James Barrett | Podcast

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody. I got James Barrett, co-founder of Tenant Turner. So James, thanks so much for being here today with us.

James Barrett: Yeah. Sure thing Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Neubig: So I used to have Tenant Turner back in the day when I had Empire years ago, and I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. But, how did you come up with the idea of Tenant Turner?

James Barrett: Yeah. Great question. So over ten years ago, myself and my co-founders, we were all IT consultants, and we had a couple townhomes, condos, things like that that we were living in. And then the the economy took a turn, you know, in '07,'08,'09 and at that point we had to make the decision, do we want to sell our homes and, you know, move into a different place at some point? And if we did that, the property values had really tanked. And so that meant we would have had to write, you know, the mortgage company is a big old check, which we had no desire to do that. So the other option was like, well, hey, maybe we should hold on to these rental properties and or hang on to these properties and turn them into rentals. And that's what kind of started our kind of process down this path. So really IT consultants, nerds...

Pete Neubig: Became reluctant landlords.

James Barrett: That's exactly what it was. Yeah. We're reluctant landlords, accidental landlords. We were part of that wave that happened, you know, just before 2010 and it really kind of set the foundation for what eventually became Tenant Turner.

Pete Neubig: So, okay, most people that I know of has that issue, and they create a property management firm. So you ended up not creating a property management firm. So what made you think of, you know, this is what 13, I think when Tenant Turner went live?

James Barrett: Yup.

Pete Neubig: That about right?

James Barrett: Yup.

Pete Neubig: You're an early adopter of technology in the industry. There wasn't really much technology at that time other than, you know, the property management software. So talk a little bit about like how do you have that BFO like oh man we need to do leasing.

James Barrett: Yeah I mean that was you know, it's the beginning of the journey, right. Like the first thing is landlords that we had to do was figure out how we were going to find somebody to rent our property. And, you know, at the time, we were starting to kind of be introduced to professional property management. We met some folks in Richmond, like Duke Dodson at Dodson Property Management, Ralph Reahard over at RPM Metro Richmond. And realized that there were  some of these problems that we experience as landlords, they existed with the property management industry as well. It's very difficult to lease the properties when the moment you put it on, you get 100 inquiries, you know, and many of them are looky-loos and tire kickers. You know, we started to hear these stories where people were having a leasing agent or a property manager show up at a rental and then the people that they scheduled a showing with never showed up. Or that, one of one of my favorite stories from those early days was a property manager at. Dodson was telling us that she just couldn't break away from her phone over the weekend, and once she started utilizing Tenant Turner, she was able to set her phone aside and just enjoy a pool day, you know, and actually enjoy her weekend because her phone wasn't ringing off the hook, because we were able to take those calls off of her plate. So those are experiences that we dealt with firsthand, as you know, those accidental landlords. Then we built the software because that's all we really knew to do. We didn't come from a real estate background. We weren't realtors. We weren't property managers. We were software developers.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You weren't even investors.

James Barrett: Yeah, we weren't even investors. Yeah, that's the thing. We really came at the industry because of a life situation. And we were lucky that we had each other. So my two co-founders, one of them I went to high school with, another was our development Java tutor, at the school. We went to VCU and we all studied information systems. So, you know, like I said, the nerdiest of the nerds when it comes to like software development. But when it came to real estate, yeah, we were novices. We, you know, basically only ever purchased one home. And at that point, none of us had ever sold a home that we had ever lived in. We weren't realtors, we weren't property managers. We were just some nerds that felt like there was a real problem worth solving during that phase.

Pete Neubig: So what did you find were the main problems? And what does Tenant Turner solve today? Obviously it helps with, you know, phone calls, but talk a little bit more about the product itself and what are the pain points that it solves for property managers.

James Barrett: Yeah. And the funny thing is, you know, a lot of the the pain points that property managers, you know, have today who aren't utilizing a software like Tenant Turner, it's the same pain points that existed back then. You know, if you wanted to market your property, you would generally have to interact with multiple different tools, whether that's like a rent links that no longer exist, or a Zillow rental manager, or you're trying to push your properties through some kind of archaic other software system. With tenant terms like, all right, let's get as many leads as we possibly can by establishing these relationships with not just the Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads, but let's get it on the apartment advisors. Let's get it on the Apartments.com, the Rent.com, the apartment guide. Let's get that listing out in many places as possible.

