Affordable Housing Dreams: George Knowlton’s Vision for the Future

Erika (00:00.976)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika. And today I’m thrilled to be joined with someone who is shaking things up in the real estate world. He has tons of experience, George Knowlton, CEO of The Smile Company. George, it’s awesome to have you here.

[email protected] (00:20.539)
Thank you so much, Erika. I’m really happy to be here.

Erika (00:24.316)
So you are using some cutting edge technology with real estate and I think our listeners are really going to benefit from hearing all your knowledge today. So let’s dive in.

[email protected] (00:36.586)
Thank you for that compliment. I’m really excited.

Erika (00:38.172)
So George, for our listeners who aren’t that familiar with you yet, give us a quick rundown. What’s your main focus these days and how did you get started in real estate?

[email protected] (00:53.198)
Well, my main focus these days is creating a trend towards conscious investment of all types of business assets Mainly real estate multifamily and industrial tenant improvements and things like that You want to make conscious investment as my main focus now, which is the invest with a smile book. That’s what what? brought about the invest with a smile book and

I really started in real estate years and years ago. My dad was a broker and then a trainer of brokers and I found a love for investigating properties and it’s grown from there.

Erika (01:29.478)
So with all the different sectors that you tackle, how do you decide what project gets your attention and which doesn’t?

[email protected] (01:38.284)
That is interesting. That’s a great question. you know, it’s less, it used to be about the project because I really, really liked difficult projects. I wanted the projects nobody else thought could be done and I could go get them done. And as I progressed, now I look for projects that I can do efficiently and quickly and create a profit for everybody involved. So.

I have really, the focus has changed. So it used to be what was the hardest job. Now it’s who is the easiest to work with and what is going to be the most profitable for all the stakeholders involved.

Erika (02:18.554)
Awesome. George, with the Smile company, when we were chatting earlier, you had mentioned the Smile system. Can you share more about that and what you’re doing that’s so effective?

[email protected] (02:31.198)
Yes, so I thank you for that question by the way because that really is the heart of the movement that I am Embarking on right now and trying to push across the United States and that is the smile movement the smile philosophy Which is an acronym for safe moral inclusive linguistic and experiential and I believe that every transaction should be that way for every stakeholder from contractor to resident to investor to asset manager in

in real estate terms and asset management terms, smile, the smile pillars can be changed over just slightly to simplicity, mindfulness, impact.

leverage and execution and that’s where my IT company or my tech company tied 360 and the now it’s done operating system comes into asset management and real estate because being Having so many hats and wearing so many hats and doing so many different things I found it extremely difficult to keep everything organized and no matter how many people I went through and tried to train It was very difficult to keep the company message the same keep every all the information I was getting the same and my clients were getting the same and so the smile philosophy has really led

to the second five pillars of the smile philosophy which are simplicity, mindfulness, impact, leverage, and execution which are all about asset management and the things that we need to really serve our clients and all the stakeholders.

Erika (03:56.548)
You had just talked about Tide 360. So clearly you’re leveraging technology. What is a strategy or what have you done that’s made a big difference on projects?

[email protected] (04:08.018)
my goodness. you know, one of the most exciting things I did was I scraped for all of the information I could find about my five most favorite real estate investors prolific, you know, one being Warren Buffett, right? Would be one Sam Zell would be another one and I’ll keep the other one secret, but I built brains. built chat GPTs of them, of their brains. And then I let them fight over my real estate stuff. Now let them underwrite.

I let each one tell me what they think should be done and then I have them vote. It’s fantastic. It’s like having these wonderful brains in my computer. So my underwriting time has gone to almost zero.

Erika (04:49.926)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. that technology, can save you time to focus on other things, speaking of that, AI can’t do everything as amazing as it is. When you have those intense moments, like a deal going sideways, what have you done in your journey to handle that? Do you have a success story that you could share?

[email protected] (05:14.634)
I do actually and you are absolutely correct that AI cannot fix anything actually. AI has nothing more than a database. It really requires a human in the loop.

Right. And so we can cut the human out of the loop in a few things, but they always have to be monitoring. And so a success story would be this. So we had a large altercation over a zoom on, and on a particular investment and, everybody’s friends, everybody wants the same thing, but everybody was disagreeing.

