The Wisconsin Investor
Each week, we bring you interviews with some of Wisconsin's top real estate investors who share their tips, tricks, and strategies that you can implement right away. This show is dedicated to helping Wisconsin real estate investors elevate their game. Along with interviews, I'll also dive into hot topics in solo episodes and feature experts from various real estate sectors across Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Investor
How This Investor Built a Virtual AI Team to Scale Real Estate (While Working Full Time)
What if you could scale your real estate business using AI — without writing a single line of code?
This week, we sit down with John “Big Money” Maxi, a full-time data scientist managing 21 rental doors, who’s using custom GPTs and AI tools to streamline his real estate systems, boost decision-making, and replace the need for a team.
From building a virtual board of advisors powered by legends like Kiyosaki and Cardone, to creating AI assistants that hold him accountable, John shares exactly how he’s using modern tools to automate his investing workflow — and how you can too.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How AI removes emotion from investing decisions
- Simple tools like DealCheck and Rehab Estimator Pro
- Creating your own GPTs with zero programming skills
- Using AI to analyze calls, track KPIs, and even post for you on social media
- Why quality data is your most powerful asset in 2024
Whether you're tech-savvy or just getting started, this episode will change how you think about leverage, systems, and scale.
🎯 Bonus: Catch John live at our AI Panel Discussion at the REI Success Club — July 23 at The Woods Golf Course in Green Bay. Doors at 6PM, panel at 6:30.
📲 Want to connect with John? Find him on Facebook: @johnmaxi
Hey everybody, we are back with another episode of the Wisconsin Investor Podcast and today, guys, we are going to be bringing some fire. My guest and I just spent about 15 minutes going through a lot of really good nuggets and I realized we should probably hit record at some point and actually start the conversation. I'm going to introduce him here in a second and, before I do like on all the episodes, I'm going to bring you our sponsor, Wisconsin Discount Properties, who sponsors all these episodes. Today, guys, I'm going to bring you our sponsor, Wisconsin Discount Properties, who sponsors all these episodes. Today, guys, I'm going to talk about a deal that I just got word from one of our buyers who purchased a deal in Krivitz from us and he closed on it maybe two weeks ago I think he's already done with pretty much most of the rehab and we were asking him today hey, how do you think you're going to do on this? What are the numbers shaking out to be? He is estimating after he sells it, if he gets what he thinks he can get for it, he's going to net $70,000 to $80,000,.
Speaker 1:Guys, and that was a deal. That was if you're on our buyer's list, that was in your inbox, so if you didn't buy it. That's the FOM, the buyer's list, because these are the kinds of deals we're putting out every single week. In your inbox, 6 am, they hit it. To get on the buyer's list, just go to wisconsindiscountpropertiescom, plug your information in and you'll get automatically added to the buyer's list where you can start seeing the deals every single week. With that, let me bring in our guest today. I'm honored to have Mr John Big Money Maxi on the call. What's up, John?
Speaker 2:Hey Corey, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Very excited.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to have you on, man. We're going to be talking today some tech, some AI, how to utilize that in your REI business. If you're listening to this and you're like old school and you don't want to hear about that, I would encourage you just to hang on, because maybe it's not something you want to incorporate some of these things but maybe if you could find somebody who you could bring onto your team or maybe bring a third party on that can help implement some of these things, I think it could really help you accelerate your own business or whatever you're trying to accomplish, and not maybe even just business, but any area of your life. So, John, with that, why don't we start out? Tell everybody just a little bit about your educational background and your W2 background first, before we get into the real estate stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I uh not native to Wisconsin, so I actually grew up in Ohio, Ohio state graduate.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah no, right.
Speaker 2:Uh, it was a good year for us, though. Um, so I got my my degree in psychology there, and then, um, I moved down South for a while, down to New Orleans, went to um LSU down there. I went to I'm a huge nerd, so I went to school until there's no more school. Um, so actually I have my PhD in human physiology.
Speaker 2:Um and so, yeah, so, like I said, I'm a professional nerd, with a piece of paper to prove it.
Speaker 2:And when I was there, basically, you know, started teaching myself how to write computer code and then transition from the academia route into being a data scientist. So, like, right after I got out of my graduate program, I I joined a startup and we were building um, a headset. That was actually like, um, we're trying to take your brain waves and read them and understand them, to like measure your level of engagement. So you could imagine, um, you know I'm not working there, so it didn't take off, but the idea was right like, what content are you most engaged with? What piece of music are you most engaged with? So if you have this, you're in the sensor you can kind of get that feedback into like, oh, like. That was my favorite part of that song, because we parsed the brainwaves to understand when you were like, really into it and then you could queue up more songs that had that kind of snippet in it or oh my goodness, work or that kind of you know tv show or you can imagine employers.
Speaker 1:You know putting this thing that's what I was thinking, dude like you know, were you engaged on that sales call, right?
Speaker 2:were you spacing out? You know when were you really paying attention? And so it's supposed to be kind of like a biofeedback device. And then I've kind of, from there, kept going into the data science and machine learning world at some other places and other companies since then.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's awesome. I love that idea. It's too bad that that thing failed, because that sounds really cool. As an employer, I'm like dude, that'd be so awesome to have for our team. And I could just be like dude, you don't pay attention at all when we're doing this. How do we get you more data? It would allow us to ask a lot better questions and provide probably better training, better feedback for our team, all that kind of stuff. But I'm sure somebody will pick that baby back up in a few years. I'm sure it'll be something relevant. But wow, that's fascinating, man. So you went from psych to human phys, to data.
Speaker 1:That's right yeah that's crazy, and most of that data stuff is all self-taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just I ran into the project I was working on in my graduate studies. You know I remember working in Excel and just being like this. The way I'm doing this just seems really inefficient. Like this, can not you know, cause I'm working with small data sets and I'm like there's professionals out here who are doing this with much more complicated data sets than I am. And they're not doing it like this and I was like what?
