How Steve Trang Used AI to Book 386 Sales Appointments in One Week

Steve Trang (00:00)
I’ll say probably this goes back a few few years, right? This is back in twenty two. But like, you know, real estate got really hard in twenty two. And right when things get challenging, my partner quit. And so I had to pick up the pieces. So, but at the same time, it’s like it’s just it is what it is. Like, you’ll never see me fall down, you’ll never see me quit, you’ll never see me give up. So it’s it’s I just had to go to my wife’s like, “Hey, look. I’m gonna have to work sixty hours a week for the foreseeable future—”

Freddie Steen (01:57)
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Freddie, and I am today joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with. Steve is someone who’s been making serious moves in the real estate space. And I’m glad that you’re here with us, Steve. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching the new wave of doing real estate automated. And how you are now pivoting to grow your business and take over the real estate space by scaling and building your team in a new way. So let’s dive in. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days and what markets are you operating in?

Steve Trang (02:43)
I mean, our main focus these days is predominantly sales and AI. So you know, in the last year we launched March of last year our AI portion of our— of our sales products. And thank you. And in that time, we’ve now worked with over two hundred and fifty clients in getting better at sales for, you know, appointment reviews, for role playing and now booking appointments. We— I was looking, we booked six hundred—

Freddie Steen (02:54)
Congratulations.

Steve Trang (03:10)
No, what was it? Three hundred— we— we booked three hundred and eighty six appointments last week with AI for our clients. So that’s been our core focus is just booking a crap load of clients and helping the clients close those sales with— with quality sales conversations.

Freddie Steen (03:23)
What markets are you operating in?

Steve Trang (03:24)
Nationwide. I mean, we’re not in all fifty states yet, only because we don’t have a client in all fifty states yet, but we’re nationwide. I mean, we have clients all over the country.

Freddie Steen (03:34)
Love it, love it. So what caught my attention about you, Steve, was the way you’ve been able as a founder, as a solopreneur, to even take a step back while managing multiple markets, but still keeping your margin strong. That’s not easy, especially in this climate. Steve, what’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly?

Steve Trang (03:55)
It’s just a— it’s it’s it’s an answer that you probably heard like a hundred times, hundreds of times, but it’s having the right people. I’m incredibly— I am incredibly blessed right now. I have the best team. I would put my team against anyone else’s team in the country. I’ve just got inc— incredible operators, I have a marketing genius, I have operations genius, I have Ian Ross, the AI guy. I mean, he’s the best sales coach I know. And he’s the one that’s actually coaching our AI. I got great engineers. So it’s just— it’s just having the best team. When everyone on your team is an A player, life is really, really easy. You have— you have different problems, problems that you know, you— you always hope for.

Freddie Steen (04:37)
Well, can you unpack that for us, Steve? That’s super interesting to our audience of operators. What are the problems that you look forward to having?

Steve Trang (04:46)
I mean, right now I’m having— going through a bit of like an existential crisis, right? Cause like I was literally fired in our quarterly meeting last week. So we had our quarterly strategic meeting. And the team was basically like, “Steve, you’re in the way, right? Like, we’ve got this.” And before, when they were like, “Hey Steve, you know, we don’t really need you as much,” it’s like, “Okay, yeah, I know you— I know you guys are saying that. And that’s my aspiration, but like, you kind of still do, right? Like, I still have to answer your questions, this, that.” We’re at a point now where like I got a world class marketer. I got an incredible sales team. I got, you know, someone that we hired in s— October of last year, or maybe beginning November, to handle customer success. And that guy has just freaking knocked it out of the park. So like, yeah. And so like, my responsibilities these days is predominantly like responding to text messages from like colleagues and replying to like some emails here and there. But like I’m— I I I— my responsibility these days is just to talk to people. Right? Someone calls me, answer the phone, talks to them, but I’m not allowed to do anything else that’s like logging into something and like doing work.

Freddie Steen (06:38)
Now, every operator I know has a moment where things got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time they had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those moments for you?

