How to Use AI Automation in Real Estate Without Replacing People | Jeff Jenkins

Jeff Jenkins (00:00)

There are a lot of layoffs happening and things. And what I wanted to focus on in my business is not to help AI replace people, but to help AI replace the tasks that don’t need people so that people can do the tasks that need the people. And that is: we have emotion, we have the ability to make judgment, we have the desire to help people in our own race—in the human race. So we want to be able to free up people to be able to spend that sort of time.

Quentin Edmonds (01:01)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited today. I’m excited because I have a fantastic guest. We’ve been talking, and he’s just a pleasure to talk to. And I know you’re going to enjoy the conversation. I believe you’re going to learn a lot from him. And if you follow me, you know what I said: this is the part that I love. I love when we can peek through other people’s experience, glean through their experience, and just apply it to our own. None of us know it all; we’re just taking different parts and we’re applying it to where it fits. And so today, this gentleman has some things to offer. He is an investor: self-storage, commercial; he’s been involved in real estate, he’s been involved in AI. What I love, what stands out about him, is that he just wants to help people. Like, that’s the bottom line. Like, how can I help you? And so I’m so excited that we get to learn today from Mr. Jeff Jenkins. Mr. Jeff, how you doing today, sir?

Jeff Jenkins (01:59)

Doing good, Q. Thanks for having me, man.

Quentin Edmonds (02:01)

Absolutely, my friend. Thank you for being here, sir. Man, so you’ll hear me say this probably again, but I want to say up front: thank you for your time, sir. I think time is our most precious commodity, man. And so thank you, sir. Thank you for being here. I know how podcasts work, but still, I value you being here. So thanks for being here. And Jeff, sir, I love to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, how you got into the spaces that you’re in. And then, man, if you don’t mind, tell geographically where you are. People love to know where people are and that they can connect with them in the world where they are. So Mr. Jeff, sir, you got the floor, my friend.

Jeff Jenkins (02:38)

So I’m in Metro Atlanta. I’ve lived here since 2014, so I’ve been here for twelve years. I consider myself a true Georgian. So I grew up in Alabama. In 2018, I had a unique opportunity to get involved in real estate, and I’ve always grown up around real estate. One of my parents is a real estate agent, and I’ve helped paint the office and I was always around it. So I heard the terminology, I learned a lot about it. I started to learn at an early age that real estate investing was a great way to make passive income. I’ve learned little tips and tricks: once you get your first property, it’s a lot easier to get your second one; the first one’s the hardest one to get—all these sorts of things. And in 2018, I got the opportunity to get in directly.

And I won’t dive in too deep, but I got super lucky and had an opportunity fall in my lap at the perfect, exact timing, and when I had the cash from selling a home and moving into an apartment with my wife. And money that we were planning on holding on to buy our next house—but I erased that real quick and emptied the bank account to buy my first self-storage property. And I bought a small self-storage property in rural North Georgia. For all the Georgians out there, they might be familiar with Habersham County. I just decided at that point that I was gonna jump into this with both feet. I’m working a full-time job on top of this. I was pushing a push mower around the property every two weeks in the summertime to mow the grass. I was doing everything, answering the calls. And I just dove into it with both feet, and I had no employees but myself. And so I learned a lot about that particular business and the software involved with it and those kinds of things.

And through my other career—which I’ll talk about in a moment—but I was familiar with these sorts of things. I knew how to make things operate more smoothly. And that’s what really kind of got me interested in this first property. So I poured every dollar I made back into the loan, which was quite difficult to get at that time—high interest rates, cosigners, and six banks before I got the first bank to tell me yes. But just staying persistent on it and again being super lucky and getting that opportunity.

But later, you kind of start finding yourself in conversations with people. People say, “What do you do? What are you involved in?” And you build this network. And lo and behold, another opportunity came up in 2024 where a smaller storage facility was for sale. It had no occupancy; it was completely empty. It needed a lot of TLC. But because I had poured all my money into that loan, at that point I had paid off my mortgage on that property—which the banks didn’t want to loan me the money, but I paid it off in, I don’t know, eight years. So that was a huge accomplishment for me; I felt great about that. Was able to purchase another self-storage facility. Had to pour a bunch of time and effort into that, too.

