Rachel (00:01.016)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Office Hours with Kevin. Hi Kevin. How's it going?

Kevin (00:05.432)
Hello. I thought I should make an appearance for office hours with Kevin.

Rachel (00:10.094)
It's helpful. It would be a lot to carry on my own.

Kevin (00:13.356)
I was going to send my AI avatar to do it instead because it's been a long day.

Rachel (00:18.166)
You know, the AI avatar probably has a more convincing Kevin voice than me.

Kevin (00:22.638)
What are we talking about?

Rachel (00:24.0)
Awesome, although it would say some suspicious things, I'm sure. All right, so in this marathon of meetings for you today, I'm excited for you to just talk even more on today's topic. For those of you who are dropping into office hours for the first time, this is a segment where Kevin, our resident seasoned pro marketing guru, talks to me a much...

Kevin (00:46.648)
No, no, I thought we were going to get through that without a mention of being a guru. Darn.

Rachel (00:51.694)
Not today. Yeah, I am not the guru. So this is a segment where you all get to come in and see me learn in real time from Kevin's experiences, observations, the unique connections he puts together about things he sees going on out in the world. And I think you'll have a great time doing that today, Kevin. He has no idea, by the way, ever what our topics are. He refuses to be given any insight.

Kevin (01:15.512)
She keeps asking, she's like, what do you think we should do this time? How about this thing? I'm like, I don't want to know. Because once I know, then I start thinking about all the different ways it could go. And then the prepared side of me is like, I mean, I've already thought about this for six years, but maybe I should spend another couple hours preparing. It's just better not to know. Just jump in.

Rachel (01:21.634)
Yeah, so this.

Rachel (01:37.28)
Yeah, we'd probably have five hour long episodes too if you had time to prepare. So awesome. Well, let's see what you do with this one today. This is going to take a little bit more context to explain than some of our past episodes. In just a few words, I would say this episode is going to be about AI, uncertainty and messaging. But specifically how I got here, Kevin posted in All Access, our member only group for DYC about

Kevin (01:42.018)
Yeah, it'd be a problem.

Rachel (02:04.821)
AI and that projecting too much certainty is a bad idea right now for marketers. That was something you said in one of your last videos and that really struck a chord with me. It got me thinking about the tension that marketers might find themselves in right now between what kind of uncertainty leadership is feeling and experiencing versus what kind of uncertainty customers, home buyers are experiencing and therefore how leadership and customers might view the idea of certainty differently.

and therefore come up with different ideas of what messaging is going to work. So I want to talk today about balancing those two audiences. And I think AI plays a lot into this in a certain way because I think leaders and customers are using AI differently, thinking about AI differently. And we see it show up in marketing in ways that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. thinking about all of that, Kevin, where do you want to start?

Kevin (03:00.142)
That's a lot. Or do I want to start? I think I need a question, but no, I think that was a good setup. I don't know where the question was in there. Where I can immediately start to riff though is. Yeah, this this idea of certainty is so alluring to us. And yet if you have complete certainty in something, it's meaning almost by definition becomes less to us.

Rachel (03:09.835)
Yeah, okay, so.

Kevin (03:30.105)
There's this weird dynamic of the more certain I am of exactly how something's going to play out, the more I feel like I've already attained it or already have it or I undervalue it. I don't treat it the way it should be treated. And there's this other somewhat connected idea, I think, of life is completely uncertain overall, which is why we hopefully stay alert and aware of what's happening around us.

because we don't know what's gonna happen. I was talking to a team of, I think there was 15 or 16 marketers in the room with a larger builder out on the west half of the United States. And we were talking about artificial intelligence. And just this idea of how do you know...

How do you know when you can project? Let me back up a second. A big part of using AI is trying to create certainty by projecting what is going to happen in the future. And so they had been talking to different technology companies and all around this idea of creating certainty and being able to forward project accuracy to the letter. And I said, yeah, I've talked to a lot of those same companies. A lot of them have really good people.

