A Podcast | Kobi Bensimon

Pete Neubig: [00:00:10] Welcome back, everybody, to the NARPM Radio podcast. And, uh, like promised, I have Kobi Bensimon with, uh, with Showdigs here. So, Kobi, thank you so much for being here.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:00:24] Thank you. I'm glad. Glad to be here.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:27] So before we get into streamlining, automation and all that good stuff I want to talk to you about, I do want to know a little bit about what exactly is Showdigs. What? You know, what, um, challenge or pain point does solve for property managers. And how did you come up with the idea?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:00:44] Sounds good. So, uh, I started Showdigs in 2019, uh, after spending more than a decade building tools for property managers, mostly in the multifamily space. Uh, my previous company got acquired by RealPage and working for RealPage. You know, I really got to see a the industry from a, you know, from a high level. And I got really excited about the challenges, but also the opportunities in the single family rental space and...

Pete Neubig: [00:01:24] What division did you work in for RealPage.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:01:27] Uh, so my previous company was called Active Building. We built the first resident portal. I think about the two tenants in big apartment communities used to interact with their property manager on site. And uh, at RealPage, I was the VP over the resident services division. Basically anything consumer touch from shopping for new apartments to applying to signing a lease, moving in and then every all the services they need as a tenant until they either move out or renew their lease.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:06] Okay, so you're at RealPage and you come up with this. You see this this huge challenge for property managers. And he's like I can I can solve that with Showdigs. So take me through that. What were you seeing and how did you come up with the idea in 2019?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:02:22] Yeah. So we saw that, you know, this space of single family rentals became very hot. People who used to buy their starter home in today's world, having to rent their starter home. So we're seeing a lot of demand from people to move out from apartments, having to rent their starter home and talking to those traditional, you know, property managers just like those represented by NARPM. Uh, the number one challenge, they said it's hard for them to scale. They get to, you know, 200, maybe 400 units, and it's really hard for them to scale. And when you dive into why, right. Geography is a problem. 400 units all in one high rise, easy to manage, right. You just put a few people in the in the leasing office, a piece of cake. Take those 400 units, scatter them on on the metro area. Now, how do you manage it? Right. You have to drive all over your. Your folks are not efficient. They're in traffic all day long. So the idea was, how can we use technology to bring multifamily efficiency to single family operation? That's kind of was the motto. Showdigs when it started in 2019, we looked around, we saw what companies like DoorDash and Ubers are doing for restaurants. Right. If you look back before those days, every restaurant had the same problem. Had to hire their own small delivery team, put them in cars. They can only bring so much, so many meals. Only in a ten mile radius. Usually, uh. Which is, you know, how property managers, you know, look at themselves. They can only manage in a two mile radius. And then DoorDash comes along and say, this is inefficient let's build a delivery crew. Let's have, you know, hundreds of deliveries. Let's let every restaurant tap into those gig workers. And now, as a restaurant owner, you don't have to have your own team. You don't have to worry about delivery. You you can deliver as many meals as you can sell. And we started Showdigs a with the same idea. Let's build in select market. Let's build in a boots on the ground operation and let any property manager tap into them. So now they want to show a vacancy. They want to put the lock box, they want to go take pictures, do a moving report instead of having their team spending all day long driving, you know, all over the the city, they can tap into a hundreds of qualified, trained people and just pay for the fractional time that they use for that resource. So that was the idea behind Showdigs. We started with the leasing. Leasing is very manual, right? If you think about that period between the tenant moving out to the new tenant moving in, you know, it's a few weeks, somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks, where property managers has have a lot of reasons to get in the car drive across town. Maybe it's to to do the move out report or take pictures for the listing or show. Show prospective tenant. Do open houses and meet the new tenant. That's like on average sometimes more than ten, 12 trips to that property. And we said, let's automate the whole thing. Let's let property managers sit in one city, lease the property across the street or across the state or across the country without having to leave their desk. And...

