A weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, Jackie Lipinski, Julie Jarnagin, and other team members from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We’re here to help you – not to sell you!
Kevin
I think it's Kylie Jenner on here.
Andrew
Okay.
Kevin
As an option. Let's see.
Andrew
Maybe a good option Is this Mr. Beast?
Kevin
Okay. Tom Brady.
Andrew
Okay.
Kevin
I feel like Taylor Swift was supposed to be one of the options.
Andrew
Let me see.
Kevin
But there are. There's 15 and total. I think, including Alvin the alien.
Andrew
I like the alien. Now that I. I'll trust the alien seems trustable.
Kevin
Bob. Bob, the robot here kind of gives me vibes of short circuit, Like one of the best movies from the eighties of all time.
Andrew
Don't you feel bad for that robot? But you develop.
Kevin
John. I mean, Johnny five is alive and you can't find him.
Andrew
I need to revisit this movie. I haven't seen the movie, but it's been years. It's been years, okay?
Kevin
I mean, I would I wouldn't be surprised because you're young and. But.
Andrew
Young'un, I'm an I'm in that cut off. Where? Let's see, when, like, animated movies really took off with late nineties and has before them but like Pixar was 99 I think with Toy Story I think that kind of shifts. Like what shows did you grow up as a kid? They went to Blockbuster for and it was an animated, nothing animated, at least for me.
Andrew
It it's like, okay, then kid got stuck watching those for like what I playing for the kids now like, oh, I don't know. Like, did they need to watch all the James Bond movies for like the Silhouette music intro? I be like, Oh no. But I was I think we grew up with that. That was that was usual for them.
Kevin
Amanda What was your childhood media content like?
Amanda
Oh gosh, just some of the classics like Tom and Jerry the Road Runner, you know, like, Okay.
Andrew
Yeah, like a weekend.
Amanda
Like that is classic and stuff like that. I mean, that's like gone way back.
Andrew
But The Simpsons, I guess The Simpsons were on there. I mean, I grew up I remember memories of like Seinfeld was on all the time, like all the time. Seinfeld is like Seinfeld. Frasier is like the same order and just knew what it was be on.
Kevin
Apparently, there's a new Frasier show.
Andrew
Oh, you can't because there's no family anyway. Oh, man, It's probably not the same.
Kevin
We should. We should go and start the show.
Andrew
You should. Let's do that.
Kevin
Welcome to episode 308. I'm Kevin Oakley. And with me today is Andrew Peek and Amanda martin.
Amanda
No, no.
Kevin
And Amanda claims she's never been on the podcast before. I don't know how it's possible.
Amanda
I don't either. But here we are.
Andrew
I cannot believe that. But Amanda, you would know, like, if we're out here before. So, yeah, that's right. Got to believe.
Kevin
You. It's your truth. How long have you been on the team now?
Amanda
Oh, man. About four and a half years. Right at it? Yeah. Yes. That's crazy.
Andrew
I. I don't believe that The.
Kevin
Reason that my memory and this might have just been like a teen call that we were on, but I just remember giving you a semi hard time. But it must have just been like sea questions when you first joined anyway. Yeah, sorry. We should. We should have had you on the table. Everyone watch. What do you do here?
Kevin
Yeah. TV For those who may not know.
Amanda
I'm an online field coach with Jen and Jesse and I help you know, everything with online sales, coaching, new offseason and lifting with these and ramping them up for success, helping with onboarding all the good things. I love it. It's so great.
Kevin
Helping out with Online Sales Academy. Oh yeah. Leading sessions at the at the Do you convert online sales and marketing summit doing all the things so that's why I just.
Amanda
Kind of things Love it.
Kevin
Well, now, sorry, Jen, you're just going to have to come on once every quarter or six months because Jesse and Amanda are.
Andrew
Taking over.
Kevin
Taking this.
Andrew
By. I feel like you're like an O.G., because when I started way back in the day with with the convert you were with, I believe, at Royal Oaks Home.
Amanda
Yes. Yes.
Andrew
Way back in the day, y'all had amazing videos because I feel like the accents and everything are just so, so different. But also, like, you worked amazingly together. Yeah, that's. That's going way back. So, you know, it.
Amanda
Is way back. And you sort of.
Andrew
Years.
Amanda
You would like, made us for us like late, late at night and they would just magically be ready the next day or.
Andrew
Definitely.
Amanda
Kevin America. Okay.
Andrew
That was but yeah yeah. Those fun times. So we go way back. This is, this is good.
Kevin
Okay, so, Amanda, story time, no pressure. First story time in four years. Yeah, I'm one of the best on the team. What do you got for us?
Amanda
Well, I do have a story for you and question for you. Kevin, Did you know that I quoted you in my session at the summit? Oh, no, no.
Kevin
You didn't go to the cloud, first of all. But only if my my head is not on the image. Like, there's just something.
Amanda
Okay, Images.
Kevin
Just like, what.
Amanda
Was it.
Kevin
About pancakes or was it actually about someone else's?
Amanda
I shouldn't have done pancakes. I would have been good. No, no, it wasn't, though. It just really stood out for me. And one of your Pulse episodes. I even read blog about it, so I don't know if you know you're famous. Yeah.
Kevin
That's a good hint.
Amanda
Yeah, You said, Kevin, that there's never going to be enough emotional drive or urgency. If they don't pick something that there's any fear of loss, then. So that really just inspired me to talk about the like thing. One part about this, though, at the summit, my session was all about the power of personalization and part of it you talked about selecting one and I used your quote and I related that to when I got our second cat there.
Amanda
Anyway, that was fun. So that was my that was my story I quoted, you know?
Kevin
Okay, now I have questions for you. Yeah.
Amanda
Okay. So let's here.
Kevin
I think the perception, maybe misconception about online sales is that getting to one doesn't really matter because you're just kind of giving them general information and you want to get them as quickly as possible to the on site team. So talk to me about when when is it necessary to apply personalization. Can you get go too far in that attempt?
Kevin
Is it is it even possible to to go too deep in personalization, do you think so?
Amanda
I think I think you do have to it. Well, I'm first of all, because, you know, you have to you have to learn enough about them to be able to recommend something for them. So if you don't if you don't take the time to fully qualify them and learn their story, you can't select one. But if you've done your job, then you should be able to select one, right?
Amanda
So I think you have to do that.
Kevin
Do you mean I am assuming, but I want to clarify. You're talking about community. You don't necessarily have to get them down to a particular hall. No, but you got to find something to.
Amanda
To find something. Yes. Yes. They are emotionally invested in something that's going to be a good fit for them based on what they're looking for. But yeah, community is great. Sometimes you'll get down to a floor plan and if that's, you know, a big must have for them.
Kevin
Or you're on your lot builder and there's nothing else to.