But ultimately, their pitch is that they're going to provide this insight and certainty into what is the next quarter or year going to look like in terms of your sales projections or closing projections. And the asshole in me just wants to say, how do you factor in potential nuclear war or pandemics into that forward projection? And I say, like the jerk in me asked that question because of course,

Rachel (05:11.703)
Yeah.

Kevin (05:17.034)
It's implied that there's no way you could. is no black swan events like a nuclear event or a pandemic are defined as a black swan event because no one can see them coming. And in fact, there's this alternate kind of reality, which is that the thing that everyone is worried about and is worried about happening is also becoming less likely to happen with

the more people who are worried about it. So it's always the thing that you're not paying attention to that gets you. And there's an unlimited amount of things you could be paying attention to. And so the idea that you could model with even the greatest AI system, exactly what's going to happen with certainty is like, and I've said this to a lot of those data providers or technology companies, Rachel, it's like, why don't you just say it'll be like 30 % more accurate?

Rachel (05:47.725)
you

Kevin (06:15.598)
And they're like, well, that doesn't sound like it's enough. I go, trust me, the people who know would be thrilled to pay a couple hundred bucks extra a month or a couple thousand dollars to be 30 % better.

Rachel (06:16.418)
Yeah.

Rachel (06:29.579)
Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay, I think that's a good grounding and just sort of the philosophical ideas.

Kevin (06:35.598)
Well, that was just my yin to your yang of like, you toss out a bunch of stuff. I just tossed out a bunch of stuff and now you got to bring us back to something.

Rachel (06:42.721)
I love it. Okay. I'm going to bring us back starting here. So sticking with AI, how do you think CEOs or owners think people are using it versus how the leaders themselves might be using AI in their day-to-day lives running a business?

Kevin (07:01.74)
Well, okay, I'm gonna come back to that. But I think the important thing for everyone listening is to follow along with this same test that I gave to this marketing crew the other day, which was in your personal life, how much AI are you using, number one? And then number two, how much are you investing in it? So think there's this weird thing with a lot of team members where they're very excited.

implement AI tools and technology in the company they're a part of with the company's money. And then you say, how much are you paying for AI tools that you use in your personal life? I don't. I use all the free versions of everything. And I think, well, wouldn't you like there have been months where I have spent $500 on AI tools personally out of my own pocket, not a business expense. I just pay for it. I currently.

If I had to guess, I'm probably closer to the 250 mark right now.

And for everyone has different things that they should be considering using AI tools for in their personal life based upon your own weaknesses or the blind spots that you've become aware of over time. So I say this in jest, Melanie, if you've ever listened to any of these, that's my wife. Melanie needs to invest in an AI tool to help her manage her calendar. She has four kids, she has a husband.

dog who has terrible allergies and gets sick and seems to have to go to the vet all the time. She's got a bunch of friends who want to get together and go on walks and talk about life and help support each other. She's got personal events that, like, she needs an AI tool to help her organize her calendar better.

Kevin (08:47.624)
For me, I love using tools to help manage my email inbox is better. And so that kind of carries over to your question of how do people think it's being used in their company and then how are they using it on their own? I had someone who is very smart, has been around in the business for probably two decades. And she said, I just loaded in all of my sales data.

across the company for the last six years into chat GPT. And I had it look for trends and tell me, know, forward predict over. And that is about as deep as most people are using it. If you, I'm not sure exactly when this comes out, post summit, pre summit, during summit, but I'm gonna be doing a lot of asking people of like, how are you using it? Cause I always find again, I get interesting insights.

Most people are using it to summarize, to write for them, to edit for them, to find patterns, pattern recognition. But that's very different than what owners, division presidents, high level executives think people on, they think that people on their team are using it to get an answer. They envision all of AI to essentially be some form of a glorified Google search that has way more data that it can review.

way more insight into how it relates specifically to your business and gives you an answer. It's like the largest, most powerful magic eight ball ever. And that's a problem because everything that goes into an AI prompt, the context window is the fancier version, all the data you're giving the AI to consider is everything it can consider.