Pete Neubig: [00:06:25] When I was running Empire, that was the number one biggest challenge that we had was that turn process from when, when the resident moves out to going out there doing the move out inspection, putting the sign out, putting a lock box out, um, you know, scheduling the maintenance team going out and checking on the maintenance team to see if everything was done, doing the move and report right. Then going out and showing. Right. I mean, I just named seven steps That and each step multiplied. And how many times did you lose a key? Or, you know, the sign got stolen or whatever, and you're going back out there and back out there. And my property manager used to do all that. And what would happen is just like you said, um, Houston, lots of traffic, huge area they would drive. Let's say they work six hours to go see 1 or 2 homes. Now they get back late at night. And now all those phone calls from from the day is just piled up. All those emails are piled up, and now they have to work all day. And now all of our clients are upset because they didn't get the the phone call back until the next day. Right. And so and, and if you have to go to 2 or 3 days in a row to go property, go look at properties. Now you're working weekends and nights and, and all of a sudden your property manager are really, really stretched, stressed out and, and they have to live in the neighborhood that they, that they're servicing because they actually have to go to the, to the properties, which you brought on another great idea, which is you have virtual property managers living across the country or across the world. So amazing. So tell us, tell me a little bit about all right. So that's the problem you're solving. How do you actually how do you fix it. Like how do you come up with the how do you fix it. Like what's what's the process.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:08:08] You know, the the big aha moment was when I realized, uh, and that's actually the day I went and started the company. So I realized that workforce that we talked about already exists. There's 3 million licensed real estate agent in this country. They're all local. They live in every street, in every neighborhood in the United States. They trained they're trained to a their day job. Right. What they're training is to sell and buy properties. But there are perfect fit in terms of their skills, in terms of their, uh, education to help property managers. And we figured if we can harness those real estate agents, connect them in the in the very easy platform, very Uber platform to the two property managers, they can be a great replacement for that in-house team that is always, you know, struggling. And so we went out, we reached out to real estate agent. We started back in 2019 just in Seattle was our first market. We got a couple hundred of those agents walking around with our app on their phone. So we track their location, and then we started working with property managers and offer them to handle, you know, handle the showings for them. Showings was the first service we took off their hand. So anytime a prospect inquired about a property, we said, hey, can you see the house within an hour? And we knew that between those 200 agents walking around in Seattle, we'll find someone ready to drop what he's is doing. Go meet that prospect, do the showing and get paid. You know, a flat fee. We pay those agents between 20 and $30 a flat fee. And and that's how Showdigs started. Right. So now you're a property manager, you can sit anywhere in the world and you know your prospect. The moment they find your house on Zillow, someone responds to them. Someone is offered to show them the home. Someone is meeting them. A licensed active real estate agent is meeting them in front of their door, and you just pay for what you use. So some are...

