244 Digital Transformation for Home Builders - Brent Bommes Nov 20 2024

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

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

Greg Bray: And we're excited to have joining us today, Brent Bommes. Brent is the CEO of RCTBuilt. Welcome, Brent. Thanks for being with us.

Brent Bommes: A pleasure to be here. Nice to meet you guys. Looking forward to this.

Greg Bray: Well, Brent, let's start off by just learning a little bit of background about you. Tell us that quick overview about yourself.

Brent Bommes: Well, I don't want to go back too many years like to when I was born, but I [00:01:00] started my real business career in sales and marketing, actually sales specifically. The very first one was selling encyclopedias door to door, but that was pure hell, so I won't go there. But when I found that customers came to you, I thought this is great. And I worked for a retail company, started there in my early twenties. And then, by 25, I became the regional sales trainer in British Columbia. So, I moved out to BC and opened a bunch of stores with them.

And then, I decided early on to get out of the retail space and get into real estate because I had friends in real estate. So, my first job was selling new homes. Then I moved into management, but from the very early get-go, loved tools that made my job easier and allowed me to kind of leverage my abilities. So, I got into real estate as a [00:02:00] licensed realtor and picked a space where I was dealing with banks and lenders on going into struggling projects.

And so, it was an interesting space, but I got to see a lot of marketing plans. And what I found is most didn't have them. So, you know, that's the first thing I'd ask is, can I see your marketing plan? Sometimes it was a paragraph. It was like, just build it and they will come kind of philosophy. So, I learned from that point, the importance of a marketing plan and a marketing strategy and the difference between fundamental marketing and just promotional marketing.

So, I've enjoyed working in my own company but then went over to a large builder in Western Canada. They asked me to come aboard, and then I kind of went through the ranks, became their first director of digital marketing for the company, and then ran one of their business units. We had a lot of success, but we had some divergent [00:03:00] ideas on digital transformation. Bottom line is it's their company, and that's fine.

And so, I went out on my own again, because I just saw that there was this digital transformation coming hard and fast. This industry is very slow to adopt new technologies and adapt to the changing market. So, my goal, audacious as it is, is to help with digital transformation, mainly with upper executives. So, they can understand they don't have to know all the details, but they do have to know some of the fundamentals. So, that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we take a deeper dive into that, Brent, let's go into one of my favorite parts of this is to find out some personal factoid about you that has nothing to do with family, work, or the home building industry. What do we got?

Brent Bommes: Well, I'll make it a little bit personal. I have, ADD. I mean, not a severe ADD, but I noticed it and I kind of [00:04:00] self-diagnosed myself. And that's when the importance of tools really kicked in to understand that there's ways to leverage my ability to communicate and to follow up. So, my first CRM, I just loved it. I was communicating to a hundred people at a time and they all commented it on how they liked the personal communication. So, that was a big thing. And then I really started to study ecosystems. From there, I just kind of merged the two. So, just kind of, the symbiosis between digital ecosystems and natural ecosystems. That's a bit about me.

Greg Bray: Brent, give us just the quick highlight of your company, RCT Built, who you are trying to work with, and the services you're trying to bring to them.

Brent Bommes: Well, what we're trying to do is to reach the top executives because I found in this space that, you know, a lot of marketing, You know, whether it's director of [00:05:00] marketing or whatnot they like to steer that ship. So, they don't want to go outside of their corporation. So, what we're trying to do is reach the top executives to build an understanding, but we're also at the same time building some tools that enhance and augment their existing performance.

I think there's a fear out there of technology and the fact that, hey, we're going to be replaced by AI and all of these things. Well, I think the truth of it is that people are going to be replaced by those who are using AI. The faster you can get into that realm and gain an understanding, it's like learning a new language. Once you get to kind of 20 percent understanding, you just, through osmosis, learn more because your understanding starts to increase. So, we're trying to reach that.

Our specialty right now is working with AI bots, and actually [00:06:00] replicating employees to have a digital version of themselves so that the digital version can sort through leads, contacts, but essentially answer every question that is asked. I mean, we're going to get to a point where it just passes it over to be written, but that one person can have 100 concurrent sessions of themselves online, as long as it's connected to the right data. And so, we help with data. But I guess the ultimate specialty is digital transformation strategies. What should you do first? What's the low-hanging fruit?

Greg Bray: Let's dive into that bot concept just a little bit. So, for clarification, are you talking about more of the chat type of thing or something that's got an audio component that can take a phone call or both?

Brent Bommes: Both, but we're talking an audio-video bot. I first did this with [00:07:00] myself. I replicated myself in kind of a shell of this computer-generated avatar. I formed my own GPT called Realtime Realtor, and I connected the virtual streaming, meaning you could have 100 concurrent sessions of that bot online. Then it can answer and even ask questions. It's a very iterative process, but it's spectacular.

