Laurent Cohen - AI for Real Estate Investors, What You Need to Know Now | Real Estate Educators Podcast with Kevin Amolsch

Description

AI isn’t coming—it’s already here. The question is: are you using it, or are you falling behind?

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch sits down with Laurent Cohen to break down how AI is transforming real estate, lead generation, and business operations.

From voice AI that answers your calls 24/7 to smarter workflows that eliminate missed opportunities, Laurent explains how investors and agents can use AI to grow their business without losing their personal touch.

They also dive into the biggest misconceptions about AI, why most people feel overwhelmed, and how to actually start using it today—even if you’re not “tech-savvy.”

If you’re in real estate and not thinking about AI yet, this episode is your wake-up call.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Why AI is like money—and how to use it
03:02 - Why real estate has a major gap AI can solve
05:18 - ChatGPT vs real AI (what most people misunderstand)
11:36 - How voice AI captures leads you would normally miss
17:08 - How AI builds trust instead of replacing you
24:18 - Why AI is overwhelming (and how to simplify it)
28:18 - Will AI replace white-collar jobs?

Connect with Laurent Cohen:
Website: GetOblic.com
Explore voice AI tools, lead generation, and automation solutions for real estate professionals.

Learn more about Pine Financial Group:
pinefinancialgroup.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
If you want to be successful integrating AI, you have to be a problem solver. But if you have experience and if you've been here long enough to solve enough problems, AI is for you. I'm a firm believer that the future of AI is disclosing that you're using AI. Not because the business wants it, but because the user will need it. I usually compare AI to money. Let me tell you why. I think both. are currencies. Money is a currency that can buy you properties, can buy you commodities, and can allow you to hire resources. Well, AI is the same. AI is a token that can allow you to buy knowledge, to buy agent resources, which are pretty close to human resources, and create growth, like money.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations for investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money.
Speaker #2
What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. Thank you so much for joining us. We're having a great time with this podcast. We're helping real estate investors and real estate educators. Are you out there building a portfolio? Maybe you're fixing and flipping, or are you providing content to other investors? This is the podcast for you. I have a little bit of a unique guest here today. Normally, we talk... all about real estate, but today, you know what? It's impacting real estate, AI, technology. We don't want to be afraid of it. We want to embrace it. How can we do that? So, Lawrence Cohen, you've been in business or starting and running businesses for three decades, mostly around technology and AI. AI is probably huge in your business right now. You're the founder of Get Oblique, which we're going to talk a little bit about today, to help real estate agents and real estate investors in their business. So welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you for having me, Kevin. It's a real pleasure. And there's a lot to be said about AI and especially how AI can help the real estate world.
Speaker #2
Well, let's go back because you're not really in the real estate space. You're more in the technology space. But you found quickly, it sounds like, that real estate really needed what you were offering. So how are you related to real estate and why real estate?
Speaker #0
Well, you know what? It actually came out the other way. As we were building GetOblik and addressing essentially small businesses, we built a directory. And we started to have requests, create listings from real estate agents out of the blue. Not that we did not see how we could help them, but we didn't prioritize that field in the first place. So, you know, it's a matter of serendipity, opportunity. and understanding exactly what's needed. So this is how I can stumble upon your great show. And I found out a real gap happening in the industry that AI can really reveal.
Speaker #2
Okay, well, let's get into that gap. Now, when I hear AI, I got to be honest, Laurent, I'm thinking, chat GPT, let me ask it a question. It's going to go get me an answer. But this is much more... I guess, involved than that. So tell me a little bit about what you're seeing.
Speaker #0
Well, first of all, what you're addressing here, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cloud, they are what we call conversational agent LLMs, models. These appear around three years ago, as everybody noticed by now. They implied a huge change in our life, but AI has been here for a long more. It's been there. It's very mature. It goes way beyond the conversational aspect of it. Now, the fact that it becomes conversational turns the technology into something that is much more accessible to anyone. Let me explain why. As it turns out, AI and conversational agents allow to turn users not into coders. or operators, but into problem solvers. If you want to be successful integrating AI, you have to be a problem solver. It's not about being the 20-year-old young gun coder in a Silicon Valley anymore. Those are great, don't get me wrong. But if you have experience and if you've been here long enough to solve enough problems, AI is for you. Now, if you start focusing on all the aspects of the real estate agent investors, you figure out that the past, I'd say, 20 years, most of them have been focusing. on creating opportunities, right? Advertising, communicating online, create your own personality, even becoming influencers. But a gap has been created in not creating your opportunity, but making sure you're not missing the ones that are coming to you. And that is a totally different thing. We've all been there. I mean, in my private life, I've known a few of... people in industry and you always see them with a couple of phone in hand you know always replying while they're doing visits while they're around town you know i would not dare to say that they don't like the phone uh because that's their main tool of operation but that can be something that can be pretty cumbersome right uh and uh there are solutions for that now if you go beyond the phone in every single aspect of what you're operating in the year industry, AI as a tool, and we can discuss that further, can be of tremendous help for growth.
Speaker #2
Yeah, I want to get into that. I was just in a meeting with my company today and we were talking about this. So this is an issue for every business. We talk about the funnel, right? You want to get your leads into your funnel and you work them down into a closed transaction or closed sale. So somewhere in that. funnel, there's got to be a point where it's a human being talking to a human being, I think, at least in real estate, it's still very much like that. So we spend all of this money in our marketing department to generate these leads that we drop into the funnel and some of them fall out. They never get talked to. That's what you're solving here, right?
Speaker #0