Pete Neubig: [00:10:32] Let me pause you there real quick because I got a ton of questions here. All right. So, um, normally if, uh, if I'm in a market like Houston, that's where I live. Um, when we had somebody show, we actually had to split that commission 50/50 with the, with the. So we get one month's lease now. And I know that's not everywhere, but we get one month lease and we have to pay that commission. Are you telling me with the Showdigs platform, they just every time they show they get 20 bucks or only when it closes they get 20 bucks, or do they get 20 bucks when they show and then they get paid again when it closes.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:11:03] Yeah. We didn't want to go back to the days where you had to pay commissions and fees. We wanted to just move the property management business from a fixed cost employees that you have to pay a salary and benefits and mileage and expenses to a variable cost. So the way we work with all our agents, they just get paid for the task they're doing. They go out to do a showing, they get paid. They go out to to put the a lockbox. They get paid for that time. They do a moving report. We pay them for the time it took them. And every task we estimate what it should take. Right. A good showing should not take more than 30 minutes. A moving report should take around an hour. So, uh, everything is based on flat fees. The agent, just like an Uber driver. The moment he finishes work, he fills up a report. Everything he learned about the place, all the pictures he took, if it's if it's an inspection type gig and on the spot, we we we pay them so they're willing to, uh. For them. It's great. They supplement their income. They have some steady income that. Yeah, that doesn't depend on on any deal closing. And for a property management. Think about it. If you have two showing agents, it means that even in the in the middle of the summer, you can only show two houses at any given moment.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:32] Yep. Yeah. You're you're leveraging all the realtors in your area, uh, to go ahead and open doors. Now, the other thing you said is like they do the showings. Now, there are, you know, some companies out there like Show Mojo ten and Turner that do self showings. Um, so is this is this something that would replace the self showing or is this like I can do self showings and if somebody does want to be shown, I can go ahead and get and have a showing agent.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:12:58] Yeah. Today with show days we offer the most flexible platform out there. So over the years we added support both on the technology side and on the agent side, and to really give our property managers full flexibility. So if on a certain house in a certain neighborhood, a property manager feel this is a good fit to do self-guided tours, we have all the tools they need, all the software with the smart lock boxes to handle that for them. On the other hand, if he has a very expensive home or maybe a home in a neighborhood that's a bit sketchy, or they have a landlord that doesn't feel comfortable doing a self-guided tours, they can use agents for that, whether their own team. Our software knows how to schedule them, connect to their calendar or more often in our case, those gig economy realtors that are happy to to do the work for a flat fee. So really, we give our clients the full flexibility to handle showing on a per property basis. There's a $5,000 mansion and a $1,000 studio. You can't read them the same, right?

Pete Neubig: [00:14:12] Yep. So that gives you a lot of flexibility. Now there are more and more cases that I'm hearing about in the industry of fraud and squatters and things of that nature. What is your take on that and how to how to prevent it? How do you prevent that stuff?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:14:26] Yeah, unfortunately, uh, scammers are everywhere and they've been scamming people off Craigslist for years now. But usually they were like.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:38] I'm still waiting for my money from Prince Nairobi, from from Nigeria. He's going to give me $1 million anytime soon. Yeah.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:14:45] Yeah. And our industry has been plagued with that for a while. But now that self-guided tours became so popular, those scammers began sophisticated and they realized they can very easily get access to a key and then show people homes, move them in. And not a week goes by that I don't hear a poor property managers telling me how he went to visit a property, just to find that property that was supposed to be vacant, just to find the family living there. And they have a list that they think is valid, and they paid security deposit and rent. And now, you know, now go start the eviction process. And it's a real pain. Uh, so self-guided tours, very efficient, very cost effective. But people have to be careful. Use tools to a validate who you're giving the keys to. I can tell you it showed for example, the most effective things we're doing is the moment we have you list the property on our platform, we start monitoring Craigslist and Facebook because all those scammers, the way they start, they put the fake ad on. Nowadays, Facebook is the number one destination for them and they try to trick people to connect, contact them instead of of the real landlord or property manager. So we work both with Craigslist and Facebook. We monitor their platform. The minute we see an ad that we know is fake, we work directly with those platform to take it off. Uh, also important validate people identity. Make sure don't just collect an ID, check that ID is it is it fraud? Is it a stolen? Is it match the person who's trying to book the tour? And and most importantly, when you have those houses on a vacant and on self showing, go check on them. Visit them at least every other, you know, every few days. Make sure people are aware that you're there and no one's trying to move in. And if you catch this early, you can avoid a lot of pains later on.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:03] That's another thing that we can use the platform for, is to have to have your agents just go out there and just do a health check, so to speak, on the house.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:17:12] Yeah. And that's a very, very common use case. Our clients who do a utilize self-guided tours. They will often ask just use our platform. They only have to check a box. And once a week our platform will automatically find the realtor in the neighborhood and just ask them to go do a health check. And it costs them nothing. Like for 40 bucks, they can have someone go and check it and check the lock box, enter the home and and that way we can catch any problems very, very early.

