing, we did research in the council and beyond, so we had about 1.6 million units actually respond to the survey and we only sent out one email, and that's what gave me the idea to solve this problem, and I thought I was going to solve the integration problem because I said you know what I'm tired of hearing about it Ten years doing surveys and sponsors coming to our events, and it was just like vendors wanting to come to market and and you know it was a problem. And so we thought, well, we're, we can solve it because technically any of the PMSs can't Right. Right, because it would be they're trying to do their own marketplaces. You can't, there's nothing in it. Isn't that what they want us to be doing, unbiased? You can't, there's nothing in it, unbiased, it's just. There needs to be something in the middle and that's where we sit in the industry. So I thought, well, let's first talk to people. So we interviewed technology companies, real estate operators and with the integration survey, it was just a lot of data around the costs and efficiency and a lot of open, good dialogue in the questions. But as I went through this, you know when you write a check, you learn fast and when you talk to developers, you learn accelerated versus just kind of watching on the sidelines.

And I expanded my business through first principles thinking and I realized at first I thought I was solving the integration problem and then I realized I don't even need to touch that because something else is going to solve that, that we don't need to take the risk in solving. So we're going to let people play out, however they play out. What we realized is we started to think about everything that's happening outside the PMS and we looked at work spreadsheets, payroll, think of the employee turnover. You know someone is sitting in there doing a new employee signature every time that happens, new onboarding. There is so much found money outside the PMS and the PMS can't go there. So what we've done is we've created the BMS, which we call the business management system, because what happens with property management systems? Properties come and go, businesses pretty much stay together for a long time. It's the LLCs that get flipped in 36 months or whatever, and the integrations need to be torn down and put back up.

But if you have a business management system, then technically the PMS would integrate with us and that's what I'm saying is you would have a real estate operator, would be able to just authenticate, just like they would, and all the standards and specs are as secure and more secure than even now. Because right now everything is happening programmatically and there's not errors, there's not queuing. There's some things that create inefficiencies for the PMS and the developer of the point solution, technology product, technology product, because they are funded with a fast, accelerated roadmap and they're messing and fussing with api connections programmatically. Where we've taken all that work down. We want the vendor to give us their documentation and we'll bring them customers. Yeah, we build the api connections so they can do it no code. They can do it fast and they can allow customers to get access to their product quickly and that's that's. That's the way that works, and so we're super excited because we believe we can help those.

We think we can bring the vendor, technology partners, customers because of the platform.

People are going to want to see those bubbles and what's this all about?

Well, call the vendor and get the api key and you're in right, and I think we can reduce their development cost on what it takes for their funded engineers to build API connections and build better products. For the customer, the PMS, I think we can provide a support system to stabilize the structure around the API endpoints through modular and no-code things, because what we want is we want Lauren doing API connections, we want people doing the work, doing the workflows. Right now, all the integrations are happening from programmers. Well, they don't do the work right, so doesn't it make sense for the people that do the work to be able to control the workflow? Yes, so this is what this platform does. And then for the real estate investor now they have data, they can get alpha returns in their property because maybe there's a tech solution that comes along and they get an API connection. They get to their data, they get what they need and they do some fun stuff, make some value for you know, their investors and owners, and even employees.

Yeah, Everybody stands to benefit. That's right. It's pretty incredible, I mean. Usually, yeah, you look at any software and you think this is going to do something. This is going to rustle some feather.

Yeah, I got on a roll there, you did?

I got on a roll. You really did.

I'll have to listen to the recording and say what did I say? I kind of hear when I crystallize, but I really know this stuff. I really know it and what I really am excited about what other people don't know is the integration problem is only there because we haven't negotiated to get our own data. Mm-hmm.

But this platform wasn't there before. So even if they negotiated, what would they do with it? Right, you know, dropbox made AWS and cloud architecture and sharing files very easy for the customer. That's what we're doing. So, if you think about, in the cloud era, you had Google Drive, you had Microsoft and then Apple. You had Apple, right, like iCloud, and it's like, well, which one do you like?