Steve Trang (06:50)
A moment where I had to pivot fast. I mean, say probably this goes back a few few years, right? This is back in twenty two. But like, you know, real estate got really hard in twenty two. And right when things get challenging, my partner quit. And so I had to pick up the pieces. So, but at the same time, it’s like it’s just it is what it is. Like, you’ll never see me fall down, you’ll never see me quit, you’ll never see me give up. So it’s it’s I just had to go to my wife’s like, “Hey, look. I’m gonna have to work sixty hours a week for the foreseeable— it could be a year and a half, it could be three years, I don’t know. But the pieces have fallen and I need to rebuild it.” And that’s what I did. So, I don’t know. It’s just like I remember I had someone say this at an event, you know, this is an event we had was me and a few other influencers, you know, Kong Lee, Sam from Ryan Pineda. And like, an audience member challenges, like, “How can we only see the good stuff from you guys? We never see the bad stuff. Right? You guys never share your adversity. You never share your challenges.” And my response to her is like, “Because we don’t have challenges. It’s just like, it is what it is, and you just freaking deal with it and you fix it. It’s not like, ‘Woe is me.’ I’m not gonna go to social media like, ‘I can’t believe my partner quit on me.’ It’s like, ‘All right, partner quit on me. What’s next? Let’s resolve this.’ So, so yeah, I mean, that’s the biggest challenge, but like, I didn’t lose any sleep over it.”

Freddie Steen (08:04)
Steve, I— I really want to explain that and give you space to dig into that just a little bit more for our audience and our operators. And what I want you to dig on is this, because I believe it’s a key in real estate. Can you explain when you got to the moment of your partner leaving, which has happened to every operator that’s out there listening right now in the audience? Can you explain how you had the courage, the know-how, and the discipline to pivot? In the face of a sixty hour work week.

Steve Trang (08:33)
I mean, I guess in my mind we were always gonna be— we’re always gonna be here and we’re always gonna be successful. And on top of that, we chose a responsibility, right, when we built this company to honor our employees and pay them all time. Right? So like, not paying them was never an option. We have commitments, right? If we’re using a product, we’re in a mastermind, we made agreements that we’re gonna honor our payments. So like, failing was never an option. And I know for damn sure I’m never gonna go— gonna go to a W2 job. That’s not an option. And so then, what— what is the only way through? The only way through is forward. So you step through it, you step into it. I’m not afraid of hard work. I am by my very nature lazy, right? That’s— I think— I think that’s just natural human state. But if there’s something to be done, I will work my ass off to get there and finish it and you know, prove, you know, maybe this is some sort of like trauma, some sort of like— some sort of a— a flaw in my character. But if you quit, because I don’t believe this anymore, I will show you that you made the wrong choice. So I don’t know, probably all sorts of issues in there, but proving people wrong is one of my favorite things to do.

Freddie Steen (10:21)
Steve, that pivot, that— that discipline, that chutzpah in not quitting is the kind of stuff in real estate people don talk about enough. And honestly, it’s what separates operators, the folks who just dabble from the ones who stay in the game long term. Let me ask you this, Steve. What are your most— what are you most focused on solving or scaling next? I mean, what’s the next real goal? For you.

Steve Trang (10:48)
I mean, the next goal for me is to build a company that— where we increase the enterprise value, right? Like, I want to have someone, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, whatever, and come along as like, “Man, like that is a good business, that is a great business. We want to buy it from you.” Right. That’s what I’m looking at. That’s a challenge. Because like, I know how to wholesale, I know how to flip, I know how to coach. Right now, you know, we transition to a software business, not by design, not by like choice, but it’s where we are. And if we’re gonna have a software company, then it’s gonna be the best freaking software company that someone wants to buy. So that’s my focus right now. My— my quarterly commitments, you know, even though I got fired from like being inside the company, is like, “All right, go talk to venture capital firms, go talk to private equity firms. Figure out how we can maximize the enterprise value of the company.” That’s your job, and that’s what I’m committed to. I already had started having those conversations, and I have to have one of those conversations every single week.

