“I think technology will actually become more critical to even the older generation and to the whole home buying shopping experience.”
Host: Today we’re joined by John Lee of Anewgo. Welcome, John.
John Lee, CEO of Anewgo: Hello.
John: Well, I’ve been in the industry for over two decades here, and we’ve been primarily focused on content. I was really going to speak to the marketing side of things because that’s our expertise, and that’s what we usually deal with, the marketers.
There’s two parts to marketing. There’s the content and the channels. We’ve done a lot in the last five or six years with interactive content, allowed buyers to be able to design, visualize, price, and even maybe buy their homes online. The one thing that’s still archaic in a sense, are the websites. I view the websites as this like Jurassic Park Island in a sea of rapidly advancing technology.
The irony is they use all this technology to get their consumers to their website, like search engines, like apps, like Zillow and other design apps and even AI now. The thing is when you get to the website, there are no search engines. There is no interactive design capabilities and there is no AI conversation.
What we want to try to do now is to take it from current websites, which are still like their generic static newspapers that they replaced, to now become interactive, personalized, dynamic to provide those home buyers that very concierge shopping journey online.
Host: Yeah, that’s an interesting thing to think about is when a buyer comes into a model home or to an office, they want to personalize their home and they want to choose various aspects of it. Now that happens from various levels.
From a production builder to a custom builder, there’s different levels of that, but a website can reflect that same experience. How do you personalize the website for that buyer when they show up? Is that what you’re speaking to?
John: Yes, and the key to all that is the data. I mean, the data obviously shows what products that you offer and everything even to the lifestyle and what you offer as a builder. The data also recognizes and captures what your buyers are doing, their shopping behavior, their intent, if you have AI to actually allow them to express that.
Taking all that data allows the website to now become more personalized. That requires the website to actually embrace technology like they use for Amazon.com and Facebook, where it’s actually an app, but it looks just like a website. It’s not like a native app that you have to download.
It looks and feels just like a website, but it’s personalized around you. When you come back, it knows who you are. It knows what you looked at. It knows what you’ve liked, and it now makes recommendations to you.
Host: That’s not only the activity that you’re doing within the website/app, but it also takes into consideration things that you’re doing elsewhere when you’re on other websites and other things you’re doing online, correct?
John: Exactly. Especially with AI, we’re just at the dawn of it, but basically the AI has shopped with you and done things with you personally outside of home buying. It’s known where you’ve been from your maps, who you’ve spoken to on your contacts, what photos you’ve taken, what other things you’ve shopped for.
It’s bringing all that into the conversation, but it also knows people that have expressed similar types of interests, intents, restraints, desires but also probably like this type of home, this type of community, this type of lifestyle.
Host: One thing we talked about, I remember it was a few months ago, is seeing AI as your personal assistant. For many people, it can seem creepy, like someone’s stalking you, watching you and watching your every move. Another way of looking at it is it’s there, it’s with you, it’s learning about you and it’s bringing you your likes and wants maybe before you even realize it. Am I saying that correctly?
John: Yes, it may be able to know you better than you know yourself, or you would like to admit you know, and also be able to express things that you probably don’t know how to express. It brings all that into play.
Then, utilizing AI along with search engines, because that’s what currently builders are doing, it actually can now create these smart conversational search engines. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. You’re starting to see this with Google.
They have, obviously, their search engines, which is 90 percent of the word search start is on Google, but they’re also incorporating Gemini, their AI. By bringing both together, what AI has been doing is it’s been pre‑trained through a certain time period across all these websites. It has great knowledge in general, but it’s locked into a certain time period.
Search engines are able to bring in current information, accurate information if you’re also asking about interest rates or what’s the temperature in Columbus, Ohio today or whatever. Bringing both the old and the new together and synthesizing it from thousands of websites into a conversation that’s unique to you is really the magic that happens.
Having that AI now not only be in that smart conversational search engine, not only be at the top of the funnel of advertising and marketing, which is what traditionally marketing has utilized it for, to actually now let AI become your personal shopping assistant throughout the entire shopping journey is what’s going to be revolutionary.