If you had something in iCloud, how do you share it with someone with Google or Microsoft, right, and iCloud, and it's like, well, which one do you like? If you had something in iCloud, how do you share it with someone with Google or Microsoft, right, and you had to either sign in with a Gmail account, all this. It was messy. Well, dropbox came in and said, hey, we're just really AWS, and if you've been in AWS, it's you know you need to be a CTO to manage through this process. They made it easy, right, and they just said just share a document, no matter what you've got. Yeah, and their business went nuts because they made it easy and they provided value for a customer and you know we stand to work on that for our multifamily clients.

Yeah, Well, what's really funny is that, you know, I came in with a lens of traditional industry knowledge, right, and so, coming in here, I think you had said something along the lines of on a slide your data, put your data in here and we'll you know. And I immediately went no, no, right, cause, initially you're you. When you think of data, you think of, like, proprietary numbers. You know that kind of data and what you mean when you say data is your employee handbook, your accessible data. It can be literally anything, but actually you're putting it in their hands, right, not ours. We're not hosting it. Yeah, exactly, I think that's where what, really, from my eyes as a marketer, I'm like, okay, we're not holding your data, you are owning your data, not your premise, you are now in ownership of your own data. And to me, that was a piece that needed to click, because my traditional industry knowledge made me immediately tense up at that word or that thought.

And some companies will say I want it on Azure, I want it in AWS, I want it on AWS, I want it on Google Cloud, I want it in a data store, I want it on-premise. You can do all of that. Yeah. And we have some pretty smart people to help people with that and it can. You know, people, it's hard to appreciate what we don't understand. Yeah, and it can feel it's scary, you know. Yeah.

And back to my point earlier on about trust your own actions. Trust yourself, do it you know and take the action. And we are designed to grow and continually learn, and I know what I do is I look back at everything I've ever done and it's just like there's times when you think like well, I don't know if that's me, I can do that. And then every time I get into the circles with the people and you collaborate and you pay attention, you put yourself around the right people and you realize like we're all as smart as we need to be. In fact, now, with access to large language models and perplexity, and if you want to go to Pi and have some empathetic, I mean you have probably a counselor there. Now we have. It's the most exciting time to be alive and to be able to make an impact for a company. Yeah.

You know, and now's the time to be bold. Be that bold leader, you know. Going back to your point where, what does that leader do? I'm a VP and people are cutting back or regional, or they're thinking about optimizing or centralizing and all this, whatever I mean, just be that leader. And every company wants to generate more revenue and every company wants to generate more revenue. Bring them more revenue through energy, through attention, through selling, whatever that is. And you know, people will be owning the buildings that they're working in if they pay attention.

Right, yeah, and you've done such a good job of creating those networks for yourself outside of the industry that you've seen this play out in other industries and play out well. It really is the best practice of most other industries as a whole, right, so I think that's why multifamily has been needing something like this for a very long time.

Yeah, and you know, sometimes we learn from pain more than we learn from the bigger, better plot process. Because I look at industries that got it wrong too. I mean you think about hotel hospitality. I mean they missed the whole Airbnb. You know you look at the, you can always say the taxis and all that. They missed the ride sharing. You know automotive industry. They missed Tesla EVs and they're catching up. They'll chase.

And you know now, tesla being the company it is today, I mean it will probably own the AI software in the autonomous vehicle, right Like, whereas Ford's trying to sell one product one time and Tesla's selling one product and trying to get the price of the car down for the customer and then has just this infinite scale of revenue because it has data or the technology that's probably going to power other cars. And so real estate operators if you look at real estate, we spend, I don't know, 80, 90% of our time indoors. You look back 30, 40 years in a car and it's you know. You look back 30, 40 years in a car and seatbelts are different and safety is different, sound is different, all kinds of the style, everything. But you look at 30, 40 years of an apartment building and it's like what have we been doing? You know what we've been doing Cashing million-dollar checks, because success is definitely the problem here. Yeah.

You know, yeah, and until, like, manufacture a stressor. You know, when I was before COVID, I owned a media company, events. Right, we did Events and I did a project for Tony Robbins, helped him build mastermindcom At his home. He put his chest, he leaned on me and he said when 9-11 happened, his business was really, really in trouble. I'm looking at this giant of a man and I'm thinking, my goodness, with that brand, who am I? I just have this little conference business in multifamily and I called my wife and I said we got to invest in video and we hired a producer. I went to NBC Studios Jimmy Fallon show and I made a decision to not have the biggest event, to not do trade shows, to do things differently and to say we're going to have a. We'll call it a small event, 200, 500 people, but a big audience. Small event, big audience. Right.

