Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Basic Business AI a podcast dedicated to simple AI strategies for businesses who don't want to get an advanced tech degree or hire some marketing bro. I'm your host, William Downs. We bring regular business owners like you and me to discuss potential strategies, ideas and perspectives about AI without getting too far into the weeds of the tech.
Basic Business AI is sponsored by anabots. Did you know companies that respond to customer inquiries in less than 1 minute have a 400% higher chance of closing the deal? Our AI, our AI powered assistants have an average response time of just 5 to 7 seconds, meaning you can close more sales without generating more leads. No tech skills are needed and you can get started in less than five minutes. Go to anabots AI That's a N a B O T S AI Today's guest is Alon Orbach. Did I say your last name correct?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yes, you did. Pretty good, Pretty good.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Can I hear it from you?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Well, I. In. In English, I said Alon or back in Hebrew alone. So the is. Is. Is the hard part.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I won't. I won't try because I just messed up and embarrassed myself.
So. So Your company is designedvr.com yes.
Do you want to tell us a little bit about the company real quick?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yes, of course. So the company started about seven years ago. We started doing vacation rentals, investments and management, which in it including also renovation and setup, meaning all the furniture setup and the interior design basically.
So we did all those four different aspects and we started it because the market conditions in. We're in Florida, so the market conditions start shifting. We used to do long term investments before, but we saw that everything changes. Investors want higher returns that were diminishing and we shift into the vacation rental segment. We've been doing it for again about seven years and we have a big portfolio. We have about $150 million portfolio and we're also looking to expand to different states right now. So I am supposed to fly to Texas in about a month or so to look into some areas there. That's where we are very short. Like that's what the company is basically doing and what we're good at.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Very interesting. So the question we always start with is from your perspective, how is AI reshaping the future of your industry?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Okay, so I will split it into like two different segments. There is my personal use that I'm also a broker. So we have a brokerage, Design VR Realty. And in that area, I'll tell you what I'm doing with AI and then there is the company There is the management software that I'll tell you kind of like what we're doing there because it's a very unique product. So for my personal use as a realtor broker, I'll start with like the basic stuff. Let's say I want to have a listing right now. And English is not my native language, even though I went to school here. My vocabulary, when I'm trying to describe things and I'm trying to describe a property. I always looked at like the top agents before and I'm like, before AI and I like, they're writing amazing. Like, you see their. The way they're writing about describing the property. And I'm like, I want to buy this house, but I couldn't write it. And then AI came and now it's like in five sentences, like basic English. It's all of the sudden giving you a beautiful description. AI is also becoming to a point where it's going to take a photo and the AI can describe the photo. So later on, if I have listing, I tell the photographer to take the pictures and then AI will describe it. So that's like one thing. But then, you know, replying to emails, if I want to reply in a very professional way, I can tell you that like 90% of the people I dealt with, their English was so basic in the way they're like writing things. So let's say you want to do a negotiation in real estate. The way you're describing the end result, like the action, like, what do you want to get in this email? When you're describing it yourself, you might not be like assertive enough or the description is not correct or. So there are so many ways where a deal can fall through with not writing things the way they should be written. So AI is also helping with like emails and it's like a game changer. The way that I see myself, I'm like, the way I go to AI, like ChatGPT and stuff, I write everything and still I see how it's modify it. And then you have different actions. If you want to be more like friendly or more assertive or more like, you know, kind of like, don't play games with me.
So you have all those options in a click of a button. And then let's say for social media, if right now I have an image that by the way, AI can make it sharper, you know, if it's a lower quality or if you want AI to create the image, even videos. And then you go to the description and you just tell Chet, okay, I Want to post it to Instagram or Facebook or it doesn't matter what platform. It's going to also give you the proper hashtags, like, you don't need to do research anymore. It can save you, like, a lot of time. Now regarding videos, you have now a lot of different platforms that if right now, let's say we take this podcast that can be an hour, for example, which it's not, but let's say, and then you put it on a specific AI dedicate platform for editing. You click a button, it's cutting it into like 20 minutes in a matter of a minute. It's insane because I used to spend. Spend half a day to edit a video before.