Yes, that's what we're solving. Let me get a little bit scoping out. We've all been taught for the past 20 years that attention is the real currency of any operator. You want to grab the attention. You want to be front and center of every transaction. This is how you build what is your voice. And when I'm saying voice here, I'm not talking about the talking voice. I'm talking about who you are, your personality. And this is what needs to be secured. It's all about trust. Trust, you know, every single vertical, every single job is the same. It's all about what you've been creating, the trust that you've created with the people you are working with. And this needs to be safe. And this is how you have to treat AI. AI is obviously not here to replace you. But AI, at the end of the day, is not about prompting. And this is why people do not understand. probably are afraid of AI. Prompting is a single specific aspect of AI. But if you've been working on AI, you very quickly understand that it's all about data, automation, and workflows. Those things existed long before AI, right? And I'm talking with someone working in the real estate industry. You know about data. This is exactly what you've been working on for the past 20, 30 years you've been in activity. So if you understand... that the game is still the same. It's about data, workflow, and automation. You do not have to worry about LLM and prompting an agent. This is just another layer on top of what you've built.
Speaker #2
So how does GitOblique do that? This is how you, when you're capturing leads and you don't want any like lead leakage, I guess I could use that term. I'm not sure if that's the appropriate term here or not, but... How does that fit in with the data automation and workflows?
Speaker #0
First of all, remember, we are very passionate and obsessive about trust. So what we decided to do is address the market pretty differently from other voice agents' companies. We created a business directory, a business directory where businesses are listed on public information and where every single page has its own. active and fully working voice AI. So as today, we have 1.8 million voice AI because we have 1.8 million listing pages. And this is free. So what happened very quickly is that we've been very successful into indexing a directory with Google. The reason is because our page are AI focused, which Google loves. And the second thing is that the voice AI on each page creates what's retention and I know I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. When you are browsing online and you spend more than two or three minutes on a page, Google likes it. It likes it a lot. And he says, okay, something is happening there. So I'm going to start indexing that website more. So now we have a website with listing page, voice AI that is indexed very high on Google. So what's happening? People are searching. They find an agent. They interact with the page, but not using forms or chatbots with their voice. And in turn, it creates leads that we send to the business owner, which is in that case, the agent. So now we have a business owner that received a free lead that was not expected. for a directory he never heard from. So he gets interested, right? He says, okay, something's happening there. So I'm going to go and try to see what's happening. The next step for him is to claim his page. Once he claims his page, he can use it as a base and add all the information, which in turn will turn the voice AI even smarter. Now, what do you have? You have a lead generation tool, but you also have a voice AI that is working. on your business that knows your business and that you can test. So now we're building trust, right? You haven't paid a dime, but you can interact with your own voice AI. You can train it by putting all the information in the accurate field pretty easy. And now you have a voice AI that is working. And the last step, which is subscribing to our service, is having a dedicated phone line that has the voice AI, potential connection to WhatsApp, the widget on your website, by the way, that creates more retention. and better indexing. But the idea, again, Kevin, is not to replace the agent. The idea is the agent needs to be off on the weekend. He's on an airplane. He's out at night. You know, every single missed opportunity is closing that is missed. And you cannot do that 24-7. You cannot speak 32 languages. You cannot also. at the same emotional level on Monday morning that you have on Saturday night, which AI can do. Because remember what I told you earlier, the level of technology here is so mature that voice AI can detect the emotion of the user and interact with the user the way it needs to be interacted. If he's upset, you're going to calm him down. And so we have a whole set of lead generation. that is created with the voice AI, that is one using from spam filtering. And believe me, that's something that's very useful for agents. Because when you start getting attention online, like agents do, you start also receive tons of spam calls. And you do not like that, right? So what do you do? You put your phone on answering machine, you put it aside while you're doing a visit. It doesn't work. You need to be on spot because you do not want to miss the one call. that's going to change your day. All those things, filtering, treating information, and sending leads, sending appointments, visits, all those things can be done. But again, we do not think that it should reply 24-7. Just when you need it, transfer the phone to the virtual phone line, let the AI handle it, you will receive a message or a four-by-four call if it's an emergency, and then pick up back the line and you're back on the job.
Speaker #2
This episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group. Pine Financial is a private lender specializing in short-term rehab lending to real estate investors. Got a property that needs some love? We can help. We are able to offer funding solutions because we raise private money from individual investors. With more than 15 years of experience, Pine offers passive investors an alternative that provides stability, consistency, and security to your portfolio. If you like real estate but want to avoid the ups and downs and effort, A Pine Mortgage Fund could be a perfect fit for you. Accredited investors will experience an 8% preferred return and profit sharing. Diversify your portfolio out of Wall Street and into Main Street with a Pine Financial Group Fund. To get more information at pinefinancialgroup.com. That's pinefinancialgroup.com. This is insane. So I got to say, I'm probably a little bit behind on AI, Lawrence, and probably more than even our listeners. So when I hear this, it's just like, it's, it's like mind blowing to me. So let me make sure I got what you just said. So a voice agent, your voice agent will respond to my clients and just have a conversation with them, just like chat or autopilot or any of these, it would be like a conversation in my voice, in any language that they speak. And it'll dictate like their mood, their. it'll match their emotional state, I guess. And so this is exactly what it is. This will help convert more clients. And I could turn it on and off at any time. Why isn't everybody doing this?
Speaker #0