Speaker 1:do they?
Speaker 2:do and and so yeah, then I. Then I taught myself. I was like, oh they, they use Python for this, they use computer programming languages to do this stuff, so I'll just I'll do that too, um, and then uh yeah. So just took a bunch of online courses, all self-taught, and then just kind of kept, you know, basically trying to get better and better and read more and learn more and just keep perfecting the craft. Um, wow, and then yeah, I love that parlayed that into, uh, a career that I've been very happy with.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Now, not only that, but I didn't hear anything, john, where, when you went to school, you also graduated with a real estate degree or anything, but now you also own 21 doors, correct? That's right? That's right. So self-taught there as well, it sounds like self.
Speaker 2:I mean you could say self-taught, but a lot of it has been just the awesome community. Um, I think so I didn't own anything. It's on mood, wisconsin, okay, and um, you know, when I came here, I started showing up to the Riaz and talking to people and I knew I wanted to buy Um, and I got. I got a lot of help and support and encouragement from all the investors around here. They're like, yeah, welcome, yeah, come on, go buy stuff, let's do it. Um, I actually tell people that you know, you were one of the first people I talked to when I moved here. Okay, cause I was trying to fit in. You know, this is 2020, somebody was five years ago and I called you out of the blue and they're like well, talk to Corey, you know he's, he's doing some good stuff. And um, it's like, yeah, you know I want to. I told you I want to start wholesaling. You're like, well, why do you want to do that?
Speaker 1:It's hard.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, well, I want to buy some rentals. And you're like, well, why don't you just buy rentals? And then I was like, I looked around, you know, and I'm like for the first time in my life, like my wife and I both had jobs, I was like, oh yeah, we could just buy rentals, because I've been always planning on doing it, but we've been students for so long. Sure.
Speaker 1:I thought of actually buying something was kind of like you know, and then uh, yeah, then you're like, well, just buy him.
Speaker 2:Then sounds like I had some really profound advice at the time. Yeah, exactly, I was like that is a lot easier than doing all this marketing. I will just buy some, let's do that um, yeah so yeah, a lot of support, do you think?
Speaker 1:that's a good move, john, for people, cause my advice maybe isn't always correct, right? So I mean, now that you've had some years to reflect back on it, do you think that was the right decision at the time?
Speaker 2:I think it was for me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. I've. I've always wanted to do. I, you know I'm. I don't say wholesaling anymore, I say I've always wanted to do. I don't say wholesaling anymore, I say I've always wanted to do direct-to-seller? Marketing, because you're at the bottom, You're at the foundation of everything, right? So I've always thought of it as a pyramid. You got the direct-to-seller stuff and you got the flippers and you got the landlords, and then you've got the MLS right.
Speaker 2:And so you can buy anywhere in that pyramid pyramid and you can sell anywhere in that pyramid. You want to buy at the bottom and sell it towards the top, and so I've always wanted to be down there. Um but you know, with with our working situation, that it was what it was I. I learned a lot by just buying and just setting up um. My system, in a nutshell, has always been defined good property managers. Um, because I've all well, last year I didn't, but mostly I've always been working full time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so you know my job has always been underwrite. Make sure it fits make sure I got the right financing lined up and then manage the property manager.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you, you are a good student, john. I'm sure that's probably exactly what I told you back in 2020. I don't remember exactly the conversation, but that's about what I tell everybody. You know, one of the things that happens a lot of times is I get calls from people like yourself, john, you know, frequently and they want to know what to do and all this stuff. And a lot of people love wholesale, like and I'm not knocking and I'm obviously that's my business and I don't tell people not to wholesale because I'm afraid they're going to be competition or something like that. Like it's really just genuine advice, like for people and it depends on the goal right your goal and hold wealth.
Speaker 1:And your roadblock was time right, like, how do I build the time? And now you're doing some of your own direct to stellar marketing and things like that. Obviously, you know now the time commitment to that can be pretty extensive just to get one deal. But you're getting it at the price where, for people who are busy, they've got good W-2s, they just want long-term wealth. A lot of times, yeah, you're going to pay more for that property. You're going to pay more for that property. You're going to pay that wholesaler or whoever you're sourcing that deal their fee. But you don't have to be like if time is money, you don't have to give up all that time and energy and effort to go source that deal. You can just be doing exactly what you did, like let's just start building the portfolio.
Speaker 2:no-transcript seller stuff so I basically took last last year I had kind of done it on and off with, like some mailers here and there um, last last year I basically took a call it a sabbatical um from my work to get into it, um, and start actually kind of trying to build out, build out the systems and make it consistent and um, and so that was last year and then a little bit into being in this year and then I went back um, back to my, my full-time job, okay, um, and changing some strategies along with that. But it was kind of like let's take this year and get the experience and see what that looks like, what I'm good at there, what I'm not good at there, uh, you know where I need to bring in help and what I can do on my own.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man, and that's. I think that's really a good lesson for a lot of people too. When we started in this business, we did a bunch of different exit strategies. We did a bunch of different things, we tried a bunch of different things. And then we figured out, hey, we're really good at these few things, we're not good at these things.
