Experimenting With Home Builder AI Tools - Monica Wheaton

Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Monica Wheaton. Monica is the VP of Customer Success at ECI Solutions. Welcome, Monica. Thanks for joining us today.

Monica Wheaton: Hi, Greg. Hi Kevin. Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.

Greg Bray: So, Monica, let's start off by just getting to know a little bit of your background. Tell us that quick intro about yourself.

Monica Wheaton: Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. I've been in the industry for about 25 years here at ECI for about [00:01:00] six. I started with builder partnerships, basically building a platform for manufacturers and builders to communicate and doing some marketing there. And then when I came over here, I started in marketing and then have been in customer success since. I really love my job because I love technology, and I love working with builders, and I love making sure that they are using technology to the best of their ability, and the best of its ability as well. And so, it's such a wonderful experience doing that with the builders.

Kevin Weitzel: It's actually where I first met you was at a builder partnerships event, one of the IBS sessions. But anyway, before we get started and dive into our topics of the day, please tell our listeners some interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry.

Monica Wheaton: Oh, that is a good question. Well, I will start with, I was quite adventurous in my twenties, I'll say. And when I graduated college, I went and studied abroad in Spain for a few months and then Eurailed around Europe, which was really fun. And then I traveled all by myself around about nine different countries in Asia, and it's just a phenomenal experience. [00:02:00] If you've never had an opportunity to travel by yourself in a foreign country, I would highly recommend it. You really get to meet some really fantastic people and even learn a lot about yourself along the way.

Kevin Weitzel: Now it's almost the same experience I had. But mine was with a small group called the Marine Corps. It was not fancy places, it wasn't fun places. It was just armpit after armpit. So, I think you might've got the better end of that deal.

Monica Wheaton: Maybe. I did spend some time in Kosovo though, and I met a bunch of military people there. But that was for work, so that's not relevant to that part.

Greg Bray: And Kevin, they fed you right? You got free meals?

Kevin Weitzel: Oh yeah. We got to eat every day. But the same brown bag stuff, and when I say brown bags, there were MREs.

Monica Wheaton: Oh my goodness.

Kevin Weitzel: Ugh.

Greg Bray: Well, Monica, for those in the home building industry who have never heard of ECI Solutions, for both of them, why don't you tell us a little bit more about the company and what you guys do and the types of services you offer to builders?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, absolutely. ECI Solutions is actually a much bigger company than just the home building [00:03:00] industry. We're a software company that provides management solution types of software, so ERPs, which is back-office operation type things, and CRMs like Lasso, what we have in the industry.

In residential home construction specifically, we have about nine different products that we offer. So, we have Mark Systems. Another one you might be familiar with is Lasso or Avid Ratings. And then also an online design center, sales center-type tool called Insearch. And then a few others, BuildTools for custom builders and Bolt for trade contractors. And so, we really are able to cover the gamut of all the different players within the home building industry with some software management solution type software. So, it's pretty cool.

Greg Bray: Well, one of the things that I really appreciate about what you guys do at ECI and this falls, I think, right under your customer success title, right? You guys are interested in builders being successful regardless of what tool set they're using. You know, obviously, you'd like them to use yours, but you guys are always putting out content and ideas, and suggestions. Is that something that you just said, Hey, we want to do this? Or is that [00:04:00] a larger corporate goal to just help our builders be successful regardless?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, and that's a great question. Thank you. Actually, that's what drew me to ECI. ECI isn't just a software company. We believe that we're industry experts that are helping small, medium-sized businesses become more profitable and better at their companies. And a lot of that is software. But being able to use software appropriately means you also have to be able to manage your company appropriately and have processes in place, and those kinds of things.

And so, it's really important for us to make sure that we're helping to educate builders on best practices. And so, we love welcoming other companies to come and do webinars with our group, too. So, I know, Greg, you've been on a couple webinars, and I think Kevin, we've had you around a couple times on some Lasso ones too. And so, we really do believe that we want our customers to be as successful as they can be.