Because I can get more people will listen to this podcast and will attend the largest event in multifamily, right, yeah? So with that, we leaned into before COVID video in a studio. Now you're sitting on a stage right talking with me and the reality is I manufactured. I didn't think it was going to be COVID. I didn't know what it was going to be and I don't even know why, but when it happened we were ready and we're in business because of that decision. Yeah.

And you know a lot of people thought I was crazy. You know they probably still do right now. And in that box over in our studio there's that we send to our members Multifamily Innovation Council members. When you open it, there's a quote in there and it says the riskiest thing we can do is manage that status quo. So I think people need to learn for themselves, get into their own actions, mess it up, be awful, and that's the learning, you know. And because change is coming and our ability to move through, that will be the empowerment that we have because we believe in ourselves. I wake up every day and I feel like a freaking superhero because what I've been through what I've had to do and I feel unstoppable.

And I feel unstoppable and the amount of capital and financial partners I have behind me to reimagine this industry is astonishing. It is literally I can't even. I got the chills and you've met some of these people.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible. It's pretty interesting. It's really incredible.

And we can help our friends that live in apartments. You know our children, you know there's a lot of success to be created, so I'm excited for it.

Me too. You know it's so interesting, even when you have, when you switch to that very future forward mindset, the things that you used to be doing that were so rudimentary. You almost look back at it and you do say, what was I doing? And I found myself even in that. You know how long did I take to post a blog before. How long, how much, how many hours did I put into that? And that's just one thing you know so.

It's not easy. I'm going to tell you, like even this week, me, I've got a coach who was the head of former head of Microsoft and talent capability at Microsoft. So technology was there with the merger or the acquisition of LinkedIn. I mean I just feel lucky to have the time to share with him and he's got some things that he's helping me roadmap to do what we're doing. You have to invest in yourself to grow as a leader to do these things. But I mean, I've got a note in my pocket.

I'm like, okay, this is my intentionality this week and I'm going to tell you, even knowing and having my own awareness, it's been hard.

It is difficult, you know, and you maybe have been in moods before where you're like anxious about something or there's so much excitement. What do you do first, you know, and there's so much excitement, what do you do first, you know, and there's so much enthusiasm, you know, and it can play out in how you make people feel and so I think, leaning into the again this leadership part we're talking AI, we're talking technology, all this stuff but it's your ability to move through that and hopefully not damage relationships along the way. And I'm going to tell you it is not easy, and that's my biggest struggle right now. I get so excited because I think everybody wants what I want or is driven towards what I want, or cares enough about certain things, and so when we say the crawl, walk, run stuff, it plays out in leadership too. We have to find ways to connect, be curious about people and, uh, to me, put them in situations to win. Yeah, because I think people feel like I want.

I think people like to be victorious yeah, like have you know like they did something and I would wager that most people are sitting around feeling rather stagnant currently you know and and I think, and I think, when you're beholden to processes that have always been, you don't have that excitement, you don't have that flame inside of you to make a change, or you just know that you're going to have to go through so many obstacles to even attempt to get in front of the person who might approve said change. It's not even worth it and people give up and then they lose motivation to innovate, to do anything different, because it's always been the way it's been. And so how do we ignite people? How do we become okay with feeling a little uncomfortable?

We talk about this a lot, like that feeling of discomfort that's so uneasy when I'm at a whiteboard and I'm not making sense of something and I can't, and you're like leave it open ended. You know you'll figure it out, but you can leave it open ended. That's very uncomfortable for someone who is used to making sense of things and plowing forward. So I just think it's a whole mindset shift. And so, thinking about marketing something like this we've been back and forth on do we sell one, you know, or do we tell everybody about the one palpable product that we know they can understand, or do we show them this endless world of possibilities and hope that it sticks. So even that's interesting and that's where I think the building public will come in.