Speaker 1:And then we can go out and one of my favorite books we're reading it now in our our, now in our business that I've referenced in the last couple episodes, I think, but it's who, not how, by Dr Benjamin Hardy, and it's such a simple concept. But as I listen to it, it's like I'm re-listening to it. I'm just like this duh, some of these roadblocks that are keeping us from growing, it's just a who problem, right, it's not a how problem, it's just like. So I'm getting in right now in our business, back into certain things in the sales side of things, and I'm going back through and I'm kind of doing the do to figure out what are the things I want to keep and what are the things I don't want to do. And then I'm going to, I'm going to find somebody or potentially a tool that maybe we could talk about to replace that and have that do the work for me, so that I don't have to be the who doing the how right, I can have a different who or a technology or some kind of system to replace me in in that how.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really good book. It's a great book. It's one of my favorites, so a lot of his stuff is great. Anything I read from Hardy is is is really good. So talk a little bit about some of the, some of the stuff that you're doing. So, as the data, as the data scientist guy in you, what are some of the, some of the ways you're using data or technology in your real estate business today and in this current environment we're in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, for me it's always the simple things that I've always done. Um is, I guess, be very repetitive and um, purposeful, and tool and tools that aren't necessarily ai, but just like running numbers on things. So okay, and and actually I'll tie this into who, not how, right. So when I was early on, I was like you know what I'm, so I'm so good with an excel I'm way better than excel than all these other people like I can build my own excel spreadsheet, um. And then I was like you know, I'm spending more time building this excel sheet than I am analyzing anything. Um, and so I moved away from that. I was like you know what? There's a bunch of really good tools out there. Let's just use those and be every time. Here's, here's how I run my numbers. I run it through the same system every time. You know if I get my green check marks, we're all good, I don't we're not all good, yeah and so like.
Speaker 2:For me that looks like pretty simple stuff, like just using deal check um rehab estimator pro, just to make sure that I'm going through the process and checking the buttons, and that's kind of like phase one really. As far as yeah, as I am. As far as data, Is deal?
Speaker 1:check a? Uh. Is that a tool? Is that, or is that just what? Uh, something you call your spreadsheet?
Speaker 2:No, it's a, yeah, it's a tool. Uh, it's a software system that you can get. Um, I think they have free access. They also have paid um, a paid version as well. But basically, you know you can't do literally everything that you would want, like you're not going to do sub twos and like creative stuff in there necessarily. But, um, okay, they have templates set up that you can do some customizing for that are.
Speaker 2:You know, this is a rental property, this is a flip, this is a burr, this is a wholesale deal, okay, um, and you basically go in and set up well, you know, I got to have such and such LTV, so I know I can get a loan, or I got to be at such and such cash flow per door, or I want to have this IRR, or you know, whatever your criteria are, you set that in there. And then when you go to any of these properties, you type an address, it pulls the public data and you just like fill out like oh's my, if I'm getting my bank that does a 30 year mortgage, here's that template. If I'm looking at my bank with a 20 year AM, here's that template. If I'm hard money, here's that template. And you kind of just make sure your taxes and insurance and everything are good to go, and then you look for your green check marks.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Like I need to get that to it. We have spreadsheets, too. Like same thing. Like we have our spreadsheets that we run and that's how we decide what we're going to lock up. But I think that's a great tool because you have the different templates in there. You just set it up once, you do the work once and then boom. What I love about that, john, I think this is a good nugget for anybody out there listening. Uh, so when we put a deal out, as you know, we send you a picture in an email. You click on the picture. It brings you up by a resource folder. We call it in there. We've got an inspection report, we've got a video, we've got all this sort of stuff right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, some people that are a little bit more traditional and old school and I'm not saying this is wrong or right, you know this is just the way some people prefer to do it. They do not like our system because they need to walk through the property right. They have to physically be there to get the emotional feel of the property. What I love about what you're doing is you're taking out all emotion and you're making it strictly about your buy box and what the data says If it checks all the greens, we buy, if it doesn't check the greens, we don't buy. It's not.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I really like how this one feels when I walk in, or I really like that it's just data and that makes it. I think, for anybody looking to grow and scale at a faster pace, it's going to make your life so much easier to do it that way, versus having to go walk through it and just get the feel of it. A lot of times we can talk ourselves out of deals, real easy, right. We can find a lot of reasons not to buy a deal. That's scary, it's risky. These are big numbers we're talking about, right?
Speaker 2:But what you've built is a system here to take out all of that emotion it sounds like, and just make it about the numbers as much as possible. Definitely, I mean, and I guess the thing that I would tie back into as we jump into like more complicated AI pieces, is that all of those things are built on data. So anything that is wrong with how you don't like the AI, what it's doing, it's because of the data that created it.
Speaker 2:And so the foundation of all of this stuff is is the data. So, whether that means you have an AI tool or you have a spreadsheet, or you have you know deal, check if you put the wrong data into it you're going to get the bad results.
Speaker 1:I can make a spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can make a spreadsheet and I can make every deal, check off all the stars. But if I just made up the data, if I didn't look up the property taxes, if I didn't confirm like what have I been paying in insurance Right, and put the right insurance amount in there. You can get green checks, but it doesn't mean it's going to work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. I see that too on the flip side, john, when you mentioned Rehab Estimator Pro. So those of you guys that don't know, this is a tool that you can use. So if you're not familiar with rehab costs, for example, it's a great tool to kind of start getting familiar with rehab costs. Example, it's a great tool to kind of start getting familiar with rehab costs. You can, you know, look at the videos or inspection reports, or if you're walking through some properties you know and and going that route, you can start plugging some of these things in.
Speaker 1:But just like what you're saying, john, what I've noticed is you have you have to maybe get with some people who know their numbers, because when you first take that thing out of the box it's going to have a preset national average type of a number in there.
Speaker 1:Right now I live in Door County, wisconsin. I can tell you just from experience in the last year we've started to do some more projects up here. Our costs up here are literally like double what I can get in Green Bay and I'm an hour north. So you've got to kind of know your region and what your contractor going rate is, what the price is of the material should all be roughly about the same, but your labor costs and all that stuff. So if you just take it out of the box, like what John's saying, and you think it's just going to know exactly your costs and your everything else, you're going to miss out on a lot of deals potentially, because I think could be really over inflating what the rehab costs might actually be in your specific area or with your connections over or under for sure?