Greg Bray: That ties into one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you today is because one of the big things in software and automation, everybody's talking about AI and all the different tools that are out there, and I know that you have done some education [00:05:00] around that. And so, we want to kind of pick your brain a little bit about some of the things you're seeing out there and things there. So, why is this the time for builders to be thinking about AI, or is it too early, not the right time, or you know, they can wait a bit till it gets better?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah. No, I love that question. And I love the conversations around AI. And, you know, everybody's in their own place or space with how they believe and feel about AI at this moment. But it's definitely something that we need to be talking about and we need to be looking at and experimenting with. So, I like to say, and I've heard many times before that, you know, a lot of times people are afraid that AI is going to take their jobs. And AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who's playing with and leveraging AI might be the person who takes your job. So, you want to be experimenting and out there playing around.

And it took me a while to really buy into that too, because, you know, AI, I first learned about it really from my kids, and they were using it for school, and that's cheating, you know? And so, it was hard to not have that view of AI as a [00:06:00] working person where you can type something in there and it shoots out the answer, if you will. You know, like or the better email that I didn't have to spend the time writing, and it felt a little bit like cheating. But when you start to incorporate it into your day-to-day, it's not cheating. It's being more efficient with your time and being able to do more and get better feedback on the things that you are doing. So I strongly believe that everybody should be experimenting with it today.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright, for the random couple of kids that are out there listening to their parents' webinar or hearing in the background, did you literally just say, do as we say, not as we do?

Monica Wheaton: Not really, because actually now I think that even in school, I think teachers need to have another view of AI as well. It's not going away. You know, yes, you're going to have some of the ones that are out there really using AI just to write their papers and things like that, and I think there's some tools out there that can figure that out pretty quickly. But AI is much more than a paper writing tool. So, kids can use AI to do [00:07:00] their research or to figure out different things that they are trying to learn and learn it more quickly than they could before, which I think is great. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Kevin Weitzel: On that same subject, before we go in further in the home building side of things, you hear about the hallucinations, that's what they call it when, you know, AI just burps out its own made-up information, but you hear about hallucinations. When we look at students utilizing AI, if they're using an encyclopedia to gather their information, whether it be online or not, but they're using data that was literally sometimes outdated as it was being printed, whereas AI is much more up to date. However, how do you address the hallucination side of it, where it just literally infills?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, no, that's a wonderful question because that's something that I talk about a lot too, is you can't trust AI a hundred percent. You have to leverage it and verify the information that you're getting and actually make sure that it is correct, because you do get these hallucinations. And I've used it quite a bit recently to profile people. And so, while I am profiling people, it will give me some information on that person, and I [00:08:00] actually go in and then research them on LinkedIn to make sure that it's correct.

And I found some things that were, you know, mentioned that weren't correct or that were slightly outdated or those kinds of things. And then you can feed that more into the AI and become a little bit more accurate as you go. But yeah, I would never say to trust AI a hundred percent, especially when you're dealing with like takeoffs or something that's a lot more important, final reports on different things, or even customer research. It's good to help you get to where you're going and to expand your thoughts around those things, but you need to verify the information you're getting back.

Greg Bray: So, then looking at which processes the builders you talk to find success, is it in marketing content, is it in communications? Is it something more in the building process itself, you know, like within some of those things you just mentioned? Where are you seeing builders find more success with some of these tools?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, no, that's a great question too. I just had a few builder groups last week where we had this as a conversation topic. [00:09:00] And we do see a lot in the sales and marketing side. And again, what we see is a little bit limited. A marketing team or a salesperson will use ChatGPT just to draft an email or to make it sound better or prettier, or whatever. But there's so much more that you can do with it, like profiling a buyer.

If you have an appointment with a buyer, you can feed in the information from your CRM, link in their Facebook account, or paste in their information from LinkedIn, and ask them for an agenda or a sales process for that person. Or profile, what is the buyer profile? What should I hit on? And you can get a full profile spit out. And again, you want to test it and verify. You don't want to treat it like this person is exactly this thing, but it allows you to ask those questions. Are these things important to you, and if not, then just move on to something else, obviously. But it gives you a starting point.

The other thing that builders are using AI for is we had a builder last week who has telling us that they needed to update their operations manuals, job descriptions, and things like that. So, they put in their old stuff into ChatGPT, and we're able to get updated manuals and [00:10:00] content within minutes. And then they, you know, obviously reviewed them and made sure they were accurate. And then some of other builders are using it for takeoffs, just basic takeoffs, so that they can verify them. But they'll go in and they'll do just a simple takeoff to make sure it's accurate and correct. And they're getting pretty good results out of that as well.

