The Apartment Department
Multifamily marketing does not stand still. Neither do we.
The Apartment Department is a podcast for operators, marketers, leasing professionals, and industry partners who want to think differently about how marketing drives performance.
Through conversations with operators, marketing leaders, and industry partners shaping the future of multifamily, we focus on what they are building, testing, and refining to strengthen marketing teams and drive measurable results.
Our goal is simple. We want you to leave each episode with a new perspective and at least one idea worth testing.
Hosted by Anne Baum and Chris Johnson, exploring how strategy, systems, and performance intersect in multifamily.
Produced by Carlos Marquez.
The Apartment Department
AI, Customization, and Humans: The Formula for Leasing Success
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In this episode, Chris and Anne sit down with Jacob Carter, founder of Nurture Boss, to discuss the how conversational AI + humans can revolutionize the leasing and resident experience by offering a customized, intuitive, responsive communication machine. In addition, they discuss the importance of AI tools using the PMS as the data source of truth and how operators can lead the charge on creating a more open system for sharing data across vendors.
Hi everyone and welcome to the apartment department, the podcast for multifamily marketers by multifamily marketers. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to announce something very exciting. We have recently partnered with Flamingo as a sponsor of the apartment department. So we know Jude, he uh did an episode with us a while ago. He's one of the smartest people in multifamily, really focused on resident satisfaction, doing the right thing, being different. And so it just felt like the perfect partnership between the apartment department and flamingo. So thank you everyone to who listens and uh supporting us. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and introduce our guest for today, Jacob Carter, the founder and CEO of NurtureBoss. NurtureBoss is um conversational AI solutions for multifamily teams. But of course, Jacob is gonna tell us, you know, what that means and all it entails. So, Jacob, thank you so much for being with us. We're so, so excited to have a conversation with you around AI technology. I know you really like talking about development and uh technology, software development. So uh go ahead and introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about Nurture Boss.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks, Ann and Chris. I'm excited to be here. I'm a fan, so that always makes it easier and more fun to do things like this. And yeah, I'm definitely a nerd, is the way I would kind of shorten that. Um, I'll call myself one, so it's okay. So I love getting in the weeds and getting technical. So uh, you know, maybe we'll we'll do a little bit of that today. Conversational AI solutions for multifamily teams is a fine way to introduce Nurture Boss. Um, you know, we love AI and building AI solutions for multifamily, primarily that manifests through our virtual leasing assistant, which really is there to facilitate from the moment a lead is generated all the way up to when a resident is renewing their lease, conversation and drive outcomes throughout that entire lead to lease and lease to renewal lifecycle. So I'm sure we'll dig into more detail throughout the conversation, but I think that's a pretty good overview.
SPEAKER_02That sounds awesome. So AI is a huge buzzword, right? Um so tell us, I mean, tell us a little bit more um about how nurture boss and and AI make um make leasing easier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So AI is certainly uh a big buzzword, and you know, a lot of people can get into a lot of different areas of AI. Most implementations of AI and multifamily are generative AI, which said differently is conversational AI, kind of the ability to have that natural back and forth, human-like conversation, uh, with you know, the person on the other end, of course, being artificial intelligence. So, really any aspect of the leasing journey that involves that back and forth communication really can be done these days by generative AI. So the solutions that we're building for multifamily focus on those critical workflows that typically take a lot of man hour and time from on-site teams that now can be done instead through technology. So, some really basic and easy to understand examples. You call the property and somebody picks up the phone. Well, that could be NurtureBoss's virtual leasing assistant that picks up the other end of that phone and has that back and forth conversation. They can facilitate the prospect journey through getting tours scheduled, answering questions around pricing availability, the local area, the amenities and features of the apartment community, but also on residence call as well, facilitating maintenance requests, emergency maintenance requests, questions around ledger balances, other reasons that residents may also be ringing the front office. But really, that continues throughout the entire journey through multiple channels. So you might have a chat bot on your apartment website powered by Nurture Boss that again facilitates that back and forth, capturing lead information, turning every page on your property website into a lead capture page, generating guest cards, scheduling tours, so on and so forth. But then once that lead is in the CRM, the prospect has expressed interest, you've captured their information. There's a ton of nurturing that we have to do still in order to drive that prospect into a resident, ultimately signing a lease. And that continued follow-up nurture occurs through those email and text channels with the NurtureBoss virtual leasing assistant with targeted messaging depending on where the prospect is at in the lead-to-lease lifecycle. Meaning if they haven't toured yet, we want to drive that tour. If they've already toured, we want to drive that application, get them through that application process, and ultimately get that lease signed. And then as I mentioned before, that's kind of half the job, right? Once that lease is signed and the resident is now a member of the community, we want to make sure they have a great smooth move-in experience through constant communication, move-in checklists, follow up in the first 30, 60, 90 days, facilitate on-time rent payments, help chase down those overdue rent payments or delinquent residents with uh AI-powered messaging there as well, boost online reputation and ultimately drive uh more renewals. So all of that uh, you know, involves conversation, typically that human touch of the back and forth. And that's really how NurtureBoss's AI can play a role in those critical workflows.
