The Apartment Department

AI Fluency: Moving from Concept to Practice in Multifamily

• Chris Johnson & Anne Baum • Season 3 • Episode 4

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In this episode, Chris and Anne speak with Tamela Coval and Tami Siewruk, two of the creators of Multifamily NEXT, a series of hands-on workshops designed to integrate artificial intelligence into the apartment industry. The guests explain that their "hackathon-style" events are moving beyond abstract concepts to help property owners and executives achieve AI fluency and operational efficiency. They emphasize that while AI will not replace humans, it requires a human-in-the-loop approach to maintain brand voice, manage data security, and avoid the pitfalls of "garbage in, garbage out" information. The discussion highlights the necessity for leadership and onsite teams to evolve alongside technology to prevent job displacement. By partnering with vetted implementation providers, the initiative aims to replace fragmented "Frankenstein" tech stacks with streamlined, AI-powered strategies for marketing, leasing, and renewals. The future of AI for real estate professionals is to embrace AI literacy as a standard requirement for the modern workplace.

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SPEAKER_01

Hi everyone and welcome to the apartment department. This is Ann Bao. With me as always is my co-host Chris Johnson. And I'm so excited today because we have two wonderful guests. We have Tamala Kovell and we have Tammy Sirik. Tamila is an industry principal investor, and she's Tammy's partner in Multifamily Next. Tammy is the founder of Multifamily Next and MPro Digital. And I'm really excited because Tamil and Tammy with Multifamily Next are doing something revolutionary in the industry. They are basically taking the concept of AI and they are allowing operators and owners to put AI into practice instead of just concept. And they're doing this through their conference that's coming up in January, Multifamily Next. I'm going to have them introduce themselves, but before I do, I want to tell a quick story about how I know Tamala. Um, because I met Tamala when I had been working in multifamily for um maybe a month, and we sat together on a bus at an event, and Tamila was so kind to me and um really inspired me. And we kept in touch over the years, and she's helped me with some really tough projects um and just really been there for me. So this, you know, really uh is is exciting for me to be able to support her and Tammy in their exciting venture. So Tamala, Tammy, anything else that you want the listeners to know before we dive into multifamily next. I'll jump in.

SPEAKER_03

So Ann, that was so kind. Thank you so much. Um, and you know, I've been in this industry for four, maybe four years and uh and growing, and um, you know, being with you, you were so excited, you were so um energizing to be with, and you reminded me of what it was like, you know, the first few times that I really understood what the industry was like and what it was about, and I just fed off of your own energy, and now you mean you're like the multifamily um goddess, you're everywhere. Goddess, I don't know if it's goddess or ghost, you're like everywhere at once. Maybe that's not ghost, but I don't know. Um, so thank you for having us on this on this uh meeting, and thanks for introducing Chris. Chris, I stalked you some on LinkedIn, and you're a smart cookie, aren't you? And then I I want to introduce, I know you've already done it, Ann, but I'd like to introduce uh Tam, uh Tammy Sarek. Uh she is an action hero, and and some of that, okay, okay. So here's the reference. Here's the reference. Uh, you know, we sc we scroll during the day. Tammy scrolls at two and three and four o'clock in the morning at the same time as you know, she never sleeps. This this woman never sleeps, but I was scrolling and I I watched um the governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was visiting with the Pope at a climate action, whatever, and that popped up in my feed. And he was talking about Pope Leo from Chicago being an action hero with climate, you know, I don't want to get into politics, but with with some different things that the Pope was doing. And and I thought, you know what, that's what Tammy's doing. She's an she's she's an action hero. She sees she sees something that is not quite right. It's a little off-kilter, and she wants to write it. She wants to, when I say write it, R-I-G-H-T it and make it better. And she was, um, you know, we were looking at different things and different events throughout multifamily, and it's like it drives her nuts when stuff's not right. And she starts flailing her arms around. You know, this the visual is really great. I should, you guys should describe my visual because this is just voice. But and she just, you know, she just is so passionate about what she does. And she wants to, like, like me at this point, she in her career wants to leave the very best that she can of her brain and her thoughts to multifamily, and that's what she's done in creating. And I'm I'm just gonna go ahead and start about multifamily next, if that's okay. That's what she's done with next, is she's she's seen a huge void and a huge gap in our industry, and she's created some amazing tools. She makes me smarter, and so I just hope that you guys will will feel some of that and see some of that, and I'm pretty sure you will. So definitely buckle up, put on your helmets because we're we're getting ready to launch. Tam, Tammy Swearick.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, hi everybody. I'm I'm real excited to be here with somebody from Ohio and from Texas. I mean, I just feel like okay, I'm I'm at home now, so that's great. And um, what happened with multifamily next, I'll tell you, was really interesting. So I I just finished building 166 educational AI tools.

SPEAKER_03

And in your spare time, in your spare time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, in my spare time, is right. And um, I've been working on it for two years. Um, it's actually two years this December, and ready to launch in January. And it was interesting because I really two years ago, we've been, you know, AI's been around forever, right? Like and AI is in everything we do. People just don't realize it. It's in our emails, it's just in everything we do. It's on Netflix, it's on TV. But we just never really started working with it ourselves, right? And uh so I built this platform and I got, you know, more knowledge, you know, from a techie side, like I can write code and I do all that stuff, right? So um, what happened was I started getting ticked off. I was listening to um or reading, you know, other programs that were being delivered on AI and listening to people talk on AI and listening to what people were writing and reading on LinkedIn. And I got really ticked off about it. Jamie Gorsky, who um is well known in the industry, is also my partner in another one of my businesses called Journey Lens. And I said, Jamie, I I haven't been on the road. I used to, you know, be on the national speaking circuit and produce brainstorming sessions for 30 years and blah blah blah. I said, Jamie, I think I have to go back on the road speaking because these people are making me crazy. I mean, I was like ready to kill people. And Tamil will, Tamil, tell tell her what happened.