My answer is very simple. Do the math. Do the math. You know, I mean, you take our solution. It costs $59 a month. 100 minutes calls, 110 minutes. There's absolutely no reason that you don't use it 30 hours per month, you know, and maybe receive four phone calls that will change that amount from $59 to a commission of $30,000. That absolutely, it's a no-brainer. The only thing is the technology is so mature and the gap with the technology makes it so far away that we only need to build trust. It's not about technology. It's not about how nice the voice sounds. It's not about having the experience that we work. It's about building trust. This is, you know, I always like to say this is like a plane pilot. You know, while everybody at the back is looking at the stars, you have to look at the instruments to make sure the plane lands. That's what we do at Get Obliv. And Let me tell you, you were talking about funnels. Again, any field you're working on, we all have the same problem. So what we've created is a funnel where you can immediately enter your company information. If we find your information, you will have in less than 30 seconds your voice AI that you can interact with, already free. I think this is how you build trust. Do not ask people for money. Do not ask people for commitment. We don't need that. We believe in our product. Ask for people to test you and then tell them, do the math.
Speaker #2
Okay. So build trust. We're not tricking the clients into thinking it's actually us talking to them, right? If I call in, is there like a disclosure to say you're talking to a robot right now? But it sounds like Kevin.
Speaker #0
That's a great question, Kevin. And let me answer you in two points. First of all, if we take a broader aspect of AI, I'm a firm believer that the future of AI is disclosing that you're using AI. Not because the business wants it, but because the user will need it. You see how it's growing now. All the images, the video generation, it's so perfect. I think we will be, as a species, looking for flaws again. You know, we would not like it. I don't like it. So we need to disclose that you're using AI. And when you get to talk about voice AI, it's even more relevant, simply because, as today, we have the technology at GetOrBlick and at all the other companies, by the way, to clone voice. I could clone your voice in 30 minutes, Kevin, and I could have your voice answering the call. We do not want that. You know why? Let's say you've been working with a customer five years ago. He was happy with you. He gives you a call. He's looking to buy a house. He answers, and he hears your voice. He trusts you, right? Then he starts engaging, and he doesn't know he's talking with an AI. But believe me, after five minutes, after two calls, he will know that he's talking with an AI and trust. will be broken. We do not want that. So that's specifically the case where technology goes beyond trust in what we're trying to build. And in a more general aspect, that's why I tell everyone that comes to me about AI. They say, listen, I'm overwhelmed. I opened X, I opened Instagram. I received hundreds of posts about the new person that using new shiny agents that is making $20 million dollars and 4 million followers. How do I put that? I don't know. I tell, you know what? Even if you use an agent or a tool that's six months old, there's a strong chance that it's already pretty good and pretty enough for what you're doing. So don't get overwhelmed with AI. Choose what's work for you and stick to it.
Speaker #2
Yeah, I feel the same that how you just described whoever the phantom person you were talking to. I get a little overwhelmed and I look at this and it's well, I'm even here now. I've been using chat. And so I uploaded my books and a lot of my articles and newsletters. And so now it knows me, it knows my business and it answers questions to me, like telling me who my kids names, right? It's a little scary, but it knows me and that's kind of nice. And now I'm hearing, oh, no, no, chat's not good. Don't use chat. It's Claude. You got to go use Claude. I'm like, what am I doing starting all over here? So you're right. It is a little overwhelming. So what's a piece of advice to a listener? Like that's like me, that's a little afraid of it.
Speaker #0
I usually compare AI to money. Let me tell you why. I think both are currencies. Money is a currency that can buy you properties, can buy you commodities, and can allow you to hire resources, right? Well, AI is the same. AI is a token that can allow you to buy knowledge, to buy agent resources, which are pretty close to human resources, and create growth. like money. There's a second aspect why AI is like money. AI and money, both of them by themselves are neutral. They're neither good nor bad. Take money. Take a good person that doesn't have money. He becomes rich tomorrow, he will be even a better person. Now, if he's not a good person without money, he will get only worse once he gets rich. You know that thing, right? Well, it's the same with AI. It's not about AI doing bad things. It's about who you are and how you're using it. And at the end of the day, we've been around mathematics forever, and that won't disappear. But AI in itself is not dangerous. I could say that it makes me a better worker, for sure. And in certain aspects, what you just mentioned, it makes you a better person, too, if you decide to. So, I mean, before thinking what AI is and how risky it is, probably we should all think about ourselves and the state of mind we are in. Because if we're in a good state of mind and we have... the ambition to do good things, AI will only fulfill those ambitions.
Speaker #2
Yeah. For us, for Pine, we understand that AI, I mean, everything's going that direction, right? So you're either going to do it or you're going to fall off a cliff, right? So it is scary and we have to embrace it and use it. So getting someone like you on the podcast on this episode is fantastic because I just learned a lot. I didn't even know what a voice agent... was. I got to be honest with you. I've never heard that term before. So that's all really cool.
Speaker #0
Well, you know, Kevin, I'm almost certain that five years from now, 80% of the company will have replaced their answering machine or chatbot with OS AI. And 10 years from now, it will be the equivalent of that. So how do you fill that gap from hardly anyone today, maybe 5% and the biggest company, to having everybody using that? You have to build trust. You have to make sure people understand that if they do not do it today, their competitor will. So at any new technology that is already mature, adopt it. Try it. Engage with it. It will only bring positive things.
Speaker #2
And you can outsource a lot of this, like your company, for example, for this one small piece. But there's AI implementers out there, right?
Speaker #0
There are tons of it. There's so many beautiful tools that we develop every day. Again, again, I'm very much telling people, be aware of the overwhelming effect again. But if you talk about, okay, let me put it this way. If you think about integrating AI in your workflow, I would not discuss the people that are offering the service about AI. I would tell them, how strong is your data set? How is your workflow? Do you have automation? Those are the things that need to be. solid. AI needs self. The more you work with AI, the thinner the prompting gets. That's something that people don't understand. They think that you need to write 10,000 lines to get a good prompt. That's totally inaccurate. You need to have 10,000 lines of data, 10,000 lines of flows and automation. But as far as the LLM, you have to let it do its job, and its job is very separated from whatever the company is. So address the company to how they treat data more than... agents.
Speaker #2