Speaker 2:yeah, you want to again. You got to check the numbers, look at them. It's really good to make sure you get everything accounted for, um, but it's going to be really helpful if you also ask a friend or shop on home depot to double check yeah, and just get I think that's a great piece of advice just get it when you're first starting out using these tools.
Speaker 1:Just get a couple of different eyes on it and get a couple of different people's opinions on it Contractors, when we use it. We used to use it years ago and we would have our contractor go, we would get their quote and then we would compare it to this and we just kind of keep doing that for a little bit until we could tweak the numbers and get pretty dialed in on what our contractor was going to be charging us for this stuff, and then it was super helpful. Then it made it really easy, especially as we were training people. The who's how to coming up with rehab costs can be one of the biggest factors when they're locking a deal up, for you Might not know all the stuff. So having that tool for them when they started out with our actual costs was important. But you got to keep updating it too.
Speaker 1:Prices change Yep, right, got to keep updating it too. Prices change, yep, right. We've definitely seen that over the last few years, right? Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those are two great nuggets. So deal check and rehab estimator pro. I think we actually have a discount link for rehab estimator pro which I can put in the show notes. Uh, if I still have it, I'll check on that, but if anybody wants to do use that tool, we'll throw a little link in the show notes for you guys with the discount code on that. John, what are some other things you're using on the data tech, ai side of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean I think I mentioned earlier so I do have a CRM. Since I'm doing direct-to-seller marketing, I've been using Resimply and they have they've released a number of of tools now into that, that kind of help, a lot of different functions. So they have like an AI texture built in so you can actually have the AI you know, texting and responding to your leads, and I'm I would say I'm still early phase of testing that, but it's supposed to take in the other communication and notes that you've, you know, left on the person. So it's all out of the context built in of who is it actually talking to, as opposed to, you know, a preset drip campaign template.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the other thing that I've been liking and that that you know you can they have it built in but you can do it on your own too is feedback coaching on sales calls or lead management calls. They have it built into the CRM, yep, so whenever I get on a call, it's calls are recorded, like all my phone numbers that route through there, like I get those, those recordings, and so they're just a button. Now you can put hit, get lead manager score, get acquisition manager score, and it gives you a whole summary of like a lot of it's broken down into, you know, timeline, price motivation, sure Things of like, well, you talked about this and that was good, but you didn't go too deep into you know how long it's been vacant, like they mentioned. It's been vacant for a long time, you acknowledge, but you didn't like, oh well, is it going to be vacant another six months, type of thing, or uh, it's so good.
Speaker 2:It gives you a score on there, and so those summaries are are helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Um can you train it to pick up on other things you wanted to listen for, or is it not really customizable as far as the uh the tool?
Speaker 2:Right. So that's their tool, so it's not customizable for me to do. That's where I've now moved kind of into another area where I've now been spending probably more time than I should, just because I like it as a fun activity and as a professional nerd I just have a lot of fun doing it is making customizations within chat, gpt, so, um, so in there now I I've, I now can do things. You know, obviously I'm not retraining the model from scratch, but I can give it all the appropriate context I want for what I want it to do.
Speaker 2:So I've made my own sales manager, gpt, where I've taken a lot of research into like what are the best lead qualification frameworks? What is the best?
Speaker 2:way to ask questions, what, and basically put together these extensive research docs which you can use AI to help you build Right, right, and then feed that back into my custom tool. So then I can now role play with it and say like hey, I talked to a person and they were in this situation, like, let's mock up that conversation. Or like here's all the notes for my CRM on this person. What should I talk to him about? To him next.
Speaker 2:And it'll give me like stuff going into the call that I should be bringing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do that too and that's that's been a great tool for us. I think we started, started it up, around January and for me as the trainer for our team, my big, my big issue was trying to sit and listen to, you know, to all of these 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 minute calls and just try to stay on top of that to give the team feedback. Well, as soon as we got this going, I mean now we have it set up to our VA, puts the transcript into the GPT, it spits out with whatever prompt we've set up for it to always analyze it with. Now it spits out the report and then that zaps to Slack and pings to the rep in Slack so they get their little report on that, on that call. Every day they're getting multiples of these. So and we've we trimmed it down.
Speaker 1:We had a pretty extensive for a while as far as all of the feedback it was giving them and it would score each part of the call and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So I mean you can get it really robust, but with the amount of volume of calls they're doing and that kind of thing, it was almost becoming like nobody was reading it because it was too much. So we just now it's like give us the two things they did really well and the two opportunities they missed for every single call and it's kind of compressed it a little bit. I know we're missing some things, but I just need them to read it on a regular basis and check it. But it's really good for us. We do training every um every morning on certain things and so for us now we'll just pull up some of the, some of the GPTs and see what the see what GPT said and then and then we'll listen to the call together sometimes and compare what GPT picked up versus what the uh, what, what the score, what the rep is thinking they said, and a lot of times GPT is spot on.
Speaker 2:When you uh, when you do that, do you have it where it's all based on the prompt, with the whatever version of chat GPT you're using, or do you have like customized versions of chat GPT where you've uploaded all the additional training files and contacts and done all that stuff?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we put it into the customized GPTs and then we just have the same prompt for that custom GPT every time, and that to your point. What was really cool is I had all these training videos for new hires and I just took an upload at all of the training videos to that cause, you know, for the lead intake calls and hires, and I just took and uploaded all of the training videos to that cause, you know, for the lead intake calls and our script. And then you know, we've added other resources of people who we also get training from as well with those and uh, and that's been really cool, you know. And then we still have to tweak it. We still have to tweak it a little bit because it was still missing a few things, but it's pretty good after you spend a little time training it, Right? I mean, have you had that same experience, John?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that was insane. That's worth like people have all these awesome prompts, honestly, but you get. I think that's where the real magic comes, like when you're already in that field doing it and then you upload all the appropriate background knowledge that you expect someone. Instead of saying, act like a sales coach, you know. At the beginning of your prompt you're actually saying here's all the things like it it knows before you talk to it. Now, here's all the things that sales coach knows. So now tell me how this call went.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Our team has also done this. So we all share the same GPT account, you know, so that we're all using this the same, the same, you know. So our VA can access it and I can access and all this stuff and I think what they've done. Now we have a guy that does social media for us and so I try not to go on Facebook ever anymore. You know, it's like too much of a distraction for me and it's it's not super productive, but we still.