SPEAKER_03

I was like, she she was I had to talk her down uh not off the ledge, but also off of a flight. She was headed to an a tech event. Then she was she, you know, she wasn't good. I would have been in the front row throwing rotten tomatoes and heckling, but she was gonna go there and say what just listen and learn why people are saying all these incorrect things. She has no patience for people who don't know what they're talking about teaching. So what what were you down the wrong path?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well what were you hearing that what that was up?

SPEAKER_02

What was the crux of the the crux of just the crux just the crux that it wasn't they weren't teaching AI fluency and what they were doing was not helpful for the industry. In fact, it was more of a fear tactic and not implementing the right strategy. There was like no governance talk about it, there was no education talk about it. It was more about we're gonna get rid of our employees, um, right, and those kind of things. And that's not what AI is all about. I mean, Microsoft just came out um in November actually with their stance on what their uh AI is is and what they're working towards, right? It's all about um the humanistic approach and AI working alongside AI and amplifying everything we do. And um, it takes a human in the loop to really make AI um effective. So when I said I was gonna go out on the road and start speaking again, Jamie jumped in and she goes, I'll do it with you because of our business and the journey lens, right? And that is looking at the entire customer experience from the minute they're triggered to find an apartment all the way through, you know, the rental and living in the community and moving out, of course, and all the 180 different touch points that there are, and how AI is gonna fit into each one of those. And, you know, so being AI fluent was important to me. So we that's why we invented a multifamily next. And um, I'm like Nike, the commercial, right? I just do it. Like I get in there and I say, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And I get people to rally around us and go, okay, we're gonna deliver this. This is how it's gonna be delivered. I don't want people going to a seminar where they're just gonna be spoken to, and then they're gonna walk away with a list of ideas that they have to go back and they never get implemented. So my concept was novel for our industry, really. This is like, okay, you're gonna roll up your sleeves, you're gonna go, you're gonna start at eight o'clock in the morning, and you might not leave that room till 10:30 at night.

SPEAKER_03

You know, we officially your PJs and your um Ninja Turtle slippies, right? Because we're gonna be comfy, we're gonna be rolling up our sleeves, we're getting up early and staying up late. So be comfortable, wear your PJs when you come to next.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's getting into done and learning so that you're gonna walk away with a 90-day plan that you can implement on Monday, and you're gonna feel confident, you're gonna have those components of being AI fluent that you've got the governance piece, you've got, you know, the the technical abilities behind it. You feel comfortable and solid, rallying your teams around you and educating them as well. And you know, being able to start on this journey properly and feeling secure about what you're doing and the security of your data, the security of your res. I mean, these are huge responsibilities that we have in our industry. And then also being able to vet who you hire, these AI companies out there, and there's a lot of them, and a lot of them are really good, but you have to know how to vet them and what positions are you vetting them for, and how do you do that? That's important. And then we have the huge fraud piece out there, so we're covering fraud and what AI can do to eliminate these billions of dollars that our industry is losing. Anyway, I'm getting I'm they call me. She's doing great. She's earning great. I'm so like excited to help people in this industry really get their arms around this and become AI fluent. That doesn't mean being a techie. That doesn't mean I'm gonna teach you how to push buttons to make the damn AI run, to use Chat GBT or Claude. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what it's about. It's about learning how to use these tools responsibly, how you can duplicate through using specific templates and and chat assistants and a genetic, and so it's all safe for everybody to do without harming your data and keeping it all protected. Um can I jump in for a second? Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this is, I mean, this is fascinating um to hear about the hands-on approach. It reminds me of at a company I used to work at a SaaS platform years ago, and we did a hackathon. Um we each we had to break into groups. Um we each came up with an idea to make the platform better, and we worked the entire night. Yeah, like stayed the night in the office. I had a tent in my office. I was younger then, right? But like thought that was a good idea. Um, and then we all presented and then we all presented our ideas in the morning on on how to make it. And so it really uh it brought a whole new level of investment to the company to be able to do that. And it sounds like again, you guys are kind of bringing that concept to AI and to multifamily, like it's time for action, which is very exciting.