SPEAKER_00Super interesting. I mean, again, AI is has been out there, programs have been out there, it's gotten better for sure. I like your approach of nurturing the resident. Can you talk a little bit more about this and the success you've seen? Maybe some data and numbers. And I'm a king of asking follow-up questions. So um I'm also gonna ask you some data on the prospect side, but let's start with the resident first and just what you've seen and what what communication channels they prefer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So everybody prefers text. That's an easy question to answer. Uh, there are rules and regulations around uh the ability to send text messages. So really doing our best to drive as many folks to opt into text is something that we spend a lot of time on as well. But everybody certainly prefers to text. Uh, you know, it's easier, it's more convenient, it's more real time. Some people want to leave it unread for an hour a day, get to it when they do. Some people want the immediate back and forth. And text really allows for both of those realities. In terms of kind of why we care about it and why we put time and energy into the resident side, is you know, my background is a software engineer, right? We we covered the nerd part, but my multifamily background experience is actually that of a renter, right? I didn't grow up working on site uh like a lot of folks that are in the space did. I was renting apartments all through my 20s, right? And as a renter, I felt like my experience could be better. As a resident, I felt like my experience could be better. From my perspective, I was paying tens of thousands of dollars a year uh to buy a product, right? I felt like getting a return phone call was the least that I could ask for. Now, obviously, once I got into this space, you realize what it's like to be an on-site team member, the number of hats that they wear. And there's a ton of empathy there. And a lot of our product is geared at making their lives easier. But initially, it definitely came from the perspective of a renter. And that's why the resident experience was one of the primary things that we focused on when we first started Nurture Boss. And what we've learned through our own experience and through data is that renewal really starts the day a lease is signed, right? Decisions get made within the first 90 days typically by a resident on if they're gonna renew in a year's time. So ensuring that initial experience is really good is critical for us, right? It's critical for the for the community and critical for the resident. So building tooling that helps drive that positive experience by making sure the resident has the information, the resources, and the access that they need when they need it is a really great way to boost those renewal rates. And then as we've evolved and technology's gotten better and we've gone kind of deeper into the tech stack with integrations and deeper into the resident experience, we're able to start building out additional tools that ease the workload of on-site team members. We know that the assistant manager is typically the one that wears the rent collection hat, right? So by being able to create that delinquency AI product, we're able to free up a lot of that individual's time, but also yield better results because we don't forget to send messages, we don't forget to follow up. We're there 24-7 to answer any questions a resident might have around their ledger balance. And we're easily increasing on-time rent payments by five to 15% on average at some of these properties that that are leveraging our delinquency AI product.
SPEAKER_00I agree that renewal starts almost day one. Um, one negative experience at the beginning, whether the apartment not being ready, they didn't get their checklist. I mean, there's so many things that can go wrong. Uh, a lot of things go right, obviously. So it's nice to have a product that's there to support us. Can you give us some examples of of messaging that you are sending out or is it custom per property? Do you do you really work with the operator? Um, and then talking about the tech stack, I assume that you uh are integrated with most of the big ones out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Um integrated with most of the big ones out there and really deep integrations, and that's super critical, right? It's not a surface level uh read data, it's a really deep get all the information and constantly be pushing information back in because we like to treat the CRM or the property management software as the source of truth. We don't want NurtureBoss to be the new source of truth that an on-site team has to log into a new platform and learn a new system, right? So, yes, integrations, but deep integrations that allow the on-site team to continue working out of that source of truth by us putting in really good information. A silly example, but a good example is with Intrada. If we send a delinquency notification to a resident, we insert a delinquency note into the resident's file within Intrada, right? That's just one example of what I mean by deep integrations. Uh, now, in terms of the type of messaging, the customization, the word that I hope everybody is sick of uh when I'm done talking about nurture boss is customizable, right? Like that is the name of the game for us. There is no one size fits all. And the ability to truly tailor our software and technology to work for your property specifically, your market, your portfolio specifically is really critical to our success and to the customer's success. So, yes, all the messaging can be customized, not only the language of the