Speaker 1:I'm still like it's important, you gotta be out there, you got to be on social media. So we have a guy that posts now, but they've trained a gpt off of all my podcasts and videos and everything else that I put out over the years, and so now, like this is going to sound terrible. So if you guys are commenting with me on social media it's not me, but it sounds like me probably is what? Because they'll plug it in. They'll say what would cory say back to this person? And it like knows me? And it responds and so far nobody's reached out and been like dude, that was really rude, or you should have never said that to me.
Speaker 2:So it's working so far.
Speaker 1:It's good it's working so far, but again, it's a who, not how thing. Now I'm, I don't have to be sitting on social media responding to all of these you know comments or even posting any content, or I have a gpt now that can come up with the thing, like I would say yeah, and you're, and you didn't also have to make a specific, you know 10 page frequently asked question document, or how would cory react?
Speaker 2:to this or that, right? You yes, you already had this other content. You had this other stuff, and now you could repurpose that into a new tool exactly which, which is the really cool, it's like we're talking about oh, did you customize this?
Speaker 2:are you using that? What this kind of all gets to is no, is if you know it's a new way to build a computer application, like you wanted to do something and you know what you wanted to do. So now, instead of having to be a computer programmer to build a whole thing and say, well, what happens in this situation and that situation, and you know where do I store this piece of information in a database and how does the application grab it at the right time, you can just kind of like. You can either do you know, have it do research for you on a topic you want it to research or you can you can
Speaker 2:dump everything you won't think or know or want to talk about on a subject into a document, put it in chat, gpt, and now it's going to respond like the way you the way and, like you said, there's tweaking and things that go. But I mean the possibilities are are endless as far as what you could get it to do. I mean, the possibilities are are endless as far as what you could get it to do. If there's a problem you're struggling with, you now have the power to make an app to handle it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's awesome, it's people, people that are around my kids always joke. They're like you and mom are obsessed with chat, gpt. And I'm like, yeah, we are like any any weird. You know, kids are so inquisitive John, you have what? Four kids, four kids, more kids, the same here. So they, you know, we get asked a lot of questions every day. I have no idea what the answer is, but chat usually knows. So I usually plug it into chat and I can answer my kids inquisitive questions now without me having to feel like an idiot, you know, not knowing 90% of what they're asking me. So so that's pretty, pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Can you just explain real briefly, john, because it's pretty simple? But for those that are out there listening, because this was a big thing for me, I'm like, oh man, I'm going to have to hire, I'm going to have to hire a who to build out my custom GPTs. And then my brother actually was the one that was like, dude, no, you just go here, you click here and then you just start training it and I was like what? So can you just explain to people real quick, like the steps to make a custom gpt and chat?
Speaker 2:yeah. So if you you know I think you have to you need to have a chat gpt. Obviously you need an account. I don't know if you need a pro plan or not to make oh okay, which like 20 bucks a month for the, for the pro plan, um.
Speaker 2:I mean, I held out for a long time. Now I'm paying for it, I'm glad. But yeah, once you have that, you basically click your profile picture. There's like a little my GPT thing that comes down and you get. You know, it's like build one and there's just a little box there so you can. There's a describe to build, so you can just type like into the box, like build me one, and tell it what you want and it itself will basically put together what it thinks you need to build that. So that's kind of like the easiest step, like lowest barrier to entry, um way to do it.
Speaker 2:Then there's also the another, another way where you can. There's a tab that's been in, configure, and you can go in there. And then you same idea, like you give it a name, like what you want to call, so you can find it in your menu and describe it and stuff, uh. And then you got to tell it well, what, what do you want me to do? So you have to give instructions like are, are you a jerk? Are you a nice person, you know? Are you, um, you know a copywriter? Are you a data analyst? Are you, you know a ceo, whatever role, you know way you want to talk, way you want it to talk type of thing, and the instructions. You know how to respond to user inputs. That would all all go in there.
Speaker 2:And that's the part that we talked about tweaking stuff. That's where that comes in. You start testing, like I don't like how this talked or um, whatever. That's where that goes. But then also then there there is you know add files button, and so you know, like easy, as an example, let's say you just bought I don't know. Let's say you bought Rich Dad, poor Dad, right, and you got the PDF of it and you want Robert Kiyosaki's advice on your next deal. You can drag and drop that PDF into that chat GPT and it's going to read the whole book and you can say you are Robert Kiyosaki, here's how you think, click bill, and then just, and then you can start chatting with them. It's like, yeah, I got this deal, I'm analyzing it, it looks like this or that. And then you know I'd be like, well, that's, that's a dumb idea. That's a dumb idea. I don't know. I haven't built that one. I don't know what he'd say, but that's a good.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's kind of all that I want to kind of build. It sounds like fun. He's got a lot of books too, so you could probably just get a bunch of the books and then it's really. You're really getting all of his advice right, I brought to mind too, actually.
Speaker 2:So I think, uh, cause I'm thinking like I don. At one point, I think the Wisco Ria, when you joined, they gave you a PDF of several books, I think that might have been one of them. So it was 10X on there, so you could drag and drop a couple books from those and get a hybrid. Grant Cardone, Robert Kiyosaki sales or investment advisor.