So, essentially what can happen is a person can go on to a website and pick whether they want to talk to a real person or they want to just talk to the assistant. Now the assistant is an AI person that is the replicant of the person who they'll actually end up speaking to, so that it actually already establishes that rapport part of it. The other thing is the bot will speak any language. I think it's a game changer in real estate and especially service, a number of things like that, where people want to talk to a [00:08:00] character.

Greg Bray: Well, Brent, how much training does it take for something like this to start giving accurate information? I mean, there's the personality side of trying to make it a little more like, you know, Brent Jr., but then there's also the product knowledge and domain expertise, if you will, about the company and those kinds of things and making sure that it's giving accurate answers back. We've all heard some of the horror stories where ChatGPT wasn't quite checked well enough and it kind of made some things up along the way and folks got themselves in trouble by not fact-checking everything.

Brent Bommes: Yeah, it has a tendency to do that. There's a few processes, one is creating the persona, and then what data do you want the bot to speak on? I can download the entire building code and it'll just know it, and then it'll take the GPT and formulate that. So, any question about the building code or service or anything else, but you very much do control the [00:09:00] track in which it talks.

And then you enter the instructions, but you never totally arrive. You can limit the bot to what it will talk about, and if it doesn't have the access to the data, then what it can do is just say, Listen. I do not have access to that. Can I get someone to get back to you? It's a process that I've been playing with for a long time now. There's so much you can do.

I asked my bought to tell me jokes. It told me jokes that I had never heard before. I'm laughing in the basement and my wife comes down and says, what are you doing? And I says, well, I'm listening to jokes told by myself and she just shook her head and went back upstairs.

Greg Bray: As she should have, Brent. That is the correct response.

Kevin Weitzel: It does. That sounds crazy, Brent.

Brent Bommes: But the whole point that I'm seeing is there's this fear of technology, which I think is predominantly had by executives. They think that you can [00:10:00] just add tools to solve problems or hire people. But if those people don't really clearly understand your vision, meaning, what you really need to know is what do you want for output and, you know, here's what this can do for you. So, we need to start by doing an analysis of where people are in their current understanding of what's happening.

In Canada here, there are a lot of government grants available to businesses so that this can be paid for, actually, at least 90%. So, the other thing we do is we look for money for them to pay for the services, and I think that's similar in the US as well.

Kevin Weitzel: I can tell you firsthand that the government does not want to give me money to promote anything that I want to do, but that's a whole different subject because some of the stuff I want to do, Brent, is crazy. But you bring up a solid point. So, because I'm under the belief that the high-level executives, those [00:11:00] C-suite and above executives, it's not that they are fearful of the technology. They're fearful of opening up the purse strings to pay for said technology because it affects their bottom line. Is that coming into play and is this the way you're getting government grants a way of negating that fear or that pushback?

Brent Bommes: Well, it is somewhat a way. But you hit the nail on the head here because the issue is that they want tried, tested, and proven. They don't want to invest in theory because everyone's got a theory and everyone has a concept, right? So, they want it proven out and they want to know who else is using it. You know, well, who's using this and what's the data on the success of it? Does it increase conversion ratios and does it reduce costs? The reality is it reduces costs dramatically, dramatically.

We're trying to come out with an off-the-shelf product, but it's virtually impossible because [00:12:00] every situation is different. So, you have to customize the bot. A lot of these changes took place during the COVID pandemic where everyone was kind of forced to use virtual reality and online tools and it accelerated that dramatically. So, people are becoming more comfortable in that space. But it's the younger buyers that are growing up in this that will be the future buyers and even some of the, you know, 20 and 30-year-olds right now.

The other day, I was at a mall. There was a food court, and there was a group of teens sitting there and all of the teens were on their phones, not surprising. I sat beside them. They're all laughing at the same time. I just looked at them and I realized they're talking to each other, but they're right there. So, they're kind of growing up in a vastly different environment where they're more comfortable with digital tools.

Our whole goal [00:13:00] is customer centricity, listening to the customer and giving them the tools so they can make the right buying decision, not being sold. So, we've seen in data, the dramatic reduction in show home traffic, but the dramatic increase, of course, in online traffic. The buyer's journey is something that we have to pay attention to. What do we want to deliver? We want to deliver the best solutions for the buyer that gives them the highest comfort, but also accuracy and AI bots can be really produced with high accuracy so that you have no glitches. Like, if it does not know, it will not respond, but it's all in the programming.