All right. I'm going to ask you a question that's going to sound probably bizarre to you, but I'm just really curious about this. Our oldest son, he's 19. He's going to college right now, Lauren, and he wants to study law. I happen to think that there's a lot of risk in that profession right now for the reasons we're talking about on this show. I know I'm not necessarily, I am sharing with him that I'm concerned and we should add some AI classes into your law degree. But what do you think the future is going to look like for some of these white collar jobs with all the stuff that you're talking about?
Speaker #0
I think that people, and I'm going to be very blunt and maybe some people will not appreciate what I say, but I'd rather say than not. I think that people that will lose their job kind of deserve it. If you work in a big company, mid-level. that you spend half your week near the coffee machine or water cooler discussing the politics of the company, you're not a worker. You haven't built much. So yes, you are at risk. I'm sorry to tell you that you're going to lose your job, but that's a fact. Now, if you're doing anything there, or as a lawyer, or as a doctor, it will only create growth for you. AI will only make it faster for you to grow, to even hire more people, and probably create wealth. So no. that's absolutely a problem. He can become a lawyer if it is passion. I mean, at the end of the day, I have three kids myself, you know, if his passion is low. Let him do low, but keep telling him that you want to be the lawyer that use AI. You do not want to be the lawyer that go against AI because one's going to lose, the other's going to win.
Speaker #2
Be the lawyer that does use AI, but make sure you tell your client you're using it. Because there's been some news articles that I've read where that hasn't been disclosed and some people have gotten themselves in a bit of trouble. So back to the disclosure piece. Okay. Is there anything else you want to share about your company or AI with our listener?
Speaker #0
Well, first of all, Kevin, I want to thank you because I really love doing podcasts and having a discussion around a very specific field makes it even more interesting. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker #2
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And as far as getoblick.com, again, any business owner, any realtor, any agent, any broker can just go there, open the listing page in less than two minutes and have his voice AI fully working for free. So have there, have fun, enjoy the free voice AI. And if you want to ask me anything, you have a footer on getherbig.com with tons of social media, just send a message there and make sure to read it and reply to it. All right.
Speaker #2
And if we call the number, we may or may not be talking to you. All right. I want to go through my notes. I learned a lot here. So I want to go through what I wrote down and what I took away from the episode. And then I want you to just... Share some color, add some color. If there's anything I missed, if you could just do that for us and then we'll make sure we get your contact information, of course, right before we wrap up. So we talked about your three decades of experience and you've said that AI has been around for a really long time. It's just more visible now because of chat and some of these other conversational models. They've been around for about three years, you said. And I gotta tell you, that Copilot one is cool. I actually talked to it on my phone and it... It walks me through. It's knowledge. Exactly. It teaches me so much. But yes, I wrote down AI is way older, more established. It's really about making the user a problem solver. So to have the most success with AI, you have to use it to solve problems. And if you could do that, you'll see a lot of success. What are you doing with the opportunities? I wrote down. So how are the opportunities getting captured? AI could be a fantastic way to do that if you're on a plane or. on a weekend getaway, or you're not able to answer your phone. You want to grab, in marketing, we want to grab attention. We've always been taught that. But you said it's more than that. It's about your voice, your personality. We want to build trust. We got to keep that safe, keep your personality safe. And we're doing that with a lot of the AI tools out there. AI is about data, automation, and workflows. Those are the three most important things. And then later you said, if you're going to be looking at AI providers or vendors, ask them, how strong is your data set? How good is your automation? Those are the questions to be asking. Again, you build trust. I wrote that down again because you did say that multiple times throughout the episode. And AI is like cash. It could buy you things. It could buy you agents. It could buy you knowledge. So think of it like that. It's a currency. You or a competitor. Oh, I wrote down you or a competitor saying, look, you're going to embrace it and use it or your competitor is. So you might as well go ahead and do that. And if you need help. There are people out there that will help you, someone like you, or we talked about AI implementers. There's forums out there I've been following a little bit. And then we talked about, are you going to lose your job to AI? Are you a white collar and you're going to lose it? And I loved what you said. I know it's not going to be super popular and it might offend some people, but you're absolutely right. If you lose your job, it's your fault. You do deserve that because the opportunity to jump on. the path to success with AI is now. And if you're not going to do it, you're right. You got to take responsibility for that. AI can make it better. It's not going to make you lose your job. It'll make your job better. So what I'm going to do with our oldest is talk to him again. I'm going to keep talking to him about this. Yes, you want to be a lawyer. That's fantastic. It's going to be hard to be a lawyer and just write contracts. So let's think about what are some other ways you can get into that profession and use AI. AI can maybe write the contract for you, for example. So those are my takeaways. Get Oblique, $59 a month, but there's a free version. That's fantastic. So what am I missing here? What else did I not write down that I should have?
Speaker #0
If you decide to work with AI today, apply the rule firm that you've been applying in work for decades. And one that I apply every single day is arbitrage with quality and speed. Okay? Obviously, you will never have the perfect product, but then you will need to be able to deliver at a quite... fast pace so you know if you decide to use ai do i need to spend ten thousand dollars or could i wait and spend less no it's always that arbitrage and you know it better than i do the same in real estate so you know keep that in mind always arbitrage is it good enough for me do i need to spend more money do i spend more time no it's good enough let's go love it how do we get hold of you get our big.com uh again the footer you got all social media linkedin Instagram, WhatsApp, I'm all there. And that's me, by the way, responding.
Speaker #1
It's not a robot, it's you. All right, so Get Oblique. It's G-E-T-O-B-L-I-C. We'll put all that in the show notes. Lauren, thank you so much for being here. I know you're very busy and you chose to jump on here with me for the last 30-ish minutes. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much. Have a best day, Kevin. And thanks for everyone.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And for the listener, you have other podcasts you could be tuning into, but you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am incredibly grateful. Thank you. And I hope you make this day a great one. All right. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh, yeah. And tell a friend.