Pete Neubig: In one place and it could spider your marketing to...

James Barrett: Yep. 

Pete Neubig: To uh, to everywhere. Which so now I only have to put one ad in. Right.

James Barrett: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: Which sounds normal now, but it was really made, you know, it was really different. Um, you know, ten years ago now, which is crazy.

James Barrett: It was. Yeah. It really was like you said. Now it's like property managers are just now they don't know how good they have it. Right? With all these different tools that are out there. But think 10 or 15 years ago they were having to, you know, use QuickBooks. And it was before everybody had really adopted these tools like Look at AppFolio or Propertyware Rent Manager, Buildium, and TenantCloud. As before, ShowMojos and Rentlys and Tenant Turners like there's a lot of softwares now. 

Pete Neubig: Well it's allowing property managers to grow these days.

James Barrett: Yeah

Pete Neubig: All the tools, the leverage.

James Barrett: Yeah. And before it was, everybody was answering phone calls from tenant leads. Because as soon as you market that property, you just get slammed. And particularly during that time frame. Right. Like there's a lot less moving around now. It's historically low in terms of people moving, whether they're buying homes or renting. But just 10, 15 years ago, it was just it was too big of a burden for many people to handle on their own.

Pete Neubig: So Tenant Turner was one of the first companies that really embraced or pushed for self showings.

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Talk a little bit about like what made you guys come up to that. Because when you guys came up with that, you had a lot of pushback from property managers. It wasn't before, you know, I mean, it was getting adopted before the pandemic, but I'm guessing it really took off after the pandemic. But tell a little bit about that story, how you came up with that and why you thought it was a good idea and how you got the adoption.

James Barrett: Yeah. It was, you know, it really came from customer feedback. Right? So there are people out there. I think you were an early adopter in that concept. And there were others out there who really like the idea of self guided tours and self showings, whether they were using a competitor or if they were, you know, doing mechanical lock boxes. That was a very common thing, like the earliest of adopters of self guided tours. These are people who've been doing it for 20 years. Another alternative within the self guided tours realm is, you know, people doing like a key checkout at their office. So somebody would still go view the property on their own without a leasing agent but they'd come to the office, you know, normally leave their ID or a $20 deposit or something like that.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And then it got to a point where it was like, don't even come get the key, we'll just give you the code. They leave the lock box open. They lock the key inside the house or something else, right? So how did Tenant Turner solve some of that?

James Barrett: Yeah. And that's where you kind of look at those business processes that have existed for decades. And you say, okay, we can utilize software to streamline this process, make it more safe for the property manager, for the property owner, for the prospective tenant, and really ensure that things are being tracked appropriately. Right. So that's a big component of what we're trying to do is like we're we're making sure that we're only allowing people to access properties that should. So we do our fraud detection checks up front. We're collecting a copy of the ID, but it's being done digitally, stored digitally. So you don't have PII floating around the office. You know, that's the type of thing that would have to either get shredded after somebody viewed the property or end up in a specific filing cabinet. So those were able to be moved online. And because of that, we were able to use different tools and techniques to run these different checks that would ensure validity of these IDs. It's not just, you know, Miss Betsy at the front desk who's like, yeah, that one seems that seems all right. Yeah. That seems like it seems like you. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Now, every time you guys create a new tech and, you know, then there's scammers and fraudsters out there that, you know, they try to get one step ahead of you and then you guys solve something. So um, when I know when I first started and I don't know if this is still a big challenge because like I said, like after the pandemic, more and more people started doing self showings. But the fear that we had was, what if somebody goes in, they steal all the appliances?

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Right. So what do you say to people now when they bring that up as a, I'm still fearful that somebody's going to go in and either, A, steal the appliances, or B, worse. Now what's happening now is like they go in and they basically just squat and like, you know, squat in the house. So what are we doing now to solve those challenges?