Kevin Weitzel: So, talking about buyer persona, have you had any builders that have used it for builder persona? And here's the example I want to give. We, as a company, found that my emails are being responded to about three times more likely than my counterparts in the same company. So, what we did was we fed the just general emails that we just write into Chat, and then what it would do is we would spit out a persona.

And therefore, if we could take the other people that maybe don't have that same open rate, and they use my persona when they generate an email, they'll put the email in, and then have it generated in my persona. They saw an increase of response rate. So, there's something about just my language. So, do you have any builders that are utilizing highly successful team members [00:11:00] generating a persona of that person and then allowing other people to utilize that persona with their language as a language model?

Monica Wheaton: That's a great example, though, of a way to do that. I know that there are tools out there that will record calls and evaluate your communications with buyers, and give feedback and training as far as that's concerned. But I haven't heard that yet about modeling a persona that's successful. And I think that's a great use of AI because, you know, obviously you don't wanna be Kevin, but.

Greg Bray: Obviously.

Kevin Weitzel: Obviously, nobody wants to actually be Kevin. Kevin doesn't even want to be Kevin.

Monica Wheaton: But, you know, Kevin's having success saying certain things or with a certain temperament or touching on certain parts of the buyer persona, like let's leverage that in our communications. I mean, again, it's not cheating to leverage what works.

Kevin Weitzel: You haven't heard of any builders utilizing that aspect of chat to create a persona of somebody that's highly successful in the company and then allowing other people to use that same formula?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, no, I haven't heard that yet. Nope, [00:12:00] I haven't heard that yet. It's very limited. And so, I think the reason that we're talking is because I did a presentation for Epcon where I gave some very specific examples on how to use AI. And the reason I did that was because I've been, for the last year, attending all of these presentations that talk about AI and the concept of AI, and they give all this example of different tools you can use. And they say, you know, these wonderful things, but there's no meat on the bones there. Right?

And so, it's a little scary. If AI isn't welcoming, it's hard to actually get in there and actually play with it. For me, it took me a while to play with the AI. At Epcon, Rob Krohn, if anybody knows who he is, he's a VP of marketing, and he is pretty amazing. One of the sessions I sat in with him, and that kind of got me working on this idea, was he actually gives his team an hour or two a week where they're required to play with AI. So, it can be ChatGPT, or it can be some other AI that they find online, but they're supposed to go in there and just play. And it doesn't have to be work-related. It doesn't have to be anything. It's just expose yourself to AI, play around with it, and see what you can get. And then if you [00:13:00] find anything that's successful, then share it out with us.

And so, after he had sort of given that presentation, then I decided to dive deeper into a presentation that I did that gave actual specific examples of things you can do with AI. So, everybody knows, you can write a pretty email with it, but did you know you could also set up a sales process? You just put in there, you know, we're trying to sell X number of units in this one community to a 55-plus buyer. You write that in there, and then it will give you step-by-step different touch points and things you want to do with that potential buyer. It was very eye-opening to the audience that, oh, I can do that. Yes, you can just go in and play.

Or another example, Midjourney is another AI that some of the builders are using. I'm not sure if you've heard this yet, but this is the designers. The designers struggle a lot with creating mood boards for buyers because buyers will choose different selections, and they need to know how this color looks with this color and this pattern and that, whatever. And so, they can do that physically in the design center, but when they're looking at a virtual space, it's harder to [00:14:00] create that in a way that doesn't take a lot of time.

So, these designers were feeding that into Midjourney, and it was creating a beautiful mood board, even with the like little twigs of Branches and whatever. I know I'm not a designer, I mean, but it looked really nice, you know, it had all the different colors and things that it needed to, to give the buyer a sense for what they were purchasing.

Kevin Weitzel: Twigs and branches, Greg. Twigs and branches.

Monica Wheaton: Twigs

and branches. That's what sounds good.

Kevin Weitzel: I need a Midjourney for clothing because I honestly, as an adult, need Garanimals to be able to get dressed.