Pete Neubig: [00:17:48] How did the lock boxes and signs work? Do they have to come to your office and grab them, or how does that typically work?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:17:55] Yeah, we, uh, we support many types of lock boxes again, depending on on the use case. Uh, for our agents, uh, they, they can access home in any, any way that the property manager feel is is easy.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:14] Do they use their lock box? The agent.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:18:16] They usually use their lock boxes because they have it there is ready for the whoever moves out to drop their keys. Uh, if they need an agent to drop the lock box, we can schedule an agent to stop by their office. Pick a lock box. Go drop it on the property. And like anything, it's just a flat fee.

Pete Neubig: [00:18:37] Is it typical that if I have an agent, like if I'm at one, two, three Elm, um. And the agent is close by, typically they're going to be the ones that do the health checks. They're the is it going to be the same agent most of the time, uh, for the property, because they just, you know, they're the ones that claim that. Or is it going to be agent one? Agent goes one week, another agent goes another week, just depending on their availability? How does that typically work?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:19:01] Yeah. We, uh, we check with the agent. Um, one of the reasons the agent like working with us, because they don't have to commit ahead of time, block their calendar. You know, for an agent, if they have a buyer all of a sudden or a seller, that immediately takes precedence. So just again, we copied Uber here. When we know we have an appointment and a house, whether it's a showing or a check, uh, just an hour before the, the, the scheduled time, we'll see who's in a 2 to 3 mile radius and and check if they're available. It will be usually the same group of realtors that hang out in that neighborhood. But every time maybe one is someone different in that group is going to be available and ready to collect the gig, so we can promise our clients ahead of time who is going to visit there, but they know they get the same type of service on the same format, no matter which one of our agents pick up the the.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:05] That's really cool. How many markets are you all in right now?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:20:08] We are now in 15 cities across the the country, working with the 3500 agents. And in those cities and, and you know, we're just getting started. So it's a very, very exciting time for us here.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:27] Yeah. Um, you need to work with NAR, see if you can get, you know, get them to endorse you, and that'll take off like wildfire.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:20:34] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:20:35] All right. So, so we talked about the leasing side of things. Right. So just to recap, you saving your your team. You as a property manager, I'm saving tons of windshield time. And I don't have to now I don't have to be in the same town or city that I manage the property. Um, I get I get a licensed agent that can walk the property weekly or every other week. They can show they can put on the, um, the lockbox to sign. I'm guessing not signs. I'm guessing we have to put our own sign in, or they they can go get to the sign at one of our, um, units. I mean, at our at our office. All right, but can they do inspections to like or assessments? Right. Because that's the other big one. So like yeah. Great. Like they put the lockbox on. But I still have to do a move in assessment or a move out assessment. So let's talk about move ins first. Can they do a move in assessment?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:21:26] Yeah. So we trained them on three types of assessment. And they get the training. And then our software really guides them. So no matter which one of those uh agents pick up the work. Um he follows the exact same template. So the first assessment we started with is the move in and move out. It's the same assessment for us. The house is empty. The property manager gives us like a four hour window when we can come in and really document every inch of the house. So room by room, we take in total close to 300 and pictures, a exterior interior, basements, uh, the whole nine yards. So if ever there is a question, what was the state before and after a tenancy, you have everything documented. The second, assessment we added in and that wasn't even on our roadmap. But so many of our clients ask us is those annual walkthroughs. And that doesn't have anything to do with, uh, leasing. Uh, but they're a big pain for property managers. Scheduling...

Pete Neubig: [00:22:41] The scheduling is a pain in the rear.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:22:44] Yes. So nowadays our clients give us a list for the quarter, say, here's all the houses I want you to inspect this quarter. We contact the the tenant they have everything is, you know, software based. They pick a two hour window where their home and can meet an agent. We then match an agent who goes, knocks on the door, introduce himself as a realtor who came to inspect. They spend 45 minutes on average documenting a, you know, 4 or 5 pictures of every room, check the smoke detector, check the HVAC filter, and in that way, for the property manager, you know, we took that whole task off their plate. We charged them a flat fee that they can then charge back to their landlords if they want to. And, uh, And now they never have a backlog. So so that's been a one of our most popular and services. And...