James Barrett: Yeah. And I think one of the, one of the good things at this point is that there's a lot more tech that's available out there, not just the tech that we've created like the proprietary tech that we've created, but there are more databases and APIs that we can tie our software into in order to do verification checks before somebody gets access to the property. Um, also, the bigger Tenant Turner gets, the more data we have that is proprietary to our system. And so if somebody has an issue like, okay, we'll use your, you know, Houston in that market if one of one of the property management companies in Houston has an issue with somebody who viewed the property, they can mark that as an issue within the system, and then that person can't get access to other properties managed by other property managers. So just the sheer volume of data that we're able to process And the other thing...

Pete Neubig: Acting like a database of scammers.

James Barrett: That's right. That's exactly what it is. And we create a digital fingerprint for every prospective tenant that comes to Tenant Turner. And so that information is obviously like name, email, phone number, but things like ID that we're able to collect the ID number. So if they tried to manipulate it, but we can still run checks against that. IP address, device and IDs. So if they come from a particular phone versus another type of device, we're building all this you know, this fingerprint for each person that comes to Tenant Turner. And if they change their email address but they're using the same device ID, we can still create the connection behind them and make sure that they don't get access to a property that they shouldn't.

Pete Neubig: And so now that will help prevent squatters and scammers. And I feel bad for some of these people that they get scammed and they have like this fake lease Is that they think that they're literally renting this place for $1,200 when it's clearly like $4,000 rental. Too good to be true means it's too good to be true. And then you have to like, you know, go through a whole process of evicting them. And it's kind of a shame.

James Barrett: It is. Yeah. And those are unfortunate situations. And in the world, right. There are bad people and there are gullible people, and the bad people will take advantage of the gullible people, and that will exist in any industry under any circumstance. But there are things that we do, you know, to help prevent or minimize that impact. And, you know, it's one of those things where we're able to recommend to our customers, say, hey, you know, put up a sign at your property, let them know that if they saw this property on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, it's not legitimate. Contact Empire Property Management. Don't just talk to Joe Blow that whoever they might be texting. But on the software side, what we're doing, too, is we're also running scans on those places that are, you know, tend to be more scammy, like Facebook Marketplace in particular, and Craigslist, which is luckily less of a problem now than it was, say, a decade ago. But we're running scans on those to see if our customers properties are showing up there. And if they are, we're able to mark those things as fraud scams and then those get pulled down.

Pete Neubig: Oh. Very cool. Very cool. You know, I know the early days, man. We just had to watermark. Everything like that was the big defense against scammers. You know now, the scammers, if they would just spend time building businesses instead of trying to scam people, they would probably be worth 10x more than what they are today.

James Barrett: Yeah. If they would spend their time creating legitimate businesses. Right.

Pete Neubig: Exactly.

James Barrett: It's pretty wild what they're willing to do. It's just yeah, they see these little opportunities to take advantage of people, you know, less fortunate. And that's the thing too. And that's like the heartbreaking point, like you mentioned, about people who get scammed and whatnot. They often, these scammers, they're going after the most vulnerable. You know, the people who don't have the most money, the people that can be manipulated. Oftentimes, like if there's a natural disaster, you'll see scams increase in that area, or certainly scam attempts increase in that area because somebody was displaced by a flood or a fire, and now they're very desperate to move into some place that they're willing to give. They're willing to walk down to Walmart and send somebody bitcoin, you know, as the deposit for their property. And it's, you know, so we do what we can to prevent such things. And you know the management companies do what they can as well. And and you know hopefully the maybe the world will be a better place one day. And these, these bad people will just go away.

Pete Neubig: Never. But yeah I mean look it's like kind of like, you know, why you lock your car because they can steal it regardless. But it's a deterrent. Why do you have an alarm on the car? It's a deterrent. Why do you have a dog?

James Barrett: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: It's a deterrent alarm on the house. So the more things you can do to make it more difficult for the scamsters, they're going to go find somebody else who's not a professional property manager who maybe is leasing their own property. Or they're just a realtor. They have none of these tools. Like Tenant Turner.

James Barrett: Yep.

Pete Neubig: At their, you know, at their behest.

James Barrett: Yep. Exactly it.

