HOUSING NEWS REPORT N TS & BOLTS
BY ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS TECHNOLOGY
3 TECHNOLOGIES THAT TRANSFORMED MY REAL ESTATE BUSINESS
ing track of what has been accomplished, who is managing various tasks, and what remains to be done. Over time, we were able to transition our entire workforce from a physical presence to a remote one, saving our company a great deal of money and making employment with us an extremely attrac- tive opportunity. What went right: We identified a platform that would serve our business’s needs and, after implementing it, saved a great deal in operating costs by creating a remote workforce.
2003 Podcasting Expanding from radio into podcasting remains one of the biggest transformational events my business, which I co-founded with my wife, Kathy, ever experienced. We are still deriving the benefits today. In 2003, I was fascinated by the new MP3 player. I had one, of course, so I could listen to my music anywhere. At the same time, Kathy was hosting a radio show, “The Real Wealth Show,” about real estate on a San Francisco network. Then, a big announcement came out and changed everything: Apple announced the launch of the new iTunes podcast platform. Now, we would be able to download and listen to radio shows on demand. Don’t laugh: At the time, it was a really big, relatively un- known deal. I immediately started looking at the iTunes plat- form and quickly realized that there would be very little com- petition for our show because there were very few podcasters. Even better, since the radio station was already burning every show onto a CD for us to archive, it would be relatively easy to convert those CDs to MP3s. I knew if we were on the plat- form, our show would be the one that appeared in the results of a search for real estate. We acted quickly. Soon we were building a huge audience and what is now a large population of loyal listeners. The show, which is still running, remains consistently in the top real estate podcasts on iTunes. Of course, if iTunes had flopped, the outcome might have been different. However, since Kathy was already hosting the radio show, it was not an overwhelming task to put a few resources toward changing the format of the show to fit the new platform. The gamble was a good one, and it definitely paid off. What went right: We got in early, stayed the course, and reaped the rewards of dominating a new technological niche in our space. Lesson Learned: When considering a new technology, look for opportunities to make a significant mark on your industry. 2014 Implemented a Cloud-Based Business Structure One of the biggest changes we have ever made to our business structure is taking our large office in Walnut Creek, California, and all its employees working in the same physical location, and putting it online using a platform called Base- camp. This gave us a highly flexible system for connecting with each other, sharing information and tasks, and keep-
Lesson Learned: Look for solutions all the time, including in places you never expected to need them. In the past, every business had an office. Today, many find they are an unnecessary luxury. In March of 2017, we decided to introduce some new customer-ser- vice representatives to our website. These “chat girls” were a live-chat feature that placed a little pop-up window on the 2017 Live Chat & Chat Bots
CONTRIBUTOR RECOMMENDATION: BASECAMP.COM
"Investors can use Basecamp to eliminate long email threads and time-consuming phone conversations, manage various properties while maintaining total privacy for the parties involved, and share documents among multiple populations working with or for the company.”
Innovative Real Estate Investing AN EARLY ADOPTER ON STAYING AHEAD OF THE CURVE.
by Rich Fettke
screen offering to answer questions for users. This was a great resource at the time, but maybe even more useful were the logs of all the interactions with investors. When chat-bot technology reached a point where we felt it was no longer too “glitchy” for public use, we boiled those interactions down to a top-50 list, loaded them into a custom chat-bot, and started using that bot, nicknamed “REAL-E,” to answer common questions and direct people around the website. This was a great transitional move as well as being transfor- mational. The bots are able to answer all the routine ques- tions without assistance, while our “chat girls,” who still work for us, by the way, can leverage their now-considerable exper- tise to help with more complicated inquiries. They remain the caring, friendly, human voices on our website.
T
his is not your grandparents’ real estate world. Bold ideas and disruptive technology are transforming the way we do business, and the real estate industry is no exception. Business as usual might be safe, but it won’t launch you into the future, and the future is where you’ll find success in today’s real estate sector. However, not every new idea is a good one. You have to be a smart “early adopter” to get the best edge on your competitors. THE MINDSET OF AN EARLYADOPTER Early adoption doesn’t begin with the technology. It begins with a mindset that’s open to new possibilities. Early adopters also routinely demonstrate the courage to make a big change on the leading edge of a trend. Just like finding a great property before it’s listed, being among the first to adopt a new technology can propel your business ahead of the others. This mindset will lead people to call you an early adopter, but it is more an attitude of being open to new ideas for personal and professional growth.
GETTING IN EARLY: GRAPHLY
At present, we are adopting Graphly to help us monitor website traffic, forecast revenue, view gross and net revenue numbers, improve rentention rates, and deliver our service more effectively. We have always gathered data about our members' needs, goals, and demographics for many years but never have had a way to quickly and easily analyze and communicate that data with our team and our investment counselors. We believe Graphly will help us with aggregating this information, understanding it, and better sharing it with our team.
> Continued on :: PG 96
Rich Fettke is the co-CEO of Real Wealth Network and an active real estate investor. Reach him at realwealthnetwork.com.
44 | think realty magazine :: november 2018
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