SPEAKER_03

And that whole idea of the fact of the hackathon and is is what I describe it as a hackathon. I'll never forget the first time I heard up like, what the heck is a hackathon? And this was probably 15 years ago coming back from a a Spark conference in San Francisco, and I was on the and I l I live in Atlanta and I was on the plane with a bunch of kids, um college kids. Yeah, I could have been their grandmother probably at this point, but a bunch of college kids, and uh you they were all chit-chatting and everybody was busy. And I asked the question, well, why are y'all you guys coming to Atlanta? Because you know each other, and is there a fun thing that I need to be at? And they said, Oh, we're going to Georgia Tech for the hackathon. And so I, you know, I'm like, oh man, we need that in multifamily. Well, so that's what Tammy has really created here. It is a hackathon. It is, let's figure, let's so each one of our operators that are as they register, they create an AI assessment checklist. And there's no wrong answers. It is what it is, right? And some of us, as Tam said, you know, we've been working with AI for a long time. We just didn't know it. Some of us are a little bit more aware of that than others, and um, so this checklist kind of gives you a oh, here's today. And then post-session, post-workshop, they'll do another one and and they're gonna go, oh yeah, now I know what all these things mean when I really didn't before. Um they think they know what they mean.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, they think they're using things properly, but the truth is they don't have the concepts behind it, so that there's very um kinetic learning going on. Learning you obtain 70% more when you use kinetic learning. So a lot of what we're doing is also kinetic because I want everybody to get it. You know, it's not just the techies and it's not just the IT departments, and it no, you need to know these things just a little bit. Not you don't have to go write code and do all that, but you have to have enough to make decisions. Because let me give you this, you'll relate to it in different ways. So, in in 92, when Microsoft Office released Office 95, right? We all you got it, and there was no framework ever written around it, right? So it was a huge problem. And still to this day, if you go and look at it, I don't know about you, but I'm still looking for files. And sometimes when I save them, I'll name them, you know, number one, or this is the final final, or whatever, because I'm working with so many different five, yeah, and everybody has has still to this day. Well, our industry is making that same mistake all over again with AI, and I think we have huge opportunities to not do that. And I want to play some kind of and Tamala. We want to play, and Jamie wanna play this role that we can make it okay. We don't have to learn the hard way all over again. I mean, you've done it. How many of us are using these incredible platforms out there like RealPage and Yarty and Rasman and App Folio and all that, but we don't even use those tools to their fullest. We use those tools and we find little ways, which is going to be interesting now because garbage in, garbage out with AI, right? Um, we find holes in their platform and we'll put whatever we want to put in there as a company. My property management company does that. You know, we have our CEO, she she likes to put like little notes about that apartment in that little hole. Well, you can't do that anymore because that's garbage in, garbage out. It's only good for her head, right? But that's what I'm saying. We don't want to do that with AI. We have an opportunity not to do that. So hopefully that I and some of the other people that are really supporting this movement, everybody will benefit from it instead of you know going doing this the hard way. We don't have to. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And so let me jump in real quick because I have a question. Yes, please. So obviously, you're very passionate about this subject, and you know, AI has been around and people are adopting it faster, faster than any probably any other product that we have out there. For the listeners' sake, I think it would be good to hear what you think the biggest pitfall or biggest mistake operators are using. First of all, thinking about when they're making this switch over to AI. So maybe we could start there. Um, because I'm interested in hearing what you guys think we're not thinking about. Like, tell our listeners what should we be thinking about that we're missing. That's a good spot, good place to start.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's a good spot. Then Tam is it Ann, is it okay if I go first on this? Yeah, you guys so yeah, so what I think Chris, I was gonna ask kind of a question of you and Ann, because um, you know, with actively you're in you know great positions with the management companies you're in. I think one of the things that you just said, Chris, people are adopting AI, but then I would go dot dot dot. Is your company adopting AI? Is your company learning how and where and when and all these?

SPEAKER_00

Are you talking about because you could we could break this up into many different are you talking leadership? Are you talking on-site? Are you talking all the above? Everybody in your just everybody, yeah, everybody kind of involved in AI at all, and like what leadership should be expecting, and then how the on-site teams are maybe using AI or communicating with it as it's uh adopted.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they're using it, everybody's using it, but everybody's gonna use it differently. Correct, nobody's using it the same way, and there's not enough governance or framework wrapped around it. Hell, every apartment community that I shop with Jamie, they can't even get their hands around the damn little widget chat bot on the bottom of your website. They can't even get that right. Yeah, yeah, so we have a framework around it to make it do what it's supposed to do. It's it can be really smart and it can be very, very helpful. But everybody in companies that I see, anyway, they're all using it differently. That's all willy-nilly, and everybody's using the one apartment community is doing this, and the manager down the road has no idea what that manager's even talking about. And saying that's what multiple executive suites, like multi-family next, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's what multifamily next is gonna allow or not allow. But it the the goal of multifamily next is let's say and you you come, nod your head, nod your head, yes, you're coming. And Chris, you nod your head, you're coming too. Um, but when you come, you know, like I said, the earlier you get an AI readiness checklist that you as a management company executive. It's an assessment, right? And um, and then you say part of the assessment, or that's not part of the assessment, but after that particular checklist, you're asked, what are your what are what are the things that keep you up at night? And and for you, it might be different than it is for Chris. For the CEO of town, it might be different, right? So there are different things. And uh, I had a uh conversation with a a a COO last uh no, she's the president of the organization last week, and it's a very large organization. And I asked her the question, what keeps you up at night? She goes, renewals, renewals. I don't know what to do with all these renewals I have. And she goes, and then the other thing that keeps me up at night is everybody's doing something different, like Tammy was just you know talking about. And I said, Well, one of our goals for um multifamily next is to bring those things that keep you up at night because you're using tons of prop tech within your organization, and you're probably spending a lot of duplicate dollars to do the same thing. And that's you know, the session that that I'm gonna um you know host is about vetting technologies and making sure that you're not duplicating your tech stack. I mean, because tech stacks look like Frankenstein. I'm sorry, they just really do. And that doesn't mean Frankenstein's ugly, it just means it's you know kind of like you know, I don't know how you describe that with my just by voice, but the graphic was pretty fun. Um so jagged stitches, jagged stitches, right? And the elevator doesn't reach the top. It's like you build a five story uh apartment community, right? And then 10 years later you decide to build 10 more stories on top of the five. Well, guess what? The elevator doesn't go all the way to the top, and now there's the wiring and the and right. So that's what your tech stack looks like.

SPEAKER_02

I'm sorry. I I want to go go to address Chris real quick again. Chris, what we're finding is if even if if your governance isn't in place, and there are companies out there that tell people, leasing people, or any anybody out there, especially marketing people, you can't use this. You can't do this. Well, let me tell you something. They're using it, they're just not letting you know. There are copious amounts of studies out there that are showing that that's a reality. And the reason why is companies are afraid of it. And now they're they're scared to death because they don't understand it themselves. So who is attending multifamily next? Yeah. It's the C-suite, it is the presidents of companies, it's the vice presidents of companies, it's the head marketing person, it is the tech departments. They're coming because they want to get a whole get a grip on all this. And let's make the right decisions and let's go back and enable our people. You see, AI is to work alongside you and make you better and to amplify your work. If everybody has a chatbot, the level field is the playing field is leveled, right? It's just all the same. So what's gonna differentiate you from that? It's the human, right? That's correct. You've got to have both. And I mean, Microsoft's doing the same thing. That's what they're doing by doctors. I think it's like 82% of uh what a doctor does can be done by AI, but the doctor needs to be there to to look at it and know when to use it and not when to use it, and that's part of being AI fluent. And okay, so Chris, I'm sorry. I hope that answers your question. I can't well.