So a lot of things. And now, like, you want to integrate videos in your social, like, so many things that for social media, it's helping now for lead generation, replying faster to people who reach out to you. The AI can start it, you know, very quickly. And all of a sudden you're like, it's saving you hours, like countless hours, you know, and even like, for me as a realtor, let's say legal stuff, I want to check the law of something. You go to the chat, you ask him a specific word in real estate, for example, let's say I'm now my client is buying a house that has.
So they have the, the bylaws. The bylaws can be, you know, like 200 pages sometimes. And if you want a very specific answer, let's say, how many days can I rent my house per year? You're not going to go through all the 200 pages. I mean, before you would. Now you upload the PDF to the AI and you tell him, find me that sentence and tell me, like, how many days I can rent. It's like unbelievable how much time it can save. Including, I think there are also attorneys that, you know, you want to draft a legal document, the AI can help you. Now, I wouldn't trust it 100%. I mean, you know, it's not like my life is only depending on AI, but it's giving you so much, like, shortcuts that then you need to also, like, check yourself, you know. But that's from like, my personal perspective.
I also want to mention. So we have like a software company that is being used for vacation rental management. And that software, it's called Boom. Now, it was at the beginning a part of Design VR. We separated into two entities. It's the first pms. PMS is a property management software. It's the first PMS Based on AI. So we are actually going all around the world right now. There are people all around the world using that software already, like thousands of accounts.
But we're going to all the events and you know, being interviewed on the AI and for that and I'm going to make it, you know, a little shorter. The AI, it's like on every aspect. So let's say the sales, it can see for example occupancy of a house and then give clients, it can offer them discounts, it can do all the negotiation for you.
It can also like the customer service. So let's say now you're in the house, you're complaining about something. The AI will actually take that. It's going to open a service call, it's going to already call the property manager to look at it. It's going to tell you what level the, the inquiry is. For example, if you know the AC is not cooling versus faucet is leaking versus there are bugs in the house and then it can also call the specific person that works in the company to take care of it very quickly, the customer review. So let's say you finish your reservation, you leave the house, the AI will communicate with you to give us like 5 star reviews, AI analytics later on, all the data. Like it can give you reject rate the task, the response, like how quickly, how quickly like the humans are responding. You know, it gives you all analytics. If we have a cleaner right now, for example, so we have different cleaning companies and within the cleaning companies there are different cleaners. The AI actually give us a grade of each person that cleans, how good they are. Like meaning how much time they spent, what review they received on that cleaning. And then we can tell you like very quickly who is the best cleaner we have. And it can give us for, you know, different aspects. And then you get into the different modes. Like you can do a completely autopilot or you can do semi autopilot. So meaning the autopilot completely, it's going to do everything for you and sometimes you're just going to do half of it and then it's going to bring it to the next person to talk to you. And the beautiful thing is that AI can do it in any language. So if right now you have someone in the Philippines working for you and they only speak two languages, and then you have like someone who speaks Spanish or you know, Mandarin or Arabic, Hebrew, it doesn't matter what AI will communicate with them smoothly.
So it's really like, so I, I know I said a lot a lot here.
You know, it's starting from a basic person waking up in the morning. You know, there's so many AI online platforms. But then you also have the more in depth that you have like developers working for it and how they are integrating it into you to your software.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: That is really neat. And you hit on something that I think is interesting and that is there are different levels to this. There's that just like I can use chat now for everything. If I just working on an email, I throw it in there. I've even just on a text message that was really important to get right. Just type out basically what I want and then chatgpt kind of rewords it. And I usually do this thing where I then give, I then rewrite what it writes so it doesn't feel quite. Sometimes it just doesn't quite get it the way I want. But it gets me going in the direction that I really wanted to get. And it covers some things and like you said, like, hey, does this need to be more assertive? And I can get a little bit of input and it's, you know, you can't just ask your friends everything you know or call an expert on everything. But you've got this expert available that. Yes. You can't rely on it for like things like, like you were saying with like legal documents and stuff like that. There's like this level of yes, it can help you draft something but then you have to go back and, and verify and stuff.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: And that's a funny thing you just said actually, because I remember it until today. Like I remember a realtor respond to my email and you could see that she does not really speak English that good.