Pete Neubig: I want to switch gears here a little bit. Tenant Turner is widely known for its amazing customer service. You go ask anybody who's used Tenant Turner,... I Have a story that when I was with Empire and we had an issue with Tenant Turner, I called up our rep. I think his name was Calvin, right? I called Calvin up, and Calvin stays on the phone with me for an hour. Solves everything. Fix everything. And at the end of the phone call, he goes, oh, by the way, Pete, I have not been with Tenant Turner for over a month and I'm like, why did you answer all my questions? And Calvin's like, well, that's just the way we do things at Tenant Turner. And like basically like he had started his own property manager company and I think he's hopefully he's very successful. This was years ago.

James Barrett: He is. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: But my guess is he's very successful because of that. What he learned as far as like that provide wow experience or that customer experience. My question to you as CEO is how did you guys build that culture? That's not an easy thing to build.

James Barrett: You're right. You're right. You know, I think part of it is our approach to things. I mean, for the longest time, you know, CEO of the small startup, you know. I was providing direct customer support, kind of laying the foundation for how we wanted to interact with customers. We've always been very customer centric. So having those conversations with people getting at the root of what their pain points are. Getting that implemented back into the software. So I think part of it is being so customer driven, letting customers drive what our product roadmap is and delivering a product that's really easy, you know, for them to use and user friendly, that makes it so that way we can scale our support at a much more manageable amount. And then with our support personnel. We've always looked for people who are empathetic, who can connect with the customer, like Calvin. Calvin is one of those people. You know, he's a member of our sales team, and he always found a way to connect with the customer whether they were buying from him or not. He just wanted to be helpful. And that is really, you know, been the pillar of our customer success team that's, you know, currently led by Lane. She's been with us for over five years. And we've had a couple of really strong customer success people that have really set the tone for the culture.

Pete Neubig: Anything during the hiring process to kind of find these type of people? Like we're using, like DISC or personality profiling, where you're using some kind of random test like, oh, if I throw this, you know, piece of paper in the corner and they don't pick it up, like we're not going to hire. Like, what was your kind of.

James Barrett: Hiring like that? I'm not sure if that's an actual hiring test, but I like that as a way to do that.

Pete Neubig: I'll pick it up if it's a 50.

James Barrett: I'm not picking up the trash. Exactly. It'll be a green piece of paper. Yeah, I think for for us, one of the one of the best things we were able to do in the hiring process was to do writing prompts. So a lot of our customer support is run through our chat support tool. And so we would give candidates basically a series of questions that were very common.

Pete Neubig: Real world experience questions.

James Barrett: Real world questions. Yeah, exactly. And we kind of treated it like an open note quiz. Right. Because the questions would be like, hey, my property listing isn't showing up on Zillow. Well, we don't expect every software support person to know what Zillow is if they're not from the industry. Right? So we'd say go look at our help center. And you could actually see how much of the help center they were able to ingest and understand and output back to the customer. We could really see how much they were able to connect with a, you know, a customer who's really just a a fake prompt that we provided them. And that really helped us hone in on people who who were caring, um, and could handle the pressures of software support for, for this industry and especially, you know, you know, this industry, right? It's very fast paced, very fast paced. We have leasing agents that we're supporting. We have property managers supporting directors of leasing and brokers and owners, and they're oftentimes not in the office all the time. And we need to be able to provide good support in a quick way. And we've been able to test that during the hiring process with those, you know, those writing prompts.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Did you use any personality profiling at the time?

James Barrett: We didn't. No. You know, I think there was probably a profile that we were looking for and we interviewed for, but we didn't do any of the formal, you know, personality profiling tools.

Pete Neubig: And then how did you keep them engaged as your business was growing? So, like, you know, I mean, again, great customer service. Customer service will beat you down. How do you keep them engaged? You know, for five years. You said Lane has five years.

James Barrett: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: How do you. What do you guys do to keep them engaged? Do you have, like, a certain CSat score and then maybe they get a bonus on or is it something completely different that because I'm such a numbers and money driven guy.