SPEAKER_00

Here's what I'm hearing though. I think you it's it's all of AI encompassing. So it's the AI tech that helps our teams follow up and have phone calls answered, which by the way, I think is good tech. I mean, we all know we need to answer the phones. Um, and if we can't, somebody needs to answer it. So we have that piece, but you're also maybe talking about the teams using AI on their own to craft maybe their own messages or whatever. Marketing.

SPEAKER_02

The problem is they're not being branded. So if you you'll learn how to use your brand voice, how to use your brand guide, how to have templates that will create the same response consistently over. So so your AI is holding your brand voice and your brand guide throughout your entire community and company. So you can have five different brand voices in one apartment community. You know why? Because we have different personas who live in each one of those communities, different mindsets, and so you have to know which one you need to use to communicate with them properly. So you're in re getting those renewals. I mean, it's a simple fact, and it doesn't have to be difficult anymore, but there just has to be consistency.

SPEAKER_03

There has to be the education and the other understanding, there has to be the education, and I think that's the biggest piece. You know, I I um I had shared with a uh Jamie and Tammy a couple of weeks ago the IBM guideline for how we're using AI within IBM, and you know what it starts with? Education. What is AI? What does rag mean? What are hallucinations? What's uh okay, is it chat GPT? And what's perplexity? Is it Claude? Right? So there's all of these words and names and um all kinds of crazy stuff or sounds crazy. You know, one of these days we're gonna be really fluent in it, and that's part of the goal of multifamily next, is to educate the C-suite as well as the executive, the C-suite, the executive level suite. And then we want to make sure that the regional directors, because let's say that you are with a multifamily uh ops team that does fee management, and you're managing for five different owners or 10 different owners, or you know, pretend you're gray star and it's mind-blowing. You're managing for, I don't know, I don't know how many owners, right? So each owner wants their tech stack to look one way, they want their monthly financial report and variance report and forecasting reports to look a different way. Yes, and so what we're trying to do, you know, so it's you so you think about things like that. Um, what we're trying to do is to use, utilize the intelligence of AI. And some people are afraid of chatbots. Chatbots have had a they have a bad rap, right? They've had a bad rap.

SPEAKER_02

And realize that chat GPT and Claude and all the different families of them, and those are all chatbots.

SPEAKER_03

They're all chatbots, just trained better, or they're AI assistants, they're whatever, and some are better than others, and you know, and some are realizing holy cow, we need to step up our game, you know, some of these big guys, right? Um, but but we've been using chatbots, we just didn't know what it was, what it was called. And I had another meeting with a yes, I had another meeting with a a different COO of a very large national organization, and she said, Tamiler, why would I need to be AI fluent or my executive team be AI fluent? We're fee managers, we're operators, we don't write tech, we don't write code, we don't do tech. Well, but don't you think you need to understand it? Because number one, you're educating people on site. Maybe you're educating people in onboarding technology that might not quite be ready for prime time, yeah. Um, and so that's very, very important. Tam, you know, you've got some some thoughts and along that lines of what we do with building AI, building, making sure that the fee managers understand, and the Ali operators, you're not coding, you're learning, you're learning the basics of AI.

SPEAKER_02

It's like you know tools today that um you don't even realize you're building, and you are, and I think that that's a fallacy that people have. I mean, you can go now on Claude and you're using Claude or you're using Chat GPT or any of the AI models, chatbots that you're using, you are building tools, you just don't realize you're building them. And you have a history in there, your history is in that that assistant, yeah. And there's a thing about that too, and unfortunately, using those things, they don't realize the security liabilities that are there, they don't realize that they can control the temperature. So the temperature is all about allowing how much creativity or not you're gonna allow. Now, temperature goes on a scale of one, excuse me, zero to one, with the exception of one other large language model that goes from zero to two, and you can adjust that creativity. So if you're you're having a conversation with a chatbot on um legal issues, you don't want it to be creative. You don't exactly create. Do you understand what I'm saying? So you're gonna mark that down to zero. You need to know how to adjust it. The other thing is people think that they can just use one large language model, chatbot, for all people just get into chat GPT and they're just gonna live in chat GPT. It doesn't work like that. AI, every AI model out there was built to do something different, better. It was trained differently. Yeah, that's why it's so competitive out there. So you need to know that if I'm gonna do leases and I'm doing reports, I'm gonna use Claude and I'm gonna use Sonnet or I'm gonna use Opus in Claude. You need to know that if you're doing marketing and you're creating posts, you know what? I'm gonna use um ChatGPT for these kind of creative things. If I want to go out and I want to create battle cards for my apartment communities, which will be a great exercise to do for us, you can use Proplexity to do that and Gemini. Gemini's great at creating battle cards so that you can compare your apartment communities and you're teaching your leasing people how to be more effective in what they're doing. The thing is, you need to learn to do those things first before you can teach your leasing people to do those things.

SPEAKER_03

You do, and you have to keep learning everything.

SPEAKER_02

So, anyway, did that question?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, of course. So let me ask you guys, because I have this theory that basically as we evolve in this AI era, there will become kind of this new uh position in companies like a chief AI officer, and it will be their responsibility to do all of the things that you just said, basically figure out.