Amanda
Of course Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't you can take it a little bit too far I guess if you, you know, qualify them out of thing if they don't want to get too far. But definitely a good idea to learn their story and select on and to become emotionally invested in it. So yeah. Yeah. I love your.
Andrew
Last makes sense.
Kevin
The last qualifying or and I'm just an insanely curious person so.
Amanda
I love it.
Kevin
When you were just talking about that, it made it feel like it's okay for the online sales person to have an opinion on what's best for the customer based on what you learn about them, which I'm maybe if listening is like, Well, duh. But again, I know, I know sales managers and onsite salespeople who are like, Oh, online salesperson is just supposed to absorb and direct the customer on whatever it is they already came in on.
Kevin
And I think to me that connects to this is an older number. I don't I actually don't know where we are currently, but I remember doing analysis of Heartland of about one third of the people who came in as a lead for one community ended up becoming an appointment for a different community after verification and personalization was made.
Amanda
So of that. Yeah. So the leads, they don't know everything that you have to offer and that's why the OSD is there to really be able to give that easy button. And that's also why it's great to have signage numbers go to that. With me though, like a story, you know, I had someone going out that was driving out path.
Amanda
The community they call, they were interested in that, but it completely did not fit what they were looking for at all. And I was able to reroute them to a different community that was a great fit. So, you know, just because they have to show up somewhere that you think they're interested in something doesn't mean that that's the best fit for them.
Amanda
And you're able to provide them with that knowledge because you know all the products, you know. So it's all about uncovering what they're looking for and giving them that easy button and directing them to the right place. So.
Kevin
MM Yeah. The place that people are headed with over the automated systems, we're saying, well if Amanda asks for information about Happy Acres, this is easy. I just load up information about Happy Acres and I send it to her in little bursts over multiple different channels. And and I think that's dangerous because, again, just the reason that someone reaches out is not a clear connection to what it is they ultimately will purchase or even what they're most interested in.
Kevin
Yeah. So I think I think that's interesting thought, too, is that at the end of the day, no matter what else is checked off in the CRM, no matter what pages said they came from there. A prospect for a home above and beyond any particular community or floorplan. It's not that it can't inform or shouldn't inform.
Amanda
Mhm.
Kevin
But you can't just say oh well they asked for Happy Acres, I will schedule you an appointment via text in 30 seconds at Happy Acres because I can, I can make that happen.
Amanda
Yeah. That's exactly right. That's why I exists.
Andrew
Right. I just, I can't imagine any automated solution I could build like the emotional momentum to then that increases the appointment kept ratio. That increases like it just gets you along the funnel quicker. Like imagine you hear Amanda close your eyes and Amanda's like, you call. It's like, you know, I think that communities like selected, that might be good for you but we have this other one and then you and your great voice, you're talking, talking and you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go, let's go.
Andrew
I want that versus reading something on the screen. And it's a robot and that has no emotional like it doesn't create any emotion within Yeah.
Kevin
I mean any attempt at fake emotion oftentimes comes off worse than no emotion. Honestly.
Andrew
Happy, awkward, like this. Yeah.
Kevin
You I don't know what story you would both use as my example. For me, it's typically like Home Depot or Lowe's.
Andrew
I like Home Depot. Don't like Lowe's.
Kevin
The same Lowe's I only looking for their they have seem to have a better power tool selection generally than Home Depot does or a larger one. But other than that, I agree with Abraham. Yeah, but you know, when someone offers you assistance, you have kind of this built in thing of I mean, I really do want as is internal talk now.
Kevin
Kevin Internal talk, Yeah. I definitely want assistance finding this one size particular special fastener that I need to replace on something in my home. And all I have is the broken one and I have to go line up the right side. And this is obviously a real world example that have a salad go. But someone's like, Hey, can I help you?
Kevin
And everything inside of you is like, Yes, I want help, but I really doubt you're going to be able to offer the help that I need or just be an expert that I need versus just taking up my time. Like we've all had those experiences where someone's like, Oh yeah, I'll try to help you, and then they lead you to like the plumbing section.
Kevin
You're like, No, but like even I know that fasteners are aisle five, so that's where we should go. And so I think there's always this thing that online salespeople and salespeople and even marketers with some of our messaging has to get through is like the relief that you have as a consumer. When you finally talk to an expert, it truly is just the feeling of exhaling.
Kevin
It's like, Oh, okay, Amanda knows her stuff. And that's what I'm saying. It's this fine line between overconfidence, oversimplification. You want this, therefore you go there as soon as you can become an actual expert and the consumer trust that everything changes, no matter what the emotional state of either party is beforehand. It's like, okay, okay, I could totally be convinced that I don't even need the fastener.
Kevin
I thought I came in with that as a replacement. Maybe there's something better, but that person's first can have to prove to me that they're not just making stuff up.
Amanda
And they also have to understand your story. What you're going to use it for on the right. How can they make that recommendation?
Kevin
Yeah.
Amanda
Mm hmm.
Kevin
Yeah. So it's this weird. It's the same thing talking about interest rates right now. You know, interest rates at 8%. I don't know if that's I think we've talked about that enough on other places. We're not going to talk about that in this news. But interest rates, mortgage rates going to 8%. There's a whole bunch people saying don't talk about interest rates.
Kevin
It's not a big deal, just end. And it's kind of like, well, if everyone knows it, I, I don't think you can completely avoid it.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. You're crazy not talking about it.
Amanda
Mm hmm.
Kevin
Like not talking about it or having at least some planned responses for the, like, common objection or statement. Because, again, as a consumer, I would feel it's my job to to be a good customer and to protect myself in this engagement, I would have to be like, you know, we're just a little bit concerned with how high interest rates are right now.
Kevin
Yeah, if a customer didn't say that, that would be weird, unless they just know they're paying cash. It's the same the same thing as again, you go to a retail store, do you need any help? The default reaction to protect yourself is no, I'm just looking. It's just what our job is as consumers. That's great.
Andrew
Andrew Yeah, I had one. I think I'm to shift that over to favorite things. I had him because like literally right before we started, I'm like, I just use this in the example of why I like this piece of software, so I'll save it for favorite things as it's more appropriate. Okay. Townhomes. I love townhomes. They're my favorite.
Kevin
They're that's I don't is that is that true?
Andrew
That's not true. That's not true. I'm not true at all. Because I think that's like my first if I had to be like, what did I first learn coming to to do? I see. And like, I was like, Kevin, why are townhomes always like the issue? Like it was almost like a bat in my head. Like, all right, about this is about a townhome for something struggling and like 2017, 2018 it was townhomes, but two weeks ago, two weeks to three weeks ago, I had to call the builder and is about a townhome product and I was looking through their photos.
Andrew
It's a coming soon. The price is really nice. You're like, really that price like, but it's a little farther out. So there's all these challenges with it. And at the end of the call it really didn't go the direction I thought it would, but we really uncover that a lot of their content highlighted the objectives as and they like made the objectives valid against townhomes.