Pete Neubig: [00:23:54] And I'm assuming you can you can schedule stuff on the weekends or or off after hours. Right. So limitations that we have as a property management company is like our people like to work Monday through Friday, right? Nine to 5 or 9 to whatever. Um, so it's hard to get to these properties on weekends when people are home. Uh, of course, after 2020 people, a lot more people are home because they work from home. Uh, but before that, for sure, it was really hard. So now these agents, they'll go in the evenings. They'll go on the weekends.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:24:24] Yeah. They actually prefer Saturday. Sunday. If you know realtor, that's the day when they're out and about doing their open houses, meeting their buyers. So for them that's the perfect time to, you know, fit in. And one of those assessments and they would work until 8:00 pm every day. They will work, you know, Saturdays and Sundays. Days so we can go through. We can inspect hundreds of houses for every one of our property managers in a matter of of weeks. And the third assessment is those health checks drive by very lightweight. Usually our clients order them on the spot. Hey, I just got the phone call that the door was left open or a window seems to be broken on the spot. We send an agent. They spend, you know, 20 minutes walking the backyard, the front yard, entering the home, checking that everything is secure. Water is not running. The HVAC is on the right temperature that the property manager wants it. And very quickly send back a report to the PM. So now if you get that, you know, scary call and you feel like, oh, I need to drop everything.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:43] Yeah.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:25:44] Cancel my appointment. Drive all across town. Now. You know you have a realtor that's a right there and can take care of that for you.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:54] That's brilliant. I mean, you know, you got. Oh, there's some somebody, you know, saying that there's a dog. A dog got kicked in like, oh, man, that house is an hour and a half from me. Now. I got to stop what I'm doing. I got to go drive minimum of three hours before, you know, to get there and back without traffic. Yeah. So I mean, that's brilliant. So I just put in a I put in a ticket with the Showdigs. They, they beep out to all their agents, somebody picks it up and they're there in ten minutes.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:26:20] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:20] Like a super hero time.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:26:22] The agent is two miles away or five miles, you know, 2 to 5 miles away. That's usually the radius that our agents are in.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:30] Wow.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:26:31] That's why they're willing to do the job in the last minute and for a very low, flat fee, because for them, it's. You know, I didn't have anything to do at the moment. Anyway, let me let me just take that and and, uh, make a quick...