SPEAKER_03

Might you be talking about the evolution of the leasing agents?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and it's not just that because I've done I'm working on every single position. But if you went to our website, multifamily next, and you went underneath the home page and you drop down and you'll see um career paths, and then you could go to leasing professional, and I did the whole evolution all the way down to um the disruption score. So for a leasing a regular leasing position, your disgrupt disruption score could be a three out of a 10, right? That means that that position is likely to go away. So we need to really work with you to, and here's the skills that you need to learn so that you can work alongside AI. So what we did was I took um all types of leasing professionals currently. So whether you're a student, housing, your luxury, your affordable senior, a regular leasing person in a garden community. I created, I think it's like six different levels there. So you can see what each how you can grow. So what we're doing is we're saying to leasing people, this is why they're scared to death out there. I I read it on LinkedIn every day, or even regionals or uh marketing people are scared. Well, you should be scared if you're not learning AI properly, if you're not gonna be fluent and literate in AI, you should be scared because in two years.

SPEAKER_03

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Well, here it's it's really like this in two years. If you don't, if you're not fluent and literate in AI, here's what's gonna happen: it'll be just like you trying to get a job and not knowing how to use a laptop or not knowing how to use a Word or PowerPoint or Excel. It's no different, it is standard, and so we need to hurry up and get on board. I'm gonna tell you, I just immersed myself, immersed 24-7 for two years into AI, and and that's all I did. I didn't, but my friends all thought I was a hermit, like nobody saw me. They no, they were seriously, they were somebody said somebody said, Tammy, we thought you died.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because I that's what I did for two years. I'm single, you know, my kids are all gone. So that's what I did for two years. I saw my dog, I was the the woman who they brought the food to my house. I didn't even go shopping. I mean, I was just like this crazy person um because I got so into it, and I'm not suggesting anybody has to do that, but you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03

But we're gonna reap the benefit. We're gonna reap the benefit.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's like drinking from a fire hose, no exaggeration. And I'm not talking one fire hose, I'm talking about three of them at the same time because it just the month of December alone already has been insane with the updates that have there, yeah. Right, and and things that what's really interesting is that things that have been built already in one platform are already and it there it's only maybe two or three years old, maybe four years old. It's already old school. It's old school, like it's it's yeah, it you wouldn't want to use it because it doesn't have all the because people get tied into using one large language model or one chat or one family there's family members in AI, right? They they get sucked into that, and it's wrong because what chat GPT used to be number one. Guess where they are right now, like number five or six. Who's number one right now? Gemini and Claude. Gemini is clean in house. That's good. Yeah, they really are clean in house right now, and that's a that's not just me saying that, that's the models and how it's measured. Groff was 15. Guess where they are now? Number three, they came flying up there because now they're 10% human.

SPEAKER_03

That's right. And most people think grok is a is a transformer, right? Grok is not a transformer that you see in the movies, but it is a transformer of data and and analysis and insight. So here's here's the thing: if you boil it all down, multifamily next, what I don't want to scare you with all of this stuff, but what we do like that, yeah, we're it's a primer. It's this is how you start learning to speak French on Duolingo or Babble, right? This is how you learn to speak AI, and you've got to invest the time. And I've had another um operator, another um CEO of a large, again, another large company. And she said, you know, Gartner, we just had our our we just had our C-suite retreat talking about what we need to pay attention to this next year. And we had a speaker that came in and they were talking about the dissolution with AI and how, you know, it's a curve, right? And people are talking about it and talking about it, and nobody's doing anything about it because everybody's like deer in headlights about it right now. And then we'll all start to become a little more comfortable with it, and we'll all start to use it and it'll even out and be normal life. Well, yeah, that's using the same type of logic that we had with tech adoption 15 years ago in multifamily with AI. That curve is like boom, right? Did you see that? It was like a ninja right there, wouldn't I? Boom, it went really fast because it doesn't wait. It doesn't wait. And so we we've what we're trying to do is just give you some basic, you can control efficiencies, you can control costs, you can manage your prop tech in integrations. Okay, that's an that's a it's not a four-letter word, but it could be in multifamily because integrations aren't always that, right? Are they not smooth? Um, you can manage those with AI, and that's what multifamily next is about is to help you customize, create, create templates that are right on with for you, and your town mission, vision, brand statement. Create templates so you can create some consistencies throughout what you know your organization, your teams can implement these things that that have been vetted by you, by your attorneys. You know, we want risk mitigation to be in the in the mix there. We have a whole day of governance, a uh AI governance, fraud workshops. You know, we're repeating ourselves a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but no, but and then tracking the path, the evolution of every position in your organization and helping people get this. Look, you know what's really sad to me, Anne? You know how we fight for really great people, right? And we get really great people and we don't want to lose them. Well, guess what? We're starting to lose some really great people. And the reason is because we're not taking the time to give them the education that they need to excel, to work alongside that AI, to be better. And we can't do that because with general AI coming, which is where it's human, right? Who's gonna be the knowledge base? We can't lose our knowledge base. We have to make these decisions. Um, listen, do go out there and look now. All the AI models out there have warnings on their websites now of because of hallucinations. I mean, man, try to do a budget with um AI right now and you'll scream because the numbers are never right. So if somebody doesn't have the knowledge to make the correct decision, AI is just to help you amplify what you do and get you going in that direction.

SPEAKER_01

It's not to do the work, it's not to replace your team, it's the AI to make humans is the new is the AI plus humans plus humans. Chris, what do you think? You tell I know you've been over there thinking and scheming. Tell me. Scheming is more like it.

SPEAKER_03

I've been watching, I've been watching the thought bubbles of his day, right?