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I, you know, I forget sometimes, you know, just a pat on the back is, is what somebody needs. So. What do you, what do you guys do over there to you know because I want to emulate at VPM what you guys are doing at Tenant Turner. I want people to say, man, VPM is the Tenant Turner of customer service. So we hit that pinnacle.

James Barrett: Oh, man, I love it. I love that. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to make you a verb, buddy. We'll make you a verb. I just got Tenant Turner. What does that mean?

James Barrett: It's a positive. It's a warm embrace, right?

Pete Neubig: It's a warm embrace.

James Barrett: I love that.

Pete Neubig: It's a warm embrace next to the bosom.

James Barrett: Yes. That's right. Come in here. Get in here. Right. Yeah. I think as far as, like that group. Right. And so obviously with our with our sales Folks. Um, they had different incentives, right? So we would set them up for, you know, commissions and accelerators and bonuses and things like that on the on the customer success or support side of things. They're less money motivated. And that's not to say that, you know, there are certain things that we would do to incentivize behaviors. Right. But it was really for them, you know, good salary, competitive, making sure that they did get, you know, annual increases and stuff, which keeps them in there, but also more from the perspective, like you said, like they're more into a pat on the back. They're more into a thank you from a customer. Like, that's what what the people that we hired and those people who are that empathetic, that was what they looked for, is the big reward at the end of the day. And for them, you know, they would continue to perform well and obviously they would get, you know, appropriate compensation based on that. Um, but that group in general, they they would, they would kind of rally around each other, right? So it was like a group of them. That's that's one recommendation for sure, is if if you're going to have to build out this support structure, it's got to be more than one person. They have to be able to collaborate with each other. They have to be able to support each other just as much as they need to be able to support our customers.

Pete Neubig: So you build like a true team environment?

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

James Barrett: Yeah. It was all US-based. All in Richmond. So these were people who were very interactive with each other on a day to day basis, being there to, to support each other in the most complex components of our software. And that's really what they rallied around. They wanted to be there for each other, be there for the customer and be there for the company.

Pete Neubig: I think, honestly, you know what your prompts must have come up in because to me, like, I'm a big personality profile guy. I'm a big DISC guy and I know there's tons out there, but the S and DISC is that empathetic. It's people focused. It's introverts for the most part. And so it sounds like you've, you hit on those type of people. They don't like a lot of change. My assumption is that there was not a lot of change in that department. Or did that department right? Not not that right.

James Barrett: Yes. Not not a lot.

Pete Neubig: That changes all the time. Right.

James Barrett: Exactly. Yep, yep. And the sales guys, they thrive on it. They they they need it. They needed sales competitions and things like that. Like with our support team, we never wanted to incentivize the wrong behaviors. Right. We never wanted to say, hey, let's close. Whoever can close the most conversations gets this because that's that's not how we wanted to approach it. And, and one thing within that team too, we had different people who had different strengths. And that that was also a kind of a key to success with that group. There are kind of three main components of customer success within Tenant Turner. There's our customer support component. There's our training component when we bring on new customers, and then there's more of a kind of a Q and A or deep dive call if there's a problem. So problem solving. So it's kind of problem solving. And then there's the chat support. And then there's also the training. And we let them...

Pete Neubig: Would you put training as onboarding as well? Trainings?

James Barrett: Yeah. Onboarding.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

James Barrett: Yeah exactly. And they really thrived being able to to dip their their toes into each little thing. So they're not just always training which might get a little bit monotonous. But they enjoy doing that a third of their day and then a third of their day. They're doing customer support. And then a third of the day they're doing more technical in depth support. Um, and I think that kept things interesting for them.

Pete Neubig: One of the things that popped into my head is like, those folks love to build relationships.

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So we always think of like, our salespeople need to build relationships, but actually your customer support team, if they build those relationships with your clients, the clients, your churn rate goes down on your client, churn goes down, and so, yeah, I think they're literally working with clients, people focused. Right there introverts. But there's still people focused. And they really like to help people. And you built something where they actually help people through the whole process.

James Barrett: Yeah. And they get there, they get that dopamine hit right. Like the sales guys get it when they close a deal. For these folks, it's when they solve somebody's problem.

Pete Neubig: That's right.