And again, through that same process, I was able to be a third partner in three business partners—just a family business—that we were able to purchase a light industrial building, which the lease for that building started on November 1st, so we’re five days in. I’m grateful to have that. And in between that, I was able to get a small condo on the lake here—really small condo, again needing a lot of TLC. I’m somewhat of a handyman myself, so I was in it reinstalling new baths and painting and doing all sorts of things to remodel it, and now it’s rented out. So I’ve been involved with that a lot.

That is my real estate investor background. Again, like I said, I was working a full-time job. I said I would get into that: I’ve worked in tech as a general manager for the past eight years, and on October 1st, that was my first day not working for that company anymore. I was a shareholder in that company. I sold my shares to that company, and I decided to go out on my own and start my company, EmpowerFrame.

So, in the process of working with the telecommunications company that I worked with, we were a managed service provider. And part of my responsibility is I was directly in charge of all of the community management associations and property management associations that we provided services for, mostly access controls and access control and cameras. So we were helping people get technology implemented into their access control system—so their pools, their tennis courts, all those kinds of things. And that was a great experience for me, and it was a peek behind the curtain of what property management was like.

Now I have a property management company that manages my condo that we rent out, and that’s been a great experience. And I realize how valuable property management companies are, because I did it myself for a while. I had to do my own eviction; I had to empty out the condo, put everything on the front yard. As a person who likes to help people, that is not something that I like to do. But as a real estate investor—and those real estate investors out there will understand this—it is a very difficult process and it is a necessity in order to be able to evict people from your storage units or evict people from your condos or whatever you have, single-family homes. I tend to be way more lenient than I’m supposed to be, and my business partners want me to be a little more strict on that.

So I got a peek behind the curtain as a managed service provider. I got to see the pain points and the friction points, because their pain points became my pain points whenever a resident paid their dues after not paying them initially and needed to get access back to the pool again and there was no system in place for that. I’ve seen the paperwork pile up; I’ve seen these kinds of things happen, and that’s what led me to go into this business.

I knew that I wanted to work in AI. In 2022 is when I really started ramping up, at the inception of ChatGPT when ChatGPT became publicly available. But I’ve been following AI news for years and years on podcasts that I’ve listened to along with this one, and I learned a ton about AI. And I kind of got the feeling this was gonna be huge, this was gonna be massive. It was gonna help a lot of people, and it was gonna come with a lot of dangers, and to a lot of people it was gonna be scary at the same time. But I knew that it wasn’t going away, and it had the potential to be great.

So I went back to school, learned a lot more about AI, got a lot more certifications. And then when I left, I decided that I wanted to work in automation and AI enablement and be able to be an AI consultant for people who wanted to gain the knowledge that I’ve been working to gain. And I can help people in a practical way without sitting through all the classes and all the videos and things like that, or taking the tests and everything that comes with it.

As I transitioned, I started thinking about: do I want to offer AI for everyone, or do I want to sort of hone in and find an industry that I enjoy being around, that I know needs this in there? And a lot of industries need it, and there are a lot of things that I work with in these companies that are reciprocal to all sorts of businesses. But I just decided that if I try to offer AI to everyone, I’m not gonna sell it to anyone, basically. But I really felt like this is a community that I like, this is a community that I understand, and this is a community that I really want to help with.

Quentin Edmonds (09:36)

Yeah. Man, thank you, Jeff. So well said, man. I appreciate you taking time to walk us through the journey, how you started, where you are now, even some of the pivots that you went through within building and different things like that. And so I appreciate you. And listen, I heard you say you emptied out the bank account twice; I heard that loud and clear.

So Jeff, I often say destiny has no wasted moments. Destiny has no wasted moments, that’s right, right? We’re learning from every leg of the journey. All of it matters, right: the failures, the success, the things that did not work fortify the things that do work, right? And so, Jeff, I would love to know from you, sir, throughout your journey: emptying the bank account twice, the different pivots, different industries that you’re in, and lucking up on some stuff throughout the journey, Jeff—what have the moments taught you about yourself? What has the journey revealed to Jeff about Jeff? Has it been discipline, humility, tenacity? What has the journey revealed to you, sir?