messaging, but the colors, the fonts, the logos, the imagery. We want the branding, the voice, the tone to stay true to the property. So it's a nice cohesive and coherent experience for the resident or the prospect. We don't want you to get a message and it feels like it came from Nurture Boss, right? That's us failing at our job. We want it to feel like it came from the property, from the on-site team. So a deep level of customization uh is definitely a major part of our platform. The two other things that come to mind, uh, Chris, from your question is one, we want to operate as an extension, a true partner for on-site teams and for our customers. If I can do a shameless uh self-plug here, go look at our Google reviews, right? Go on Google, type in Nurture Boss. Don't even go to the website, just click on reviews and start reading through those. 100% of those reviews are five-star reviews. There's over 40 of them, and almost all of them go into detail about how great their relationship is with their customer success manager at NurtureBoss. That is one of our secret sauces. Putting the humanity back into AI is something that we really focus on as an AI provider in this space because we don't want to lose that touch. We don't want to lose that human touch that's critical to success for prospects, residents, on-site teams, and nurture boss itself, right? And then the second last thing, Chris, about what you asked about was some examples of messaging. Um, we can spend as much time on this as you want. I'll give a quick example and stop in case you've had enough. But when a new resident moves in, for example, there's a lot of things we can do prior to that move-in to make it a great experience. And we'll change and alter that based on the property's needs and the residents' needs. So, one example is maybe we send it a custom move-in checklist seven days prior to move in, letting them know how to set up renter's insurance and what the criteria needs to be, how to set up their Wi-Fi, how to get the power uh account set up, right? A real unique custom move-in for that resident at that property. Or maybe it's a welcome packet attached as a PDF that they want to get in the hands of every resident. Maybe uh they need to, I'll plug the sponsor here, download a flamingo app, for example, right? And and that's something you want to make sure they do. Well, our messaging can help make sure that they do that. Uh, or maybe it's just a general, hey, we can't wait for you to come in and pick up your keys, right? So that's an example of some of the kind of pre-moving messaging that Nurtroboss might send automatically to new residents. Yeah, I love it.
SPEAKER_00And I just I assume that all the messaging goes into the CRM and the staff, on-site staff can see it and jump in anytime they need to as well, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's absolutely right. And kind of on that, that mindset of bring the humanity back to AI, we think it is our job at NurtureBoss to monitor the on-site team's activity and for us to not step on their toes as the technology provider, not the other way around. So through those deep integrations, we know when the on-site team is actively engaged with the prospect, and our AI is not going to check in and send them a message out of left field that says, hey, schedule a tour, right? Because they're actively talking back and forth with Anne, who's working at the front desk, right? So we do a really good job through our features and functionality of knowing when there is a void of lack of communication that AI needs to fill, and we jump right in. And we also know when to take a step back and let the humans do their thing. So, so yeah, definitely close monitoring of the on-site team's activity. Jacob, it's funny you said that.
SPEAKER_00I just had a conversation the other day with the team, but I want to start promoting that we're human instead of AI because so many people are talking to bots that we our our teams are actually gonna actually answer the phone. So these questions are really they're for me and the rest of our industry as we try to figure out our tech stack. And it sounds like you're just doing it different. You're doing it different than a lot of the other AI partners out there. And I like your where your headspace is at.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'm glad that stands out. Um, yeah, and there's a lot of little things we do that add up to a big difference. So I'll give you another silly example. A lot of the AI providers out there uh need to be an agent in the CRM, and a lead needs to be assigned to that agent in order for the AI software to follow up and work with that. The problem with that is that you take away ownership from the on-site team when you do that, right? It's kind of like the on-site team gets permission to not worry about this prospect. Um, or worse, they do want to get involved, but they can't because the prospect's not assigned to them, right? So we don't do that. We don't take ownership of leads inside the CRM. We don't have an agent that you have to assign the lead to. We are aware of all leads 24-7. We're monitoring all leads 24-7, and we jump in when it makes sense, right? We we play a role when a role needs to be played, but we always defer to the human. Now, the humans could choose to not follow up, and nurture boss is there and we're doing the work and we're converting leads, right? But if it's uh a team like yours, Chris, where you want to advertise the humanity, right? Uh at the property, then by all means do the work. And but rest assured, nothing will fall through the cracks because you have nurture boss there.