Host: My main takeaway from what you’re talking about is that just because you have a website, you’ve checked that box and you probably invested a lot of money in it, you can’t just let it sit there. You can’t just let it age and become stagnant. Like anything in your business, you’ve got to constantly be working on it, evolving it, adapting new technology and pushing it forward.
John: Yes. AI, here’s the scary thing for marketers, but also the opportunity. The scary thing is you have to do all of the above. When I say all the above, some people still do print, your marketing still has to be print‑friendly. You have to do SEO because it has to be website SEO‑friendly. You have to also accommodate for mobile, so it has to be mobile‑friendly.
Now with AI, you also have to be AI‑friendly. It needs to be all of the above, but one thing about each new paradigm technology shift is each new technology supersedes the other as the top of the funnel. Digital replaced print, mobile now supersedes say just websites. It has to be a mobile‑friendly website. AI would now become top of the funnel.
If anything, it may become AI‑first because instead of consumers doing the shopping, which is what marketers have actually done all their marketing for is to attract an audience and then direct them where and how to shop, the buyers may now direct their AI to do the shopping for them.
That actually changes the whole nature of the website because the websites have been built to attract human eyes, then to guide those human eyes and direct them how to shop. You have to have the right colors, the right size fonts, the right buttons, links and filters and all of these things in there. Maybe even the right names for your plan so it sounds attractive, let’s call it a flower or something.
None of that stuff matters to AI. The AI is going to go in there and look, John has asked for a size nine, black leather Michael Jordan high tops, do you have it or not? If he doesn’t, then it just moves on. Your website needs to be AI-friendly in that it can serve up whatever the customer is looking for.
Host: It has to take the emotion out of it, and just get to the facts, strictly the facts.
John: Yes. It’s going to be very functional, just like you may use Amazon. Amazon isn’t the sexiest, most attractive website, but you know what it can do. It knows it can find it quickly for you, make the recommendations.
But different from say, Amazon, when the buyer has actually now come to your website, you still have to have it very attractive for human eyes, but you have to almost serve the AI eyes first.
Those AI eyes are not just visual, it’s textual and even voice. I think a lot of people may just be talking to their phone, to their AI and not speak speaking in bot language of, “new homes, Raleigh, North Carolina.” That’s not meaningful enough to express the home of your dreams and your desires and your lifestyle.
Host: I think where you’re going is you can’t be one extreme or the other. You’ve really got to find that middle ground where you’re appealing to the technology bot AI looking at your site, but then also appeal to that buyer.
I’d like to talk a little bit about the buyers themselves. Let’s go back to the human element. Something that’s near and dear to our heart at Epcon, since we build homes and communities that are popular with 55+ buyers, is that there’s a change going on not only in technology but a change in generations, a change in the people buying the homes.
As Baby Boomers are continuing to mature, Gen X is entering the 55+ area. Millennials are in their prime, move-up buyer stage. Gen Z and those beyond are just getting into that first‑time buyer. What maybe you’ve been doing to date to sell to one segment has to evolve because the generations are different and their use and knowledge of technology is different. Can you speak to that?
John: Well, I think buyer behaviors are changing. They’re changing because consumer expectations are changing. I kind of have a little catchphrase here, “Speed and ease and just for me, please.” What I mean by that is people want instant gratification. They want that speed.
They have been expecting that with everything they do and they want a simple process and they want a hyper‑personalized experience, just like they get from Starbucks to Netflix to Uber. That’s exactly what AI offers new home shoppers. It addresses all those three elements, which are probably the main reasons that people drop off in their customer journey because it is a slow painful process.
For cross generations, I actually think technology is going to bind a lot of these generations together because, first of all, the Gen Xers, we’ve been using technology for 25 years. We’re not only the early adopters, we’ve been the early adapters to probably everything that’s ever changed, and so we are expecting those changes.
I think AI actually will become the great equalizer because if everybody uses the AI personal assistant, then my AI that I’m using is probably just as smart and talented as Gen Z’s AI because that’s going to be the first method of shopping.
Also, contrary to popular belief, I think older generations are going to be more dependent upon technology. They’re already connected to everything online. They’re going to be dependent upon it for being socially connected, for staying healthy with their smartwatches and their smartphones, remind them to take their vitamins and things like that, but also to just remain functionally independent.