Pete Neubig: [00:26:47] You you and I are kind of we're kind of similar where, like, uh, you know, I own VPN solutions now. I, I ran Empire Industries with 23 virtual team members in less than ten US based team members. Right. We had 980 something doors, three markets. And you're. And so I'm a big fan of, you know, leveraging virtual talent. And what you're doing is you're just taking the Uber model and you're getting you get to leverage virtual talent. What I love about your model is I only pay as I need, I pay as I go, right? Like, there's no like I'm not you're not charging me a dollar per door or whatever. You're I just I have probably a small, a small minimal monthly fee and then I just whatever I need, I just, I just go ahead and I, and I just kind of order it a la carte and people are there within minutes. And so what I, what I always look at is like, yeah, I can go do it myself and I can quote unquote save money, but I just wasted six hours of my day. Or worse, one of my property managers. Or I can pay somebody 30, 40 bucks to go look at that property or go do whatever I have to do, and they can do it in like ten, 15 minutes. Um, and so how powerful is that as a property manager. Your owner, well, how about when the owner calls you because the neighbor called them because something happened to the house, and now I'm like, I can't get out there today. I got all these other things going on. I got out there tomorrow, or I can just man, put an order in and have somebody out there in 30 minutes.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:28:13] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:13] That's powerful. That's really powerful.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:28:15] And think about how better fit this is to the seasonality in our business. Right. For property managers they never have enough stuff in the summer.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:27] Right.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:28:27] Not to talk about people wanting to take some time off during the summer, but then in the winter, you know, they have extra capacity. Now we're telling them, pay for what you use, summer. You have more work, you pay more. Come December, you have no listing activity. Your bill is going to be zero at the end of the month. So it's it's a really a match. Well, with how property management naturally works. And and so, you know we're very excited about this model. It's working amazingly well in the other industries. Right. I mentioned restaurants and food deliveries and other deliveries.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:12] And even Amazon's doing it now.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:29:15] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:29:15] Amazon's doing it right. Yeah. So let me ask you this. Um you said you're in about 15 markets. So name a few states and cities and markets that you're in. Um, if you don't mind. And I'm sure there's a list on your on your website that has all the markets, I'm guessing.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:29:29] Yeah. Yeah. And those markets, uh, you know, we update them all the time as we get more demand from, from property managers. But you know, on the West Coast, we're in Seattle, Portland, Denver, Bay area. We just started in, in in Southern California. You know, that whole stretch between L.A. and San Diego? Okay. Um, on the East Coast, uh, Orlando, Atlanta, uh, old San Antonio in in Texas. Phoenix. So really, we are targeting the big SFR, uh, markets. Uh, but still long way for us to go. And, uh, every time we, uh, we have enough demand from property managers, we take the time, we go hire the the first cohort of, uh, of those real estate agents, train them and then open, open the services there.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:24] I think this is huge, uh, for all, for all types of PM companies, right? Whether you're you're managing 30 homes on your own, 50 homes on your own, or if you're or if you're, you know, got a whole department full of property managers and you got, you know, a thousand single family homes on your own. This is a great way to to to leverage. And what I like about it is the talent is there. They're realtors right. So at least they're licensed, right? So they're vetted, they're licensed. And um, they're, you know, they're in our industry, which is which is great. What's um is there one other thing that you could think of before we go to a commercial break that, um, you can, you know, that Showdigs takes off for property managers. So we got frustration, we got leverage. We got, uh, amounts, dollars amount. We got speed to get things done. Um, so it's a it's an amazing, amazing, uh, idea and product you came up with. It really, really is amazing.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:31:22] You know, I just want to mention, uh, one of the things I'm surprised many of my clients tell me how easy it is to make new sales, right? To new landlords having Showdigs, because how many property managers today can tell a prospective landlord We are going to show your house seven days a week, 9 to 8 p.m. on demand. Right. And our notice using licensed realtors, right? No one can say that today. But if you have a team like us and you tap into those network of realtors, that's the reality. So landlords love it. You know, they feel special. They feel that they're taking care of their listing, is not going to sit on the market for more than it needs to. And everything is done by licensed realtors, which is a big advantage for them.

Pete Neubig: [00:32:18] You know, I had I had an owner once, um, and he, he didn't want me to, quote unquote, manage the home. Like, he didn't want to rent it out, but he wanted us to go by there once a week just to get the mail to check it out to, to make sure everything was alive and, and survived. And, and like, you know, it was my field techs had to go do that. And it was kind of a pain. But if I had showed this at the time, I would literally just put in. Hey, well, how much is it going to be? 50 bucks? I charge him 60 bucks or whatever. I make a little bit of money and and they go ahead and basically build the build a report for me so I could use you guys back back then.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:32:52] Yeah. Amazing.

Pete Neubig: [00:32:53] Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to put you on the on the lightning round. So uh all right everybody we'll be right back with uh with more with Kobi from Showdigs. We'll be right back.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:08] All right everybody, he will put Kobi on the hot seat. Are you ready? The lightning round.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:33:14] Let's go.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:15] All right, let's do it. All right. Uh, do you use virtual assistants in your business?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:33:20] I do. Uh, we have virtual assistants to handle a lot of the questions we get from prospective renters. One of our services is we handle when we handle leasing, we handle all the communication with prospective renters, and we utilize a group of virtual assistants to, uh, you know, and do that. And we've been very happy with it.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:46] What is one piece of advice you would give someone who's just starting out in business?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:33:52] Uh. Think not that what you need today, but think where you want to be. If you if you have ten doors right now that you need to manage already, think as if you have 200 doors and build your processes and and systems as if you have 200 doors, because that will ensure you'll get there. If you always think about today, you never get to to tomorrow. That's kind of my experience.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:22] Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:34:24] No. Absolutely not.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:27] You're one of my better friends now. What, uh, what was your first job?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:34:33] My first job out of college. I I'm a software engineer in my background. I worked for a company that built, uh, chips, uh, computer chips that went into routers and communication devices. And our clients were companies like Cisco at the time. And that was the late 1990s.