Andrew
Like unintentional.
Kevin
You mean objective objections? Objectives.
Andrew
Okay, This my back. The objections? Yeah. The objections were they were like featuring the objections. Like what do you hate about townhomes? They didn't because their photography is so standardized that the way they photograph townhomes is the way they photographed single family homes. There is no intentionality as far as like, okay, cool, this is a I only how the product here, maybe it's 25 feet wide.
Andrew
Maybe. I mean, our home is sprint. It's 30 feet. We're on a foot, 40 foot lot. So we're at a 30 foot home.
Kevin
It's pretty decent for them.
Andrew
So it's 20, 25, eight. But all the photography, the angles were not featuring like depth. And so in town, home is more like, what do you hate about it? Or why would you not choose this townhome? They're small and cramped. Okay, so the photography should feature mostly images that feature like the length of the home, right? That's going to be it.
Kevin
You don't have to document the entire crime scene.
Andrew
Correct. Like, let's make sure it is showing like it feels big and spacious. What he also not like phantom asylum's privacy. These include a fence in the backyard that are like it cuts off the backyard where I think it's like a 12 foot fence. You could barely see it. And the photos, as far as like separating you, your back patio from the neighbors, you could barely see it.
Andrew
So I'm like, hey, if they feature at every it's like they only needed these big shots of the whole building. This I think there were six units per person, per little per building. And so I saw all six. So like me and Alex, really small, it didn't focus in on like, hey, here's like the living area of your outdoor living area and it says example after example after example, in the order of the images, I'm like, if you showed number three versus number one, you might be able to hook them and create like we talked about with Amanda, like enough emotional excitement, like, oh, you know, that actually does look more spacious.
Andrew
And I'd expect and then you tie in to the fact that like more for all rural area where this townhome project is being built, I think there's as you go farther away from like downtown, there's an expectation of land and space. So a townhome close to downtown to like that's perfect for me. You put that 25 miles outside a city center.
Andrew
People were like, I could get a double wide on 45 acres for 250. Okay, And you're trying to give me 3000 square feet of yard space if that even. Yeah. And why would I do that? Like so your everything they did was the opposite content wise and like, Oh that's really interesting. I've never looked at photos of townhomes.
Kevin
So instead of I guess I want to clarify that like his clarify and what instead of instead of knowing that those are the objections, is your point and then creating content that speaks to them as No, that's not really a valid objection. You just have a misperception about townhomes are are different. You're saying all of the content just affirmed the likely objections?
Kevin
Yes, It didn't because didn't always talk about Smucker's is one of my favorite Smucker's. But the name like Smucker's, it has to be good. It's they know the objection would have been when that first became a brand. This is a weird sounding company. It sounds like just smacking saying I mean, it's just bizarre.
Andrew
It is.
Kevin
So there's there's definitely a technique or approach of saying, I know what the objection is going to be. I'm going to hit it head on with answers or solutions or or different viewpoints. You're just saying that was the big miss.
Andrew
Is big mistake. Yet it made it made you go like, well, this is why I don't like townhomes. It's what I gathered from it. And it's like this builder. They're very process driven. Everything standardize. You've got to recognize their photos with even at least I can without their name on it. So but they're all great. Like they're they're doing an amazing job.
Andrew
But the townhomes are photographed the same way as a single families. The buildings are the same way. And I think that's like the not the issue, but it's like, oh, they could probably like I'm like in one here. There's it's a three, three floors and there's four units in the building. And you go like, well, we're I park like it never feels like where's my home within this.
Andrew
And I think they should like just focus on the unit versus the entire building. As far as the big exterior, they only the kitchens and it's like, well, this kitchen's actually pretty spacious, but the way they took the photo, you can't see all of the kitchen and the shape. And so it looks like there's one countertop to cut something on.
Andrew
And then once something like cooking, you're like, This looks miserable to cook in, it's tiny. And so they should have just had different angles on it. And you keep going to go and you're like, Oh, everything I do, it makes us feel like it's a small, cramped townhome they really don't want to live in. But you'll have to settle for versus like, Oh, it actually looks like a nice place to live.
Andrew
Like there's ten foot ceilings, you have your private outdoor space on there. And so it could be, I guess if you're struggling with townhomes, which is probably everybody, if you have townhomes, maybe like I look at it in that context, like am I reinforcing why people don't actually prefer townhomes first? For the most part if they're not actually like downtown or a walkable location?
Andrew
Yeah, so we'll see if there's new content. Yeah, that.
Kevin
And this is true for every community. Page One of my pet peeves is certainly community pages, where 95% of the images and the photo gallery for the community page are the model home. Yeah, I'm like, Oh, that's not the community, but it's even more so true in multifamily scenarios, settings where if you just had photos of the model versus the community, the walkability, the amenities and again, the area around it is the amenities.
Kevin
That's, that's why even in.
Andrew
I agree.
Kevin
Markets like you know, the broader metro area around Washington D.C. I think we still can be on a on a metro line and that is an important amenity of the community, even if it's not in the community and it's ten blocks down the street, it's still. So that just is even more critical. That's your pick because, I mean, that's just by default.
Kevin
That's why people are choosing multifamily, mostly because of affordability. And builders choose multifamily primarily because, I mean, this is what I heard my entire career, pretty much as I especially pre and VR, when when you're a smaller or even a large private builder and you're just trying to find opportunities on the landside piece of land as identified, I think it's going to go one way and then, you know, eight hour in two, it's like, you know, this isn't going to work as single family.
Kevin
We're going to have to turn it into multifamily. Yeah, very rarely for for a builder that's focused on the suburbs, do you do you target let's go find more multifamily product. There are those who do it and you know that. And that's why the people who do multifamily exclusively, just like builders do on your lot exclusively, are typically way better on your lot.
Kevin
If if 90% of a builder's portfolio single family and they just kind of sort of do multifamily again that's the other reason why that can be a challenge.
Andrew
Do you think multifamily is going to increase? I want to say substantially, but what does that word even mean? Is that five, ten, 20, 30, 40%, Do you think it's going to have a larger increase? And do you think builders will have more multifamily products the next five years from now compared to, say, ten years ago due to affordability and maintaining the margins they want to maintain?
Andrew
I mean, I would thinks and this my like dumb assumption is like, well, that kind of makes sense if if they.
Kevin
I think the reason that my answer is yes is because land prices again are the main drivers. Yeah. And those don't seem to be improving like land prices and also becoming more affordable anytime soon, even in in even in an economic downturn. So yeah, but I guess my the reason it's making me hesitate is single family for rent and even just really dense single family is all know I was just in a home yesterday and it's a single family community that was built 15 years ago and the homes are traditional, single family homes.