Rachel (10:17.602)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (10:44.11)
It has to absorb all of it. Like if you just drop in the word ketchup for random times, you ever had this experience, Rachel, where you're trying to use voice to text in a message and then a kid or someone walking by and it just enters in some text? You and I know, but that's not what I meant to say there. And when we filter it out before we hit send, hopefully. The LLM has no way to know that. Now it's getting a little bit smarter.

Rachel (10:58.157)
Yeah.

Kevin (11:13.518)
in some recent tests, it'll be like, you seem to be saying the word ketchup a lot, but here's the thing, like a human would never need to know. Did you mean that you're actually looking for ketchup-based restaurants in your search? Like, we wouldn't, like, that was clearly a miss. The only context it can really focus on is every piece of context you give it. So we have to do this pre-filtering, and then when it comes out, we have to do this post-filtering.

because it doesn't know anything that it's saying. It's all predictive based. It doesn't know what the words mean. It only knows the relationship of words and characters to other words and characters based upon analysis of everything that it can absorb in the training phase of how it's created. And so what this means is if you're trying to get an answer, you're just fundamentally using it the wrong way. The better way to think about this,

and how owners and high-level executives should be wanting people to use it. Since we're primarily in audio-based format, I'll draw in your mind's eye a circle, and that is all the potential answers for your problem. It's called the problem space. And the ideal thing to use an AI tool today for is to say, instead of searching through that entire circle for the proverbial needle in the haystack,

I'm going to get rid of 95 % of the circle and tell you, the human expert, that you only need to filter through this 5 % of the circle remaining. That's an incredible boost of efficiency. And what that means is like 5 % of all the potential answers in the world is still more than an answer, but it lets the expert get to the best answer and leans into what

what is awesome about humanity to be able to really understand what's totally relevant. And until AI systems become real and alive, which doesn't mean like, I don't want to go into consciousness and what all that means, but.

Rachel (13:23.309)
It's different podcast.

Kevin (13:25.154)
The most amazing thing about human intelligence is our ability to ignore almost everything all the time. There's an countless amounts of information coming at us and yet we can also pick out the things that are relevant and put them together. And no one has to like input that through a keyboard or voice. And we don't analyze it. And that's why kind of end with this. Cognitive scientists and behavioral scientists have said

Rachel (13:32.802)
Yeah.

Kevin (13:55.043)
that as much as we've claimed to understand how these large language models work, none of the way that they function overlaps to how anything that is alive on planet Earth functions. Meaning we can't look at how an LLM quote unquote thinks and say, that's similar to how aardvarks think or pigeons think or squid or humans. It's not how brains function.

It can mimic it, which is why I call it simulated intelligence, but it can't duplicate it yet. So really, really short answer. They think they're using it to get answers, and the way that the best people are using it is to think faster and better. And they're asking questions like, tell me the weakness in my argument. Ask me more questions until you know enough to truly answer my question.

Rachel (14:32.173)
That's a great

Rachel (14:45.623)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (14:51.032)
Tell me the five potential objections that a CFO would have to my line of thinking. They're using it as an endless exhaustive way to become aware of your own blind spots or ideas that you hadn't considered yet.

Rachel (15:01.781)
Yeah, it's a great intellectual sparring partner for everyone who doesn't have a Kevin just at their disposal in a podcast studio. That's a really good segue back into the topic of uncertainty. Humans do have this great ability to figure out what's relevant, ignore a lot of variables, but in this socioeconomic climate, sociopolitical climate, whatever,

label you want to throw out there, no matter which lens you're applying to our society in this moment we're in, it feels very uncharted, I think, to a lot of people right now. So let's focus back on home buyers for a moment and consumers. How do you think uncertainty is factoring into their decision-making right now?

Kevin (15:41.006)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (15:47.769)
it's huge because biologically the way we work is that we need to be aware of threats around us. That's how we're wired. In advertising we call it pattern interruption. What people expect and then what you insert. And the difference of what they expect causes them to look at it, pay attention, observe it, and then say, is this relevant to me? Like you got my attention, congratulations, step one complete.