I think technology will actually become more critical to even the older generation and to the whole home buying shopping experience.
Host: You’re speaking a little bit about Gen X and being a solid expert myself, I’ll take it from 25 to 45 years, been dealing with computers and every technology that’s come along, we’ve had to figure it out, adapt to it and master it. I’ll often say that we created all the toys most everybody’s playing with.
As we get into that next segment of our home buying experience, where is it? Where’s the technology? I’m going to be ready for it. Each generation is impacted differently, but this is a way to smooth the road for everyone. AI is going to work with everyone in different ways, and each are going to adapt in their own ways.
John: I think also, tech is now cool. We literally wear technology on our sleeves, just like a fashion statement. We’re conditioned for annual new smartphones and watches. It’s like the latest spring fashions. Every new device from AirPods to Apple Vision is heralded. There’s new AI versions coming out.
I think AI is not only ubiquitous, it’s going to be, in technology, it’s going to really be the way that we do sales and marketing. If you don’t use technology, people are not going to utilize you. It’s actually a representation of your brand, of your products and probably an expectation of a bad customer experience.
Host: Yeah, that’s a really good way to look at it. You need to adapt it because people are expecting it, and if you don’t deliver, they’re not likely to want to work with you.
John: Yeah, they don’t even want to go down that path.
Host: Let’s take it up a little bit from a higher level. Let’s talk about the industry as a whole. There’s a lot of changes going on. We’ve talked about just the technology side of things and how quickly it’s advancing, but there’s financing challenges that have been going on. Obviously, we’ve been through the pandemic and the after effects of that.
Let’s just talk about what do you see are the biggest headwinds and tailwinds impacting us for the next few years? Let’s get that crystal ball out and just talk a little bit. What are those challenges and what are the things driving us forward?
John: I think it all boils back down to data. Especially AI, it needs data to actually have any intelligence and be able to guide the buyer and help the buyer and even help the seller to optimize their resources and to sell their products.
One of the big headwinds is our systems are isolated legacy systems. They’re siloed. They really need to be able to speak to each other and be part of an ecosystem so that the data can not only speak to each other but speak bi‑directionally in real time.
I think another big headwind is just education and training. Frankly, a lot of the people in this industry, they’ve been doing marketing based on SEO for the last 20 years. If it’s not SEO‑centric, what is plan B? I don’t think they’ve ever thought of a plan B because they never thought there would be one.
To really go to that hyper-experience, uber experience mentality, I think it’s going to be very difficult. Like I said, if you don’t have interactive channels that can actually adjust and hyper-personalize a customer experience to each individual buyer, I think you’re back to the old newspaper days in a sense.
You basically have to have the buyer go and look up things, browse on their own, contact you and never really be able to move down the funnel without some human assistance when actually it’s probably looking for AI assistance.
Host: It’s an interesting way to think about it. I’ve had conversations with you and some other vendors that your business is based on knowledge and information. It’s in people’s heads, the people who have been in your company for a while and the knowledge and expertise they have, and it’s in your systems. It’s in your computers. It’s in your platforms.
How do you tap all of it and bring it together and put it all to use for your business? And really, if you can find a platform that can pull information and knowledge from people and platforms and bring it together, that’s what can drive your business forward.
I would think that would be your advice to any builder, one that’s sitting there going, “Hey, I’m ready to go. I want to push my business forward,” or maybe, “I’ve gotten a little stale and I’m trying to figure out what direction to go.” That would probably be a good starting place. Do you agree?
John: Yes. First of all, marketing is about connecting buyers and sellers. That’s your primary role. Technology improves those connections. If you think about now, e‑commerce being online, the way it succeeds is because the Internet is about connections.
It’s connecting all these vendors’ products with people and needs, requirements, prices and all that stuff. We’re trying to do the same thing in our little giant world at Anewgo sales, building our own Anewgo ecosystem.
We’re also tying it through APIs. I won’t get too jargony here, but tying it to the ERP systems, to the CRM systems, so that the information about your products, which is from your ERP, carries on through that customer’s individual shopping experience and feeds into your CRM, which is now about the people.
Tying the people and the products together in one ecosystem across an omnichannel platform, that’s why it has to be an app as opposed to a silo generic website.