Speaker 1:You just reminded me, john. You and I, I think, are pretty similar age. Did you ever watch Short Circuit growing up? I don't think. I don't know that one oh dude, classic 80s movie. You got to go check it out if you haven't watched it. But anyway, it's this robot and he like, becomes like a person and anyway he's at this chick's house and he's just reading through all these books and he's just throwing it. That's what I'm thinking of. This you're talking about chat, gbt. It's like short circuit. Proactor had a premonition back in the 80s that this was going to be happening at some point. Talk about, though, you and I, before we hit record, something else that I had never thought of, and I love this idea. You were talking about sort of building your own board of advisors within chat.
Speaker 2:Talk a little bit about that and some of the ideas or thoughts you had around that because I think this is pretty cool for anybody out there listening in any stage of their investing journey or any other thing they're trying to build. Yeah, so the idea is that most big time companies, even small companies, could benefit from a board of advisors that have been through it before and they're not running the business, but they can tell you what you need to do, things to think about and when, and so one of the things that you can do is apply that to to chat gpt, in kind of the same way, where, instead of building that knowledge base for your custom gpt of here's knowledge on you know how to be a facebook marketer and here's knowledge on how to be a Facebook marketer and here's the way people write on Facebook, etc. Etc. You can feed it like here's all the information I have on Grant Cardone, because we're talking about it. Here's all the information I have on Robert Kiyosaki. Here's all the information I have on Ken McElroy Whoever. Actually, I did a webinar on this recently. It's like you can do fictional people Like do you want captain Kirk on your board? Do you want Yoda on your board? Oh, that's cool, and and so what you do then is and again, you can use chat GPT to help you do this is you create these extensive dossiers on these people that you then upload into chat GPT and say like, okay, you are, you're not one person, you are all of these people together or separately within this one conversation. And so that's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I was playing around with that the other day and, you know, basically built it, got the people in there, and so I want to rebuild my wholesaling company from the ground up. Like, where am I going to start? What do I need to go with? And so it just spits out each of the nine people on the board has their own viewpoint. Some of them were marketing experts, some of them were deal structuring experts, some of them were negotiation experts, and they all bring their own flavor. And then you can start saying, alright, well, so those are all the things I want to consider.
Speaker 2:Well then, what would the actual blueprint be? And they'd be like well, phase one, weeks one through three. You got to build out these things. And it's like you know your mission statement and who are you marketing to, and like all that stuff. And so it's like okay, well, these two board members, you guys, were the ones that were really focused on the mission statement, like help me craft that. Like here's kind of what I'm thinking, like what am I missing? How would you reward that to target those people, or you know? And so then you can just kind of go deeper and pull in the board members right, that had that viewpoint and then you can jump back out. It was just a test of like, could I set up this board and would they give me eventually actionable steps, very discreet things to do on a timeline of like all right, here you go. Here's your own 90-day wholesale company, that's amazing and they know your area right.
Speaker 1:Because if you build your own GPT or just your own premium uh, chat, you can put in like I'm john, I live in this town, I'm this old, I have kids, this is what I do for a living, this is what I want to do for a business like you can build all that in and tell chat that so it knows you right. So then your board of advisors then would hypothetically know that as well. When they're giving you this, they could potentially provide you more regional type of advice based on what you're trying to do as well.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that gets to that point actually is one of the things that I started doing a couple months ago now is like one of my chats is like a personal assistant chat, and the way I use that is every, every morning I have like three reflection questions that I answer into chat, gpt, and then I go well, here's like things that are scheduled Like these are just like on the day for this period of time, and then I go here's my three priorities, like build my daily schedule, and on top of that I do the um uh traction book.
Speaker 1:It's like I've gone through the whole vto organizer and it's like I've done that.
Speaker 2:It knows like I rocks and my 10-year target and all this stuff, and so I've built this personal assistant around, like this is what I'm trying to accomplish business-wise. I also have these like family life goals and so like now, here's what today looks like. Build my schedule and you know what my kpis are and like what my like bigger longer term goal is. Keep me on track.
Speaker 2:And then the end of the day here's my end of the day reflection pump update. My KPIs give me new reflections for tomorrow based on what I said went well or didn't go well today, and so the next morning there's my new reflection prompts to start the day and get everything planned. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So now, it's all cycled.
Speaker 2:So now when I go to do these other things, it just has all that memory so it does months of me doing business on a day-to-day basis. So like it's like I didn't have to tell it who I was anymore. It's just like I'm building a wholesale company. It's like, well, you're Maxi homebuyers and like you know, just like knows all the stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so cool, dude. I'm getting so many great ideas from this. So, audience, if you're listening to this and you are, if you're like tuning out, if you would need one of those headsets John talked about earlier and make sure you're tuned in you are missing out on some really good stuff here. This is incredible, dude. I'm just thinking about that. We had consultants come in in October. You know we're paying them thousands and thousands of dollars to sit with us and go through all this stuff. Why would we not just plug that in to a GPT and just have it keep us on track every day? And then we have our team put a scorecard together every day of how they did on the day, what their hots are, what do they need to focus on the next day or what do they think it is? They can have their own, based on their own personal goals for the year with us or the goals that we set for them. Oh my gosh, dude.
Speaker 2:There's, it's so much.
Speaker 1:It's really it's.
Speaker 2:I mean, what time I don't know. I forget what time it is or what time we have to get, but, um, there's so many ways you can go with it. And then the thing that has me really jazzed up now, um, like I'm looking to start. I don't know where I'm going to find the time to do this, but what I really want to do is you know, there's now this new layer of I don't know what to call it.
