How Real Estate Investors Can Use AI to Automate Follow-Up and Close More Deals | Jarod Bowersett

Jarod Bowersett (00:00)
Well, the kind of the origin story on the problem that, you know, we’ve, we’ve very intentionally started to sit out and solve for is very, it’s so the biggest problem, right. And the REI space is the fact that damn near every operator, they suffer from like an inconsistency in deal flow. And I’ll give you the simple story of this, right? It takes about seven and half hours of prospecting time to give yourself one hour of productive sales time.

And it typically takes about 12 hours productive sales time to give yourself one hour or sorry, one closed contract, right? And for a wholesaler, that of course doesn’t stop because then you have to go through fulfillment. So it’s going to be 30 to 100 hours of manual time, effort, and energy to actually close, monetize, dispo that opportunity and get cash in the bank. Whole timeline takes 145 to 180 days.

Cody Crabb (02:17)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel and today I’m joined by Jarod Bowersett, co-founder of Hey Rafi, an AI-driven platform that helps real estate investors automate their prospecting and their follow-up and their lead conversion. Lots of people struggle with managing that stuff. So today we’re gonna get into how investors can stop losing deals in that kind of awkward follow-up stage and kind of build some.

Some more revenue, some consistent, predictable revenue coming in. So hey, Jarod, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jarod Bowersett (02:47)
Thanks for having me, brother. I appreciate you.

Cody Crabb (02:48)
Okay, so ⁓ I’d love to hear what brought you to this point. When did you start getting interested in real estate? When did you start thinking this was a problem? I’d love to hear that path.

Jarod Bowersett (02:58)
Yeah, okay. Real estate investing journey goes back quite a few years ago. It had always been kind of just like a side hustle project, right? Try to get involved in some deals, so you start going through the exploratory phase. I had been W2 employed for a while. Actually, my career was in enterprise level sales. Typical deal cycle for me was like, I don’t know, 25, $50 million, but of course I would take years to close. But I got chance to build some sales teams and held some pretty cool positions.

And kind of throughout like my investing, these investing cycles though, I had the opportunity to just talk with a lot of investors. And I really started to understand that a lot of the problems that exist for most real estate investors are mostly sales related problems. from the guy that’s always really enjoyed the sales process and building out strategies, I was like, hey, there’s gotta be a fun way to tackle this. So that’s kind of what got me into the niche and building the things that we are.

Cody Crabb (03:52)
The word fun kind of catches my attention there. So why is that the way you were thinking? Just out of

curiosity.

Jarod Bowersett (03:58)
Well, think, because I think really, truly love sales. Like it’s always been something that I’ve always gravitated toward. I love the ideology of sales that, know, really at end of the day, like sales at its best, you’re helping people. You can of course, very selfishly help yourself by helping others. ⁓ I also help love helping like new sales or even younger sales people, whether men or women actually develop that muscle and some of the mechanics that you need in order to do the job well. And that’s, that comes down from the premise that most

people think of sales as something that’s really not. And there’s this avoidance nature to it. And it’s funny because of the way that that gets mapped into the REI space, right? Because most of the folks that come into REI, this isn’t wasn’t their first job, right? They were doing something else and they’re like, this looks fun. This looks exciting. This looks sexy. And they probably have no sales experience. And here they are. They’ve plopped themselves into an entrepreneurial space where your entire life is predicated on how well you can sell.

So from that vantage point, like, these are a lot of things that I always really, I already really enjoy doing. And then of course, at the end of the day, you know, at least from like the education component of one salesperson and another, the REI space as you already know, right? It’s also very advantageous for somebody who gets good at it because then you can really make like life-changing money.

So anyway, point being, right, if we can help solve some of these problems that exist for most operators, then we also know we’re going to be bringing good impact to their lives. So hopefully that wasn’t too philanthropic. I wasn’t trying to go there, but you get the idea.