Is this relevant to me and what I'm concerned about and how I want to make my life better? If the answer is yes, then I might continue. If it's no, then I give you a little bit of credit for being a Geico ad or a progressive ad that's funny. But if I'm not in the market for insurance, moving on. And so one of the challenges is that there's so much noise for the consumer to be fearful of.

It's fear that causes the uncertainty and the uncertainty and fear feels valid because of specific concrete, in air quotes everyone, facts. The facts are that interest rates are really high. The facts are that homes are unaffordable. And so part of what we have to do is not respond by just saying, well, those facts are all wrong.

In some ways you could summarize what a lot of companies try to do in our industry as well. I'm just going to get on my Facebook account and I'm going to tell you, now I'm changing it to the personal world circa like nine years ago. I'm going to change the world with my Facebook rant about how cucumbers are evil. And there I made the post, now I can walk away and all of my 2000 contacts

Rachel (17:16.055)
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin (17:45.325)
are never gonna eat a cucumber again because I told them the facts about how deadly cucumbers are to everyone. Silly example, but that's essentially what we're doing is we're saying, and this is what's strange about this in particular, Rachel, is that senior leaders and salespeople are more likely to believe this to be true than marketers, because marketers tend to have more lived experience. Like you're seeing the data of stimulus response.

Rachel (18:13.741)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (18:13.75)
in the thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions have been exposed to this and they are either responding or not responding.

Rachel (18:20.557)
Yeah, it's not as anecdotal in a marketing dashboard.

Kevin (18:22.338)
Whereas, right, whereas salespeople and senior executives are more likely to say, will you just tell them, please, like just tell them the facts and then the facts will provide a new certainty, change their mind on their own and then they will buy. And that's never how it works. So there's a general misconception about like facts will conquer other facts. mean, facts usually don't are not the primary and certainly never the only reason why people change their minds about something.

But the other thing that definitely doesn't work is just to provide an unlimited amount of certainty because now you sound like a crazy person. Hey, don't worry, rates don't matter. Now that's like an unlimited amount of certainty that I'm trying to hand someone and I promise you no one's picking that up. What do you mean interest rates don't matter? Maybe the only time that would work is if they've never bought anything with a mortgage or interest rate.

Rachel (19:12.204)
Yeah.

Kevin (19:18.764)
sensitive anything in their life, then maybe they just don't know. But eventually once they do know, they're gonna be like, that person was lying to me, because this really matters. What's most important is to say, when these kinds of things happen, here's how we respond. And here's the track record of us responding to those in the ways that we promised over time, as verified by past customers, third parties, et cetera.

Rachel (19:26.413)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin (19:45.205)
And so in the interest rate world, like if there's a lot of uncertainty around, I don't want to be an idiot who buys right before rates drop. And it seems like everything I read talks about rates are going to drop soon. So I'm just going to wait. Okay. You can try to provide ultimate certainty by saying, here's this great rate we have. And so now the rate doesn't matter. Move on. Which can be so, it can look so good. It can become unbelievable to the customer.

Rachel (19:52.961)
Right.

Kevin (20:11.694)
I mean, a 3.99 % interest rate to someone who's been shopping around at used homes and thinks that six and a half is great is like, okay, what's the catch? How am I getting screwed here? Whereas potentially, I'm not saying this is the only answer, but potentially to say, hey, if interest rates do drop over the next six to 12 months, we will go back and refinance you, or we will let you do a float down if you're under construction still where you can relock the rate at a lower level.

Rachel (20:21.377)
Yeah.

Kevin (20:42.028)
and that's on you, you can decide when to do that. So you're protected in that sense, but it's not promising the certainty that through lived experience we know just isn't trustworthy at all. you become an untrustworthy person by your desire to just remove uncertainty entirely.