SPEAKER_00Do you have any data on successful tours using a bot versus when it's human? Like actually showing up and converting. Do you have any data around that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good question. Um, so we did notice when we first released our product that tours scheduled by virtual leasing assistants had a higher no-show rate. And we actually made adjustments and changes in our software that have resolved that. There's easy things like sending immediate tour confirmations, sending appointment reminders that help with that. But a lot of it was making it less of a transactional type communication and more of a conversational type of communication. So, hey, you're coming into tour. What do you want to see while you're here, right? How can we prepare and get ready for that tour to get the most out of it for you? Do you, you know, do you like working out? Do you want to see the fitness center? Um, you know, are you uh a guy that uh or girl that loves their car and you want to check out the covered parking or the underground parking? Like what matters to you, right? And by engaging and really getting emotional investment from the prospects pre-tour, we're able to increase uh that show rate uh across the board.
SPEAKER_02Jacob, I I think that's interesting because um I was at Apartmentalize. I'm sure were you out there as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we had yeah, we had the booth, we had a whole gang of us walking around in nurture bus shits.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all the people. Um, well, there was a particular session um, and I don't remember the details other than one of the things that they talked about was this idea of the golden path being dead. Um, and really understanding and asking your prospects what they're interested in when they're coming into the property, so that you're not doing the standard 45-minute kind of dragging them around, you know, what you think is the optimal view of the property through that golden path, but instead again, understanding. And so it's really interesting to hear that part of that nurture process to ensure that scheduled tours are are showing up for their shows is asking ahead of time. And then it's giving the leasing agents the tools that they need to be successful and really pick up a conversation. So that's really timely. Um, because that was something, you know, I was there for three days, and that's like one of the things that really stuck out to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's great. And that kind of makes me think of one of my, I guess I'll call it a hot take on multifamily. There's coming into multifamily as an outsider, which I don't feel like one anymore, to be clear, right? I've been deep in the weeds for five years now, and this is my family, and I love it. But I still have a little bit of that outsider lens on things, right? And a big thing when you come into multifamily that that can be shocking is hey, we're different. We don't do things the way everyone else does stuff. We do it the multifamily way. And a lot of times that's great and it makes a lot of sense. But there are some learnings that the rest of the world has figured out that maybe we're a little slower to pick up on in the multifamily space. An example of that, if one of my sales reps wants to sell you NurtureBoss and you get on a call and they just read a script for 45 minutes and go through a deck, it is miserable. I'm bored, right? You're bored. The sales rep's bored. It's like, when is this call gonna be over? We know that the right way to sell product is to learn what is keeping you up at night. What are your pain points? What problems are you trying to solve? And then I'm gonna tailor my pitch to your specific problems. We call that the discovery phase of the sales cycle that that precedes the demo phase, right? And that's what you just said, Ann. You said, let's do some discovery work, let's figure out what this prospect cares about, and then let's alter our demo or tour to address those pain points, right? So yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that that's kind of one of those things where it's like, yeah, we should absolutely be doing that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and when you put it, it's so funny when you um put it outside the context of multifamily or kind of, you know, from like a sales perspective, you're right. Of like, why why wouldn't you why wouldn't you be doing that? That's I never thought I had never actually thought about it that way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a prospect is in a sales funnel. That's just the reality, right? And we need to drive them through that sales funnel like we would drive anybody through a sales funnel. But with the, you know, really important differentiators where you're not selling a widget, you're selling a home, and that's a big deal, right? You need to treat it with the severity of of what a big deal it is. So there is certainly differences, uh, without a doubt, but there's some shared uh similarities there as well.
SPEAKER_02I um so I know we've been talking about nurture boss, but I'm kind of curious because you said you're a nerd. You said you've been in multifamily for five years. So what was the catalyst for starting uh Nurture Boss? You know, tell us a little bit about that journey and then we can jump back into data and and all the good things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, I came at it from the renter's perspective. So quite literally, I was sitting in my apartment uh upset with um the management company running my apartment because of the experience I was having. And because I'm a software engineer is uh, you know, by trade, for better or worse, I think technology can solve all problems. I'm often wrong in that, right? But uh in this situation, I believed that I was right. So I literally just spent my nights and weekends writing code to build a platform that I wish I had as a renter, right? That I wish the the community I lived at had uh as a renter of that community. Uh and I was able to get a couple apartment communities to try my duct tape bubblegum version of software that I had built. And it was pretty incredible. Within a few weeks, we could accurately attribute multiple leases having been signed because of the nurturing that this nurture boss software had done. And because of that flywheel and multifamily, the owners of these apartments were like, wow, where did we get all these leases from? Nurture Boss? Well, listen, I got these properties in California and blah, blah, blah. And you blink, and a couple weeks have gone by, and you're at 30 properties across three states, and you're like, hold on a second, maybe I have a business here, right? And that's kind of the the genesis of how everything got started.
SPEAKER_02That's very cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that that with us.