Description

AI isn’t coming—it’s already here. The question is: are you using it, or are you falling behind?

In this episode of the Real Estate Educators Podcast, Kevin Amolsch sits down with Laurent Cohen to break down how AI is transforming real estate, lead generation, and business operations.

They also dive into the biggest misconceptions about AI, why most people feel overwhelmed, and how to actually start using it today—even if you’re not “tech-savvy.”

If you’re in real estate and not thinking about AI yet, this episode is your wake-up call.

TIMESTAMPS

Connect with Laurent Cohen:
Website: GetOblic.com
Explore voice AI tools, lead generation, and automation solutions for real estate professionals.

Learn more about Pine Financial Group:
pinefinancialgroup.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
If you want to be successful integrating AI, you have to be a problem solver. But if you have experience and if you've been here long enough to solve enough problems, AI is for you. I'm a firm believer that the future of AI is disclosing that you're using AI. Not because the business wants it, but because the user will need it. I usually compare AI to money. Let me tell you why. I think both. are currencies. Money is a currency that can buy you properties, can buy you commodities, and can allow you to hire resources. Well, AI is the same. AI is a token that can allow you to buy knowledge, to buy agent resources, which are pretty close to human resources, and create growth, like money.
Speaker #1
We were in negotiations for investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money.
Speaker #2
What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back. Thank you so much for joining us. We're having a great time with this podcast. We're helping real estate investors and real estate educators. Are you out there building a portfolio? Maybe you're fixing and flipping, or are you providing content to other investors? This is the podcast for you. I have a little bit of a unique guest here today. Normally, we talk... all about real estate, but today, you know what? It's impacting real estate, AI, technology. We don't want to be afraid of it. We want to embrace it. How can we do that? So, Lawrence Cohen, you've been in business or starting and running businesses for three decades, mostly around technology and AI. AI is probably huge in your business right now. You're the founder of Get Oblique, which we're going to talk a little bit about today, to help real estate agents and real estate investors in their business. So welcome to the show.
Speaker #0
Thank you for having me, Kevin. It's a real pleasure. And there's a lot to be said about AI and especially how AI can help the real estate world.
Speaker #2
Well, let's go back because you're not really in the real estate space. You're more in the technology space. But you found quickly, it sounds like, that real estate really needed what you were offering. So how are you related to real estate and why real estate?
Speaker #0
Well, you know what? It actually came out the other way. As we were building GetOblik and addressing essentially small businesses, we built a directory. And we started to have requests, create listings from real estate agents out of the blue. Not that we did not see how we could help them, but we didn't prioritize that field in the first place. So, you know, it's a matter of serendipity, opportunity. and understanding exactly what's needed. So this is how I can stumble upon your great show. And I found out a real gap happening in the industry that AI can really reveal.
Speaker #2
Okay, well, let's get into that gap. Now, when I hear AI, I got to be honest, Laurent, I'm thinking, chat GPT, let me ask it a question. It's going to go get me an answer. But this is much more... I guess, involved than that. So tell me a little bit about what you're seeing.
Speaker #0
Well, first of all, what you're addressing here, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cloud, they are what we call conversational agent LLMs, models. These appear around three years ago, as everybody noticed by now. They implied a huge change in our life, but AI has been here for a long more. It's been there. It's very mature. It goes way beyond the conversational aspect of it. Now, the fact that it becomes conversational turns the technology into something that is much more accessible to anyone. Let me explain why. As it turns out, AI and conversational agents allow to turn users not into coders. or operators, but into problem solvers. If you want to be successful integrating AI, you have to be a problem solver. It's not about being the 20-year-old young gun coder in a Silicon Valley anymore. Those are great, don't get me wrong. But if you have experience and if you've been here long enough to solve enough problems, AI is for you. Now, if you start focusing on all the aspects of the real estate agent investors, you figure out that the past, I'd say, 20 years, most of them have been focusing. on creating opportunities, right? Advertising, communicating online, create your own personality, even becoming influencers. But a gap has been created in not creating your opportunity, but making sure you're not missing the ones that are coming to you. And that is a totally different thing. We've all been there. I mean, in my private life, I've known a few of... people in industry and you always see them with a couple of phone in hand you know always replying while they're doing visits while they're around town you know i would not dare to say that they don't like the phone uh because that's their main tool of operation but that can be something that can be pretty cumbersome right uh and uh there are solutions for that now if you go beyond the phone in every single aspect of what you're operating in the year industry, AI as a tool, and we can discuss that further, can be of tremendous help for growth.
Speaker #2
Yeah, I want to get into that. I was just in a meeting with my company today and we were talking about this. So this is an issue for every business. We talk about the funnel, right? You want to get your leads into your funnel and you work them down into a closed transaction or closed sale. So somewhere in that. funnel, there's got to be a point where it's a human being talking to a human being, I think, at least in real estate, it's still very much like that. So we spend all of this money in our marketing department to generate these leads that we drop into the funnel and some of them fall out. They never get talked to. That's what you're solving here, right?
Speaker #0
Yes, that's what we're solving. Let me get a little bit scoping out. We've all been taught for the past 20 years that attention is the real currency of any operator. You want to grab the attention. You want to be front and center of every transaction. This is how you build what is your voice. And when I'm saying voice here, I'm not talking about the talking voice. I'm talking about who you are, your personality. And this is what needs to be secured. It's all about trust. Trust, you know, every single vertical, every single job is the same. It's all about what you've been creating, the trust that you've created with the people you are working with. And this needs to be safe. And this is how you have to treat AI. AI is obviously not here to replace you. But AI, at the end of the day, is not about prompting. And this is why people do not understand. probably are afraid of AI. Prompting is a single specific aspect of AI. But if you've been working on AI, you very quickly understand that it's all about data, automation, and workflows. Those things existed long before AI, right? And I'm talking with someone working in the real estate industry. You know about data. This is exactly what you've been working on for the past 20, 30 years you've been in activity. So if you understand... that the game is still the same. It's about data, workflow, and automation. You do not have to worry about LLM and prompting an agent. This is just another layer on top of what you've built.