Yeah, I tried to boil you. I did a few webinars. That it's like excitement, share everything and that's how we kind of got to this. You know the productization of things, but you're absolutely right, I think you know we're trained to have the answers and if you have the answers you'll look good in front of the boss and you'll be able to keep your job or get the job you want. And you know, now it's more like questions, right and the actions, and it's very hard. I mean, I remember unpacking what I needed to do because different organizations have different priorities. But we've really left a lot of people behind. And you know what Carrie's doing with the Women's Summit and all that, the movement around helping everyone in multifamily understand the fundamentals of what it means to create wealth. And we're in operators. We kind of do the hard work, the 3,000 tasks that keep growing and growing. But to me, I want to make people filthy rich. I don't. Why have we not made more millionaires? Why do our maintenance professionals not know how to invest in real estate? Right.

Why do our assistant managers not have their own portfolio? Why do they not? Why are they not part of the finance meetings? Why are they not part of the investor relations meetings? Why are they not part of the JV deals?

The real estate operators have the ability to create wealth for people through education, and this happened to me. I mean, I was actually just curious. I was observing.

A lot of people don't know to observe, because they're trained and they process and they have their PTO and all the things that they need to do to follow the. You know, because these companies get so large and they basically make a rule when something goes wrong. And you know, with all these rules, and then people feel trapped sometimes because they're really, like, alive, they want to do great things and they don't know where and how Is it risky and they're a single flow of income. But if I'm out there and I'm in an organization and that organization feels status quo, there's probably a reason. Until you own a business or a property, you may not understand that decision, but while you're there, I think they have the ability to take it into their own. Like, don't wait for somebody to train you. There's the stuff going on around you Pay attention, observe and you may be somebody we write a check to, to fund the next big idea.

Yeah, yeah, elevate yourself.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that is why, and I will say like candidly, you know when, when you walked me through the process of how you got to where you're at today in your company, I said to you there are so many times you could have just monetized cash to check and peaced out, I mean honestly, so many of the things you built you could have just sold in that very moment. Um, and that was impressive to me that you intentionally didn't, and you had bigger goals and you're always thinking about others in the sense of how do we elevate, how do we help renters, how do we help individuals who work for these companies, how do we help people to think just differently as a whole people?

to think just differently as a whole, and and that's that's what motivates me to be here, truly because I've seen you not cash the check and just settle for a status quo the way it is. You see something bigger.

Yeah, I mean I'd have a larger event and I'd have a trade show. But, to your point, we need, like what you're doing with mindset and ambition and attitude and capabilities, we need to help people understand how to think independently, right, and know that they are accountable and capable of anything. Yeah, literally anything. Yeah, and that's a very. There's some dark moments getting there, but, man, on the other side of that, when you pull it off there's no money that can buy it.

I mean, carrie and I first decided the life we wanted to have first, and then you work backwards what would fit into that City? You're in location, who you spend time with all that stuff. But yeah, I think it's an exciting time If I'm out there and what you're doing is get people to think differently, inspire them and, all the while you know, generate the rents. You have to keep the lights on, collect the rents Simple stuff and lead the teams. Then you're done. That's it. Just those three things.

Yeah, always be thinking forward.

That's it, just those three things yeah, always be thinking forward, that's right.

More forward than forward. I thought I was a forward thinker.

I want to find out if this is the longest podcast I've been on, because I have been. Normally I'm interviewing people and you've turned. You're now interviewing me and I'm just like you know, I'm going.

We both think this way, and I've been hungry for it for a long time. I've been hungry for innovation, or the ability to innovate, for a long time, so I think that we could probably podcast for 24 hours.

Yeah, well, there'll be more to come for this. Should we break and wrap on that? I think that was good. Yeah.

Awesome. Hey, thanks for hanging. That was fun. I know people are really going to want to know a little bit more about you and what you're up to, and I know that it's easy to find you. Those of you that want to connect with Lauren in the show notes, go ahead and do that. Until next time I'll see you, maybe standing on this stage, maybe giving a keynote, maybe, or some kind of little charge for people and bringing in the leaders. Yeah Sounds great, awesome.

All right, we'll catch you on the next one. All right, that's it. That's all. We got you stuck with us, so watch the next one. Listen to the next one. Hey, if this was useful, you found it valuable. Slack it, message it. I don't know if it Teamses it, teams it, whatever that is, text it like it, subscribe it, whatever that is. Give it a share. That helps other people discover the things that were working. I want to bring some value to you, so we'll see you, guys, on the next one. See ya.