SPEAKER_00I want to just take a a different turn here and and just talk more about the hot takes of multifamily. Where's the tech going? How is AI gonna change? Is this leading to centralization? Kind of talk about where you think AI will take it and and including what you're doing with the prospects and residence, which is great. Um but what's next? How do we improve it more?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a good question. So a couple things. One is I don't think anybody out there truly understands how fast or is able to predict how fast and and dramatically AI will change in the coming weeks, months, let alone years, right? We're starting to see AI models that are literally being allowed to train themselves. They're literally being allowed to design hardware to run themselves on more efficiently, right? So we've really opened the lid on Pandora's box. And I think we're gonna see some pretty explosive growth and progression in the capabilities of AI in the very near future. So I don't even want to hazard a guess at what it's gonna look like a year from now, other than to say, I don't think any of us know. So I think the best thing we can do. Is open our minds as as wide as we can and just really be ready to get on board or push against or whatever, but have a have a stance right on the way that things are going and where AI is taking us. Now, more specifically, though, and in the immediate future, and what I think multifamily, along with a lot of other industries, are going to see is really this focus on um the agentic side of AI. So at Nurtroboss, we build agentic AI software. And really said simply, for an AI piece of software to be considered an agent or agentic, it needs to have the ability to interact with its environment. So ChatGPT, if you go to you know the website and you start typing in the search bar, that is a good example of a non-agentic AI, just conversational AI. You know, if you type into Chat GPT, hey, I need to book a tour uh at this apartment community on this day, it's not going to come back and say, okay, your tour has been booked, right? It's going to send you a link to the website or the Zilla listing or whatever it is. So when we say agentic, we mean that the AI is empowered with the tools and functionality to interact with its environment to actually drive outcome versus complete a task, right? Now that's we're all on board with that for the most part. What I think the really innovative companies like NurtureBoss and others are doing is understanding how you're going to start building a lot of what I'll call microagents, right? Agents that are hyper-specialized in a specific task. And you can start building up a little team or army of agents that plug into an orchestration layer that operates for the entirety of the entity, whether it be a property, a portfolio, a market. So imagine an agent that is really good at scheduling tours. Imagine an agent that is really good at uh monitoring um, you know, the trash collection at your property. Imagine an agent that's really good at monitoring amenity usage. Imagine an agent that's really good at knowing if a resident's going to renew or not. So you start getting these hyper uh focused specialized microagents that plug into a single orchestration layer. So from your perspective, Chris, or your perspective, Ann, it's just one AI that you engage and interact with. But under the hood, it's a bunch of really specialized microagents, if you will. That's kind of my what I think's coming in the next six months, sort of uh fiction.
SPEAKER_00Mind is blown, Anne, as you like to say.
SPEAKER_02I know. Well, then I'm trying, okay. I have questions. What do what do people use to build an eight? Like what everyone, it's like AI equals chat GPT, right? Like that's I know that's not true, but that's just yeah. So like what type of tool, what would someone use to build that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I totally, I totally get what you're what you're you're getting at. And I have a couple answers. So let me let me frame this differently.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Today, if you need a specific tool or functionality on your phone, you go to the app store and you download the app. Think of it like that, right? You're at your property and you need an agent to do X. So you're gonna go to the app store and download that agent, and it's gonna work at your property. So I've someone like yourself or Chris, think of yourself as a user of agents, not a builder of agents. We don't build phone apps, we just download them. There are other nerds out there that build the phone apps, and I think we're we're pretty far away from you building your own agents. At least, you know, you can go and build your own GPT on Chat GPT, and you know, you can do some stuff, and it's it's it's very uh introductory. But at the level I'm talking about, we still need the engineers, right? Or the AI to write the code, if you will. Um, it's not a build your own scenario, but it's a it's a plug and play of download your own apps to create all the apps on your phone, if you will, but it's download your own agents to create your own layer of uh agentic software for your property portfolio that does what it does. You know, I'm starting to get into the future here, right? You asked me what I thought was coming, so we're really getting out there, but but that's that's what I see.
SPEAKER_02Why does it need to have to be individual agents that do each task? Like, is that kind of the nature of agentic AI?