Speaker #2
So how does GitOblique do that? This is how you, when you're capturing leads and you don't want any like lead leakage, I guess I could use that term. I'm not sure if that's the appropriate term here or not, but... How does that fit in with the data automation and workflows?
Speaker #0
First of all, remember, we are very passionate and obsessive about trust. So what we decided to do is address the market pretty differently from other voice agents' companies. We created a business directory, a business directory where businesses are listed on public information and where every single page has its own. active and fully working voice AI. So as today, we have 1.8 million voice AI because we have 1.8 million listing pages. And this is free. So what happened very quickly is that we've been very successful into indexing a directory with Google. The reason is because our page are AI focused, which Google loves. And the second thing is that the voice AI on each page creates what's retention and I know I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. When you are browsing online and you spend more than two or three minutes on a page, Google likes it. It likes it a lot. And he says, okay, something is happening there. So I'm going to start indexing that website more. So now we have a website with listing page, voice AI that is indexed very high on Google. So what's happening? People are searching. They find an agent. They interact with the page, but not using forms or chatbots with their voice. And in turn, it creates leads that we send to the business owner, which is in that case, the agent. So now we have a business owner that received a free lead that was not expected. for a directory he never heard from. So he gets interested, right? He says, okay, something's happening there. So I'm going to go and try to see what's happening. The next step for him is to claim his page. Once he claims his page, he can use it as a base and add all the information, which in turn will turn the voice AI even smarter. Now, what do you have? You have a lead generation tool, but you also have a voice AI that is working. on your business that knows your business and that you can test. So now we're building trust, right? You haven't paid a dime, but you can interact with your own voice AI. You can train it by putting all the information in the accurate field pretty easy. And now you have a voice AI that is working. And the last step, which is subscribing to our service, is having a dedicated phone line that has the voice AI, potential connection to WhatsApp, the widget on your website, by the way, that creates more retention. and better indexing. But the idea, again, Kevin, is not to replace the agent. The idea is the agent needs to be off on the weekend. He's on an airplane. He's out at night. You know, every single missed opportunity is closing that is missed. And you cannot do that 24-7. You cannot speak 32 languages. You cannot also. at the same emotional level on Monday morning that you have on Saturday night, which AI can do. Because remember what I told you earlier, the level of technology here is so mature that voice AI can detect the emotion of the user and interact with the user the way it needs to be interacted. If he's upset, you're going to calm him down. And so we have a whole set of lead generation. that is created with the voice AI, that is one using from spam filtering. And believe me, that's something that's very useful for agents. Because when you start getting attention online, like agents do, you start also receive tons of spam calls. And you do not like that, right? So what do you do? You put your phone on answering machine, you put it aside while you're doing a visit. It doesn't work. You need to be on spot because you do not want to miss the one call. that's going to change your day. All those things, filtering, treating information, and sending leads, sending appointments, visits, all those things can be done. But again, we do not think that it should reply 24-7. Just when you need it, transfer the phone to the virtual phone line, let the AI handle it, you will receive a message or a four-by-four call if it's an emergency, and then pick up back the line and you're back on the job.
Speaker #2
This episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group. Pine Financial is a private lender specializing in short-term rehab lending to real estate investors. Got a property that needs some love? We can help. We are able to offer funding solutions because we raise private money from individual investors. With more than 15 years of experience, Pine offers passive investors an alternative that provides stability, consistency, and security to your portfolio. If you like real estate but want to avoid the ups and downs and effort, A Pine Mortgage Fund could be a perfect fit for you. Accredited investors will experience an 8% preferred return and profit sharing. Diversify your portfolio out of Wall Street and into Main Street with a Pine Financial Group Fund. To get more information at pinefinancialgroup.com. That's pinefinancialgroup.com. This is insane. So I got to say, I'm probably a little bit behind on AI, Lawrence, and probably more than even our listeners. So when I hear this, it's just like, it's, it's like mind blowing to me. So let me make sure I got what you just said. So a voice agent, your voice agent will respond to my clients and just have a conversation with them, just like chat or autopilot or any of these, it would be like a conversation in my voice, in any language that they speak. And it'll dictate like their mood, their. it'll match their emotional state, I guess. And so this is exactly what it is. This will help convert more clients. And I could turn it on and off at any time. Why isn't everybody doing this?
Speaker #0
My answer is very simple. Do the math. Do the math. You know, I mean, you take our solution. It costs $59 a month. 100 minutes calls, 110 minutes. There's absolutely no reason that you don't use it 30 hours per month, you know, and maybe receive four phone calls that will change that amount from $59 to a commission of $30,000. That absolutely, it's a no-brainer. The only thing is the technology is so mature and the gap with the technology makes it so far away that we only need to build trust. It's not about technology. It's not about how nice the voice sounds. It's not about having the experience that we work. It's about building trust. This is, you know, I always like to say this is like a plane pilot. You know, while everybody at the back is looking at the stars, you have to look at the instruments to make sure the plane lands. That's what we do at Get Obliv. And Let me tell you, you were talking about funnels. Again, any field you're working on, we all have the same problem. So what we've created is a funnel where you can immediately enter your company information. If we find your information, you will have in less than 30 seconds your voice AI that you can interact with, already free. I think this is how you build trust. Do not ask people for money. Do not ask people for commitment. We don't need that. We believe in our product. Ask for people to test you and then tell them, do the math.