Kevin
It's not a zero lot line community, if you're familiar with that terminology. There are a lot lines, but the houses can't be more than eight feet apart. And in where I'm from, that's kind of strange, especially for homes that are probably selling in the $500,000 range.
Andrew
Yeah, And it.
Kevin
Is like this is close.
Andrew
I mean, that's us. We're we're ten feet apart, you know, five feet and inside. So we're we're cozy with our neighbors. And you could probably. Yeah, that might have been the minimum we could do with our air. But the older homes, like older homes right there across the street, like out the back yard there on Thursday, 50 to 70 foot lots.
Andrew
And so they have quite a bit of room between between them. But we're twice the size square footage. So they made it work. I mean, they sold or they sold in a heartbeat, the smaller, much smaller lot sizes.
Kevin
Well, yeah, my story is about lag times, which that's one of those terms that I just didn't hear a lot about or really fully understand until about 10 to 12 years ago. So, I mean, like eight years into my career in homebuilding and then I was like, okay, I'm understanding. But one of the reasons why homebuilding is so hard of an industry is the amount of time that passes between something changing and the result of that change.
Kevin
A real clear example of this is back to land. Builders have to be looking 3 to 5 years out and saying, Where do I want my communities to be in 3 to 5 years? The physical location to figure out, is this the right price I should pay for this land? Will people want to live here in five years?
Kevin
What price with what products and that they're tossing the dirt five years into the future in California longer. And so this lag effect is also what we're experiencing right now with interest rates and its impact on the economy. So everyone freaked out, Oh, my gosh, interest rates changed and it's going to be a disaster. Turns out the disaster hasn't happened yet.
Kevin
People are still employed. You know, wages going up for the most part, people still buying homes. And it's because interest rates short term interest rates, which is what the Federal Reserve changes, that typically takes 24, I think 36 months before the impact of wherever the rate was changed. You has a fact because that's how long companies are borrowing from the bank at a particular loan and it doesn't have to be renewed for five years.
Kevin
And so they're halfway through that at the rates change. And it doesn't really matter which one of the reasons the big tech companies right now are still firing on all cylinders is they've got $1,000,000,000 or I think in Apple's case, like 20 some billion dollars in cash. And so they're like cool interest rates are higher. We don't need your stupid interest rate bank.
Kevin
You just keep it. We've got cash. So lag as a term is just you know the delay from making a change to seeing its impact and it's real. They're all over the place in the world, but especially in our industry. And one of the things that I had a conversation with this week with one of our builder partners was a particular struggling neighborhood that we with with them and their team have been, I'd say, squirreling away like a squirrel, attacking a bird feeder, trying everything we can to try to make things work.
Kevin
And not really a shock. This is one of the things we talked about. It seems like actually I'm going to give full context here. The the head of of sales and marketing made the comment said, you know, my my father made the comment that every time you all seem to focus on a community, things get better. And the joke is like you kind of like insinuate like, can't you just do that all the time for all of them, which, you know, as a, as the marketer perspective is like, can you just make sure the product and pricing is better so that things just work more often and they don't need to, you know, But that's
Kevin
that's the healthy tension in the business. So things get better. But what's interesting is one of the takeaways was that the the getting better was related to the most recent thing. So this weekend, this past week, the number of appointments like tripled or quadrupled to the community. And the connection was what must have been the thing we changed on Friday or Thursday.
Kevin
I was like, well, we can't. We can't say that. We really can't because for the prior 30 days we had taken the average amount of traffic to that community from like 1000 visitors a month to 14,000.
Andrew
It's a few.
Kevin
And and the concern was, hey, the the lead in appointment volume isn't correlating to that immediately. So we're not sure if these folks are the highest quality folks. So let's actually change some of the messaging adjust spend which the spend was already very, very healthy obviously to get to that level. And then it was like that must be the change that made the difference.
Kevin
And I was like, What is your average time between website visit to lead, which most people would have a hard time calculating anyway? In this case, the builder actually has. I don't want to go into that right now because it's somewhat proprietary both to us and them, but they have another way of telling some of that cycle time.
Kevin
But as an example, one of the other builders you work with just told us yesterday they did their latest analysis from lead to contract, which everyone in this, listen should be able to calculate. Their average cycle time right now is 150 days, 150 days from getting the lead to getting a signed contract. There are reasons why and the type of builder they are that that would be longer.
Kevin
But the point is that is elongating, the lag is getting wider. And so just imagine if you're that builder and you get 300 leads in a month where you typically would get 100 and everyone gets excited and then you don't get sales for I don't even know what that is for five months.
Andrew
Yeah.
Kevin
So 100 days.
Andrew
Five months.
Kevin
Yeah. So there's, there's, there's potentially four months where everyone's like those leads were all crap. They weren't worth it. What's going on? It's just really hard. If you don't understand the lags that are in the business to make the dots. So one of the things we talked about to try to bring some practical application here besides just understanding the concept and trying to figure out what your lags are in your business is privacy changes make all this really tough.
Kevin
Now their CRM system does a better job than most at identifying source and medium, but it's still not obviously going to be perfect. We know that in time. It's a particular campaign can be even harder. One of the best good old fashioned ways to do this is just have actual start and stop definitions. So there's two ways to kind of do this good enough, I would say.
Kevin
One is it'll be really scary because this community just took off. But if you turned off all the extra advertising like cold turkey it on a day and then watch the lag from when you cold turkey to it to when does that appointment volume taper off. If it correlates like if if there's correlation there, then you can at least take some of that.
Kevin
And now you could do that for individual channels. Like if you're concerned that the meta traffic or the Google traffic isn't good, you could just cold turkey one. But again, you're going to have to watch the lag. It's not going to be what happens tomorrow or next week. But this this idea of stopping, I'm actually trying to resurface as a really important concept.
Kevin
You know, we talk about sprints like do a two or three week sprint of of spend or change in strategy, then stop and see what happens. And I feel like right now the impetus for most people is just keep piling on, Just keep doing more.
Andrew
Mm hmm.
Kevin
And there's a couple of problems with that. One, you're not even really analyzing. You're just like more and more and more and more and more. And you don't have that. You can't you can't really tell. Like if you've if you've done ten experiments on one neighborhood and then things get better, you don't know.
Andrew
You're stuck doing those ten forever. Yeah, maybe only two, right? I mean if you, if you get for ten. Yeah. You don't, you don't have answers.
Kevin
Yeah. I just that, that is actually for people who aren't trained marketers, you're going to have to help them understand the lag effect and the I didn't even know really that I was doing this. But but one of the in terms of the lag concept, but I used to tell my salespeople all the time at Hartland, if you tell me the last week of the month that you're freaking out and you're not, you're falling behind or you're not going to hit your sales plan, I can't help you.
Kevin
I didn't frame it in the sense of the lag, but I just said it's too late because it's going to take me 2 to 3 weeks to create the traffic, to then have that interest develop for them to then reach out to get scheduled in for an appointment. It's not going to happen in a week. The only the only prayer we have of turning people that quickly is basically email and the phone texting or calling, and that's for someone already in the database.