Pete Neubig: [00:34:59] Wow.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:34:59] And it was all about communication and getting internet everywhere in the world. So,

Pete Neubig: [00:35:06] So crazy.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:35:06] Went a long way.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:07] I used to be a Cisco certified engineer, and my guess is I probably used one of your chips that you designed. Yeah, in the back in the I was there in the mid to late 90s. Uh, early 2000. So interesting. Small world.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:35:21] Small world.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:22] Yeah. What is your ideal vacation?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:35:26] Oh, I'm, uh. I like urban vacation. Uh, give me, like, a week to stroll around Paris or Madrid or any one of those classic cities and just try to imagine. I lived there and I eat at the local places and go see a show at evening and a walk the parks. I love the urban energy and lifestyle.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:53] What is one thing that most people don't know about you?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:35:57] About me? Wow. Now you got me there. Um. I'm originally from Israel. I had a career. A military career that the people are not aware of. Uh, as an infantry soldier, and I, uh, um, I was a platoon commander back in the day in the Israeli, uh, force.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:26] Oh man. Kobi's a badass.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:36:29] So, I have a a sweet spot for, uh, you know, uh, veteran friends and people that served. And yeah, I don't talk about it much, but it's kind of been, uh, been there in my history.

Pete Neubig: [00:36:47] Got it. Alright. Uh, what is one book you have read or currently reading that is impacted your business or life?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:36:55] Wow. Um, I'm not reading a lot of business books the way I used to am I'm reading a book now called Trust by Hernan Diaz, and it's about how money moves the world and moves our lives and the cons and pros of of our capitalistic way of life. And it's really making me think about, you know, how I live my life, how I run my business. So very recommended when it won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, two years ago. So, uh.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:31] Do you remember the author?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:37:33] Hernan Diaz. 

Pete Neubig: [00:37:35] Hernan Diaz. Okay. Trust. All right. Um, what is one challenge you're currently facing in your business?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:37:43] Um, well, we have a lot of challenges, like every business. And for us, educating property managers, taking them through that mental gap of moving from, you know, owning their team, controlling them, hiring them to a virtual kind of a gig based workforce. It's not an easy task, right? It takes a lot of education and easing into it.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:14] Just like property managers have to educate the public on, you know, on managing property management.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:38:19] Yes, yes. So I feel with our realtor side of the business being a breeze, they love it. And many of them also drive for Uber on their spare time. So the whole concept is very familiar. But with property managers. It takes more uh, more and that, you know, issue we talked about about scammers. It's kind of a constant, uh, cat and mouse game we played trying to find out how our clients are getting scammed and what how we can utilize technology to prevent that. And it's like a constant, uh, process that we deal with every day.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:04] Alright. Final question. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:39:07] I'm a cat person myself.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:10] All right.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:39:11] Two cats here at the house.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:13] All right. You're off the lightning round.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:39:16] Nice.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:16] Yeah. Okay, so if somebody wants to learn more about Showdigs or reach out to you, what's the best way they can they can contact you?

Kobi Bensimon: [00:39:23] You know, our website, showdigs.com is easy to access. hello@showdigs.com, that will reach me and my team. And we are at all the NARPM events. So you can just walk to our booth. And so no shortage of ways to to get in touch.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:44] Awesome. And if you're listening to this and you haven't joined NARPM, why not join NARPM. Go to n-a-r-p-m.org., narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. And if you are looking for remote team um, look at vpmsolutions.com. And if you're looking to hire somebody uh, remotely, whether they're in Mexico, Costa Rica, Central America, wherever. Um, vpmsolutions.com it's free for you. Um, the way we make money is we charge the VA 10% of what they make. Kobi, awesome job today. Thank you so much! See you everybody.

Kobi Bensimon: [00:40:25] Thank you. Pete. Bye.