James Barrett: You know, and they and that and that's what gets them jazzed up and gets ready.

Pete Neubig: Or they get they get a they get a five star review, or they get an attaboy, or they get a client that's a happy client, right? Or they onboard somebody who had all these questions, and now the person's super happy and they got a referral or whatever it is, right?

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: That. Yeah. Uh, I'm looking at this from a property manager point of view, right. You have your onboarding team and then you have your kind of like your, your department, your either your departments or your property manager. And so, you know, some of these folks, you know, on property management, especially like your onboarding team like CS, SC or, you know, like you have to find these type of people because they're not getting those dopamine hits of selling, you know.

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Like I have a happy client who's been onboarded. I have a happy client. I solved their leasing issue. I have a happy client. I solved their maintenance issue. Things of that nature. So. Excellent. That's really, really good information. Okay, so I'm going to I'm going to pivot again and I'm going to get you on this one. What is the hardest thing you've ever done? Now we see the final piece of it right. We see James. He's super successful. Tenant Turner is very successful in our industry. So I'm seeing the finished product. But what was the hardest thing you ever done?

James Barrett: Yeah, I would say looking back at, you know, our history with Tenant Turner in 2015, myself and my co-founders, we moved out to California from Virginia, and we lived in Silicon Valley for three months to participate in Y Combinator, which is just a world class startup accelerator that helped amplify what we were doing as a business. But we had to leave our, our families behind. At the time, my kids were like preschool age. And my wife and I hadn't really spent that much time apart before, so. So to spend that much time on the other side of the country, it was really difficult. It was the best thing for the business. It was the best thing for myself and my partner to be able to be really focused in developing the tool and the business that we have today. But to leave a lot behind was a challenge. And, yeah, it was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Pete Neubig: Wow. Yeah. Well, congrats on getting into Y Combinator. I don't know how hard it was ten years ago, but it's almost impossible to get in these days. And if you want to be around people you know, that have completed something, you have to join them. And so, yeah, Y Combinator, you literally got thrown in and you were hanging out with people who have taken companies, tech companies from idea to, to market.

James Barrett: Yeah, yeah. At the time, you know, the hot topic these days is like AI. Like Sam Altman was was there. He's the CEO of OpenAI. And you know, there's a lot of amazing minds that were there. And that really helped us level up and help the company level up and accelerate our development. And it was a great experience, and we're glad we did it. And you know how it is, even just like within the NARPM community, right? You have to be around people who are doing what you're doing. You have to be able to share stories and be vulnerable and tell stories and, you know, that's how you're going to get it to the next level.

Pete Neubig: But every successful person has had that moment where either, I've lost a business or I'm, you know, I mean, you gave up your family for three. Was it three months?

James Barrett: Three months. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: That's rough man. Going to live in California for three months on the other side of the country. So you know congrats though. But it worked right. And now those three months seems like like a blip.

James Barrett: That's right.

Pete Neubig: Yeah I'm sure it wasn't those days. I'm your wife with young, young children. She was probably. You probably weren't her favorite person at the time.

James Barrett: No, I remember, she couldn't go anywhere. Right? Because like, I, she puts the kid to bed. She's got no place to go because I wasn't home to be able to watch the kids or anything like that. And so she actually spent that summer painting the entire kitchen. And I think that was like her coping mechanism. So I'm building software with my guys. She's, you know, redesigning the house and painting the entire kitchen. And so it all works out.

Pete Neubig: Behind every successful man is a strong woman, that's for sure.

James Barrett: Right. That's right.

Pete Neubig: ll right. So you mentioned Sam Altman and AI, OpenAI. You're one of the big thinkers in the industry, where do you see AI being used in this industry?