So typically this would be something that might take days and days to work out. But instead I turned to one of my brains and I asked it to analyze our conversation and give me a third party neutral view of what the disconnection was with an honest curiosity. Right. What is the disconnect. How can we fix this. And when it came back it was so good.

It was great. I didn’t have to say a thing. I emailed it to all every party It told me where I was wrong or could have been wrong or could have been misunderstood or spoke You know in a in non-clear way and it did that for every participant and when we came together I’m telling you it was nothing but smiles. We’re like, my gosh. I had no idea I came across that way. I had no idea I missed that it was yeah, so that for me was an absolute 100 % success

Erika (06:39.462)
That’s great. What was the biggest lesson that you took from that and how do you approach deals in similar situations now?

[email protected] (06:49.39)
Well for me personally, it said that I had a very powerful personality and sometimes I didn’t listen well and then if I listened a little better I would have a better response and so

Erika (07:03.215)
Hahaha

[email protected] (07:03.458)
I said, wow, I’ve heard that before, goodness. So now I really need to focus on that. And so going forward, I’ve been focusing more on waiting and really contemplating and responding versus being the powerful person in the room. I’m working on being the quiet person in the room and letting my power come out in other ways.

Erika (07:24.816)
Yes, speaking of power, it doesn’t seem like you’re slowing down with what you’re doing. What’s the next big goal for you and Smile Company?

[email protected] (07:34.338)
The next big goal for myself and Smile Company is to really proliferate Jane’s Shared Housing Foundation, which is my non-profit shared housing foundation.

And Smile Company, really want to build facilities purpose-built for autism all the way across the United States. So that’s our biggest goal right now for Smile Company is to get the ball rolling on some nonprofit. It’s actually a system where we can have investors invest in the property and the nonprofit rents the property so my investors can make a good profit and the nonprofit has a beautiful purpose-built facility and our asset management can operate it.

vertically integrated and able to roll out across so that’s our biggest goal is to bring in some partners some collaborators in that as well as other operators because we don’t want to operate it again I’m a real estate company I just got certified in shared housing so that I could bring shared housing into the fold of real estate to on a bigger picture more global to really focus in on affordable housing and find a niche in there and so I think I found a niche in there where my investors can make money I can make

and we can serve the community at the same time and that’s just one of the ways so I would say generally affordable housing we’re focusing hard on affordable housing.

Erika (08:54.94)
Those projects sound really exciting, George. For our listeners who are new in the industry, what kind of advice would you give them when you’re trying to decide who to partner with, who to work with?

[email protected] (09:08.446)
That is fantastic question, you know, I wrote an entire book on that actually It came out just the last this last year It’s called invest with a smile thrive in 2025 and beyond and in that book It gives you a step-by-step guide of how to evaluate an operator how to evaluate an asset manager and all of the AI Integrations that are now available to help the residents so that you can be an investor with a manager that actually holds your moral strength

structures, right? If you want everybody to smile, you can pick them and this gives you a perfect recipe of being able to evaluate them so that you can make wise investments and it also gives you all the red flags that look for ones that are not. So I highly recommend that book, Invest with a Smile.

Erika (09:57.872)
Awesome, awesome. there, for you personally, has there been a specific partner or mentor that’s really shaped your path?

[email protected] (10:09.256)
There have been a few mentors and I will tell you that would be another offer that I would give to everybody is don’t learn from one person learn from many. So I would say I’ll give you three right now that I really really appreciate and I

David Lindahl and Richard Wilson and Dan Martell are three incredible business people that are worthy of being your mentor.

Erika (10:42.556)
That’s great. And going back to the networking, do you have some practical steps that people could take when they’re looking to build their network? What is the first thing they should do?

[email protected] (10:55.054)
think the very first thing you should do is go to your Chamber of Commerce meetings and just get to know people and let them get to know you and volunteer. The best way to get your name out there is to volunteer. if you want your name out there and you want to know movers and shakers, go volunteer. Because I’ll guarantee you all of us that are making money are volunteering and donating. if you want to get out there, volunteer.