And her response was 100% AI. That just did not make any sense. Like you could see how she used sentences that you're like, it's like, it's like it makes zero sense. So that's why you're, you just said, you know, don't trust it 100 like you still need to do the homework, you know.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a tool. Yeah. My sister is a college professor and she has some students that are English as a second language. And she literally had a paper turned in that said as an AI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. And she was like, well, this is obviously just written by. And they didn't even bother to pull that out.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: So she sent an email out to her students saying, it's come to my attention that some of you are using ChatGPT to write your papers. There you get a chance to turn yourself in. And she had like 30% or more of her students basically go, oh yeah, I used it.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: There are apps today that tells you if the paper was written through AI or not. So that's also like, I know professors are using it.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah, she's got something for that now too.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: And I think AI is here to make us give us a lot of short cut tools. But at the end you still need the people are smarter or brighter or like you need to know how to use it, you know, and not just use it.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Well, yeah, well. And that's the thing I love about what she's, she's embraced AI. She's an English professor. And so obviously if you're writing an English paper, you need to write it. You can't have the AI write it. But she's having them like some of the things that they were doing like formatting for certain guidelines or whatever, she's like, I'm going to have them do that now. Like that's not, that's like spell check. Like this is just a tool to have. No one in the future is going to be like, well, you have to know this formatting. No, you should just be able to go onto a computer and say this needs to be formatted in this way and it will do the, you know, whatever that text formatting is. I don't know any of that English stuff, but anyway. Yeah, well, interesting.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: I think that in the future, you know, a lot of people are scared from, you know, AI is going to take over like education and stuff like that. And I think that the professors, teachers, their job will be how to actually use that tool, to accept that people will use it and not ignore it and then just say, you know what? Okay, they're using it. How can I make them better? Let's say in English or you know, vocabulary and stuff like that.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: I'm sorry, hold on a second.
I'm sorry to interrupt you. That sounded like somebody was busting down my door.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: No worries.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: You want to take that again?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I'm just saying. So I said I think that people, instead of being scared of how AI can also make us more robotic or not think for ourselves, I think that you should accept the fact that it's not going anywhere and then accept the fact that, for example, students will use the chat and other tools and then see how to make them actually use those tools. But make them, you know, do more in depth research or do like, like accept it and then, you know, tell them because, for example, let's Say you're telling me to do a paperwork on whatever subject, I don't know, like the, the global warming. I'm being told to do like a paperwork on let's say global warming. So it's not going to be just to go to chat GPT and tell them, okay, tell me about the world crisis. You know, it's going to, I'm still going to need to organize it, to read it to, to you can say, okay, go to more specific things within that explain. So it will make people actually read it and remember it and the experience. So I think we're going to get into a new world of education, like how to approach education.
But it's fine as long as we know how to utilize it and not be scared of it.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I, yeah, I. 100% agree. 100%. So I don't know where we're at on time here. I think we're probably where we need to be. So Elon, can you tell me what would be the.
Who would be your target audience and then how would people get in touch with you? What's the best way for them to reach out to you?
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Awesome. So the target audience, again there are different aspects. So from the vacation rental segment we are working with a lot of investors for short term rentals we're offering about 9, 10%. It can be even higher, a percent return on investment. So that's really what we do for the last seven years. We're very good at that. So that's one audience that we're definitely working with. And then from the brokerage side, so in Florida we are dealing with sales, purchasing and you know, offering a great service to the clients in the community here, how to reach out to us. So my personal kind of like real estate Instagram is Orback Realty and I can share the links later. And then the professional like the business links will be design, VR, realty and investment. So I'll share it for the Instagram and Facebook that's like right now our main focus like Instagram and Facebook.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, Will, I appreciate it. It's a great topic. You know, not many talks about it, so it's great.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you. It's been refreshing hearing from you so I want to thank my listeners as well. If you run a business of any size and you have some ideas or strategies around the topic of AI, we'd love to have you on a future episode as well. We interview business owners of all levels of experience and exposure to AI so we can represent all voices, especially the 90% of us who are curious about AI but not trying to get tech degrees.
You can apply to be on a future episode of basic business AI by simply going to basicbusinessai.com and one more time, if you want to install a 24.7ai sales and support team for less than 10% of the cost of a single employee, get yourself an anabot. Learn more at anabots AI. See you next time on Basic Business AI. Oh, and by the way, if you like this episode, tell your friends.