James Barrett: Yeah. And you know, the cool thing about AI, it's definitely been in the industry for a while. Right. And something that we've utilized AI for, something we've already talked about around fraud detection. And so AI it got great marketing. But what if AI was before AI was, it was big data and big data analysis and taking large data sets and being able to analyze them and improve upon some algorithm automatically. And for us, you know, a big component that we use AI for is that fraud detection and fraud prevention and taking the data and the data sets that we have and preventing any sort of negative behavior. So I think that is going to be big because rental fraud exists well beyond just within the showing process, right? It's part of the application process. And there's some companies out there now who are who are using more and more AI components to prevent rental application fraud and document fraud. I'm not sure if, you know, products like pet screening and whatnot if they're using AI, but I'm sure to a certain extent that they probably are because they're having to do rapid document detection and verification. So there's probably an AI component to that too. And an AI is really good about processing lots of data, comparing it to a bunch of other data points, and learning. On how it can do that better, faster, stronger. So I think there's going to continue to be a lot of emphasis within our industry within that, you know, that kind of component. Fraud prevention fraud detection.

Pete Neubig: So you're a tech guy. So my guess is you don't believe that the machines are going to rise up against us, i.e. like Terminator. You think they'll be able to utilize AI as a tool, just like we utilize the internet back in, you know, 1999 and 2000. Is that.

James Barrett: Exactly. That's my stance on it. Right. And, you know, we will continue to see things evolve. I think something that's really interesting on the AI front is what you see a lot of these big tech companies doing where they're reactivating nuclear power plants because they need so much processing power and electricity to be able to handle all these AI, you know, uh, type calculations and whatnot. So at the stage we're at right now. It is a great tool. It is a great feature on existing software. There's, you know, many softwares that we interact with on a day to day basis that already have AI components built in and that's a good thing because it makes us all more efficient.

Pete Neubig: VPM is working on some AI bots right now inside of our platform to be able to match people better with job postings.

James Barrett: Yeah, yeah. And that's a great use of AI. You know, going back to the customer support component, to the support tools that we utilize, it's their AI that we've been feeding data into and been training. Right.

Pete Neubig: It's kind of like version one of it is, was the chatbot considered AI? I'm asking I don't know.

James Barrett: Yeah. For the most part, most chatbots that you're going to interact with are AI at this stage, right. You know, just a few years ago, it's basically the chatbot is going to ask a question and have a couple of like structured data responses and say, I'm this or I'm that, or I need this or I need that. And then based upon that, those are more like simplified decision trees. So it's software basically say if this then that type situations. But with AI, the, the whole hope is that you're going to be able to interact with it more realistically without having to have a predetermined path that's created in some sort of workflow tool. So I think property management is a great industry for it because there's a lot of different workflows that we have, whether it's on the leasing side or the maintenance side. And I will help drive solutions to our customers, whether it's owners or prospective tenants, much faster than if we have to wait for a real human to do it. Or it can be much more flexible than just kind of a traditional if this then that type software solution.

Pete Neubig: How far away do you think a like products are out there that are easily to be able to use for AI, for customer service, maintenance and things of that nature. You think we're a year away to or actually like we're there?

James Barrett: I think we're still getting there, right? Like, I think people are incorporating AI in their platforms. I think what's going to be exciting over the next few years really, is when people build new features and capabilities into their platforms, utilizing AI first. I think a lot of what we're seeing right now is like, okay, our software does this thing. Let's utilize AI to make the thing that our software does more efficient or effective. But what we're going to see more of is like, well, let's build this new capability within our platform and let's do it with AI. And AI is at the core of what's being built versus being layered in kind of after the fact. So I think that's where we're going to start to see some really exciting improvements over the next few years. Um, but I think we should all embrace the little bits of AI that we're getting right now, because it ultimately is going to make us...just like software did. Like you had mentioned, just like software in the internet had previously. AI is going to make our teams our selves and our lives more and more efficient.

Pete Neubig: Thanks, James. We're going to take a quick commercial break and I'm going to come back with the lightning round.

James Barrett: Great.

Pete Neubig: Right back everybody. All right. Welcome back. We got James Barrett, CEO of Tenant Turner, on the hot seat. The lightning round.

James Barrett: All right.

Pete Neubig: Let's see here. All right. What is one piece of advice you would give someone starting out in the property management business?

James Barrett: Oh, I would say I mean, again, as a software guy, embrace software, even if it's not Tenant Turner, right? Go go into your property management business with an automation mindset. And if you can start with a good foundation, you're immediately able to scale much faster. And there's so many great tools out there for you.