Rachel (21:02.901)
Yeah, man, there's so many layers in what you're saying. There's framing, there's tone, there's actual content of the message. There's the conclusion you draw from all of that content and tone and framing. It's a lot of nuance, honestly. This is a hard thing to nail, especially in an ad, a reel, an email, whatever it may be that marketers can touch and have control of.

Kevin (21:25.462)
And this brings us back to AI and trying to use it to get the answer. Because although I'm very relieved that the last math test I ever had to take in my life was in 1998. There are still a lot of tests involving math that we take in our life or whatever. Like we all still have dad. My kids are always fascinated. They're like, Dad, you don't have homework. No, I don't have homework. I just have work and it can happen anytime all the time.

Forever. Okay, well, what do you do for work? Well, I talk to people and sometimes I touch my keyboard and I move my mouse around. You're like, huh, that's work. Yeah. And I don't know, did I tell you about my oldest daughter changing her major in college? Have I mentioned that before to you? Okay, so this is, I promise this is relevant. And we're gonna get back to the AI point two.

Rachel (21:55.543)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (22:14.765)
don't think so.

Kevin (22:21.812)
my oldest daughter decided to change her major from marketing to nursing. And I'm totally supportive of that. Whatever she wants to do, I'm really excited to watch her do and do a great job at it. However, she made this comment about her roommate who's a marketing major is probably not gonna have much work that she needs to do because marketing is such an easier job or an easier major to have than nursing, to which I just.

bit down on my tongue to the point it almost bled and didn't say a word to her. But here's why I got so triggered by that comment inside is because what is likely to be more difficult to memorize information from a textbook about how the body works and how drugs interact with it, et cetera, which is a lot of work or to create an answer to a problem that has never been answered precisely in that way before.

or to come up with something from nothing. And so the creative process of going through all those layers and the framing and the messaging, everything you talked about requires deep empathy of putting yourself in the shoes of what the consumer is thinking as specifically as possible. That might mean going out and visiting competitors. That might mean calling a loan officer and talking to them. That might mean buying or going through the purchasing process yourself, which I recommend people do as often as they

as their life will allow? Yeah. But all that takes a ton of energy and time that everyone else discounts around you because they just see the output that you do. And that leads people back to saying, have to get, I have to find a way to get more leads and appointments for my company so we can get more sales. I have 32 other things to do. And so I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna ask you.

Rachel (23:49.183)
I just did and it was eye-opening.

Kevin (24:16.436)
AI, it can do some of my homework for me. And that again leads people to in a crunch trying to just unload all of the data without thinking through the fact that every piece of data you give it or don't give it is leading the witness, so to speak. And they're looking for an answer instead of a bunch of new ideas or new objections to consider.

Rachel (24:19.053)
Mm.

Rachel (24:35.725)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (24:44.545)
Yeah. I had this quote I wrote down getting ready for this today. Marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem. They use marketing to solve other people's problems. It just hits right on everything you just said. So all right, let's bring this all the way back around to the idea of messaging and not creating too much certainty. And this is something you have talked about as well in other places. Thinking about that not just externally facing now, but internally facing the marketer who has to answer to those division presidents and leadership and owners.

Kevin (24:54.286)
Hmm.

Rachel (25:14.881)
What should they keep in mind right now about that audience's uncertainties and that audience's wants and hopes? And how should they frame their messaging, thinking also about not projecting too much certainty?

Kevin (25:30.443)
Ooh, there's two different directions I wanna come at that. First is just to say, I think it was our very first episode that some of these things are gonna echo in that every interaction you have with other managers or leaders, you should be educating them as much as possible and using stories and data together to make it as real as possible. Now that's a challenge, especially when you're younger or newer in your career, because you just feel this need to get, like report the data, report everything or,

over communicate, because you don't know yet what to filter in and out. So in some ways, we do have this other conceptual context window that we're using with the humans around us. Again, humans are more intelligent in the ways of being able to understand what's relevant than AI systems are currently. However, it's challenge. So...