Cody Crabb (06:11)
No, no, that was good,

that was good. I think knowing how somebody got there is also just as important because I feel like sometimes you hear the, like you get the money part first and you’re like, okay, now how can we like monetize, you know what I mean? How can we monetize something? But when you solve a problem first, that almost always is a better situation for everybody. ⁓ Okay, so now tell us about your current product and I have to ask about the name. Who’s Rafi?

Jarod Bowersett (06:39)
So, okay, so I’ve got some good ties into the startup communities. And so I’ve actually launched a couple startups over the years, ⁓ mostly all failures. ⁓ And I partnered up with a couple of guys a couple of years ago.

And we had launched under the premise that, we would actually launch a platform for other real estate community and it would be like a mentorship marketplace. So the whole idea is that we would, you’ll get a bunch of coaches and mentors and then a bunch of students. And then, you know, there would be some sort of exchange of like a dollar hourly rates, very similar to what mentor cruises and kind of the startup community to what this would have been in the RDI space. Well.

We get into this thing about, start doing some of the motions on this and there are four partners involved in the beginning. One of the guys names was Rafi and we thought it would be just fricking hilarious that we just named this company after him because he was just kind of this, this crazy middle Eastern guy. And we named it that. And then of course what happened six months later? Well, two of the partners, they’re like, I’m out. I don’t want anything to do with this. So my now, my now partner and I have just kind of like been left with this shell of an organization and we just kept it around. And then when this launched.

and of course it’s in the AI space, we thought what a hilarious thing we can do here is just anthropomorphize like our AI and just call it RAFI. So that’s what we’ve done.

Cody Crabb (07:55)
There is an argument that people are like, that’s a bad idea, but I love it. I seriously, I name all my AI stuff and it’s like, maybe I just wanna live in the future too much, but yeah, that is very funny. And I think that there’s something to be said for when it’s a specific thing. It’s almost like, he knows what he’s talking about. Do know what I mean? Like, it’s not just a vague entity. Okay, so apart from all that, ⁓ so tell us a little bit about kind of

Practically like someone that’s you that’s opening. Hey Rafi for the first time. What does it do? Why why does it do it? Well, how does it work?

Jarod Bowersett (08:29)
Yeah.

Well, the kind of the origin story on the problem that, you know, we’ve, we’ve very intentionally started to sit out and solve for is very, it’s so the biggest problem, right. And the REI space is the fact that damn near every operator, they suffer from like an inconsistency in deal flow. And I’ll give you the simple story of this, right? It takes about seven and half hours of prospecting time to give yourself one hour of productive sales time.

And it typically takes about 12 hours productive sales time to give yourself one hour or sorry, one closed contract, right? And for a wholesaler, that of course doesn’t stop because then you have to go through fulfillment. So it’s going to be 30 to 100 hours of manual time, effort, and energy to actually close, monetize, dispo that opportunity and get cash in the bank. Whole timeline takes 145 to 180 days.

So.

Cody Crabb (09:15)
Well, you put

it that way, that’s exhausting, for one. Yeah, yeah.

Jarod Bowersett (09:19)
You get all the way through that transaction, right? And then ⁓ an operator, you know, if it’s a one-man band, you got to start it all over again. And so this creates these huge revenue cycles, right? And the way to get out that, of course, is you have to be very, very ⁓ diligent and…

Well, let me put it this way. You have to be very behavioral with your practices and understand that with the efforts that you’re going to do today, they’re not going to pay off until six months from now. And you get good enough, you do that long enough and great. You get some more deals across the finish line. And now you can start to hire. And then of course you do that motion, right? It creates new problems as your business begins to grow.

Our whole idea is like, you know what? This is really a sales problem at the end of the day, because what happens when you’re taking your eye from your funnel now to fulfillment, you’re not doing the things that you need to do to bring new opportunities in. So if we can automate a portion of, if not all of that, we can create a consistency in the deals that are coming in to an investor’s, you know, pipeline on their board, however, what you want to explain it. So our tool quite, quite intentionally, and here’s the tactical of it. We automate.