Pete Neubig: Do you use virtual assistants?

James Barrett: We have used virtual assistants for various tasks. You know, a lot of ways I should probably have one. Just. Just for myself. Maybe one day.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

James Barrett: Highly controversial. But I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say probably top five pizzas for me would include pineapple. You know, like a like a Caribbean jerk or like a pineapple and ham. I'm here for it.

Pete Neubig: All right, man, well, we differ on a few things. That's one of them. It's okay though. I still love you, man. I know you probably don't go to fast food often, but when you do go, what's your go to?

James Barrett: Uh, Chick-fil-A. Definitely. Spicy chicken sandwich. Extra pickle. Yeah, yeah. There we go.

Pete Neubig: Spicy chicken with extra pickle. I love that.

James Barrett: Spicy chicken, extra pickle. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: I'm doing that from now on.

James Barrett: You know, the extra pickle. I was anti pickle for a long time. And then chick fil A brought me back into this pickle world. And now I'm not only there, but I'm extra the pickle.

Pete Neubig: So I get the spicy chicken. I love the pickle. It's never enough. I never even thought to ask for extra pickle. I'm doing it. You just changed my life.

James Barrett: Game changer.

Pete Neubig: You just changed my life. What was your first job?

James Barrett: First job was a waiter at a retirement home, so I would work in the dining room. I had to wear a cummerbund.

Pete Neubig: So dinner from 3 to 4?

James Barrett: Yeah, exactly. It was great. Well, the best part about the job was I'm in high school, and I was home every night by 9:00. You know, it wasn't like a normal restaurant job where you're working till 2 a.m.

Pete Neubig: What's your ideal vacation?

James Barrett: Oh, my ideal vacation is some sort of adventure. Whether it's a skiing adventure or, you know, we're going to the beach. I like to go on different excursions. I like to explore the the whatever, wherever we're at. Like we went to Puerto Rico last. It was about a year ago in one of our favorite things was just a food tour, you know, and it's like you're just walking through the city, downtown San Juan, and you're just being exposed to a lot more. And we just love getting out there and learning something new about new cultures.

Pete Neubig: I'm like you, man. I love the adventures. Yeah. Um, if you could have dinner with anyone who is alive, who would it be?

James Barrett: Oh, anyone who is alive. Um, you know, this is probably a common thing, but the first name popped into my head was Elon Musk. I think he's a controversial person for various reasons, but I think he's an interesting person. And as somebody who has created a business and won business and knows how hard it is to have seen him create all of these businesses and watch him operate all of those businesses simultaneously. Um, it's just a fascinating individual.

Pete Neubig: He is fascinating. I, I agree that's a great answer. What is one challenge you are facing in your business?

James Barrett: Yeah, I would say in our business, um. That's a great question. One of the challenges we had was, uh, very recently hiring, you know, so hiring unemployment still is very, very low. And, you know, bringing on new people, particularly as we just talked about with our customer success and support, like we're looking for a particular type of person, and we're not afraid to say no to good people in order to get the great people. Um, so I think that's always a challenge. Um, and obviously, I think something that you can help people with. Right. But, uh, uh, so.

Pete Neubig: Um, you prefer dogs or cats?

James Barrett: Definitely dogs.

Pete Neubig: Dog guy. All right.

James Barrett: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right, man, you're off the hot seat.

James Barrett: Whew. I'm feeling that one, you know.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. All right. If someone wants to get in touch with you. James, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

James Barrett: Yeah. I mean, as far as getting in touch with the company tenantturner.com. Uh, me specifically, james@tenantturner.com Or find me on LinkedIn. Lots of connections with property managers. And also might see you at a conference at some point if we haven't already met. Right.

Pete Neubig: And if you are listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, join NARPM. Go to narpm.org. or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking to hire remotely, you're looking for a remote team, give vpmsolutions.com a chance. It's free for you to browse, create a profile, browse over. I think we have over 39,000 profiles now on the platform. We have over 45 VPM Academy courses for the industry. Or you can email me at, pete@vpmsolutions.com. Thanks, James for being here. Appreciate you. See you everybody.

James Barrett: Thank you, Pete. Appreciate it.