Andrew
I feel like this really makes the case to be much more proactive and like the marketer, we should all be like, That's kind of obvious. Everyone should be more proactive.
Kevin
No, you're absolutely.
Andrew
But they have thresholds of traffic that you monitor per community. So you're ahead of the salesperson who's on the last weekend of the month. They're stressed about their quota on the 23rd. They're like, Oh shoot, I need two more sales this weekend on the 27th, 28th of October. But if you already knew traffic was low on the ninth because you're like projecting it based on what you're seeing in analytics, like I need to bump that, traffic it up somehow and that could prevent things from from escalating to that situation.
Andrew
But you need the threshold. So you need to figure out like, well, what's my number? What are the numbers for? It's gray and I don't really have to do anything before someone talks to me about it.
Kevin
And before you set those thresholds, you better be doing your coffee and analytics time to be able to understand the patterns, because if you just create random defined thresholds.
Andrew
Yeah.
Kevin
That's also just going to cause tail chasing. It's like because we already see this happening where people mishear our statement of a thousand units of traffic per community to get 1 to 2 sales from that neighborhood. And they think every neighborhood has to have 1000. But you can absolutely sell four homes off of 300 website visitors. That's allowed and does happen.
Kevin
So you have to be spending that time to really know where those things are, are going to be set. But that's where a lot of people get caught off guard. Last year at this time was they felt so comfortable with the backlog or the sales volume of of spring and summer that even though the numbers were all going down and we were we were saying on this podcast, other places like, hey, things are 1,000% slowing and slowing pretty quickly because people weren't looking at those leading indicators of traffic because everyone was so overwhelmed with the amount of activity that had been going on for the last two years.
Kevin
Most builders really didn't even realize it was happening until like late summer, early fall. And then they started to freak out.
Andrew
To like proactive thresholds. All right.
Kevin
On to the news. First up from Mashable.com, Metta has some new AI personalities and they are super cool people. That's intentionally bad grammar, but we've got people who look like Jenner's and Paris Hilton. Oh, is this a Snoop dog? I did not realize I was Snoop Dogg.
Andrew
Snoop. I don't know who the bottom four are on the right side. I don't know whether or not they seem like great people.
Kevin
Yeah, they're not all celebrities, but I think somebody for everybody and I think about half of them are the celebrity chat bots are live and they're weird is the subheadline from the article and this is my last intro. And then I'll let you guys share. Which do you think? But they're weird that from the article yet another chat bot with a celeb twist.
Kevin
That's right. And more chat bots baby. We were promised flying cars and hoverboards and instead we get to talk to bots that can just barely hold a conversation akin to your single worst interaction at a cocktail party. But it looks like a famous person. What do we think here?
Andrew
This is Amanda you go.
Amanda
From for the Oh.
Andrew
Yeah. Okay.
Amanda
Got creeped out by the fact.
Andrew
It's it's depressing. It reminds me of the movie. And if you have time this weekend, you should watch it and you'll understand the reference. The movie is called Her H.E.R. Just heard her from 2013. He falls in love with the guy. This guy?
Amanda
Oh, no.
Andrew
It's super bizarre. It's very uncomfortable. All you're like, Is this really insane what's happening here? But it's won some awards. But it's it's it's definitely in the, like, eccentric, weird movie category. But it's this. But this. He falls in love with Scarlett Johansson, who is the voice actor, who is the A.I.. So, again, that's that's reasonable. So maybe meta onto something.
Andrew
Let's try to use celebrities as who you're interacting with, but still read it. You're like, this is okay.
Kevin
So the short answer from the online sales world who, you know, we love anything that would potentially allow us to connect with more people. This doesn't hit the market. We an agreement. Yeah, this is the agreement where you know okay so I think the interesting question is, is what led them down this path also wrong? Here's what I mean by that.
Kevin
I watch my wife in particular and she follows influencers and I just you know, everyone knows how I feel about the word and the thing and whether we are. Do you convert to influencers or not. All the all that stuff. But let's say there is a workout influencer or last night I'm watching her use flip through her stories and she's like, Oh, I love this person.
Kevin
And it's just very clearly an ad for some hair serum. And she's like, Oh, I love this. She's so great. I'm like, It says by now. And she's talking strangely high energy and how much she loves this product. And I go, Of course, she says she loves the product because she's selling you the product, she's making money and she's like, Well, but she designed it.
Kevin
She made it like that makes even more weird because she's talking about how much she loves this product that clearly the IKEA effect, right? I made this. It must be the best thing ever because it has my name like I did it and yet it doesn't matter. She's just enamored with it. So And every once in a while I see her actually comment or talk to these people who have hundreds of thousands of followers.
Kevin
And it it gives her this weird high, I think of like I just interacted with an influencer, I guess somewhat akin to, you know, if Rich Barton or somebody on on Twitter X likes a tweet. But that's like in that scenario for me. I don't expect it and I don't it's their reaction to it, not me just talking or adding them.
Kevin
That is the exciting part. It's just like, oh, they, they, they read it, responded. There's this weird thing, I think that younger generations are like, I just like my kids just would love the idea of interacting with Mr. Beast in the smallest way possible. So I think there's something there that is directionally right. But they they've missed the mark badly.
Andrew
But I think they missed because there's no brand assigned to these people for her to be like, okay, the Kardashians have a brand and that's why people want to associate with them. That's why they buy their products. Mark at the summit, I forgot his last name. Mark from a thousand. What? You buy that apparel because it makes you feel part of the club or makes you feel a certain way.
Andrew
So like who we follow also I think makes us feel a certain way or we get whatever emotion out of following that person, interacting with them, or just interacting even just engaging with our social media. And as for Metta, it's like I feel like they're trying to piggyback that experience of like, Oh, I'm interacting with this feels like Tom Brady.
Andrew
It talks like Tom Brady or like, This isn't Tom Brady. Tom's on a yacht in Miami doing whatever the heck he wants. He's not this isn't a bot. So like, it's like, of course this is fake. It feels like you're like tricking me, like I'm like a child or something like. And, like, that's that's not the real Elsa at Disney World.
Andrew
Like, I know that's not her.
Amanda
Right?
Andrew
But they do like. The four year old, the three year old, the five year old. Like they're like, That's Elsa. Oh, my gosh, This is amazing. So, like, they're trying to trick us, like we're like children or something. Something like that. That's why I think the cringes. Yeah, it's, it's, it's obviously fake like. And it feels Grinchy. It's a long way to get that point, I think.
Kevin
Yeah. The first message is not not having the real name. So it shows Mr. B's likeness, but his name is Zach. It's almost like right from the get go, you're looking at a fake coach purse that you know is fake and everyone else will know is fake because it doesn't even say coach. But everything about it looks like a coach.