When I say it’s connected, if you start shopping from a portal and you’ve started designing some homes and favoriting some builders, when you go to the builder’s website, you should be able to start where you left off in that customer journey.
Then when you go visit the sales center in the community, it should know who you are, what you want so the salesperson can just jump right on board. You’re not redoing everything. Everything is digital, it’s easily accessible.
Having that whole ecosystem tied together and you have to do it multimodally because in our unique industry, the products don’t exist. We have to show it visually. This is where we come in and you have to show it with virtual tours, but you also have to be able to let them put it together in pieces and parts down to the kitchen sink and picking out a home site.
That is a very complex thing to do. The reason we have to do it using data is because we cannot hire hundreds and thousands of graphic artists to sit there and design your home while you’re sitting there with a three‑second wait time to go and render that.
The AI, we’ve been doing AI before AI came out, is the DNA for your home is actually pulling up all the Sherwin‑Williams colors, all the stones, all the bricks, all the faucets or whatever, and it’s rendering it on the fly. Then as the buyer interacts with that, now it’s feeding our AI to say, “Hey, people that have chose this option will probably like this option.”
Now it’s creating personalization at a massive scale online, which is basically what Facebook does, which is what Amazon does, which is what Uber does in matching buyers and sellers to the right destination at the right time and the right vehicle at the right price and handling that transaction.
You need data. AI is now facilitating that data because AI can now generate your dreams and have a conversation, a meaningful conversation, as you move down through each complex step in the customer journey, because it’s not just about your product.
Like you were saying earlier, it’s about interest rates. It’s about financing. It’s about mortgage lending. It’s about insurance. All those different domain experts need to come into the conversation at the right stage, at the right time to facilitate the online shopping process.
Host: I can imagine people listening to this podcast, listening to this interview, and it just sounds overwhelming. It sounds complex. It sounds like I’m going to have to have a committee of 15 people working overtime for a year to try to bring all the pieces together. Tell me why I would be wrong in thinking that.
John: You are correct in that it is a complex journey. That’s why two‑thirds of people want to buy new homes, but only 10, 15 percent traditionally have actually bought new. Now it’s like 30 percent purely because of the lack of existing home inventory and interest rates.
It is a complex journey, that’s why this is really a software platform play. It’s not for the builders to play in themselves. Frankly, they couldn’t feed enough information into the AI to have it give a meaningful response about septic tanks or interest rates or whatever because they’re not writing all that content.
It’s a crazy “it takes a village” approach. If I just use any individual builders on their own, the AI would only be as smart or as dumb as that current builder’s content. Our secret sauce is not only have we built this platform, but we have 300‑some builders that are on there with thousands of communities and 20 to 30 thousand designable house plans on there.
Collectively, we have enough for the AI to feed upon to actually make meaningful recommendations and conversations because if the AI is actually a dumb assistant and not a smart assistant, nobody will ever use it. Just like if you’ve got a bad realtor, you’re not going to use them again.
That’s why I don’t think any individual builder can do this on their own. They won’t have the resources, they won’t have the time and they won’t even have the desire to do that. That’s why we have to create the platform.
Host: Yeah, putting it in builder speak, I would say that many builders don’t develop their own land. They don’t do their own electrical work, their own plumbing work. There’ll be something about the home building process that they sub to another vendor to come in and do that part of the development process.
I think builders need to start thinking of a technology provider as an integral part of their business. That’s something you buy, and then just plug in and then you’re done. It’s looking at your IT vendor in the same way you would any other sub in your construction and development process. Would you agree with that?
John: Yes, that’s a good way to explain that. To keep it really simple and memorable, here are the steps. I call it the IPA, just like the beer you drink. Because you probably have to drink a lot of beer to do this. There’s the infrastructure piece, there’s the platform piece and then there’s the application piece.
The platform and application piece are things that are done by software vendors like ourselves. We create that platform, create that ecosystem. We have the AI generating the content and all that.
Then the application piece, after we built this platform, which is like the foundation for your house, is we can now build the application of how it can be utilized by the salesperson to improve their sales process or optimize their resources and also be a great conversational application for the buyer as a personal shopping assistant.