Freddie Steen (11:39)
Let’s talk about that and unpack that just a bit. Can you explain to our audience at a thirty thousand foot view exactly the problem that your software solves for operators that are listening now?

Steve Trang (11:52)
Yeah. So, you know, I’ve been doing this business for a long time, right? Like, I bought my first property in— in two thousand five, right? So I’ve been in business for a long time. Along the way, the hardest challenge is not finding motivated homeowners. It’s not converting deals or closing escrows. Like, that’s like your first like, you know, six months of— of your— of your business. The hardest thing to do is to find a team, build a team, and have that team, you know, work towards a goal, works towards a mission. And they were talking about eventually, you know, if we’re trying to increase the enterprise value, the problems we’re trying to solve today is like, “How do we find business owners who want to reduce the stress of managing their salespeople, right? Getting the salespeople to do what they said they wanted to do.” Because like every salesperson says, “I want to make six figures like this.” Every salesperson. “Hey, what do you want to do?” “I’m gonna make six figures,” right? How do we get them to actually do the work required to make the six figures? And we do that by helping the salespeople holding themselves accountable, having coaching calls on how to get better at sales, using AI to review their sales conversations to find areas for improvement, creating role-play bots for the salespeople to practice and work in their craft in real time and find activities, areas for improvement, and having leveraging AI to book appointments on new leads, because you know, humans, we love our salespeople, but they can’t beat AI and speed to lead. They just can’t, right? Technology is gonna win there. So having AI book the appointments on new leads and follow-up leads so that the salesperson can do what they do best, which is talk to motivated homeowners. So using all those things, that’s the problem we solve right now for business owners.

Freddie Steen (13:29)
That’s big, Steve. I mean, especially when you’ve already got this macro view of sales to be able to condense that in a way and focus that in a way that can improve the bottom line revenue of operators in real estate. That’s huge. The next move can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it. Now, I know a lot of people listening are either earlier than you in their journey, Steve, or looking to level up. And I think they benefit from hearing this. When it comes to building relationships, of which you talked about a lot off our pod, about some of the relationships that have helped you propel— and when it talks about growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for Steve?

Steve Trang (14:57)
Genuinely caring about people, genuinely wanting to help them. You know, when I first got into business, again, five— I remember reading Zig Ziglar’s quote, which was: “You can get anything you want so long as you can help enough other people get what they want.” So anyone in my world knows if they need help, they can call me and I will take the time and talk it out with them, talk them through, offer different perspective, offer, “Hey, like maybe this is— have— have you looked at this way? Have you considered doing this? Here’s how I see the problem. Like, I hear what you’re saying, I hear your complaints. Here’s what I’m hearing. Here’s what a different perspective you might want to attack this.” So I don— I don’t ask for things without— I don’t just call people asking for things. I’m not a taker. I— I’ve always intentionally been a giver. So I will never ask you for something because I did something for you. And so people in my world and my network know that when they call me and they need help, I will always be there to help.

Freddie Steen (15:52)
Yeah, you can’t fake that. I mean, relationships are everything in this space. All right, before we wrap, Steve, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Steve Trang (16:07)
The best way to find out about what we’re doing, you can go up to— you can go to objectionproof.ai. So, objectionproof.ai, you can upload a transcript and you’ll— you’ll see how we’re reviewing the sales calls. You could also, if you want to, you know, listen to what our AI sounds like, you can text AI caller to the phone number 33777, or you always just check out our podcast, Disruptors. You know, you go to disruptors.com or you can find it on YouTube or iTunes, Spotify, and so on.

Freddie Steen (16:32)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, Steve, your story, and your perspective. We need more people in the space who are doing it the right way. So, thanks again for being here.

Steve Trang (16:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Freddie Steen (16:44)
And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Steve, who are out there building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you, Steve.