That's one thing. The other thing is the certain too much certainty. Yeah, we had a bunch of that in 2020 and 2021. A bunch of, and actually someone a couple days ago asked, hey, can we talk to this very specific criteria of individual to understand how they're tackling these problems? I'm being specifically vague here for several reasons, but what I told,

the team that asked for those connections is we love connecting people with each other. But in this specific instance, I'm not going to, and here's why. Is because what you're asking for, if I give you four individual people, they're gonna tell you four different ways because there's still a lack of rigor around process and management of this position, or this specific thing you're asking about. And so what you're gonna find is that people are misunderstanding

the outcomes in terms of sales and how they are achieving it. For instance, how do we solve problem X? Well, how I solve problem X is with one, two steps, one, two and three. And it's it's amazing and it's awesome because we have been exceeding our sales goal all year long. Without providing any context that the builder lowered their prices by 20 percent a year ago. And so really. Steps one, two and three don't have a lot to do with it. It's just how they like to do it.

Kevin (27:51.799)
And so there are 2020 and 2021 and some other instances that I won't get into now. People still have too much certainty into how the outputs are arriving at the outputs that they're getting. So in 2021 and 2020 was really bad because marketers thought they could solve any problem. mean, we were just, everyone was a freaking genius. And all you had to do was let people buy homes through Google Forms or landing pages.

or Frankenstein, like add to cart checkout tools. And it worked. But why did it work? Because everyone was desperate for a house. Or again, there are people, pretty well-known people, who talk about how many homes they're selling online. And yet, when I talk to their sales people in model homes, their sales teams are

required to use those same online tools to write contracts with customers who are in their physical office.

Rachel (28:53.043)
Mm, yeah.

Kevin (28:55.918)
So, like there's, and I don't even know if the person hyping this up, I mean, I have to believe they're aware of it, but to the extent that they're aware of it or that they, the point is that even in our secret summit episode, for those who are going to the summit, we talked about this too, like one of the reasons our event is a little bit different, Rachel, is because we all understand the weight, having worked for Home Builder, of if someone from the stage says something, there's a lot of people who are just gonna take it as fact.

and we understand that there's nuance. Okay, so back to the, like how do you not project too much certainty? I'm gonna toss out a wild card here and say that if you're talking to CFOs, CEOs, or COOs, you do have to have certainty in the financial return of what it is you're speaking to. Certainty enough that you're willing to put your neck on the line. So everything that you talk about,

Every new opportunity that you want invested in, something you should stop doing, something that should be changed, has to have a potential financial impact that you think is reasonably determined and be able to defend. That's kind of their gauge of whether they should take you seriously or not.

Beyond that, you don't need to say, this is going to make us $5 million. It's very different than if we do this successfully and work at it, I think we could get up to $5 million return on this project. Very similar, but one seems more credible potentially to the group that's listening to it.

Rachel (30:33.037)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (30:39.425)
Yeah, well, one tells a story. It's only a sentence long, but there's still an arc there, right? If we work hard and we're successful, then this thing will happen, beginning, middle, end. Versus, we're going to make five million. There's no story there. I think you're automatically poisoning your audience to either be defensive or hopefully they're not gullible and just take you at your word. But I think that's a really good example.

Kevin (31:00.12)
Yeah. And be excited when there's an objection to what you're presenting or talking about too. I think marketers not getting the same sales training that salespeople have get offended way too quickly when someone says, yeah, well, what about this? Every one of those is an opportunity to educate and inform. Like there's no reason if you've done your work and you're prepared for the conversation, ask me as many questions as you want to try to poke as many holes in it as possible.

Rachel (31:06.306)
Yeah.

Kevin (31:29.378)
That confidence, confidence is not the same as certainty, but the confidence that you project in not getting offended or hurt that someone asked a question or might have challenged your assumptions is really, important.

Rachel (31:45.858)
Yeah, you know, and it's a sign of engagement. They're taking your idea seriously enough to give their own attention and mental model to trying to figure out how it would or wouldn't work. I remember earlier in my career telling people ideas, you know, higher ups, peers, senior peers. And I used to be so happy when they would be like, that's a great idea, Rachel. Cool. And then I learned later it was the people who were like, but I don't know if that's going to work because XYZ, I've realized they were taking it way more seriously than people who are like, good job.