Jeff Jenkins (10:37)

Yeah, there has been a tremendous amount of self-reflection. And I think that just in and of itself, learning to self-reflect has been such a great skill: to know that I’m not good at everything and that I can’t do everything. Because again, that’s what I was doing, and made plenty of mistakes along the way, and luckily none of them derailed me completely.

But in the self-reflection, what I learned is that I like to help people. I enjoy being involved in that process. I’ve learned that I have a thirst for knowledge. I think I told you before we were talking on the podcast, I attend YouTube University, so I have a lot of formal education, but man, I try to soak up as much as I can. I love talking to people like you. I love talking to other people involved in real estate. I jump on calls sometimes that have no tangible benefit for me, because you never know what you’re gonna learn from people when you start having conversations.

So that’s probably the biggest two things: is being able to self-reflect and realize that just because it’s your opinion doesn’t mean it’s right, and that you can change. Like, you can swear you’re right about something and still be wrong.

I’ve been instilled from my parents—I’ve been instilled with a very strong work ethic, and that’s never been an issue for me as well; it’s never been an issue that it’s not strong enough. Sometimes it may be a little too strong, I think, especially now that I have a family and those kinds of things. I gotta dial back and I wanna make sure that I’m prioritizing the things that need to be prioritized. But it’s been a great journey so far. And I’m thirty-six years old, so hopefully, fingers crossed, the journey has some time to go. And now that I have these skills, I’m hoping that I will continue to evolve as a person.

Quentin Edmonds (12:07)

Absolutely. I love it. And just listening to your journey, I think so—so I see in pictures. People talk, I see in pictures. And so I’ve literally in my mind watched you evolve as you told your story in each kind of segment of your story. So there’s no doubt in my mind you’re going to continue to evolve.

I always say there’s a difference between being a self-aware leader or person, or a self-confident person, right? A self-confident person, they know who they are, they know their strengths, they know their weaknesses, but it’s to the detriment of everybody else. Meaning they will just, “I know I ain’t strong here, but I ain’t gonna ask somebody for help. I’m gonna steamroll you, I’m gonna act like I know, I’m gonna put you down and say it’s your fault when you know you’re the real problem.” Like, a self-confident person, they know who they are, but it’s at the detriment of everybody else. A self-aware person is: they know who they are, but it’s at the complement of everybody else. Meaning, “I will ask for help; I know where my weaknesses is. I want to build healthy community. So, hey, how can we do this thing together?”

And when I listen to you, I see you as a self-aware person, not a self-confident. You want to make sure that your family’s taken care of. You want to make sure that people is helped. And so it’s no doubt in my mind that you’re going to continue to evolve, my friend. No doubt, man. Operations, man: I would love to know what’s maybe one operational thing you’ve put into place, let’s say maybe like the last year, that is either helping you be successful or really kind of redefine the way you do things.

Jeff Jenkins (14:09)

Yeah, I think—good question. And I think this is an opportunity for me to kind of talk about what automation is. I think there’s so many buzzwords out there that get thrown around, especially in the age of AI that we are well into now. You see a lot of the negative headlines revolving around AI, and they’re absolutely valid many times. AI can be very dangerous, just like the internet can be very dangerous, and you need to operate responsibly in order to do that.

But one of the things that I think is really important is, for one, not to just treat AI like a Google search engine, but to use the tools that are available to you in a practical way in order to be able to make your workday easier. We all hear, “AI is going to replace us all. Our careers are going to be gone.” And maybe that’s true; maybe there’s some truth to that. I’m sure that there is some truth to that. There are a lot of layoffs happening and things. And what I wanted to focus on in my business is not to help AI replace people, but to help AI replace the tasks that don’t need people so that people can do the tasks that need the people. And that is: we have emotion, we have the ability to make judgment, we have the desire to help people in our own race—in the human race. So we want to be able to free up people to be able to spend that sort of time.