That eyepiece, that very bottom piece, the infrastructure, this is all about the data. This is where the builders can contribute and add value. One, they have to be able to collect that data. Two is to now structure that data for AI to be able to read it. It’s at a granular level and it’s all standardized.
Then frankly, it’s multifaceted so that same house can be sold to a newlywed couple as well as a retiree couple, it has to have a different message. Then the last part of that data, it needs to be trained. By bringing all that infrastructure, that data into our platform, it now runs that machine. Then the builders can kind of step aside in a sense.
One of the ways that we’ve done it, we’ve actually made it easier for the builders, is every CAD file they give us. Our AI reads all your floor plans because the builders don’t even read all their floor plans and market people don’t even know how to get into it. But to go and read all the floor plan rooms, all the options, so now it fills out a data library.
Now if you express that you want a Jack-and-Jill bath with an outdoor kitchen and you want an optional study instead of the fifth bedroom, whatever, it can now pull from all that. You want stone, you want a Craftsman house, you want a certain lifestyle and it now pulls those things and it creates a marketing message, both visually and textually, that’s meaningful for that buyer.
In one sense it’s daunting for the builders, but the way we’ve made it simple is just contribute your piece to the pie, which is your data. Your data now feeds the platform and the application.
As we have interactions with the buyers, it actually adds more data to your raw data because now we see this plan will sell better at this price to this audience than this one. It will sell better at this time of night to this audience from California versus this audience from Florida.
Now the AI is utilizing that to make those on-the-fly decisions because, frankly, the conversations are happening in real time, personalized at two o’clock in the morning. You cannot respond fast enough as a builder or a seller to that paragraph.
Host: Hearing you describe that, I’m looking at AI as a subject matter expert in every part of your business, but has the ability to integrate it and make it useful to a buyer.
John: Exactly. I actually believe in the future, every industry will have its AI domain expert. What we want to create for the new homes industry is that expert, and we call her Sophie. Sophie will know everything about the new construction business.
It’s not going to know everything just from the builders because there’s a lot of things that are peripheral to what the builders may put in their website content or their CMS back-end content management system that’s related to the world wide web of information.
We’ve taught Sophie, if they ask about the current interest rates and financing terms and all that, go out to the web, pull that piece out but then also show the promotion for ABC builder that utilizes that interest rate or that mortgage lender or whatever. It brings that, it synthesizes that information in the conversation.
Host: Well, you’ve talked about a lot of things in regard to what’s happening in the industry, where are things going? I want to know more. If I were to ask you, where would you recommend that I go to keep that education happening, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a conference, where should I go if I’m like, “You’ve intrigued me, I want to know more”? What do you suggest?
John: Well, because technology is moving at a very fast pace and probably accelerating now, I get a lot of the information from my news feeds from Google and Apple newsfeeds that’s tailored toward AI and technology because you can specify your subject matter, as well as Flipboard. I read all those current event things there.
I also go to some PropTech conferences. I’ve been to Blueprint. Obviously, there’s IBS and there’s a lot of great sessions there. I just came back from Jeff Shore’s conference and they’re starting to have some tech elements in there. I’ve been to your conference and you speak to tech. Obviously, there’s a lot of industry podcasts.
We have our own Anewgo of new home sales, but DYC, Blue Tangerine, Meredith Oliver has her podcast, Kimberly Mackey. There’s a lot of industry experts, but I do look outside of our industry for tech trends. I look within our industry for tech applications because the technology, some pieces really don’t work in our industry, so be able to look at both outside and inside to do that.
The other thing I really encourage people to do is actually get hands‑on experience. If you have some vendors that are doing some of this stuff, like us, we will offer some free trials. Maybe even let you be a prototype tester, maybe be a customer advisory board member for some of these tech companies because we all need guidance.
We can provide the tools, but we don’t know the application. Like what I was saying with the IPA, we’re building the platform, but we really need builders to teach us what applications they need. What are the problems that they are facing and opportunities that they can see, as well as what mainly the problems that their customers are facing?
Host: Well, John, as always, our conversations are jam‑packed. I’m left with my head spinning a little bit on things that I want to go explore and talk more about. I just want to thank you for joining us today and sharing a little bit with our listeners.
John: Oh, you’re welcome. I love talking about the future because there’s always something new to talk about.