SPEAKER_00

I I have a lot of thoughts. I really I'm I'm kind of wondering where AI is gonna take us. And there's been some talk in the industry about the larger companies maybe breaking the AI AIs off. So instead of having one model that they're using, you would actually have a prospect model, a resident model.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely so that's all that they learn.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And so some of it's mind Yeah, some of it's mind-boggling on how we are gonna get there to make it smart enough to be able to do so.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's so simple.

SPEAKER_00

But technology's happening so quickly, and I just I kind of feel this is kind of the wild west right now. It's kind of like when we're when we were just figuring out SEO with Google.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

In my generation, I've had Google and now AI. I was just telling my employees about this. It's kind of wild to like live in this world of trying to figure it all out and be found. But where do we go? What is what's the advice that you give people on how to continue to learn, how to make sure we're staying on top of it? I know you have a whole session on it, but what are like we what are some key takeaways? Not everybody on that's listening is gonna be able to go. What are the key takeaways? How can we be better? Well, it's good. Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll get the word out there, but how do we how do we get better?

SPEAKER_02

You have to you have to be AI fluent. There, you don't have a choice, you will not have a job in two years if you are not AI fluent. And AI fluent is not tech.

SPEAKER_00

I understand. Let me ask it a different way. So I don't think I'm Google fluent, but I love Google, as Ann knows. And we've been using it a long time. I've been doing this for 20 years, almost my entire career. Google's been using Google, right? But I know how fluent. I know how to navigate Google. I know I know what the kind of what SEO is gonna do for us. So, what does AI fluent mean to like PPC Fluent or SEO fluent or just Google in general fluent or or general marketing just for us? What does that mean to you when you say AI fluent?

SPEAKER_02

Okay, or it what it means to me is very, very simple. It's for you to have an understanding of what you're actually doing when you're using tools. That's number one. What is that process that you're actually doing? You're just not going in there and typing in something to search, right? We've been prompting way before AI on Google. I'm a big SEO freak. That's what I did before I got it. I still do it every day in my other company, Multifamily Pro. I do SEO for people all over the United States, in Canada, and in the Bahamas. So it you have to know that. You have to know if you're gonna specialize in SEO, you have to know what H1 headers are, you have to know how to write schema, you have to know all those things, right? Now, if you are a person in a management company that is hiring somebody to do your SEO, you might not have to do the SEO, but you need to be able to understand what it is that they're doing because otherwise you can't monitor it. They could just pull the wool over your eye, right? You have to charge you tons of money, yeah. Right, exactly. You have to know what you're at least enough to be able to orchestrate this, and in AI, it's all gonna be about the orchestration in every department. That's why I've taken each position and broken them out because you have to be able to orchestrate. The leasing department. You have to be able to orchestrate the marketing department with AI. You have to be able to orchestrate the management office. You have to be the orchestrator of AI. And so in order for you to do that, you have to know how it works. And that's being very simplistic.

SPEAKER_00

How to best use it for training.

SPEAKER_02

Or not use it. That's what you're not using. When you use it and when not to use it.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Do you want to do that? So Chris.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that makes I love that actually. And so, Chris, I would also say a takeaway is, and you know, I've we've all heard this several times, I'm sure, in the last umpteen years, but a marketing director or a director of marketing uh or a director of leasing does not mean the same thing today. Right. I mean, this is part of the evolution that Tammy's written on, and and Anne that you've talked about. A director of marketing or director of leasing is a technologist today. And that's not what it was. I started I started leasing apartments in 1981. And and I was great. And I loved leasing apartments, right? And you know, I would get into it, and I fell in the pool once while I was leading, uh, you know, I was showing the amenities to somebody and was that's a whole nother podcast, right? But um, but you know, we're passionate about what we do and we know how to monitor balloons and bandit signs and chocolate chip cookies and things like that. That's not what a leasing manager or a director of leasing or a director of marketing is today. I was promoted to director of marketing because I was good at leasing. Um, today.

SPEAKER_02

Today, you could be a digital leasing specialist, right? You can be a leasing analytics manager, you can be a leasing strategist. There are so many different areas of leasing. Okay, you guys have all heard this before. You all know that we've put leasing leasing people, we because we wanted to keep them, we would in the olden days promote them to assistant manager or promote them to a manager because they were really good at managing. The problem is that's not where they're happy, it's not where they're where they excel. So that what we've done, what we did in you know, years ago is we took those leasing professionals and gave them a career path to be different, you know, of senior leasing or leasing, you know, traveling leasing, and we created all these other positions. Well, AI is no different, so we're transforming that workplace journey now, right? And we've gone, we're going from what today should be at every property right now is an AI-powered leasing professional. This is a leasing professional who knows to work alongside AI and knows how to have that uh live engagement, the consultative closing, you know, the assisted personalization, you know, all those kind of things. And then it goes into you can advance to a digital leasing specialist and all those other ones that I have mentioned. I mean, it's a huge career path change that people haven't looked at yet. And they really need to be looking at it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So here's a practical application from from AI that I read about earlier today. Google Stitch. There's a program guide or guidelines on how to use Google Stitch. Because and what that does is it creates you take a website and you you take data from a website, I should say, and it creates a heat map of here were the trigger, here were the points that people went to and and did a an action point, right? So you know where your hits and misses were. If you were a smart leasing agent and you knew you were had some AI literacy, you could take data that you've got from your SEO vendor and your reputation vendor and your your um, I should say supplier partner, and your supplier partner who who builds websites with you, right? As well as your CRM. You put all of those together and you go, create a heat map for me. Where am I hitting the mark and where am I missing the mark? That's a practical application for a leasing agent today that is created by AI.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_03

Before that, could we have could I have created that? No way. I'm not a coder. Tam's a coder. I don't do that, but I do know how to read data and know how to extrapolate data and going back to if I'm a fee manager and I'm and I'm running properties for five or 10 or 15 owners, and they all want individual reports. I take all of my diff my data from all of my sources and I put it into my AI assistant, and I say, give me a give me a report that has this, this, this, that focuses on that, that, that, and tells me these, these, these. And I can create that for each owner that I'm managing for. And bam, they'll spit it out in two minutes, three minutes.