And they're never going to think about it again after that conversation. It did not pique their interest.

Kevin (32:18.53)
Right. When I go and visit a builder and present something to their sales team, onsite sales team, when I stop about five, 10 minutes in and ask if there's any questions, most of the time there isn't. And it's because they are already disagreeing with something that I'm saying. And so I usually would just toss it out there.

come on. There's someone here who thinks like I'm full of it, right? It's OK. Like ask, ask away. You can disagree with anything that I'm talking about. It doesn't bother me in the least. Let's have a conversation about it. And then the first brave person will raise their hand. And then from there, everyone's in because they understand that this is a conversation. Yes, I have data and information that I want to share. To try to make them better, but I I want I want the pushback.

Rachel (33:13.761)
Yeah, you know, that's so interesting. This image comes up for me again of a sparring partner, right? You want a sparring partner. It makes you sharper. And I know that you've spoken before about the idea of using AI for that purpose. And you spoke in Jen's podcast recently about how salespeople should come to marketers and say, these are the objections I'm willing to get. I like the idea of marketers also trying to think through what messaging or what

objection is this messaging likely to spark because if it sparks something then there's something there for them to work with but I don't think that we think about messaging that way.

Kevin (33:49.739)
Yeah. But you always should be thinking about the likely impacts of everything that you're doing. And it's a credibility builder. When I would work with sales managers, we had three regional sales managers at Heartland most of the time that I was there. And when I would tell them what we were doing and I would say, I don't know for sure, but most likely we're going to start hearing these kinds of things if this is working. And then...

even before the sales results happened, they started helping them understand, okay, we don't have sales yet, but what Kevin thought might happen based upon the messaging that we were going out with is happening, which then would just looking back, it made them more comfortable to come back and say, okay, you were right about this, but we're not selling yet. But you were right about that. Like they would get excited about that part.

Because then that helps them understand that if we work together and you keep telling me what I'm missing and what I'm not, that we can get there.

Rachel (34:54.709)
I know you're not the movie reference person, Kevin, but I'm going to try this anyway on the rare chance that you saw this movie because it was about like marketing and sales. But did you see the movie a few years ago about Nike signing Michael Jordan? well, now don't want to tell you because I'll spoil like the best moment of the movie for a marketer or salesperson. But there's this great moment with exactly what you're saying of, if I'm right, this is going to happen next. Come talk to me when that happens. So for those of you who've seen the movie.

Kevin (35:07.286)
No, that sounds interesting though.

Kevin (35:22.385)
yeah.

Rachel (35:24.398)
You know what I'm talking about, but...

Kevin (35:25.422)
And there's been, at this point, probably 30 builders that we've had that conversation early on. Like they're like, hey, Kevin, we're not ready for anything. Just wanted to have a quick conversation, quote unquote, pick your brain on something. And I will toss those kinds of things out. And then they'll be like, okay, now we want to work with you because you were right about that.

Rachel (35:48.194)
Yeah, you knew what you were talking about. All right, well, I love the idea of marketers using AI then to try and have that sparring partner stand in for the customer, right? What is the customer going to object to in this messaging? And that way I can take this to my sales team and say, we know we're likely to hear XYZ if this is working, as you said, and sharpen their skills that way. All right, we have a few more minutes here before you need to go. Can you give me an example of what an appropriately or proportionately

confident message, we'll say confident instead of certainty, what a confident message could sound like in today's market in a social media clip.

Kevin (36:27.95)
Hmm. It's always hard without a couple things to grab onto, but I'll do my best. Meaning market or builder, but I know we want to keep it as vague as we can. So I will do my best here. So I'm actually going to build it out in front of you, even though this is a mental thing that I'm building. Confidence is about knowing what you can provide. So you have to know intimately what it is that you can provide and what you're good at.