So, I worked with a machine learning person over the last little while, and I learned a ton. I've been working on an AI concierge. It's the first thing that they greet when they come to the website. Then they have the choice of, you know, not [00:14:00] pursuing that or talking to the AI concierge. And the AI concierge can help them navigate the website, it can pinpoint all of the details, but it's also transcribing this at the same time and sending it directly to the CRM so that we have real-time business intelligence about those conversations so that we can understand more about the client.

Greg Bray: So Brent, thinking about technology like this, which is kind of brand new and brand new is a little intimidating, even for people who love technology, let alone those who are a little hesitant. What's a simpler way to kind of dip your toes in and learn more about some of these things without having to go in all deep into the create the full avatar kind of system? Is there a simpler way to kind of start experimenting?

Brent Bommes: Oh, there is. You know, I mean, even just with chatbots, messenger bots. There's a number of existing tools out there in the car industry that are very successful as [00:15:00] well. The first point that we're trying to start at is education. We've been working internally on an introductory course to digital transformation so that people can understand the basics.

People seem to say, okay, is there a tool that looks after this? Well, you've got to first change the mindset to learn the skill set to use the toolset. It's not that there's this thing you can attach to your system that does everything without any input from yourself. And what ends up happening is people keep downloading tools that are disconnected to the rest of their data. Data is what you're trying to achieve. You know, when you get into analytics, what AI is bringing is prescriptive analytics that are computer generated to say, it's no longer about numbers, it's about trend lines. If you want to change your trend lines, you have to change your actions.

I've been getting to speak to some [00:16:00] builders, and builders do not want to come across as ill-informed. You just kind of establish this is a safe environment, like we're just trying to establish where you're at. It's like when you're in the mall, you are here. You first got to know where you are in order to get to where you want to go. We want to help them with determining where they're at because I think a lot of people have a different perception of where they're at based on the feedback that they get around them.

Kevin Weitzel: So, let me play devil's advocate for a second because I do 100 percent agree with your statement that AI won't take your job, but people utilizing AI will take your job. But do you feel, because I see this happening on a much more macro level and even at a micro level with people being dumbed down? Let me explain my question before I go fully into it.

With the onset of the smartphone, we have a whole generation of millennials, I'm not picking on millennials, I'm just choosing that group, [00:17:00] that don't know how to read an actual map, that don't know how to memorize a phone number. When you were a kid, you had to know everybody's phone number. You had to be able to read a map, didn't know where you were going if you were going to have to make a work trip from X to Y.

So, my question is, is that are we creating with AI and with some of the other digital tools we have, a chasm of people that no longer know how to do and just know how to push the button to make something do it for them?

Brent Bommes: That's a great, great question. It's a real question. It's everyone's real question. There's skills that are being lost. The ability to write in cursive is gone.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah, it's gone. Does that mean that it needs to go away? Like, I mean, do we need teletype? Do we need rotary phones anywhere? No, of course, we don't because those technologies replace each other. But are we dumbing down our society to where we are no longer knowing how to do something? Take for instance a hammer. Yes, you could arguably say that going from a hammer to a pneumatic nail gun was night and day for the construction industry.

You don't have one guy out there swinging and hitting, you know, wearing out [00:18:00] his arm. He can just go out there and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Knock out an entire wall in a fraction of the time. However, if you had a machine that literally could go in there and knock out all that hammering for you with, you know, an automated bot arm, when that machine breaks down, what do these people do? They're like, well, what do we do? The machine broke down. I don't know how to hammer this wall anymore. Where do the nails go?

Brent Bommes: The tool itself is not the solution if you don't know how to frame. So, it's not like that is going to solve your problem. A bad framer with a pneumatic tool gun or, you know, some of the new tools coming out, those people are still going to be bad framers if they don't know the fundamentals. Tools are meant, in my opinion, to enhance your mindset and skill set and leverage your ability. It's about enhancing what you currently have, but you still have to understand the fundamentals of where it came from.

There's this symbiotic happening right now, the symbiosis between the digital world and the natural world [00:19:00] where the augmentation and enhancement is starting to merge with the digital world. And it's something that we have to accept. I mean, the cat is literally out of the bag. These tools are going to exist, but we have to focus on the problems that these tools are going to solve. How do I use the tools that exist, but it's not the tool themselves? So, that's why I strongly talk about mindset, skill set, then toolset because the tools aren't the answer.

There's a side that is not so glamorous, and then there's a side that can really enhance and move society forward. You know, we've got to focus on looking at it through a lens that, what are the benefits that we can achieve through this and clearly understanding the problems.

One of the main reasons I went into this is because I know what the barriers are. I know what the disconnects are. I've looked at data and to set up proper data. You know, [00:20:00] if you have a company that has a bunch of subsidiaries, are they all using the systems the same? You know, it's the garbage in garbage out. So, ultimately we're trying to look at big data doing an analysis to gain our real-time information and business intelligence.