SPEAKER_02

You still have to be the one that knows what you're putting in there. But you have to know what being able to evaluate it when it comes to precisely. Look, if I mean, if I could sit here on this show and and Chris and explain the whole thing to you, we wouldn't have to have, you know, two and a half day workshops, which will which we have, right? Where you're gonna roll up the sleeves and you know, it's not a party, it's definitely not a party.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's it's no frills, it's no frills, yeah, but it's it's learning, it's logic, it's learning, it's logic, it makes sense, um, and it's sharing the information. So, and we have supplier partners who are coming in as implementation partners. There's no trade show, there's no booths, there's no they're coming in, and and it might be lineups. Maybe you've heard of lineups, maybe you haven't. It might be Prop Matic, it might be pay score, it might be better bot. They're coming in as implementation partners and they're bringing their expertise. And they're saying to, all right, big fat management company that said you don't know how to, you know, you've got all these renewals and you don't know how to manage that, or you've got this incredible turnover and you don't know how to manage that. We know how we can create from what we do on an everyday basis, we can help create some some AI solution, you know, some AI um assistance for you to provide solutions, to give you data, to give you insights the way that you need to see it, to make some changes. And that's what Multifamily Next is about: bringing in challenges, getting AI fluent. Maybe not, you know, we're not gonna be able to parlay the Francais, you know, but we will take home at the end of two and a half days, we're gonna bring in challenges and we're gonna leave solution with solutions. We come in on Wednesday, we leave on Friday, we come in on Tuesday, we leave on Friday morning, and we're gonna have solutions that we can implement Monday morning. It's not an inspirational event. Yeah, not inspirational, not emotional. You're gonna be inspired. People are gonna go, oh my gosh, I've needed this for I don't know how long. But they're gonna take that and they're gonna be able to say, I can put this to this that I worked on and I built for two and a half days. I could put this to work for me on Monday when I go into the office. I think that's pretty compelling for a conference. It's pretty compelling. It's not a conference. I should I take that back.

SPEAKER_01

It's a hackathon. It's a modern day, it's a multifamily hackathon. Hackathon. And I like that you're leaning into the suppliers, vendors too, because I mean, to be fair, they they're they're stacked from they're pulling in AI experts, they have product managers, they have directors of, you know, they're they're three years ahead. They're already planning out their roadmap three years ahead. And you know, I I'm making that up kind of, but not really, but like they have the vision. So to be able to bring all of that and say, like, not only this is what's happening now, but let's help you build for the future as well. Multi multifamily companies, uh owners, operators don't have those resources on staff, they just they don't. We're not built for that yet.

SPEAKER_03

They can't afford them. They're yeah, we're not built like that yet. Yet, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we will be. I do believe that we will be, but I don't yet. And so let's lean into the companies that already have those resources in their back pocket who want to form partnerships again, because that's a big theme now. Owners, operators, management companies, vendors, suppliers, the best relationships at work are partnerships. And you guys are facilitating that situation, Chris.

SPEAKER_03

You're right, and one more thing, one more thing, and that's important. Um, and Chris, I know we're, you know, it's almost bedtime for bedtime for Bonzo, right? That's an old reference. Only old people will know what that means. If you don't know what it means, Google it. But so she said Google it, by the way. It did say Google it. I mean, don't we all just say Google it? Google it. You could, or you can claude it. You know, if I'm feeling really down and I need some motivation, I'll put a project in Claude and Claude, I mean in uh chat GPT, and my chat AI guy will say, Oh, Tamily, you're so smart, you're so wonderful. Yes, and we can do this and this and this. And Claude goes, Yeah, no, I'd rethink that if I were you, right? So that's why we need to have a few different uh I need the fluffy.

SPEAKER_01

I need someone telling me I'm I'm that my ideas are good. That's just how I work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I'm with you. Yeah. So one of the things that we're also trying to do at Multifamily Next, Tammy mentioned that, you know, we're gonna be in in at least nine cities, nine events. Uh, we're gonna at least have nine events, and we're doing that because you guys told us we're tired of going to event after event, and some of them are duplicates, some of them are stellar, but some of them just offer the same information that you learned at the last three events, right? So we're bringing it to your hometown so that you don't have to necessarily travel. And then others, other operators said, bring it so that I can bring my whole accounting team, I can bring my whole IT team. And so that's why we're coming into your backyard. You know, we might not be at your doorstep, but we'll be at your backyard to bring a little bit of AI literacy and some introduction. So it's not so scary, right? It's not so scary. And, you know, also to emphasize the fact that you guys might think that this is the typical, like I said earlier, the typical curve where you hear about it, you hear about it, you hear about it, and then you know, that big roller coaster hill, and then everybody starts using it. Yeah, it's not like that anymore, it's like this. Um, it's it's quick. So um that's what we're trying to accomplish. Tammy has like she's an action hero. You know, I started and I'll end with that. She's an action hero. She sees, you know, the bat signal and she goes in, she swoops in, she fights the bad guys, and you know, oh one last thing. Remember when, recall when you went to a conference or you went to an event, you went to OpTech, put on by NMHC in November, and there were maybe two people who had chatbots in there in their booth that they talked about, and then you went to AIM in May, and there were 40 people who had chatbots. Well, okay, that's not that many months. Well, so those that had chatbots just for cosmetic appearances, that's not who you know you want to necessarily partner with. You want to partner with the people who are really in there and understanding, and that's another thing, the whole vetting of um implementation partners. We are vetting implementation partners. I've had to go on and and go in with some and say, I'm so sorry, you don't fit our criteria. We want, you know, you got to be SOC2 compliant, right? You you know, you got all of these federal and and and then there's the state and the low and the local regulations that different technologies have to follow. And that's your SB40, Chris, right? So, you know, there's all of these regional, state, local policies and laws that you have to follow. The FTC guidelines that were released last week are scary, right? You get you know, they sent out messages about just this one topic fee transparency. If if you're not fee transparent to your consumers, that's a violation of the law. That's a great way to end, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00