SPEAKER_01Is that it's the more, yes, the more broad uh you try to make one um implementation of AI be the less good. It's kind of jack of all trade, master of none sort of scenario. So there's value gained from the end user perspective. When you can let a model be hyper-focused on a specific thing, uh, then it can be really good at that thing and you can continue to iterate to make it better at that thing. When you want it to be good at everything, it becomes okay at everything, right? So the reason that I have that vision is one, because I think the agents themselves will be better if they're hyper-focused. But two, you want the ability to plug and play. At this property, I don't need the agent that focuses on resident satisfaction because it's uh a student living property in renewals, burn and churn, whatever. Not that you don't want satisfied students living there, but it's just not a priority for you, right? Or at this property, you know, we're stabilized, we have really good retention, we barely do tours. I don't need a whole tour agent for that. My on-site team can handle it, right? Or, you know, this property has zero scaping, so I don't need this thing that interacts with the maintenance company or whatever. You know, there's all kinds of reasons why, but it it's not a one-size-fits-all, and that's why we focus at nurture boss on customization because we don't think that the nurture campaign that works for property A will work for property B. So we don't want to force property B to use property A setup. We want to customize it for each market, each property, each portfolio. So, why would we expect your AI needs to be the same as Chris's AI needs? They're not, right? So it's it's not just about the hyper specialization for better outcomes, but also the plug and play nature of it of I need what I need and I don't need what I don't need, so I don't want to pay for that.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense. I have a question about demographics using platforms and AI. Are we is it do you think it's right that all the generations behind us don't want to talk to people, they don't want to see the property, they just want to get their answers, or are we wrong about that? And people actually do want to see where they live and maybe talk to somebody every once in a while. I'd love to see if you have any data on that. I'm just that's a Chris question, not like an kind of an industry question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I have a couple things. One is uh broad, if I have to pick a side, if you're making me pick a side, Chris, I pick the side that that's wrong. I pick the side that uh you know, human-to-human interaction is not dead, you know, if I have to pick a side. What I will say though is that if you look at the data of how even millennials versus Gen Z use Chat GPT, it's wildly different. Millennials in in Gen X and in Boomers and beyond, they typically use Chat GPT like you would use Google, right? And I'm a millennial. Like you type instead of Google, you type it in Chat GPT. Gen Z Alpha, they're not using Chat GPT like that. They're saying, hey, ChatGPT or whatever they've named it, you know, I got some tough decisions coming up. I gotta figure out where I'm going to school. And I'm thinking about U of A, but my boyfriend's going to this other school, and I really can't decide where to apply. Like, what do you think about that? And they have this in-depth life coaching conversation with AI about what they should do next, right? That's how the younger generations are using AI, which is inherently different than how my generation and older are using AI, where it's like, you know, how much Benadryl can I take? You know, it's like just a different, it's a different thing that we're doing. So I do think younger generations are creating a deeper relationship with AI. And I do not think that is a bad thing, to be clear. Um, if you read studies about benefits of having friends and spending time with people and blah, blah, blah, the benefit is not that it's a human, the benefit is the relationship, the communication, the give and take. And there's no reason you can't have that with technology, right? So I don't think it's this wildly unhealthy thing that younger generations are building deeper relationships with AI. Maybe 20 years from now, I'm trying to figure out how to delete a podcast episode from 20 years ago, right? Because it turns out I'm really wrong. But but no, I don't I don't think it's inherently bad. But I also don't think that there's a lack of desire for face-to-face communication or or human relationships. I don't have a lot of great data to pull up to back that up, Chris. Uh, we're kind of out there right now, so I'm just telling you what I think. But what I will say is that my opinions are informed off being really in the weeds on AI and spending a lot of time researching how people are using AI. I I tend to agree.
SPEAKER_00I think AI is great to answer the questions that need to be answered, but I do think there's something to be said about seeing where you're gonna go live and seeing the people that are there that are gonna help you in meeting them. I think that means something to everybody. Um at least it did me. I was a renter by choice for a long time. I told you I rented up by you, even in in Arizona. Um and I still wanted to know the staff, even though then, and this was like 12 years ago, I leased sight on scene, but I had friends in the area that told me it was nice. So uh well, you relied on a human, right? So it's I relied on a human, exactly. Although I didn't have ChatGPT to go ask how great is this area in North Phoenix and am I gonna like it? So I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It's another thing of is ChatGPT even telling you the truth. I could go on and on about that for a long time. And my my one and and I stole this from somebody else who I don't remember or I'd credit them, but you should think of Chat GPT as a smart, friendly liar, right? Um, best of intentions and the friendliest of intentions, but quite often a liar, right? So you gotta you gotta take that lens.