Speaker 2:I don't want to get too technical, but basically, when two computer programs talk together, it's like the application layer, right? They like there's a API that they communicate through with what it's called. There's a new one instead of API MCP, which stands for model context protocol, and so this exists so that your chat bot can now interface with programs through this model context protocol. So, instead of it, it's like right now, right, so I use Trello, like my GPT can like output a list of things that I can copy paste, and it just creates a bunch of Trello cards. Okay, With the mama context protocol, it would just be able to talk to Trello directly.
Speaker 1:So then you're like eliminating yourself from having to go in and actually put the prompt in. It's just going to do it for you.
Speaker 2:You'd be talking to chat GPT and I'd tell it like here's my KPIs for the day, and it could MCP over to Google sheets and actually write those KPIs in a Google sheet over there.
Speaker 2:Cause now it can talk to Google sheets, just like it can talk to me, and so there's there are other things you have to set up and it gets more into the weeds as far as, like, the actual programming and some things like that. Sure, but that's kind of where now I'm really excited and I want to. I'm planning some yeah, planning some projects around that of like okay, now can I talk to chat gpt, but have stuff happen elsewhere so that I don't have to take it from there and put it into there.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, dude. There's so much, so much cool stuff happening right now as we're, as we're living in this amazing time and in the world. Uh, it's pretty crazy going from short circuit, you know, being the uh being a crazy dream, to uh, we have a real life short circuit happening right now and we can utilize it to become more efficient and effective. And the other thing too you know you mentioned the deal check thing before. I would imagine you know GPT. You could build your own deal check right in GPT. Right, if you didn't want to use that software, you could. You could have it kind of prompt you. Here's the things what, what are these numbers or what does this look like, or whatever the case is, maybe use deep research if you had to.
Speaker 2:That's something I wrote down Cause I got a list of like ones I want to try building and that that's that's on there. I didn't prioritize it because I had deal check and because math can be where it struggles Right, like theoretically it can do all that advanced math, but also, like you, better be able to know how to do yourself to check it, like if it spits out an IRR. I'm not sure I'm going to trust that at face value.
Speaker 1:Would you use another soft like like grok or something, to throw it into grok and see if they come up with the same answer? You could do that. Are they both kind of the same?
Speaker 2:Me being me, like, I would throw it into a spreadsheet, that's like I know the numbers line up to that that thing, and have your, your like known test. Um sure, but for other stuff, like, I have seen it work pretty well for some other stuff, like when I was messing around with the ai board of advisors, um, that I made.
Speaker 2:You know it's like I want um. You know I told how many deals I want to do a month and like average um thing for a deal. And then like uh, average revenue per deal or profit per deal and uh, like the grant cardone person in that like spit back, like if you're gonna have that revenue and it was the right amount of revenue, if you like put those numbers together in a year, yeah then, like you gotta have x sales, like you gotta have these many sharks on your team, just like crushing the phones. You know it's like in his voice and I was like all right.
Speaker 2:It didn't get the math right. It was a pretty simple math problem, but it it got it right yeah that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I was thinking the board of advisors things too and that's speaking of another show is I think it's called the men who built America. It's like Ford and JP Morgan, and you know a bunch of those guys from back in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that were the big Titans of industry, and you know you could get some of that kind of stuff in there too and have you know Henry Ford telling you what to do or something That'd be pretty sweet, it'd be awesome and that's like, yeah, you can, anything that you can do research on and feed it the knowledge you know, like we have.
Speaker 2:We have that history so you can teach it to talk and have those viewpoints.
Speaker 1:Holy cow, I love this stuff, man. Uh, john, this has been awesome. We're going to get we're going to get going to reps. I know you got a real job and you have a business that you have to build and a lot more GPTs to build. So, uh, what are there any other just quick hitter tools that you think the audience would really benefit from or that you know you you think would be kind of neat to throw out there?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I mean, if you haven't played around with deep research in chat, gpt, play around with that, otherwise I'll throw out. There's a Facebook group I'm in AI prompts for entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:I'll throw that out there, because if you want some inspiration for what people are doing, you can check that out. It's a really good group. People are dropping pretty awesome prompts in there to try out. And I don't use the saved post very often on Facebook, but I do. When I'm going through there I'm like, oh, this looks pretty cool. I would like to see how this would work in my business, because it's like 450,000 people in this group, across all industries, that are just like. It's like 450,000 people in this group across all industries that are just like. Here's what I'm using this for, like here's a prompt that I used and, like you know, so it's all sorts of people who are doing all industries, all types of sales, and they just put their prompts in there and let people try out. So that's, that's a place to check out.
Speaker 1:That's pretty, that's pretty amazing man.
Speaker 1:I know, um, you don't mention deep research. I think I talked about this on another episode, maybe. Maybe it was with my Kiggins. We talked about some, uh, some deep research stuff and some GPT stuff, but I know I'll just to reshare it again If people didn't hear that that that deep research saved me probably a month of legwork where I was looking to build some new construction, multifamily stuff, and so I put in you know, here's what I want my LTV to be once everything's up and running, here's how much cash I have, here's how much I can invest, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Here's the areas I'm looking to do. And I hit deep research and then it gave me like I don't remember if it was like five to 10 questions based off that they're like, well, what about this and this and this? And I was like, oh, these are great questions, you know. So I'm responding back and then it's like boom, and it goes out and maybe 20 minutes, maybe a half hour later I've got basically it telling me not to do it. You know I was like, okay, all right, thank you, you just saved me a month of ruminating on this and phone calls and digging around and trying to run the math and doing all these different things, and you just did all the research for me to come up with some of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Now I've seen it on the other side. We've used it to run comparables in our, in our business, and we had to do deep research on a four unit, for example, and trying to figure out ARV on this thing or what it's currently worth, and I did not like it at all. I was pulling cops from like 2020 and I was like, yeah, we don't want that, so I might have to build a custom gpt just to tell it how I want it to run cops, and then I'm sure it could. It could probably run it better. But we were just throwing it in and saying what's the arv on this?