Kevin
Purses like once. Scott you're missing the whole better feel of the essence of the brand, right? If it was a if it's a knock off and no one knows is a knockoff, then you know that that's one thing. But this is a clear knockoff.
Andrew
And yeah.
Kevin
It, yeah, it just doesn't look that good. But I do think there's something to wanting to interact with these, these people that we know or feeling like there's interaction, but it's just not even close to the, to the mark it's fun.
Andrew
Someone's probably going to come up with a something very similar and they'll use like deepfake technology. And so you could like video chat with Tom Brady and it's just people, thousands of people in a call center that then they could use their face and then they'll just like use Deepfake to be like, Oh, I'm actually talking to Tom Brady.
Andrew
Cool. Like, what are you doing it with? So they take his voice and that seems more like a fun experience. It's a waste of time and it's not chat bot, but it's like, look, I talk to Tom Brady but it's not Tom Brady.
Kevin
I mean, there are Elvis impersonators and not all of them look like Elvis. Maybe we're completely wrong.
Andrew
That's true. We'll find out. That might be gone in a year. All right.
Kevin
Next up, there is an actual article, but we're linking to a Twitter, a tweet on X. Well, I've finally crossed the chasm. I call Matamata pretty consistently, but I am having a hard time with X. I agree. A gentleman named Alexis who said big news for ADD used today, accessible dwelling, accessory dwelling units. These are essentially small homes connected or not connected, but in the yard or somehow on property.
Kevin
That's for another primary residence have now been able. The FHA policy now allows 82 rental income to qualify for mortgages, further cementing their role in the housing market. And in places like California, you know, if you can rent out your ADU for 3500 bucks a month and that counts, as you know, rental income, that's a big deal.
Amanda
Yeah, that's really neat.
Andrew
Yeah, that's neat.
Amanda
I actually talked about this on my coaching call today. Like, because, you know, like people are running into this of a high interest rates affordability like it's not it's a condition now that you know just an objection it's the conditions that like how could you overcome that and I thought this was like possibly thinking out of the box like a great opportunity for builders.
Amanda
You know, like they build the customers house, Maybe they can build a little tiny home to like L.A. money.
Kevin
Or I mean, it's.
Amanda
Actually.
Kevin
The construction of an 80. You can be folded in to New construction financing. So now it's like, I'm going to build both these things.
Amanda
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew
Yeah.
Amanda
That's true.
Kevin
I think lenders really may begin offering borrowed mortgages on properties that they to use on the new policies effective immediately. Mm.
Andrew
Yeah. So Alexis builds what appears to be areas that look really nice like they're, they like they would fit in a backyard better than a tiny home looking looking thing like they're really.
Kevin
Nice $350,000, probably tiny others.
Andrew
They're pricey. My first thought I think it's neat, but I'm like, okay should someone who's buying through an FHA be a landlord? And will this like what is their rate if they have to use 82 income to qualify? Like I'm like, does that hold significantly higher risk? Because if it's ever vacant or if it's vacant for x percent two months out of the year, can I make their mortgage if they don't have that income for two months or three months or four months or something?
Andrew
So you qualify for it, or maybe they've been paying rent. That's actually more than what their new mortgage would be. And they're like, Please, just let me do something. I'm not even I rent that thing out there, but my rent now is 5500 a month. I'm a finance and I'll be 4400 per month and I'm saying they'll be rental income.
Andrew
Yeah, I like that.
Kevin
There's certainly be unintended consequences from this. Like one of the comments on here is I have a house with a garage that I want to convert into an 80. You, you know, well this helped me and so it might Yeah. And then and it might improve your value. It might lower the value of the primary residence if you don't no longer have a garage.
Kevin
So but I mean people California are super excited about this. And the one I know if it's this particular change or something else that because I think call it the state of California also passed a different law related to its use. But every individual municipality has to basically opt in or say, yes, that's allowed. And so in the markets, even where this is the would be the biggest deal because a lot of aid use already exists in California is can't qualify each individual market.
Kevin
So L.A., San Diego, you go service each town has to say, yes, that's allowed and that's going to take time. And it won't necessarily be applied everywhere, but super interesting. Next up from TechCrunch, Google's AI powered search experience can now generate images and write drafts. So this is kind of the only lead in here from this article. Is that the trend?
Kevin
For sure? You've got folks like Jackie Beatty or Openai who are trying to create brand new platforms using alarms and AI powered tools. And then the other trend is just integrate those kind of tools within the already standard platforms. An example of this is Adobe. Adobe is like, I see, I see you daily and I see you, I have to say discord, use it via discord.
Kevin
But what's the other Netherlands?
Andrew
I lose, I lose track anyway.
Kevin
That's what I use all the time. So it's crazy. I can't think of it, but they're like cool and nice. Try trying to like, you know, integrate artificial intelligence in images. We're just going to drop it into Photoshop Illustrator and all the tools that real creatives already use. So they don't need your other little silly thing because it's going to just be built into the platform that those experts already use.
Kevin
So this to me is kind of big picture. What Google is doing here is let's just integrate all this right into the core product. But what else are your thoughts on this one wager.
Andrew
I'm a fan. I think it's super cool. The because I think all the tools you've mentioned, they are not user friendly. Like for normal people to use.
Kevin
Having to learn the average just how to use discord to to use what is the premiere generative visual tool, which I can't think of the name of, is they got.
Andrew
To go to Discord first. So it's like, it's annoying. Yeah, it's not accessible. And that's I think that's the way to for the fastest progress is to make it accessible to everybody where there's no login, there's no credits or whatever you have to buy to get it and make it work. I know it's expensive to run these things by Google pushing it.
Andrew
I'm all for that because I will. I think that will push progress on this a lot faster for the robots to take over the world. Just getting the last one or not, I'm all for it. Let's let's do it. This will help with them be easier to make PowerPoints and decks and presentations. This is what I need. Yeah.
Kevin
And it's it's not everything. And they're they're doing it kind of interesting where the one example in the article and I saw a video on this as well if you do a Halloween table setting search and click images in Google where you see you'll see all the normal images and then you'll just see a box that says create something new with our generative A.I. tool.
Kevin
And then you click that it will create four additional images for you out of thin air. And so it's it's not like, again, that's trying to incorporate to the to the image search you're already going to. And then it's like if you're not finding exactly what you're looking for, just make it. I think it's I think a smart also, by the way, when you try some terms, that box does not appear.
Kevin
And my other thought is, is there some initial scrub there that goes? Is there enough images that we believe would it be highly correlated to this? Then we don't even need to show this generative AI option because there's already.
Andrew
Like.
Kevin
10,000 really good options. It might only be appearing in less, less popular searches.
Andrew
Yeah, let's play with that. That's fun.
Kevin
All right. Next up, we've got the numbers. We've got the third quarter.