SPEAKER_02I think that's interesting too because all the conversations around this like geo, um, and it it's almost identical to conversations back in the day about SEO. You know, how do I keyword stuff? How do I step up my reviews to make you know my my website and GMB a trusted source for these um generative search engines? And so it's just kind of, you know, to your point, one, yes, chat GPT tells me I'm amazed, you know, like I'm never wrong when I talk to Chat GPT, that makes me feel better. But two, uh again, that people are already thinking about how do we game the system? And so from that standpoint, when there's kind of this like human intervention of how do we get Chat GPT or other search engines to to trust what we're saying, it's still being fed by humans, so then it's not as uh neutral as as we think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I've been uh spending a lot of time actually on the GEO topic because I was interested. Um, you know, Nurture Boss does not offer a GEO solution, so there's no money in this for me, but I've just was really interested in it. Yeah, and actually I I built and and I'll put this out there for everyone to use for for free here um in uh maybe a a month tops, but I built a GEO audit tool where you can put in your property website and it'll spit out a report and tell you how you're doing for GEO. And so I I went deep into researching it. And there the truth is there's a lot we don't know still. There's a lot of guesses and there's a lot of trying to game the system to your point, right? Um, not that I think everyone out there who's who's a marketer uh, you know, and is trying to boost their their websites uh ranking it has bad you know intentions by any stretch of the imagination, but um, but we we we do want to outrank our competitors, right? And and we do work to to achieve that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that'll be interesting to see your tool. And I just learned something. GEO, not geo, like just EO.
SPEAKER_01I've heard it, I've heard now I know is yeah, I've I've heard it both ways. I I say geo just because geo advertising and marketing is kind of a is a you know a thing. And for sake of hoping to not confuse, I say geo.
SPEAKER_00I am not an authority though, so don't I want to finish up with with your product at the end, but I want to ask one more general question about our industry? We've had some consolidation this year, some probably some surprising things, at least for me. I've been doing this a long time. Um my question to you is how does our industry get better with our data? Maybe better asked, why can't we just share better between our tech stacks? Why are there so many barriers? Why are there so many walls? It just seems that if we really want to do our customers right, we would break down these walls so we can actually figure out what's going on and not have broken chains everywhere. What's your take on that? And how do we get better?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, the reason is capitalism, brother. You know what I mean? Like everybody's trying to everybody wants you to use their product now. Hold on though. Let me let me give you a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00Like, look, we're all making money, we're all multifamily. Yeah, nobody is disputing that. I'm not saying we should do anything for free, by the way. I'm just saying, can we please just get some APIs that give us data that doesn't break stuff? That's all I'm asking for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's not you're not asking for much, it's a very reasonable ask, Chris. And and I'm on your team just for the for the record. Um, but so a couple a couple things here. So one is that I think the most important message, if I could want anyone here, is that operators, you have the power. I can't go to you know, property management software X and demand anything as a vendor. I just can't. But operators, you can. So you guys have to get loud voices and demand the kind of breakdown of barriers that you're talking about, Chris, because you guys are the ones that have the power to move the needle in that realm and in that argument. Now, that being said, what every vendor can do is their part to make sure their walls are down, right? Nurture Boss, we want to integrate with anybody and everybody. If it's going to help our customer, then it's in our interest. Now, you know, my background is uh a software engineer, but also in in product, software product. And one of the rules when you're building product is you always fall in love and get obsessed with the problems that you solve, not the solution that you built. When the solution that you built becomes the driving force for conversation, you totally lose scope of the reason people want to use your solution, which is that it solves their problems. So when we become solution obsessed and we lose sight of the problems that we're solving, we start making bad decisions like not integrating, right? Despite what the customer needs, we're obsessed with the solution we want you to buy. So we're not going to integrate, right? So it's not a good mindset. It's the wrong mindset, and it does not lead to value for our customers. And ultimately, I do believe that the right side will win. Value for our customers will win. But I think that the operators are the ones with the voices in this conversation, and you guys creating a rally cry around demanding open integrations is the fastest way to make it happen. Not to put it back on you, Chris, but that that's my take from the vendor side on kind of what we need in order to get what you're saying, which I want and I agree is is what we need. Because if we can have a single source of truth or mini sources of truth for data that communicate with each other, I mean the sky's the limit, you know, on what we can accomplish there.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. I think I know our next topic uh for Jay and Shelly in the Run Club, you know, we need to get it, we need to band together and we need to we need to be one voice in this because we all want it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I listen, I I I love it. I hope it happens.
SPEAKER_02I think that's interesting too, because then that's an opportunity to, you know, anytime I've heard people talk about data strategies, like the very first part of that is kind of you have to define your fields basically, right? Like you have to define what does a prospect mean, what does a lead mean? What does and so I think that everyone unifying together to have like a multifamily data strategy would allow for, you know, this kind of standardization across the industry too, which I think would be really interesting, you know, uh a standard standard definitions and all of that. I don't know. So I'm with you guys. Let's let's do it.