About 80 % of the pipelines. What that looks like is we will handle outbound calling, emailing, and text messaging. And we’ll use those three things in concert with one another in order to qualify leads and then book appointments.

And so that could look like cold outreach. That could look like warm inbound opportunities. Maybe somebody fills in, know, PPC, PPL. That can also look like we can manage your existing book of opportunities, right? So a lot of the, you know, a typical wholesaler, they might have a couple thousand leads that exist in their system. Well, here’s a, here’s a shocking point. Maybe you do know this.

Maybe you don’t but about 3 % of an average investors pipeline is converting every month an average investor only converts about 0.5 % of their pipeline every month so that’s six times the total addressable opportunities that you’ve got to monetize on it every given month, so if you can just

really take that chunk of business that you’re, it’s already available to you, right? You have to pay any additional money for it and do a better job of nurturing and managing that book of leads. Well, you can find 25 to 40 % more profit just by converting those opportunities with spending zero additional dollars on marketing. So it’s a very, it’s a very compelling argument to say like, hey, like, don’t worry about going to spend more marketing. You’ve already got some opportunities in front of you. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (12:12)
Yeah, tell me more. Yeah, I know

so many people that’s like a huge, huge struggle. So that’s, think also too, I mean, what a time saver to not only not have to be like tracking down lead, new leads and things, like the quality, it’s, like you said, there’s this pre-screening process. So not only are you not having to do that, you’re also not wading through a lot of people that you might’ve had to.

because it’s screening people out. So what kind of things does it screen out? I mean, is this something that depends on the person or how does it work?

Jarod Bowersett (12:44)
Yeah, well, that’s the most exciting thing. ⁓ We’ve actually just recently launched that update, which allows us to actually give each investor kind of their own criteria that they can scan for more or less like a playbook, right? Because somebody that focuses solely on say like a probate style channel or maybe like a pre foreclosure channel, that’s going to look entirely different than maybe just like a nationwide wholesaler that’s just doing like a PPC campaign. ⁓ So yeah, we do give some flexibility on like the questions that you may want to qualify for, but kind of the baseline is timeline price point

and motivation with a heavy association with motivation or urgency. Like we don’t really necessarily qualify based on price point, right? Because that matters significantly less, especially if somebody is highly motivated to move. We’re really just trying to uncover like highly motivated individuals, right? At the end of the day. So our model is trained to do like a push away, you know, if the tire kickers or…

You know, they don’t have strong sense or strong reasons that they need to move or sell their property or whatever the situation is. Our model will actually disqualify that, especially, you if it’s…

Cody Crabb (13:44)
That’s cool.

I feel like that’s, I I love the idea that you can just automatically, ⁓ know, it’s like on, ⁓ people joke about like on the dating apps, you’ll put something outrageous and then if someone doesn’t get your sense of humor, they’ll just screw right past it. And it’s like, that’s the idea is that you can just kind of, don’t even have to deal with all the people that would start there. So ⁓ yeah, so I like. ⁓

Jarod Bowersett (14:01)
Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (14:09)
the price, I mean, so it’s price range, like level of motivation, timeline, like that kind of stuff. Is there anything I’m missing there? Like what other kinds of criteria are there?

Jarod Bowersett (14:18)
Well, I mean, that’s the simplistic nature of it, right? Because the main job to be done for us is like twofold. Number one, it is a tremendous amount of outbound attack in order to get people on the phone, right? A typical investor might only get a hold of like a third of the leads that come inbound through their pipeline over the course of a week. Of course, that changes the better you are with follow up. So we can typically change that paradigm. Just trying to get people on the phone is a big part of the job.