Monica Wheaton: Oh, nice.

Kevin Weitzel: It's ridiculous. So, I could use that AI tool.

Monica Wheaton: You just aged yourself there, Kevin?

Kevin Weitzel: Yes, I have.

Monica Wheaton: But do they sell those anymore, though? Because I loved those.

Kevin Weitzel: I don't think they do, but they really should. And they should do it for adults.

Monica Wheaton: They should for adults, right?

Kevin Weitzel: Dillard's does. They're called rounders. You know, you go to the rounder rack and you just buy all the clothes that are on that same rack and you're going to find an outfit.

Greg Bray: Well, Monica, I really appreciate what you said there about all these presentations that gave you this hype without a lot of [00:15:00] to do and a lot of meat on the bone, I think it was a phrase you used. I remember when I was first exposed to ChatGPT back when it came out, and I heard these people talking about, oh, it analyzed my spreadsheet, or it did this, or it did that. And I'm looking at it, for whatever reason, I was like, how do I give it a spreadsheet to analyze? It's like I didn't know. I had to ask. Oh, you just drag it in there, and it uploads? I'm like. Okay. Duh.

But for whatever reason, it didn't jump out at me that I could even upload a file, the way there's just this little box. There's no like upload button next to it or anything like that that was obvious at the time. And sometimes it's just those little ideas, like somebody planting an example and going, here's how you do it, and giving you a couple of steps that can make all the difference, and suddenly we can create other versions of that and other ideas. So, kudos to you for trying to be a little more in the trenches and give them those exact ideas they can do with it. I think that's wonderful.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Greg Bray: So, let's get a couple more examples then. All right.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah.

Greg Bray: So, you talked about being more personal [00:16:00] in communication. What are some of the things that they can use, like from the CRM or something like that, that would help them create a more personal communication with the buyer?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, well, obviously, and so this is going back to like use your CRM, please. Salespeople get your data in there because it's very important for, as everybody knows, that a buyer is buying from a company where people work. And yes, everybody has their own personality, but the company needs to understand the buyer, and it needs to be a seamless understanding of that buyer from when they come in to your website to when they talk to a salesperson, to when they talk to a designer and a closer, and the builder and that kind of stuff. And so, if you're not putting your notes into a CRM, it's harder to keep that relationship that way, where you really understand and know the buyer and provide them with a really good experience.

And so, a lot of things that you can do with the CRM is one, you can look at the specific buyers and their persona and that kind of thing, and feed that in so that everybody understands [00:17:00] that this is the persona for this specific buyer. But you can also look at the data within your CRM within a certain community, to look at these are all the people that are interested in this specific community, and what is their level of interest or their rating? And then, what is it specifically about this community that they're interested and excited about? And you can feed some of that data of your notes and your questions into an AI and then get some information back.

So, another example of that would be like with our in search product, you know, you select the different design center options, like the different flooring and things like that. And so, it tracks all of that in the database, in the backend. And so, when you open a new community, you can basically use AI to say, What was it that our buyers were selecting within this community? So, that when you open a new community, that's what you select to put in there. And that works out really well because you want to obviously maximize your profits and your sales in a new community.

Greg Bray: The idea that this data has more use than maybe we think it does, but if we don't collect it, [00:18:00] there's nothing there, right? This whole idea of you've got to use the CRM. And now, instead of just putting like the little one-liner of notes, the paragraph of notes, even if they feel just kind of random things, could suddenly become really useful and valuable. It's not like we have to define every field that, oh, we need to know their shoe size and we need to know their whatever, and we have to have a field for that. Just putting them in the freeform notes field could potentially have value later when you come back and use some of these tools to pull apart.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah. Well, and that's a good point, Greg, because I think that people forget that the AI is only as good as the data that it's based off of. Right? So, if you have really poor data, you're not going to get good actionable things that you can do out of AI, or good reports, or good solutions coming out of your AI. A hundred percent, you have to have good data. And so, that's another thing that I like to say is good data is everybody's job. So, everybody needs to be concerned about it, and everybody needs to, you know, make sure that they're entering and cleaning up and doing what [00:19:00] they need to do as far as making notes and things like that. So that we can do those kinds of exciting things, profile the buyers better, and be more responsive, and those kinds of things.