Speaker #2
Okay. So build trust. We're not tricking the clients into thinking it's actually us talking to them, right? If I call in, is there like a disclosure to say you're talking to a robot right now? But it sounds like Kevin.
Speaker #0
That's a great question, Kevin. And let me answer you in two points. First of all, if we take a broader aspect of AI, I'm a firm believer that the future of AI is disclosing that you're using AI. Not because the business wants it, but because the user will need it. You see how it's growing now. All the images, the video generation, it's so perfect. I think we will be, as a species, looking for flaws again. You know, we would not like it. I don't like it. So we need to disclose that you're using AI. And when you get to talk about voice AI, it's even more relevant, simply because, as today, we have the technology at GetOrBlick and at all the other companies, by the way, to clone voice. I could clone your voice in 30 minutes, Kevin, and I could have your voice answering the call. We do not want that. You know why? Let's say you've been working with a customer five years ago. He was happy with you. He gives you a call. He's looking to buy a house. He answers, and he hears your voice. He trusts you, right? Then he starts engaging, and he doesn't know he's talking with an AI. But believe me, after five minutes, after two calls, he will know that he's talking with an AI and trust. will be broken. We do not want that. So that's specifically the case where technology goes beyond trust in what we're trying to build. And in a more general aspect, that's why I tell everyone that comes to me about AI. They say, listen, I'm overwhelmed. I opened X, I opened Instagram. I received hundreds of posts about the new person that using new shiny agents that is making $20 million dollars and 4 million followers. How do I put that? I don't know. I tell, you know what? Even if you use an agent or a tool that's six months old, there's a strong chance that it's already pretty good and pretty enough for what you're doing. So don't get overwhelmed with AI. Choose what's work for you and stick to it.
Speaker #2
Yeah, I feel the same that how you just described whoever the phantom person you were talking to. I get a little overwhelmed and I look at this and it's well, I'm even here now. I've been using chat. And so I uploaded my books and a lot of my articles and newsletters. And so now it knows me, it knows my business and it answers questions to me, like telling me who my kids names, right? It's a little scary, but it knows me and that's kind of nice. And now I'm hearing, oh, no, no, chat's not good. Don't use chat. It's Claude. You got to go use Claude. I'm like, what am I doing starting all over here? So you're right. It is a little overwhelming. So what's a piece of advice to a listener? Like that's like me, that's a little afraid of it.
Speaker #0
I usually compare AI to money. Let me tell you why. I think both are currencies. Money is a currency that can buy you properties, can buy you commodities, and can allow you to hire resources, right? Well, AI is the same. AI is a token that can allow you to buy knowledge, to buy agent resources, which are pretty close to human resources, and create growth. like money. There's a second aspect why AI is like money. AI and money, both of them by themselves are neutral. They're neither good nor bad. Take money. Take a good person that doesn't have money. He becomes rich tomorrow, he will be even a better person. Now, if he's not a good person without money, he will get only worse once he gets rich. You know that thing, right? Well, it's the same with AI. It's not about AI doing bad things. It's about who you are and how you're using it. And at the end of the day, we've been around mathematics forever, and that won't disappear. But AI in itself is not dangerous. I could say that it makes me a better worker, for sure. And in certain aspects, what you just mentioned, it makes you a better person, too, if you decide to. So, I mean, before thinking what AI is and how risky it is, probably we should all think about ourselves and the state of mind we are in. Because if we're in a good state of mind and we have... the ambition to do good things, AI will only fulfill those ambitions.
Speaker #2
Yeah. For us, for Pine, we understand that AI, I mean, everything's going that direction, right? So you're either going to do it or you're going to fall off a cliff, right? So it is scary and we have to embrace it and use it. So getting someone like you on the podcast on this episode is fantastic because I just learned a lot. I didn't even know what a voice agent... was. I got to be honest with you. I've never heard that term before. So that's all really cool.
Speaker #0
Well, you know, Kevin, I'm almost certain that five years from now, 80% of the company will have replaced their answering machine or chatbot with OS AI. And 10 years from now, it will be the equivalent of that. So how do you fill that gap from hardly anyone today, maybe 5% and the biggest company, to having everybody using that? You have to build trust. You have to make sure people understand that if they do not do it today, their competitor will. So at any new technology that is already mature, adopt it. Try it. Engage with it. It will only bring positive things.
Speaker #2
And you can outsource a lot of this, like your company, for example, for this one small piece. But there's AI implementers out there, right?
Speaker #0
There are tons of it. There's so many beautiful tools that we develop every day. Again, again, I'm very much telling people, be aware of the overwhelming effect again. But if you talk about, okay, let me put it this way. If you think about integrating AI in your workflow, I would not discuss the people that are offering the service about AI. I would tell them, how strong is your data set? How is your workflow? Do you have automation? Those are the things that need to be. solid. AI needs self. The more you work with AI, the thinner the prompting gets. That's something that people don't understand. They think that you need to write 10,000 lines to get a good prompt. That's totally inaccurate. You need to have 10,000 lines of data, 10,000 lines of flows and automation. But as far as the LLM, you have to let it do its job, and its job is very separated from whatever the company is. So address the company to how they treat data more than... agents.
Speaker #2
All right. I'm going to ask you a question that's going to sound probably bizarre to you, but I'm just really curious about this. Our oldest son, he's 19. He's going to college right now, Lauren, and he wants to study law. I happen to think that there's a lot of risk in that profession right now for the reasons we're talking about on this show. I know I'm not necessarily, I am sharing with him that I'm concerned and we should add some AI classes into your law degree. But what do you think the future is going to look like for some of these white collar jobs with all the stuff that you're talking about?