Once you get somebody on the phone, mean, especially if you’re using most of like inbound channels like a PPC or PPL, assuming that you’ve got your marketing tuned in, like most of the people, they should be somewhat reasonably qualified right now, can then disqualify a lot of that. But you’ll notice that those criteria alone, if you’re doing more of like an outbound approach, maybe it’s calling or it’s like more of like a targeted list, like, know, probate or foreclosure, you’re going to end up disqualifying a lot more people, you know, through those channels than you might normally. But yeah, I mean,

Cody Crabb (15:07)
Yeah, and if you’re looking for something really specific,

mean, that seems so valuable, you

Jarod Bowersett (15:12)
100%. It could also be too,

like if you are, ⁓ if you’re like looking for like one of those one-off things, like I just want to make sure it’s not listed and like then you can book it that way. Like there’s a lot of flexibility with that too. Or maybe you want to do inbound or like in-person like appointments. That’s fine. You can set all these things up.

Cody Crabb (15:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like that. Because

everyone kind of handles this. This business is so, everyone has their own little way they like to do things. that seems like that’s really helpful. So okay, let me just get into the nitty gritty of it. Let’s say I’m a wholesaler or I’m starting to use this app, maybe not a wholesaler, just someone that’s trying to use your app. Give me an average, what does it actually look like for me to get in there and to try to use it?

Jarod Bowersett (16:36)
Yeah, very, very simplistic. ⁓ create an account. Once you create an account, my team needs typically just a couple of days in order to get phone numbers approved. Cause we do have, you know, an outbound number that will actually rotate for you and do all those things, make sure, you know, it’s, staying compliant. Once that’s configured, ⁓ we have a, like a, a configuration call where my team, your team get together. We do all the connective tissue. So maybe we’re going to zap directly in with all of your, your lead service providers that are out there.

Cody Crabb (16:50)
cool.

Jarod Bowersett (17:05)
Maybe you simply just want to act as an intermediary for all the leads that are in your CRM right now. There’s an exchange of basically just the linking that sets these things up. We asked you some questions like, Hey, how do want the thing operate? You know, when we create an appointment for you or we do a live transfer, who do you want that to go through? What are the hours of operation where you’d want this stuff to come over? Think of it this way, Cody. What I’m trying to get out of your team at that point is like, if you were to put a salesperson in this role, what are just the tactical things that they would need to know?

that’s in line with your business, right? Do you book in-portion appointments? Like how do want them to handle some of these calls? So like in a lot of ways, we don’t have this live quite yet, but in the next two weeks it will be. You can actually like take your script and your playbook and you can just like pop it right in there and it’ll basically take that information as a direct dialogue or direction on how it’s gonna go out and attack its opportunities.

Cody Crabb (17:52)
Cool, yeah,

I really like that. ⁓ I feel like, ⁓ this is just a really, this sounds like a massive, massive time saver for so many people, because it’s the part that takes the longest, I would say. And you can’t stop, because if you stop, then in six months, then you’re gonna be out of luck. I think this is, ⁓ yeah, this is super helpful. ⁓ Okay, so let’s say I am, ⁓ and also,

Something that kind of, yeah, let me just say that again. Something else that kind of called out to me there was you make this sound like an app, but this is not just like an app or like this is an entire service. Like you’re meeting with the people, you’re getting stuff set up for them. This is way more than just like your average, you know, this isn’t just like you sign up for the app and then that’s it. It sounds like it’s a lot more involved than

Jarod Bowersett (18:43)
Yeah, you know, we’ve, and we’ve, here’s the truth of it. Like we would have loved to go just like the app, like, you know, I don’t have to talk to anybody, right? But at the end of the day, like what you said earlier is more true than not, where it’s like every single operator in this space, they’ve got like a little different spin, right? Like maybe they have a different exit strategy. Maybe they’re in certain markets and you know, they have very specific rules that apply uniquely to their business.

So our model of that is like, okay, let’s be a steward of our relationship and just set this up in a way that best serves you.

Cody Crabb (19:14)
That’s awesome, and especially because I think it’s not just about preference. Like you said, their entire strategies can be so different. mean, just being able to customize that really carefully, and then not just that, having your help to do that personally. mean, that sounds really amazing. So ⁓ let’s say someone ⁓ starts using ⁓ Hey Rafi, and…

How fast do you think you would start to see some changes in their business ⁓ and what changes do think they would see?