This is a great yeah, this is a great point. So, what I'm taking from this, Elon, is that AI, we're in the wild west and we need to learn and we can't just go in blindfolded. We need to have a plan and be intentional about it, which I think fits our mode and you and I, which is why we're such wonderful friends, because we always have intention to what we're doing, even if we're doing things separately, we may have different ideas on different uh different ideas on something how to implement, but our intention is the same, so it's great.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, this was wonderful. You and Tammy are doing something incredible. Um, you're right, she is a superhero because both of your passions came through. But I mean, I think just knowing that there are people out there who have an idea, see something that isn't right, and say, I'm gonna fix it and I'm gonna dedicate two years of my life. And um I'm gonna go for, I mean, that's inspiring. And um so thank you all for you know being brave and you know, doing things that sometimes we wish we all all could do. So great. You're so great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03

So I just want to say one last thing, right? But and Tammy and Tammy, Jamie, and I all feel the same way. We've all given our uh my degree in college had nothing to do with multifamily operations or real estate or anything like that, right? Um, I was a speech language pathologist and audiologist, right? So I was going down that path. Um, and then I moved into an apartment, I moved from college into to Dallas, Texas, moved into an apartment community, and they came up and they knocked on my door late that afternoon to go, you know, you were kind of fun. Would you like to work with us? I'm like, well, what what would I do? You'd be a leasing agent. Well, what is that? Right. So that's how my career started. And that career has paid for four kids to go to college. It's pay, I've, you know, I've been a single mom for a long time. Uh Tammy and Jamie, they weren't necessarily single moms for a long time, but they have their stories. And we want to give back to this industry that has given so much to us. Yeah, I'm drawing social security, but I want to make sure that the the industry that has really taken care of me and my family, and I have two, my two adult daughters, I have four children, and and two of my kids are in the multifamily industry, and they love it. They've been in it since they got out of school. So uh we want to give back, and that's what we, you know, we want to try to send the elevator back up to the top or back down to the ground when you get to the top. Maybe that's the better term. But thank you for having us here tonight. It was so great. Thank you. I did this earlier.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know if you got to see that. Yes, a little hokey. I did. You know, I'm ordering my pajamas for my now that I know that there's mine. I was looking at the Dallas one, but now that I know that you all are doing a road trip. But if I go to Dallas and Dallas, Chris, that would be a plus.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but yeah, because that's the soft launch, honestly. And that came about because we had operators that said, we need this and this and this and this, and we need it in Dallas, and we need it on that date. So that's how the date came about. But come because we're building, and that's what we've said to our implementation partners too, is help us build this because you know, is that does anybody watch Friends? Did you ever watch the show Friends? No, Seinfeld, Seinfeld, yeah, of course, Chris. Oh, yeah, I'm a big Seinfeld fan too. So I'm trying to think as a Seinfeld fan too. So, well, okay, so in friends, pivot was a big thing. Um, I'm trying to think of something with remember just think about Kramer coming into the door, yeah, like that. You know how he does. I don't end I don't enter the room the same way. But if we need to pivot, if we need to change gears, we're gonna do that. And this first event is a soft launch. It's it's where we're gonna start building. And our supplier, our implementation partners are right there with us and say, Yeah, we want to build this. And they truly are our partners, they're not our vendors, they're our partners, they will educate us and they will make us smarter.

SPEAKER_02

You know, there's a there's um Matthew. Sorry, I had a power outage at my house. Oh my goodness. Where you went, yeah. My they just went out. I was like, I was shocked, everything was black. I I you know, I had to go find someplace to put a light on. Anyway, power came back on, so I'm back. Now you guys are in trouble. I had a break, right? So what's really interesting about the people were there. When I was at OpTech, I met um this gentleman, his name is Matthew, and he's turned out to be like my P in the pod. He's just like, I just love talking to him because he's I think they share DNA. Yeah, I just there, he's just so smart. I mean, he's done um, he's sold four businesses all in the multifamily um housing space, and he's written code for Camden. And I mean, the the product he's out with right now is will blow your minds. It'll just blow your minds of what it can do from a marketing standpoint of view. Talk about not having to worry about SEO and ILSs and all those things that are going on. It's just mind blowing. And so he's gonna be there working alongside me in a lot of my educational classes and portions of my class. And it I'm just so excited to work with him. So we're getting to work with some really incredibly smart um vendor partners. And you know, a lot of times they, you know, it's the salespeople that we talk to, right? The salespeople that are that go to the events. Well, now we're really getting the people that get it, like that really know what they're doing and how we can do things better and how we can use. So I'm so excited about that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, um, yeah, and they're and and and they'll learn how to tweak their own businesses to better suit what you guys need. You uh you know, you operator, we operator people need. They'll they'll go, oh well, we developed this and this and quite fit.

SPEAKER_01

We'll all be learning together. So, damn and Tammy, we can't thank you enough. You all and with Jamie again are doing something wonderful. Thank you to our listeners, thank you to our sponsor, Flamingo, thank you to Chris, thank you to Carlos, and until next time, this has been the apartment department.