Greg Bray: All right. I didn't prep you for this in advance. Okay. But when is Lasso going to have the little customize this email button with the AI, and it's just going to do it all for you for everybody?

Monica Wheaton: That's a very good question. And that's something that we are absolutely looking at very closely, is when are we going to be able to add AI into our products? And it should be coming pretty quickly.

Greg Bray: We won't hold you to any dates. We're not asking for any insider information,

Monica Wheaton: So, no, no, no. And so, what I do want to share, though, is again, like it's one of those things where AI's been around, this is the funniest part is AI's been here since like the sixties or even the fifties? You know, I can't remember when it first started. Kevin, do you know that date?

Kevin Weitzel: Sixties is for sure. I don't know about the fifties, but sixties for sure. Yes.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, we did a little quiz at a thing where we actually looked that up, and we had people guess, and they thought that AI was just created in 2023, and it's not. No, it's been here since the sixties. [00:20:00] And so, it's not a new thing, but it really just became hot when ChatGPT came out and everybody started leveraging it. Initially, people were looking for AI, but as we've talked about, they didn't know what that meant. So, like two years ago at IBS, you know, we have our booth and everybody was like, do you guys have AI? And we go, well, no, we don't have it yet. And so they walked away, right? Well, you don't have AI, we don't want Lasso CRM.

But when you actually ask them what is AI and what are you expecting it to do, they had no idea. They just wanted to hear you say the word AI because they had no idea back then. Now people are actually really cluing in and understanding what AI is. But my point is, is it takes a little while for that adoption. It was hard to understand at that point whether this was kind of a fad or if it's something that everybody needs to really prepare for. We believe that AI is not a fad. It's here to stay. And so, we're not only incorporating AI into our products, we're incorporating AI into our company.

So, we really have these weekly meetings with our developers and our teams internally about [00:21:00] how are you using AI today in this week? Kind of like what Rob Krohn was doing is how are we creatively using AI? Because you can use AI to build code, even. And there's some stories about a 90-year-old who wanted a certain app, and he was able to use, I think it was Cursor or something like that, to build his app in no time. And it worked fine, you know, and that's a little scary for us. But it's here to stay. And so, we're not only incorporating it into our daily work, we're looking at how we can best incorporate it into our products and how quickly we can do that. So, it is absolutely coming as one of our enhancements.

Greg Bray: So, you mentioned that you're talking to builders, they say, oh, we want to know about AI, but then they actually don't know why.

Monica Wheaton: Right.

Greg Bray: What are some of the other kinds of mistakes or misconceptions you've been seeing as you've had those kinds of conversations, things that they like, think it can do, or anything like that you've seen in patterns in conversations?

Monica Wheaton: It's mostly that they just don't know what it is. They just don't know what it is and what it can and can't do. Again, [00:22:00] going back to the whole data thing, is that the biggest misconception is that AI can be this magic tool and it can do what it does on its own. So, going back to the whole data thing, I think that the biggest misconception that builders have is that the data that AI is built off of that they don't realize you need to have data in order to leverage AI. It's really when we push people about what they want their AI to do, they don't know. I can never get in their head and figure out what it is that you think AI should do.

Kevin Weitzel: I always find it hilarious that people don't even know that AI is even working in the background, where they don't know what's happening.

Monica Wheaton: Right.

Kevin Weitzel: If you've got a refrigerator that tells you when things are expiring or when you're low on things, that's AI. If you have a car that has a little yellow light that tells you when somebody's in your blind spot, that's AI. It's not just some magic sensor that's over there. It truly is AI that's sensing vehicle around you. If you have a map system that you're traveling from point A to point B, and it tells you some of the faster or slower routes, that is also AI. It is not just, oh, it's faster to go [00:23:00] on the 10 than it is to go on the 20. I don't know. Right. The twenty's nowhere near the 10, but that's not, that's not the issue. Is there even a 20? I don't know. I know there's a 10. But anyway.