SPEAKER_01Once for what it for what it's worth, once upon a time there was um mitts, and I had to look up the acronym because I'd I never knew what it stood for, but multifamily information and transaction standards. But you know, a lot of the old school property management software still use MITS today, and MITS is exactly what you're talking about. And the problem is that it it got outdated decades ago and never got updated. So now everyone's moving away from it, but nothing new to move to, right? Um, so it's a little wild westy out there, but I think that's a solvable problem. I think if we can get the data doors open, we'll figure out how to normalize the data. That's something we've all been doing since computers were created, you know. Um, but still, still definitely would be nice to have a standard out there.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's interesting to hear um that MITS is uh uh Ret C has a MITS working group um that I happen to be a part of, but I've only been to one meeting, so I'm still uh I'm still getting up to speed. So that is uh good to hear that that is did used to be the standard, um, because there is at least a group working. Um, and that group has a pretty good representation of operators, vendors, etc. So great. Cool. That's moving already, and I'm a part of it.
SPEAKER_01Wonderful. Keep me posted.
SPEAKER_02All right. Anything else you want to say about Nurture Boss, Jacob?
SPEAKER_01Um, we covered a lot and and it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we got to dive deep into certain parts of what we do. I think the what I would end with is not new information, but just repeating something I said earlier because I can't emphasize enough how important it is just to not mince words and be clear. Nurture boss has the best AI and multifamily, I'm sure of it. But what we really have that matters is the best customer service and multifamily. We care so much about what experience the prospect resident and on-site team members, marketers, operators are having when they use and leverage nurture boss. And we put a ton of time and money into that. The customer success team is the biggest department at Nurture Boss, and we're a tech company, right? So that's saying something. So just I can't emphasize enough that when you work with Nurture Boss, you're partnering with somebody who is in the mud with you, right? Working to get things the way we need them to be to drive the outcomes that we need to drive. So putting that humanity back in AI is just such a big focus for us. And even if you don't care about Nurture Boss, care about that. Care about whoever you're working with should be your partner, right? And should be in the battle with you, you know, shoulder to shoulder, driving toward those ideal outcomes.
SPEAKER_02I love it. Thank you so much for coming and telling us about Nurture Boss. And again, yeah, your passion showed. And um, it's really great to hear from people who are wanting to drive change and wanting to do something different. You know, that's Chris's whole thing. And um, you know, he always wants to be different because it's an opportunity to do things better. So before we let you go, we're gonna ask my favorite question. Um, so a couple few months ago, which I've started saying, by the way, a couple few, I don't know why, but a couple few months ago, uh I started saying that I thought that um chat GPT at some point would basically be the death of I used to say Google, but now I say Google search. So, Jacob, what do you think? Will chat GPT be the death of Google search?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, do you want a yes or no, or do you want a little context with it?
SPEAKER_02You answered however short, unequivocal, however you want.
SPEAKER_00Is that our podcast gets big enough that you get aggregated and they just take one piece of it that means nothing? That would be amazing, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that'd be perfect. Yeah. Uh unequivocally, yes. Uh ChatGPT is gonna replace Google search. And the my short answer on the why, and I don't know if that's a good thing to be clear, but the short answer on the why is because what you get with ChatGPT that you lose with Google search is context. Context about your life, about who you are, about what you care about, about what drives you, right? And ChatGPT has this context because of your history with it, which means the results you're getting are so tailored to you that it's unavoidable that it's a better solution. Now, that could be why it's a horrible thing, right? Echo chamber, all the you know, all those things, but it also could be a great solution. That depends on the developers at OpenAI and and the you know the direction that they take the large language model. But but yes, without a doubt, ChatGPT is gonna replace Google search.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Jacob, you're the best guest we've ever had. Thank you. Uh all I gotta do is agree with Ann. Chris, are you still standing strong on um on your no?
SPEAKER_00I love Google, but I'm I'm starting to crack a little bit. I don't know. So ChatGPT is kind of fun when you get into it. And you give it some prompts. And even if you try to give the same prompts to go, like yes, you get it, but you get the website. So I'm starting to crack. We'll see. I don't know.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_00Well, I got a really good reason to keep listening now so I can see Chris's journey.
SPEAKER_02See, Chris's we need like a graph or something, like the months. Chris, Chris's opinion change. Jacob, thank you so much. I'm so glad that we got to meet um your company's wonderful, you're wonderful, and um, we can't wait to talk to you again sometime soon and let us know when your tool, your GEO tool comes out so we can share it with our listeners. We want to thank Carlos, our producer, who makes us sound amazing. We want to thank our sponsor, Flamingo, for um being a great partner and doing the right thing in the multifamily industry. And until next time, this is the apartment department.