Speaker #0
I think that people, and I'm going to be very blunt and maybe some people will not appreciate what I say, but I'd rather say than not. I think that people that will lose their job kind of deserve it. If you work in a big company, mid-level. that you spend half your week near the coffee machine or water cooler discussing the politics of the company, you're not a worker. You haven't built much. So yes, you are at risk. I'm sorry to tell you that you're going to lose your job, but that's a fact. Now, if you're doing anything there, or as a lawyer, or as a doctor, it will only create growth for you. AI will only make it faster for you to grow, to even hire more people, and probably create wealth. So no. that's absolutely a problem. He can become a lawyer if it is passion. I mean, at the end of the day, I have three kids myself, you know, if his passion is low. Let him do low, but keep telling him that you want to be the lawyer that use AI. You do not want to be the lawyer that go against AI because one's going to lose, the other's going to win.
Speaker #2
Be the lawyer that does use AI, but make sure you tell your client you're using it. Because there's been some news articles that I've read where that hasn't been disclosed and some people have gotten themselves in a bit of trouble. So back to the disclosure piece. Okay. Is there anything else you want to share about your company or AI with our listener?
Speaker #0
Well, first of all, Kevin, I want to thank you because I really love doing podcasts and having a discussion around a very specific field makes it even more interesting. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker #2
Yeah.
Speaker #0
And as far as getoblick.com, again, any business owner, any realtor, any agent, any broker can just go there, open the listing page in less than two minutes and have his voice AI fully working for free. So have there, have fun, enjoy the free voice AI. And if you want to ask me anything, you have a footer on getherbig.com with tons of social media, just send a message there and make sure to read it and reply to it. All right.
Speaker #2
And if we call the number, we may or may not be talking to you. All right. I want to go through my notes. I learned a lot here. So I want to go through what I wrote down and what I took away from the episode. And then I want you to just... Share some color, add some color. If there's anything I missed, if you could just do that for us and then we'll make sure we get your contact information, of course, right before we wrap up. So we talked about your three decades of experience and you've said that AI has been around for a really long time. It's just more visible now because of chat and some of these other conversational models. They've been around for about three years, you said. And I gotta tell you, that Copilot one is cool. I actually talked to it on my phone and it... It walks me through. It's knowledge. Exactly. It teaches me so much. But yes, I wrote down AI is way older, more established. It's really about making the user a problem solver. So to have the most success with AI, you have to use it to solve problems. And if you could do that, you'll see a lot of success. What are you doing with the opportunities? I wrote down. So how are the opportunities getting captured? AI could be a fantastic way to do that if you're on a plane or. on a weekend getaway, or you're not able to answer your phone. You want to grab, in marketing, we want to grab attention. We've always been taught that. But you said it's more than that. It's about your voice, your personality. We want to build trust. We got to keep that safe, keep your personality safe. And we're doing that with a lot of the AI tools out there. AI is about data, automation, and workflows. Those are the three most important things. And then later you said, if you're going to be looking at AI providers or vendors, ask them, how strong is your data set? How good is your automation? Those are the questions to be asking. Again, you build trust. I wrote that down again because you did say that multiple times throughout the episode. And AI is like cash. It could buy you things. It could buy you agents. It could buy you knowledge. So think of it like that. It's a currency. You or a competitor. Oh, I wrote down you or a competitor saying, look, you're going to embrace it and use it or your competitor is. So you might as well go ahead and do that. And if you need help. There are people out there that will help you, someone like you, or we talked about AI implementers. There's forums out there I've been following a little bit. And then we talked about, are you going to lose your job to AI? Are you a white collar and you're going to lose it? And I loved what you said. I know it's not going to be super popular and it might offend some people, but you're absolutely right. If you lose your job, it's your fault. You do deserve that because the opportunity to jump on. the path to success with AI is now. And if you're not going to do it, you're right. You got to take responsibility for that. AI can make it better. It's not going to make you lose your job. It'll make your job better. So what I'm going to do with our oldest is talk to him again. I'm going to keep talking to him about this. Yes, you want to be a lawyer. That's fantastic. It's going to be hard to be a lawyer and just write contracts. So let's think about what are some other ways you can get into that profession and use AI. AI can maybe write the contract for you, for example. So those are my takeaways. Get Oblique, $59 a month, but there's a free version. That's fantastic. So what am I missing here? What else did I not write down that I should have?
Speaker #0
If you decide to work with AI today, apply the rule firm that you've been applying in work for decades. And one that I apply every single day is arbitrage with quality and speed. Okay? Obviously, you will never have the perfect product, but then you will need to be able to deliver at a quite... fast pace so you know if you decide to use ai do i need to spend ten thousand dollars or could i wait and spend less no it's always that arbitrage and you know it better than i do the same in real estate so you know keep that in mind always arbitrage is it good enough for me do i need to spend more money do i spend more time no it's good enough let's go love it how do we get hold of you get our big.com uh again the footer you got all social media linkedin Instagram, WhatsApp, I'm all there. And that's me, by the way, responding.
Speaker #1
It's not a robot, it's you. All right, so Get Oblique. It's G-E-T-O-B-L-I-C. We'll put all that in the show notes. Lauren, thank you so much for being here. I know you're very busy and you chose to jump on here with me for the last 30-ish minutes. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker #0
Thank you so much. Have a best day, Kevin. And thanks for everyone.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And for the listener, you have other podcasts you could be tuning into, but you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am incredibly grateful. Thank you. And I hope you make this day a great one. All right. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh, yeah. And tell a friend.

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