Amanda
We balanced.
Kevin
It was benchmark data.
Amanda
Is this.
Kevin
Is this like a world premiere.
Amanda
And release? Yeah. Okay. Hot out the press. I yeah. So I prepare these calculations with the benchmarks every quarter they call me the nerd over here so many ways. But but good numbers So yeah I compare it to quarter two. So benchmarks for quarter three are lead to appointment. We have 40% though, that went down just by 1%.
Amanda
So kind of steady appointment to sell 19%, which is down 2% from quarter to that contribution that went up, which is really neat to see. The online sales contribution went up to 48%, whereas quarter two with 46% and quarter one with 45%. So not only increasing, which is very exciting. Yeah. One thing to point out though, is that leads they did go down by around 15% last count from quarter to quarter three.
Amanda
So I'm going to pick your brain off of that. So why do you think lead counts are dropping and doesn't even matter? Or tell us what you think.
Kevin
What your rivals and I both saw the same tweet from Lance, formerly of Forbes. He just started his own newsletter on housing data. Now, be a good follow or a sign up if you're if you if you like, that kind of nerdy content. But he just said, hey, basically I crunched the numbers and October is the least affordable month for housing in the last get ready 100 years.
Amanda
Oh least affordable month and.
Andrew
We have no problems with affordable.
Kevin
We got no issues here. Oh work. In fact I think this is this is just data that I saw about an hour ago and I don't have it still pulled up, but I believe of the National Association of Realtors just came out with updated data that showed for the I think for the first time in at least like the last flying blind here 20, 30 years, there are under 4 million transactions that are that are currently like they call it annualized transactions.
Kevin
So they take a data point and they say if it stayed here and was and happened over 12 months, this would be the number and it was the lowest that it had been in whatever time frame they were talking about, and it was below 4,000,003.96, I think. And so there and the other end and little piece of the puzzle, Amanda, is a lot of our builders who do highly partner with local real estate professionals like were.
Kevin
And these are major markets, not like top 15 markets in the country. They're calling the top two or three agents in the market that they've had great relations with. And they're like, Hey, we've got this great thing or we've got this opportunity, We've got these homes. And the response from these these are the best of the best agents and those markets are that sounds awesome.
Kevin
I have no. One to work with. I don't have customers.
Andrew
Wow.
Kevin
To work with. You know, so 15% those aren't too bad. And the other thing is the overall slope. But what we can see as well from home builder data and other data providers is that the slope of the decline this year is nowhere near as steep as last year. So last year in this and the third and fourth quarter, it just dropped almost actually almost as severely.
Kevin
This is all transactions used and new, almost as severely as during the Great Recession. It wasn't starting at a higher high like that chart. You look at it, it's just like, oh my goodness, down 80%. Some ridiculous number. But the steepness of the curve is severe but pretty short. This year we didn't ever get as high as last year's highs, but the decline and the slope of the decline is more steady and slow.
Kevin
So take your poison. Would you rather be down 15% or I bet if you went and looked at the same data last year, third quarter, second quarter. Mm. Just My quick guess would be it'd be 35. So you know that's the thing with percentages is Yeah. The higher high probably felt great. Yeah. But the ride down probably felt worse.
Amanda
Right. That makes sense. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Kevin
And I'm most interested in the apartment to sell ratio. I got 90%. That's what you said was.
Amanda
For 19%. Now.
Kevin
That's still freaking awesome.
Amanda
I agree.
Andrew
Down from 21%, I think. Right?
Amanda
Yeah.
Andrew
So that's shifted.
Amanda
All in 2%. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I love these benchmarks because, you know, it's just such a good overall image because, you know, it's all market that's large builders, small builders established online program, new programs. So it's just a really great mix to have an overall view.
Kevin
Yeah.
Amanda
Yeah.
Andrew
It's real, real data.
Kevin
Oh, hey, something just happened. I think. I think somewhere in the last hour we just crossed over officially 25000 minutes of the podcast, which does means I said yesterday so you could listen to market proof marketing Monday through Friday for 8 hours a day and still be able to listen to a fresh new episode for you for over 60 days now.
Kevin
For over two months now, the tools.
Andrew
You will see.
Amanda
Them catch.
Andrew
Your life change. It'll be like a sitcom, like an had two kids here now. Yes. Three, seven has a new house like all these things that have happened.
Kevin
I mean, again, the IKEA effect is real. So it might just be because we made it. But if I ran a marketing department and hired someone who was brand, I would be tempted to just mandate like, Yeah, over the next three months I'll give you three months, but you need to listen to like just have it in the background.
Kevin
You don't need smooth jazz, you don't need rock and roll or country. Just listen. I know it happened years ago. Just listen to it. Anyway.
Andrew
My like reprogram their brain. And so if they had something wrong with the brain, maybe it fixes that. There's nothing wrong with it. Maybe there might be something wrong with it, then maybe that'll be fine. Yeah.
Kevin
Okay. So you're going to have to make sure we do favorites because we're going to end on a depressing note on the news stories here, unfortunately. But according to Redfin.com, homebuyers must earn $115,000. That's obviously household income to afford the typical U.S. home. That's $40,000 more than the typical American household actually earns. So, okay, some of you listening are like, I mean, that's that's a lot of money, but that's not terrible.
Kevin
But when you put it in the context of the average household brings in $75,000, that's a problem.
Andrew
It's a lot of buyers that put that were previously in the market are not in the market like they are. They cannot participate. That's a better way. They are they cannot participate in home buying those people because of that.
Kevin
Yep. And the typical years homebuyers monthly mortgage payment is 20 $866 an all time high, up 20% from a year earlier.
Andrew
That's a bit of a mortgage so crazy.
Kevin
But you know rates are just a state of mind. Just take the rate.
Andrew
You know, just stay in it like it's not permanent. I mean, you still might need 28, 66 for the average average.
Kevin
But yes, and I do you know, some of the folks that I see posting the stuff I like, I get it when you're speaking to people within the industry, you're you're trying to motivate, put things in context. But then there's other people who are within the industry who are clearly talking to just the average person. And you're like, I don't think you come across the way.
Kevin
You think you come across here.
Andrew
Yeah, I mean.
Kevin
It's not if you live in the Bay Area, California, by the way, you have to earn at least $400,000. Oh.
Andrew
No big deal.
Kevin
No big deal.
Andrew
No big deal.
Kevin
Rust Belt buyers, nearly CENTCOM, Detroit home buyers only have to earn $52,000. Wow. But it's still a 19% increase from last year.
Andrew
Yeah, that's in Detroit. You could buy some houses for like nothing because.
Kevin
Yes, if yes, like $10 if you.
Andrew
There are.