Rotary Club, Elks Club, any of those clubs. Lions Club, Chamber of Commerce.

Probably one of the more influential ones would be your economic council meetings your local economic council meetings. You’re gonna get to learn about Upcoming legislation that’s coming and pushes that the city or county are already pushing for so that you know where the path of Progress is and that will give you a big head a big head start in underwriting your properties or even knowing which ones you want to underwrite

Erika (12:03.292)
Got it. Speaking of head starts, what other advice would you give? You got any secret task to keep things running smoothly?

[email protected] (12:08.525)
Yeah

[email protected] (12:12.046)
Yes. So this is a thing. So I’m going to tell you, is it, is it okay if I tell you a pain story to give you that answer? Okay. So, so I did a podcast over a year ago and they asked me, know, and I’ve been implementing AI for a long time and they asked me, so how do you think you are? If you were going to grade yourself on your implementation, what would you grade yourself? And I think I graded myself a C minus.

Erika (12:18.222)
yep, go for it.

[email protected] (12:38.734)
At that time because of the time it was taking to get things done everybody gave me data They gave me a website name or whatever But they didn’t tell me how to do it right and with all my other businesses running or even just one business running It’s almost impossible to learn all of this stuff and get it done in a timely manner in which case you lose your momentum or you lose clients or Numerous things get in the way so that

Pain is what caused the rise of tide 360 and what caused the rise of our done in three system that we can take you from your business name to fully operational funnels website Secretary answering your phone and emails in three days And we do that for $2,500, right? So I would say that

We don’t need to do it for you You can read a book and you can do it yourself and I built it that way purposely So that people can do it themselves if they have the time But for me the pain was I couldn’t do it myself even though I work 12 16 hours a day I couldn’t get the time done I might waste three hours trying to learn how to input a workflow and that is just not acceptable for most business people they can’t do it so I would say get your systems in place really quick and do done for you

If that if I could give that advice I think and it doesn’t matter which company you go go with but I would do done for you if you can Because you’re get a much better result and a much quicker result and then you can focus on the higher level things Actually nurturing your clients and that and I speak from experience right because it’s been a painful road learning this thing because most of my most of my business before asset management was all word of referral so I had no idea about marketing no idea about

client nurturing or anything like that because everybody came to me. so, right. And in asset management and in today’s world, that’s not the way it works. You have to get out there, which means you need to have systems in place. I’ll leave that with this. What used to take hours now take seconds. Right. That’s the power of the now it’s done mindset. Right. So we also know a fact that speed to lead. Right. It’s speed to lead. And we know that every email that’s answered within one minute.

Erika (14:26.906)
Yeah.

[email protected] (14:54.104)
has a 90 % better chance of converting. So that’s why we set up email agents, right, to answer your emails every 60 seconds, right? So that if somebody, maybe in India, wants to buy your product or wants to invest in your project, and it is two in the morning our time, and they start sending emails, they’re gonna get responses right away. And they’re gonna be able to close the loop and maybe even invest before you wake up.

That’s never been heard before. That’s like what used to take days done in seconds. It’s amazing.

Erika (15:25.958)
That’s so exciting, George. I love it in how you’re leveraging technology. Thanks so much for dropping all this info today.

[email protected] (15:34.867)
you’re very welcome.

Erika (15:36.504)
Now, if someone here who’s listening today wants to reach out, contact you, learn more about Smile Company, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

[email protected] (15:47.906)
best way to reach me is at smilecompanyllc.com. That’s smilecompanyllc.com, all spelled out. Or they can reach me at tide360.ai. That’d be tide360.ai. And they can also get to me through my secretary, Charlotte, and her number is 866-846-8433.

be 866-846-8433 and you can always get a hold of me on Instagram at George.Nolton at Instagram and message me there and I’m on there often so that’s a very quick way to get a hold of me if you want to get me personally that’s probably the fastest way to get me is to message me on Instagram

Erika (16:40.198)
Great, George. Your approach to blending tech in real estate is inspiring. For everyone tuning in, if you love this episode, make sure you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations with heavy hitters like George coming your way, and we’ll see you on the next episode.

[email protected] (17:00.206)
Have a great day everybody!