I was telling you this story a little bit earlier, but I’ll kind of go through a little bit. I spoke with a young lady who was in charge of a tax-credit housing location. And during that call, she had a conversation with one of her tenants that I was present for the audio. And it really just kind of—I don’t know, it broke my heart a little bit. It kind of got me really wanting to help this person, because they deal with situations that are more difficult than my own. And when you find yourself in a position of privilege like I have—again, a lot of luck involved, but I’ll take it, right?—so you’re empowered to help people like this.

And then you start hearing the conversations from the property manager saying, “I don’t have the time to do the things that I need to do because I’m having to do these recertification processes and I’m having to do all these things, and I just don’t have time to spend doing what I want to do.” And you hear the pain points and you say, “That’s an automation. That is something that we can automate for you.”

And then being able to dive into it and again jump in with both feet and say, “Here’s all the systems that this person used.” They use whatever—you name the property management software, because there’s a hundred of them out there—but you know how to integrate things with that software so that the certain things that they deal with friction points on—”I’ve got to take this PDF that was filled out with pen and paper, then I have to scan it, then I have to upload it to this file, then I have to send the email to this person, and then I realize they made a mistake, so I have to go back in and do it”—automations, and sometimes with a little bit of AI necessary (not if it’s not necessary), but it can do these things for you. It can organize these processes for you.

And now in an age where you can vibe code with things like Claude Code and Codex and things like that, you can build dashboards for people. You can put things in place that allow people to be able to focus on the things that they want to focus on in their business. I’ve seen it happen firsthand. I’ve done it for myself in my own business; I’ve done it for other businesses. And being able to see these things come into shape is huge, because it allows people to spend their time on the things that matter to them.

And for some businesses, that might mean that they’ve got their operations down, everything’s smooth, but that just means you’re at an opportunity to scale. You can actually grow your portfolio now because you’ve made things operationally efficient, and then you can use tools—use these sort of tools for marketing and use these sort of tools for outreach to be able to get more doors and help more people from their perspective. And then once you’ve grown to that point and operations start to get a little bit shaky again, go back to the drawing board on the operational side and build automations and help people learn how to use these tools so that they can be effective.

Quentin Edmonds (17:47)

Man, so well said, man. I love the way you put things. What’s next for you, Jeff? Like, what’s your next real goal? What are you looking to solve at scale next, my friend?

Jeff Jenkins (17:54)

Yeah, I’m learning as I go. I’m trying to continue to evolve and I’m trying not to pigeonhole myself to any particular—I’m a goal setter, but also in the process of setting goals, I like to be very specific and attainable and timely. And so when I set goals, I don’t just write down a number on a piece of paper or something like that. I try to gather data and make sure that I have things in a position to where I can be successful.

And what I want to do is—my initial goal is to target companies that are local to me. I want to be able—in my backyard, I want to be able to go out and put hands on people’s businesses to really help them in person. Again, there’s a little bit of irony to it because I’m taking the human out of things, but I so value the human, and I think that’s gonna be our most valuable asset over the next decade and beyond, is human touch—is being able to get face-to-face with people and talk to a person instead of talking to an AI.

And again, there is tremendous value in AI voice agents and AI chat agents, because somebody answering—if a nurse gets off of her shift or his shift at two o’clock in the morning, because nurses work around the clock, and they know that their lease runs out in three days and they’re trying to find an apartment, and so they’re getting on their favorite search app or whatever and they’re looking for their location, they can get a real-time response. Not in this case necessarily a human, but they can get the information that they need right then and there. And the business that is offering that information is not gonna lose a lead because they weren’t within their business hours. And then they can follow up in person the next day or whenever that may be so that they can make that process more beneficial for the tenant. And this is somebody who is three days away from a lease expiring or three days away from being removed from their roof over their head, and it gives them the opportunity as well to be able to get answers.

So as far as next steps, I don’t know for sure, but I know that I want to work with companies; I want to be in person. And then potentially expanding out after that and working with companies nationally to be able to help them solve their problems.

Quentin Edmonds (19:51)

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Now, I love how you talked about the human element, because everyone that comes on the show, I love to get their unique perspective on the word relationship. So Jeff, when you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind for you when it comes to building healthy business relationships, whether it be from the tenant perspective or if it be from mentors or people in your circle that have helped you grow? What is your unique perspective, Jeff, on the word relationship?