When I go back to evolution, the best quote from Darwin was it's not the smartest, it's not the strongest, it's not the wealthiest, it's the most adaptable. Darwin's theory of phyletic gradualism is a little bit flawed and that was proven in 1972 by Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould, where they came up with punctuated equilibrium. And punctuated equilibrium says that there's bursts of evolution not that it's a graduating system. It's there's events that cause this dramatic change. We're in the midst of punctuated equilibrium right [00:21:00] now, where it's accelerating exponentially.

Greg Bray: Well, Brent, this has really been an interesting exercise to kind of ponder some of the opportunities. And you're right, things are changing so fast. I mean, when did ChatGPT even become a household word, right? It just hasn't been that long. And now it's everywhere, and people are doing all kinds of interesting things with it. But we want to be respectful of your time and appreciate the things you've shared with us today. Can you give us, just as we wrap up, two quick pieces of insight on where somebody can go to just kind of become a little more comfortable with some of these AI concepts and to start maybe learning and educating themselves a little bit more?

Brent Bommes: Well, I mean, online, of course, there's a lot of YouTube videos. There's a lot of great speakers. But there's also speakers that are saying this is the direction. So, who do you trust in this day and age? You have to go back to the fundamentals and look at how is this going to benefit me. What do I need to [00:22:00] learn? You can tell someone, you only need to really understand 20 percent of this and then it'll kind of take care of itself. Well, what 20 percent do I need to learn? You've got to go to the fundamentals. We are going to start providing videos of digital transformation to help people understand.

The biggest problem I see with the home building industry is all derived from the cycle times. So, there's a correlation, strong correlation, between the inception of an idea to the delivery of the product. Home building is, well, you gotta find the land, you gotta design what's gonna go on there. It's literally years. So, to change, you'd be changing midstream in projects that are currently existing, running on the current software. It presents a real problem because, well, then we change and then we're going to have to change again. People are going to have to start looking at change is not a one-time thing. It's constant and it's accelerated. You [00:23:00] have to be either an early adopter and ideally, an innovator.

It's a big topic and it's intimidating and we have a tendency to gravitate to what we feel comfortable. And so, there's not a lot of people gravitating to understand the whys and how things are happening. That's where you start. I'm trying to set up an AI bot that will do just literally that, will talk about digital transformation. Very close to having that done. That should be done within the next two weeks, but it hasn't been an easy road.

There are always problems. But understanding where the disconnects lie and where the barriers are, then you can focus on what is the output I need from this. You start on, what do I need to solve? Not, you know, here's a cool new tool, but it's actually solving something.

Kevin Weitzel: So, to give a little summation there for our listeners, as well as, for me. Basically taking what you put in there. I'm going to quote John Burns, and it's no secret, I've quoted him [00:24:00] a dozen times on this podcast, maybe more. I don't know. Greg might be keeping tallies who knows. His quote is real simple. If you're still doing business today, the way you did it 10 years ago, you won't be relevant or in business 10 years from now. The fear though and the problem that really needs to be nailed home is that this technology is coming at you, and it's no longer a 10-year span. We're talking an 18-month span that people have to figure out how to adopt some stuff or they will literally be left behind. So, I'm right there with you, Brent.

Brent Bommes: No, good point. And the diffusion of innovation itself has changed. Like the cycles are so much closer together so that you could be still trying to learn one technology and there's two technologies past that already. You know, this investment fallacy that we've already invested the time and the effort into this, we're not changing course now. You've got to be willing to change course on the spot.

I think the CMS is actually the focal point of your system and everything else has to be plug and play [00:25:00] because real-time information is what you need. And you need this cycle, this digital ecosystem where all your data is connected and you can analyze your data and it's real. Until you have good data, most people are just aggregating more data and it's really about sense-making more so than aggregation. So.

Greg Bray: There's a lot there and we appreciate the thoughts that you've shared with us today and some of the challenges and hopefully everybody's not like running away screaming going. Oh, my gosh, it's too scary. But rather, hey, I need to face up to these challenges and understand what's coming. Brent, if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more, what's the best way for them to get touch?

Brent Bommes: They can connect with me through rctbuit.com. There's places to register or LinkedIn is a good place. You know, I've made a lot of connections through LinkedIn and had some amazing discussions, and found some really knowledgeable people. It's about being collaborative in this day and age because there's just so much [00:26:00] specialized knowledge and you can't possibly know it all. So, you just have to talk to people that know more than you and you have to have an ego that allows that.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks again, Brent, for sharing 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.