Yeah, so there, I mean, there's so many different things. Even when you like order airline tickets, the efficiencies that are there. That's AI looking at and analyzing how many people are searching to go from one place to another during certain days. There's so many different aggregations of data that happen in split seconds, like trillions of different things every single day, and people don't even realize it's even happening. So, to not be willing to absorb and at least allow some of this to impact the efficiencies in your life is downright silly.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Greg Bray: So, Monica, which tools are you guys recommending builders experiment with first? There's a lot of different things out there. We can't do everything all at once. If there's only, you know, a couple to look at first, what's on your list?

Monica Wheaton: I would really highly recommend ChatGPT, of course, or Gemini, because that's the easy one, and that's the one that most people know. I [00:24:00] would also say try Midjourney. Another use of Midjourney, I'm not sure if anybody has seen that architects have actually been using Midjourney quite a bit, or custom builders. As a custom builder, you could do that, where you sit with your buyer and they tell you about this house that they want. They wanted to have this feeling and that feeling, and another thing, and you know, and it sounds like this crazy idea.

With Midjourney, what you could do is just feed that all in, and then you come up with this concept of a house that didn't take you any time. So, you're not wasting time drawing things that the buyer's never going to want. If they want mermaids and this and that and the other, you just put it in there. Draw me a house that looks like it might have mermaids near the ocean.

Kevin Weitzel: Are you selling this whole concept to like potheads and mushroom eaters or what?

Monica Wheaton: I must be, I must be.

Kevin Weitzel: Hey, man, I want a house with some mermaids, man.

Monica Wheaton: I should have probably, maybe like a rodeo in the backyard or something like that, like a mechanical bull in the front. Who knows? Anyway, ranch style. I don't know. You, whatever, you know, buyers come up with all sorts of crazy [00:25:00] ideas. But you could feed that into Midjourney and then get on the same page with your buyers, so that you're at a point where then you start drawing and wasting, not wasting your time, but leveraging your time in the best way. So, you're not like wasting all that time upfront trying to get to something that's really kind of unattainable for them.

Greg Bray: What's the most creative example you've seen? Has there been one that you were just like, you heard about and you were like, wow, that is a great idea, I wish I'd thought of that?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, I don't, off the top of my head, I'm not sure if I can come up with a really, really good one. We did, uh, this is a fun one though. We put our pictures into AI, and I would never recommend that because it never spits out your picture back. And I look like a little mouse, is what I look like. Oh my God. Do not look like that at all. But we put our pictures in AI and asked which celebrity was our doppelganger and stuff like that. Or to make us like a, you know, better celebrity or, you know, whatever. And that was kind of fun, like just playing with your own picture and whatnot.

Kevin Weitzel: I did one where it says, What would I look like as a female?

Monica Wheaton: Oh, nice.

Kevin Weitzel: And it literally spit [00:26:00] out my same ugly face. So, the crazy thing is that for some reason, sideburns threw AI into a loop, and they couldn't figure out what to do. How do I make a female with sideburns?

Monica Wheaton: Did you still have your sideburns as a female?

Kevin Weitzel: I had my sideburns. It was a picture of me with my sideburns and I, and it was one of those, you know, what do I look like as a female? And it literally spit out the exact same picture, so.

Monica Wheaton: That's funny. Just didn't even change your face, so you'd be one pretty female.

Greg Bray: We have learned more about Kevin on this episode than.

Kevin Weitzel: I think so. Really. Right,

Monica Wheaton: Exactly. So, um, another, I'm just going to recommend one more AI is like a CallRail or a training tool. And actually, there's the other one that I recommend too, but CallRail is really good because it records your phone calls, and it can give you some sentiment analysis. And so, it kind of can help you read the buyer after the call, so it can tell you, you know, is this really a warm lead or is it cold lead? I mean, you obviously have your own perception, but then having that other additional insight from the AI is really helpful. And then, you know, going back and revisiting how you sold on that [00:27:00] call is really good too. Because then you can, you know, improve your process there. And the last one, Kevin.

Kevin Weitzel: Wait, wait a minute before you go on this last one, I don't think I need AI to figure out what quit calling my house means. I don't think I need a CallRail for that.

Monica Wheaton: But was that really like a rough tone, or was it maybe not so rough? You know, I mean, was it a 10, don't call me, or an eight? Come on.