Kevin
Room and even give it away, because that sounds interesting. There's Japanese, there's homes in Japan, they're the same way. And Spain and and other parts of Asia. You buy this home for ten bucks. But before you jump out and say, I'm going to become a real estate mogul, you have to promise. In Detroit's case, I think you have three years to bring the house up to a certain level of livability or you lose it again.
Andrew
So I still don't.
Kevin
Want people buying up a bunch of land and doing nothing with it.
Andrew
Amanda has it's close to Detroit, so we move to Detroit.
Amanda
I know, but no, but actually like 3 hours. But I have your place there. But I am close. Yes.
Andrew
You don't. You have no reason to go there.
Amanda
You think I'm an area of Detroit.
Kevin
I'm a bigger fan of the west side of Michigan, generally speaking. Okay. But you didn't. You don't care about that. That's not why you're listening to the show. How does affordability get fixed? I think everyone keeps saying the way to fix affordability is just to build more. But I just want to remind everyone that there are still this problem of the price of land, and that's not helping things, and it's build more of a certain type of home which zoning and or voters will not allow.
Kevin
So you either have the problem, not my backyard or zoning or building a bunch of stuff in a place where no one is, which is its own challenge. So not likely to to be fine is.
Andrew
Not in my back.
Kevin
Even if manufactured housing takes off like a rocket.
Andrew
Yeah.
Kevin
Mm hmm. All right, so let's end with current favorites. Yeah. Got to be a favorite this time. Amanda What do you got?
Amanda
Yeah, well, I. I have really been loving. A favorite is the role of coaching that I have been able to kind of step into the role full time. And it's just been really neat to see the best of clients and kind of be with them through the journey of like really establishing their program. Like Candace, that whole homes, for example, we do the builder shop and she was one of the ones that made it all the way through one of the three.
Amanda
And I was like proud coach moment and thought that just really neat to see their numbers kind of come to life when when they don't have that before and then also see them grow like as they as you spend time with them. So I've been loving that and I've also been loving the fall weather, the shift in perspective, you know, like I was like, no, I don't want summer to end, but that's the best we are.
Amanda
And the the leaves are beautiful and I'm enjoying it.
Andrew
So your life change color?
Amanda
Yeah. Without changing color. So they're so pretty and jealous.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. We don't know. We don't have that down here, but I mean, we. So I'll go. Yeah, I'll say the weather as well. It's been great. Are, we're like high seventies, low eighties, that's like wake up and it's like 60 something which is, that is amazing. But my real current favorite is this task management tool. So you have project management tools which are fully robust, right?
Andrew
They have task management, which is usually more appropriate if it's like just your stuff. So this is just my stuff because I want it to be simple, straight to point zero. I need zero resistance to using it, which I've struggled to find. So I found this one. It's called tick with a tick tick, tick, dot com SDK. And what is neat about it is you could type in like I just typed in while we were talking.
Andrew
I don't think anyone caught me. You don't have to click on anything to set dates. So I was I typed in Proactive Threshold report, traffic leads, appointments and one chart next Tuesday and then assigns it to next Tuesday. Like it reads like I'm still like the prompter on it next Tuesday. I think there's other things I do this this was just I happened to find this one and it does it.
Andrew
And there's like literally nothing on here except for the list of things and then like the name of the list and that next Tuesday, next Monday, tomorrow features really nice right for the that that we surgical podcast that something from Becca and Sarah that I'm going to finish up tomorrow I just copied that and typed in tomorrow copy typing tomorrow and then on there in like half a second, like I'm like, this is great, what I found and I've tried tons of them like this has no friction to actually use it or I didn't have to learn it.
Andrew
We use teamwork. There's Monday, there's Asana, click up, all these different ones and like, Oh, these are so like too much for me to actually want to use it. If there's multiple people involved, I don't think this would be a tool for you. But if it's just your things, then I think it's it's super nice device. I've been using it for three weeks, so it's made three weeks, which is.
Andrew
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I think so.
Amanda
So that out.
Kevin
Yeah. I just you reminded me of one that I use only for my personal email inbox, but I also put it on Melanie's email as well. Is same box S.A. box. I might have mentioned it before, but it, it has kind of these additional boxes that, that it creates. Let me let me pull it up here because I'll just tell you what I actually So there's a same black hole.
Kevin
So instead of trying to subscribe to things forever and they just keep resubscribe and you just say, If I get anything from this, just put it here and then automatically deletes them over time. But if you've signed up for something where all you want is the Pizza Hut coupon or the Papa John's coupon to be able to reference, you can go in the black hole and find it.
Kevin
But You never have to see that at your inbox ever again. Yeah, that's that's all saying events is anything and it just crawls the email and automatically applies it. And when you move something that automatically learns, okay, that's what that email or those kind of email should go. So same events, anything related to an actual date and time goes into an events folder same later is just what it believes are less critical.
Kevin
So if it's not coming from a person but a company and then same news as any newsletters, that's your sign up for that would be different than than what we're talking about with the black hole. And then they're saying next month, same next week, so you can do the same thing. You reply to any email or input like the the date range that you want to be reminded and then my other favorite is saying no replies.
Kevin
You can change the default setting, but the default is like if you send an individual email to a person and they don't reply. I think it's within five days. It puts a copy in there just so you see the notification of like, Do you need to send another reminder of this person? Did you get what you needed or not?
Kevin
Oh no, it's not that expensive. I think you can buy a bundle for like two or three emails for four. Not a lot, but my wife just I think she signed up for every single email under the sun. And then the school is trying to send you emails and then it's like, okay, Barry So.
Amanda
This little pollution. Yeah.
Kevin
That's right.
Andrew
That's, that is so true is so it sounds like the cool feature is that you use it and then it learns because of where you put it. You don't have to guess, assign it. You just like I thought over there, I thought over there.
Kevin
As long as you check and eventually boxes every day and move things around after a day or two, it does a pretty darn good job. And it also will send you a summary email like once a week, like, Hey, we're not certain based on your behavior. Like if something's continuing to go into same later, but you're not even reading it.
Kevin
It's like, are you sure you want this to go to the black hole? You can ignore the summary if you want to, but it tries to do its best to help you as well.
Andrew
That's pretty cool.
Kevin
And then my other favorite is the Professional Builder, 40 under 40, which Jackie Lipinski. Congratulations. There's a whole bunch of people that we're not going to make anyone sad by not saying her name, but there's a bunch of other friends of do you convert that that won the award as well. But that's a it's just a really great group of people always.
Kevin
And and this year is no exception. MAN Yeah, I'm just looking the list again. There's even more people than I realized that, that we know that like we know they're awesome.
Andrew
Enough, right?
Kevin
Are either.
Andrew
So congrats.
Amanda
I know.
Kevin
Ever heard of that guy? I am, I'm pretty sure. Chief Marketing Officer, Corporate marketing at my homes here in Columbus. Good job. You guys did a good job because that's the right list. All right. That'll do it for this week. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening!
Amanda
By!