Jeff Jenkins (20:19)

Yeah, I think that so often today relationships are purely transactional: “If you don’t have anything to give to me, then I don’t have anything to give to you.” And I think that relationship should be service-oriented. It should—and that is transactional in a way, because again, when you provide value to someone else, regardless if you receive any value in return, you do receive value in return. There is a tremendous amount of self-respect that you gain. If you’ve been involved in the situation, if you’ve volunteered, if you’ve ever helped somebody, if anybody’s ever said thank you to you for something, then you understand that there is value to being able to help people.

And we all have lives to live, we all have budgets to manage—our own household budgets—and we all want to be able to be successful and provide for ourselves and our families. But relationships are truly service-minded. I think service and relationships go hand in hand.

Quentin Edmonds (21:15)

Yeah. Man, so well said. Like, I think relationships can be transactional in a healthy way. And I’mma give you this, what my dad told me. One time my dad sat me down and he said, “Hey Quentin, have you ever seen a tree eat its own fruit?” And I looked at my dad, was like, “What?” He’s like, “Have you ever seen a tree eat its own fruit?” And I was like, “No.” He’s like, “That’s right, because a tree grows fruit for somebody to pluck from.”

And he was telling me—he said, “Q”—he called me Quentin, but he was like, “You’re gonna produce things that’s gonna help people. And sometimes it’s gonna feel like it’s transactional, feel like it’s painful because they’re plucking from your fruit.” He was like, “But here’s the thing: there is another tree that’s growing just for you where you can go and pluck from that tree and eat their fruit.” So he was like, “It can be transactional, but in a very healthy way. So produce what you’re supposed to produce that’s gonna help somebody, and in return this is healthy, because a tree that’s not healthy ain’t gonna grow no fruit. So if it’s healthy, they’re gonna grow fruit that’s gonna yield to you and help you.” And so that’s like that refreshing one another. And so I love your outlook on relationships, my friend.

Man, Jeff, I feel like we could talk forever, man. I feel like areas we can go into. If someone wanted to reach out to you, man—connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing—how can they get in contact with you, sir?

Jeff Jenkins (22:36)

Yeah, anybody can check us out online, of course. empowerframe.com is our website. We’re on all the social media platforms—just search for EmpowerFrame, you’ll find us on there. You’ll find phone numbers, email addresses, and things like that. My direct email address: jeff@empowerframe.com. My LinkedIn: just search for Jeff Jenkins, you’ll be able to find me. I think the official URL is /integratorjeffj.

Feel free to reach out, even if it’s—again, even if it’s not transactional. If it is transactional, I’m gonna make dang sure that my end of the transaction is more valuable than their end of the transaction. That’s one of the things that I want to try and—I really love that. I love it when somebody says, “I think I underpaid for what you just gave me.” And that’s really my goal, is to try and get to that position. But or people just want to talk: I’m on calls all the time with people who are not in transactional relationships with me, just giving advice, learning about what they’re doing, offering little nuggets of information if they need them—anything that I can help with. I love doing that; it’s my favorite thing.

Quentin Edmonds (23:31)

Yeah, yeah. Well, Jeff, man, let me say three things to you sincerely, sir. One: again, thank you for your time. I really valued it today, man. Thank you for coming through. Secondly, man: thank you for what I like to call the gift of your integrity, the gift of your authenticity, even the gift of your vulnerability, I would even say. I believe when we talk about ourselves, talk about our business, talk about what we know, I believe we cast seed out there, and people can take that seed and they can plant it into their business, into their life, into their mindset, and really get a return. So I really believe you cast some real seed out there today, man. So thank you for that. And lastly, bro: thank you for your mindset, Jeff. Thank you for the way you think, the way you process. I really appreciate you bringing that mindset—your mindset—to this platform. I appreciate you coming on today, man.

Jeff Jenkins (24:19)

Thank you very much.

Quentin Edmonds (24:19)

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Jeff. His information is in the show notes. So go check him out, click the links, check him out, get in contact with him, look him up. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here, because I promise you we’re gonna continue to bring up amazing people, just like the Jeff Jenkins. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.