Kevin Weitzel: True. Okay. All right. I'll buy that.

Monica Wheaton: AI can help me do that. But the last one that I was going to recommend is really just the notetakers. The notetakers have been invaluable. We use Fathom. Other people use Otter. There's many, many of them out there, but I would really recommend doing that. It is just been invaluable. You know, then you can actually start to really listen to the conversation or really participate in the conversation without having to worry to take notes. And a lot of those AIs will let you emphasize things, too. So, if there's something that's being discussed that's really important, you can hit a button and it'll say it's really important, and it will come out with the to-do list and assignments, and things like that. So, you just have to follow up after that. And so, that's been a [00:28:00] really nice one too.

Greg Bray: I love, Monica, that AI does not equal only ChatGPT. Sometimes in these conversations, that's where a certain set are that they think that is, I'm going to use AI, that means I must use ChatGPT. But there's a lot of these other tools that are very specialized and focused on just certain tasks, and because of that, they do those tasks better than the more general tool does because they've been trained by the company that built them in a way that makes them even more effective. That's a great reminder that there are a lot of different tools out there to take advantage of.

Monica Wheaton: Well, even just real quick with ChatGPT, if you have a real savvy kind of person on your team, you can actually train ChatGPT for your company and create your own sort of ChatGPT, if you will. So, if you wanted to create like a buyer sort of portal or a prospect sort of portal where they can ask questions. You can train your AI to just answer the questions on your specific information. So, that's really a cool thing to do, too.

Greg Bray: Well, Monica, this has been a fun conversation, and I know Kevin's had fun [00:29:00] today. But before we wrap up, do you have any kind of last thoughts or words of advice you wanted to get out to our audience today?

Monica Wheaton: The big thing is just play around. Just get in there and play around. It can be scary, and there's a lot of different posts on LinkedIn that lists a ton of different AIs that can be scary to know that they exist. But just try a couple of them out. See what you can do there. Sorry, real quick. Another example of something that one of our team members does is he uses his AI as a sounding board. So, if he has an idea, he's a really busy guy, so if he wakes up and he has an idea of a project he wants to start, then he'll speak it into AI and ask him for a, you know, a little bit of market research on this project and it'll spit out some market research.

And then, you can kind of create your channels too. So, he does the market research, and then he'll go back later that afternoon and read the market research, and then he'll have additional questions on, you know, how about a rollout plan for this? And so, he'll ask the ChatGPT for that, and it spits that out right afterwards, too. And it's kind of neat, and he doesn't always do the things that it spits out. But again, it helps you expand your [00:30:00] mind and think of things you might not have thought of before.

Greg Bray: Well, Monica, if somebody wants to learn more about ECI or to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Monica Wheaton: Yeah, I'm happy to chat at any time. You can reach me via email. It's mwheaton@ecisolutions.com. Just reach out, and happy to answer any questions you have about AI or any of the ECI products. And if you're a customer, I'm happy to help dive in to see how you can use some of our products better and really get the value out of it that you're hoping to. Because there's a lot of value you can get out of any kind of technology if you really lean into it, now is a time that you want to lean into your technology now. I know that it's a challenging market out there, and you've got a lot on your plate with trying to sell all the homes you want to sell by the end of the year, and leaning into technology will help you do that.

Kevin Weitzel: I know we're wrapping up, but that was probably one of the most important things you just said. Do you know how many times I've run into home builders that are like, this particular x, this widget, this thing, this platform stinks, and here's why. Because it doesn't work. Yet none of their people on their staff are [00:31:00] using it.

Monica Wheaton: Hundred percent.

Kevin Weitzel: They have no expectation of their staff utilizing what the management of brass has spent money on implementing.

Monica Wheaton: Yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: So, use the technology, people.

Monica Wheaton: Or how about this one, Kevin? I'm sure you can appreciate this one. You have an interactive site map on your website, and it takes 10 clicks to actually find it.

Kevin Weitzel: Yes.

Monica Wheaton: And then call and complain about, excuse me, my site map's not working. I want to drop it. Well, duh. I can't even find your site map.

Kevin Weitzel: Fact.

Greg Bray: Alright, well, thanks again, Monica, for spending time with us today, and thank you, everybody, for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.