So it is the USPs and all the other stuff, like, we know consistently we can deliver this.

Then it's saying, okay, who is that potential target market? How are they feeling? What are their frustrations? What is the opportunity for other options beyond me? So yes, competitive analysis has to be done, but even outside of specifics, just generally, what do each of those options offer? I could stay put, I could move, could rent, I could stop renting.

And then each one of those, you're probably gonna have to continue to chase down another three or four different branching paths. okay, they decide to not do anything. While they're deciding to not do anything and then kind of stay in the know or doing nothing and just say, we're gonna live here till we die. Stay here and say, until I get that new job. Again, you have to go through and empathize with all those and think through it.

Since we're recording on September 11th, what I would say is I'm going to go with kind of an end of year. So there's certainty of knowing that I can provide because the fictitious builder in my head has inventory that is either completed or near complete. And I can confidently say that you can move in by year end. But then I'd also talk about the fact that holidays can, well, we can't overload it too.

Kevin (38:27.21)
So this is the other stuff I'm thinking through. got a, like, my art professor in college used to always say we were designing something. Like, King, Queen, Jack. You know, what's the King idea you're trying to communicate? What's the Queen idea and the Jack? And most things you can only communicate the King. And if you try to the Jack, you're probably pretty foolish. So year-end inventory is probably the ability. And then I would talk about the variety. So...

depending on like we have inventory for anyone based upon different kinds of needs and I got to be careful not being too certain. So I'd have to get specific. Sometimes the way you balance trying to provide too much certainty is giving some specifics that kind of commit to certainty of a different narrowness. Like I can't say I have homes for anyone and anyone. That's so certain and broad that it's unrealistic and un-

So I would say I've got three to five bedroom homes, like ranges, square footage bedroom ranges. And then the other piece of certainty would say based upon the history of the company.

Something around... have... With no specifics, it is really hard. like actually, I'm gonna... Am I gonna pivot to...

Rachel (39:55.425)
hard, right?

Kevin (40:07.714)
I'm actually gonna call out a builder who has a tagline that I would riff off of, which is Abrazo Homes. Their tagline is, have a plan for your plan. And the idea is that no matter how your life is adjusting, we have a home design that is designed to meet your needs.

Rachel (40:29.837)
think that's a really good example of speaking to that uncertainty because it says right up front no matter how your plans are changing, which is happening to so many people right now.

Kevin (40:37.102)
Yeah, so I think I'd connect it all. I have a wide variety of homes that will be ready by year end. You can pick the best time to move in for you. So I'm gonna give you flexibility in when you're gonna move in between now and the end of the year, even if the homes are already done. And I'm gonna give you that float down optionality of if rates drop by January 15th of 2026, I will let you.

float down your rate or help you offset the cost of refinancing at the lower rate. Now, I just promised a bunch of stuff that's gonna ruin your margins. So again, like you have to sit through a lot of that and say, what can we do and what can't we do? But I was certain in what I could, I was confident in what I could deliver. And I said, if this happens, then this is what we'll do. And then again,

Rachel (41:33.847)
writing some pathways.

Kevin (41:36.288)
something unique about the brand broader of, you know, we're custom, we are reputation for quality and history, all the rest.

Rachel (41:46.475)
Nice, stuck the landing with one minute to go.

Kevin (41:50.23)
I don't know, I feel like I give myself a solid C plus on that one. But, man, Rachel, if you could be on the actual builder calls where like we have a specific location, we can do all this and get some real data then.

Rachel (42:03.755)
Yeah.

Kevin (42:04.046)
I think I would have gotten an A- at least.

Rachel (42:06.571)
be a fun playground. have to work in the complete lack of constraints here, which as any improver knows, any good improver, you actually need limits to come up with something good. All right, well, this could go on forever, but I know you have other calls to get to, Kevin. Thanks for dropping into office hours with us.

Kevin (42:22.764)
Alright, looking forward to next time.

Rachel (42:24.653)
Bye.