Speaker 2:here's the data, here's the address deep research who's the uh contact person for the wisconsin mls? How can we build a uh?
Speaker 1:yeah there we go. I mean, that's what you need.
Speaker 2:The data right.
Speaker 1:So it's like it's only going to find what it can find, and if you can, it's pulling yeah, it's pulling Redfin, it's pulling Zillow and any, any historical sales data can, but uh, it's only as good as, like you said, the data that's available.
Speaker 2:You could give it that and say here's as much as I, you know, because you go, you know wherever your search thing is, whether it's MLS or otherwise, like there's only so many parameters and sometimes you only got so many of them. You know, at a point in time, for the property You're like, well, you know, let's see what is what is what is the best, but you got to give it the best data.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I wonder if they have an API or what the MCC, whatever else you were talking about we got to find. Find someone who, uh, a broker somewhere that wants this? Yeah Well, I I have. I have a few I could probably talk to that would want it. So get that hooked up. All right, john, I know you got to get back to your, your real life here. This has been an amazing episode.
Speaker 1:You're also going to be on our panel coming up at the REI Success Club. So if you guys got some value out of this and you're like, give me more of this, I want more of it. We're going to have an AI panel the fourth Tuesday of July. I think is when we're having you on, correct? So, yes, so come on out. It's at the Woods Golf Course. We open the doors at 6 pm for some networking. We kick it off promptly at 6.30. We do a little bit more networking after the panel. So the panel usually goes about an hour. We'll do a little networking for about a half hour and then just free networking after that from 8 till whenever you want to get out of there. But that's going to be an awesome panel. We have you and I'm trying to remember who else we have. We have a couple other people that are maybe utilizing it in their own businesses as well, um on there. So this is going to be a probably one of my favorite REI successes that we've ever had, so it'd be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, john, before we wrap, we always like to ask a little fun question here, and this is really. We have people outside of Wisconsinisconsin they might want to invest in wisconsin. Maybe they're maybe they're ohioans or lsuans like like yourself here, thinking about coming up to this great state and throwing some dollars and into some properties here. For those that don't know what you know, we like to tell them a little bit about the favorite places or traditions up here for you. Do you have a favorite wisconsin place to visit or tradition that you that you've enjoyed and you have?
Speaker 2:the outsider perspective now I mean a blanket statement just all of summer, right, um, but we have, we just love lake trips in the summer.
Speaker 2:So, as much as we can, um, we're trying to convince our friends from out of state, our parents, everyone to come up here, and just as many as we can, as we can, we're going to door county, we're going to wild rose, we're going to I mean, there's so many lakes within an hour, two hours of where we are and they're all a blast. I mean, you can do the, the campsites, get the cabins, you know you can do something, but you get hotel rooms. You can stay at the bed, right, I mean, whatever kind of flavor experience you want, you can do something, but you get hotel rooms, you can stay at the bed, right, I mean, whatever kind of flavor experience you want, you can have it and all of them are great and everything's beautiful and it just all has the Wisconsin vibe of like we're like we're just here and we're having a good time and like no one has to be I don't know Instagram worthy.
Speaker 2:It's like let's just enjoy the lake and that's, that's what I love.
Speaker 1:I'm with you, buddy. I we travel a lot and I always, whenever I come back to Wisconsin especially in the summer or the fall to the fall is a great time to be here it's just like man we. We are really lucky to live in such a beautiful state and with some so many lakes. Minnesota brags about their lakes.
Speaker 2:We're just that's right. Never, never knew, I moved here and it's just like it's, it's the best, just you know, yeah, we would like I said we're always trying to recruit people to come visit, like why don't we come to wisconsin?
Speaker 1:I'm like dude, because it's fantastic yeah, and ever everybody thinks it's cows and pastures and that's uh, that's a portion of the state for sure. You know you can get on some pretty long drives here where all you see is fields and maybe a couple of quick trips. But you can, you know, if you look around.
Speaker 1:You don't have to look very far, there's plenty of water if you're into water stuff, so absolutely Well, next time you're up in Door County, man, hit me up and we'd love to hang out with you and the fam and and, uh, catch up a little bit more and probably nerd out with you some more on some tech stuff. We have the opportunity. And thank you, guys all for listening. Guys, if you got some value out of this show, please share it. I say this every episode.
Speaker 1:Not only does it help us grow the audience, but it's also going to help you get the word out about you know, into real estate and you're learning this kind of stuff and you're going to be able to attract lenders. You're going to be able to attract deals. You're going to be able to attract contractors and other people that can help you accelerate your goals and get you closer to the end goal for yourself. If you are out there and you want to just have a conversation like John mentioned just calling me up five years ago and you're not ready to necessarily get on a buyer's list yet, you're not really sure what direction you want to go with your career or with real estate, you know, go to Wisconsin discount properties. Just hit the contact us button and either myself, reese or Connor from our team will reach out to you and have a conversation and try to try to get you connected up to this awesome community that we have here in Wisconsin for real estate investors, and with that, john. Again.
Speaker 2:Any last words before we part here I just say, yeah, definitely, corey's been good resource for me and I shared that story, so definitely don't hesitate to reach out. Um, I'm always happy to. I love talking to other investors. See what everyone's doing. Um, if you have more questions for me, reach out john maxi on facebook. Pretty easy. Um love to help however I can.
Speaker 2:like I said, I got a lot of help and support when I was getting started in the community up here, and so I definitely want to be be able to give that back and help out however I can, whether it's, you know, bouncing numbers off or helping with some stuff or you know whatever. I'm happy to help, happy to chat.
Speaker 1:Awesome, brother. Well excited to see you in a few weeks. At the time this will probably pop and we'll we'll have even more discussion there. So if anybody wants to come check out John end of July, we'll be at the time to do it until the next episode. Guys, we'll see you soon.