Jarod Bowersett (19:49)
If

I, by the way, like, I don’t want to take this as like, I’m spouting anything to brag about here, but because this truly still amazes me. We have yet to see a partner who has signed up where we’re not typically booking an appointment either same day or at the very latest 24 hours from them. And that can be, that can be like low lead volume. It doesn’t have to be crazy big, but like, it’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty amazing what a lot of, you know, AI effort looks like and how that actually can.

Cody Crabb (20:03)
⁓ see, that’s cool.

Yeah,

well and it can target exactly what you’re looking for in a way that, I mean, that seems like a wildly short amount of time, but really when you think about it’s sorting through a lot of stuff that you don’t have to, I mean, yeah. Okay, so let’s say, ⁓ what are some things that you’re hoping to add in the future? What kind of things should people expect to see if they join up?

Jarod Bowersett (20:34)
Well, what we’re trying to get really good at right now is just really like this handoff process of the different playbook. And the reason I say that and why that’s a little more nuanced is because maybe you don’t have explicit instructions on what you want, maybe like a salesperson to do, right? It’s never been written down. It’s more of just an assumption. But when that translates into the kind of like this digital space, it’s sometimes really hard to make inferences or to make assumptions about what you want and how you want it. So.

We need a better system in order to handle kind of this intake. That’s some onboarding related components. We’ve just updated a lot of our voice model. we’re now, ⁓ yeah, yeah, for sure. It’s the whole thing. Again, think of it like a salesperson. Like it is a deployable salesperson for real estate operators. ⁓ So we’re working on that right now. The kind of like the big picture roadmap is twofold. Our immediate next step is actually to

Cody Crabb (21:11)
you’ve got the whole voice thing in there too.

Jarod Bowersett (21:31)
do some of this process, but for the disposition side, right? Because there are operators that are disposition constrained on their ability to now, you know, market this opportunity up elsewhere. And then also facilitating with human in the loop, closing contracts too. Not to say that a lot of people are necessarily gonna want that, right? That’s like closest to the money. There’s a lot of, you know, hands-on involvement there. And that’s fine, but we can at least assist with, you know, a portion of that. And when the time is right, we can take that process over.

Cody Crabb (21:57)
Awesome, well this is definitely gonna be something that people wanna check out. I think a lot of people are gonna realize they’ve got, maybe they’re leaving some stuff on the table because if they can use some tools like this, ⁓ they really might have a better shot of getting some more. Especially, it sounds like the ideal person to use this would be someone that’s got a really specific niche especially because that way you don’t have to be wading through.

people that have no idea what you’re talking about and it seems like you can just zero right in. So if people want to find out about ⁓ how to use your app, how it works, how they get started, where can they go online?

Jarod Bowersett (22:35)
Couple places, we’ve got a bunch of stuff on YouTube, so feel free to check it out there. can subscribe and kind of follow our journey there. If you’re more interested in seeing the platform in motion and kind of just getting more of like a consultative time with us or our team, you can literally go to our website, you can book a demo. That’s probably the best way. You can also create a free account, although you’re not really gonna get the full experience of like how it works, how it operates, what it looks like by doing so, but you can certainly just go.

know, noodle around in there to see what you can find. And ⁓ also on our website, you can actually talk directly with our AI as well. There’s a little place where can just put your number in and it’ll give you a buzz and you guys can have a conversation.

Cody Crabb (23:13)
That’s cool. Wow, that’s really cool.

Sometimes I can’t believe I’m hearing sentences like that. Like, yeah, well, can just, we can talk to your, you can talk to our AI, it’s fine. ⁓ Well, again, thank you so much for sharing all this today. ⁓ And thanks to our listeners for joining us today. If you liked what you heard, go ahead and hit subscribe, hit like, do the comments, do all the things, and make sure you check out Hey Rafi, and tell him I said hi. And then we’ll see you next time on the Real Estate Pros podcast.