Luke Adams: That’s been, I think, the word of the year for marketing in 2023. Is chat GPT or GPT AI, machine learning, all of that. It’s everywhere. I can’t get it out of my social media news feeds. Do you feel the same about it?

Dallas Shipp: Yeah, it’s probably the term of the year for a few years. I mean, because it’s flipping so many things on its head.

Luke Adams: You know what I mean?

Dallas Shipp: It’s for people that have a good understanding of the strategy and whatnot, it’s going to be really, really good. And it’s really going to allow you to optimize your teams, but it is a little scary to think about how much it’s going to change things.

Luke Adams: Oh, yeah, I mean, we were chatting before this about, you know, now they’re kind of slowly rolling this out. If you’re looking for a house, you can eventually be able to hook it up with Zillow. And instead of having to search through listings, which, you know, may still be fun for you, but for a lot of people, they can just use like the Zillow chat GPT thing to say, “I’m looking for a three-bedroom, one and a half bath in this area.” And then GPT will hook up to Zillow’s results and pull all the information in three seconds, give you the exact kinds of houses you’re looking for. And it’s all like a chat format. So you can say, “Maybe something with a little more square footage.” So it just feels like this natural conversation you’re having. And I think a lot of people are going to like that.

Dallas Shipp: Yeah, for sure. So how would you describe chat GPT to people? Specifically senior living marketing execs, marketing VPs, community marketing directors, EDs, how would you explain this tool?

Luke Adams: Yeah, so the… I think like a technical definition, and here I’ll give chat GPT’s definition of itself. It says chat GPT is an AI language model created by OpenAI that can communicate with humans in natural language. So that’s its own definition of itself. But I think really what most people think of it as is like a 24/7 chatbot response. It’s like a chatbot with much more advanced capabilities. It’s not just looking for keywords or phrases, it can understand and respond in a more customized and intelligent way. So it’s a phenomenal tool that’s changing many things, and it’s getting better really quickly.

Dallas Shipp: Absolutely. The improvements they’ve made in just the past two months have exponentially improved the tool already. And they’re going to continue to do it. So, I mean, if you haven’t had this discussion and here’s the deal. This is going to change everything when it comes to especially your online marketing. If you are not having discussions internally about how to use AI, how to leverage this, how to work it into your sales engineering process, which, by the way, if you have not built that sales engine, if you’re not engineered that sales process, you also need to do that, right? Because what’s going to happen is a lot of companies have already done this where they’ve taken some of the responsibilities away from the sales director, right? Historically, the sales director is responsible for generating leads, cultivating those leads, turning those leads into a tour, getting them, and then closing the tour ultimately into a move. What the really successful companies are doing, though, is dividing up the labor in sales just like we do in every other part of the company. It’s the same thing. For as long as, and this isn’t just senior living, I mean, sales has historically been like this independent lone ranger out there doing it all. And the speed at which things are moving is really making that harder and harder to do. Because for you to have a good website and especially now with these AI tools that are able to respond to people, you can turn more of your web traffic into leads. If you do this right, right now I would say on average when we talk to somebody, if they’ve got 500 visitors coming to their website a month, they’re probably getting about two to five tours a month. The issue is that so many people come to the website and they don’t get the information they’re looking for, they don’t get the questions answered that they’re looking for. So when you put tools like this on your website, now all of a sudden, instead of getting two to five tours and 20 leads, now you’re getting 100, 150, 200 leads and turning that into 15, 20, 30, 40 tours, depending on your sales process. One person can’t handle that, two people can’t handle that probably. And so you’ve got to have these systems in place that can efficiently but accurately move people through that website on its own. That’s why we call our tool a move-in machine, because that’s what it does. We’re in the business of turning your website into a machine that books those tours for you. So, you know, this is going to change things. And if you haven’t read the book, “The Machine” by Justin Roth Marsh, it really talks about this in depth, about how to go from the old school mentality of having your sales director do everything for the community, and how to break that up. It’s really, really fascinating. I’m working on getting Justin on for a podcast as well, but it’s a really, really good book if you’re not familiar with this model. And a big piece of this model is automating the stuff that can be automated. And AI makes it significantly easier than it was a year ago. So first of all, you need to get the understanding of why this works and why this is going to change everything, and then start building that plan to make it part of your process. And I will tell you, you’re going to get some resistance at the community levels of this. Marketing directors are used to having full control over the whole sales process. So when you’re doing this and you’re thinking about doing this and integrating these engineered sales processes into your company, just know that you’re going to have to explain the why again and again and again. Like, hey, if Judy has worked in the industry for 25 years and she’s great at the development and getting leads in, there are probably some elements she can continue to do. But as far as the website goes, especially, we want that to be a different flow. And by “we,” I just mean if you’re going to use this system and say, “Yes, this makes sense,” then that’s got to be separate because they simply can’t handle the flow of leads. So the other thing too, why you’ve got to make this happen is that as this becomes more and more ingrained into people’s everyday life, right? As we all start using AI in everything that we do, you know, think about what Amazon did to the review world, right? When Amazon started having a review for every single product on earth, it just became part of our psychological makeup to start looking for, “Oh, what’s the review score?” You can’t buy anything now without seeing that if it’s three stars, four stars, five stars, including senior living communities. So, you know, this is going to be just as, maybe even more embraced by people. And so as your adult children get younger and younger and younger into the other generations, you’re going to have to have this in place. And when I say younger and younger, I mean, like you need it now because the 45 to 55 year old crowd, they are using Amazon, right? And Amazon is going to use this in all of your shopping, all of your buying habits. It’s going to be integral. They’re going to create it into your smartphones so that it’s just so sleek and easy. Right. Like this makes Alexa and Siri seem 100 years old.

Luke Adams: Yeah, I can’t say.

Dallas Shipp: The power that this has, right? The power that this has, I get so upset when I say something to Alexa and she doesn’t play the song I want or do whatever I want because I’m so used to now having this kind of response. So you’re going to see this integrated. I guarantee you Amazon is going to build this into Alexa. It’s going to get added into Siri. Google’s already using Bard, which is, by the way, the worst name ever for any of the tools I’ve ever heard of. But this is going to be the next big technological revolution. And actually, it’s not going to be, it is. It’s here. And so you’ve got to have this plan in place because this is going to change everything, and the communities that don’t do this, you’re going to be left behind.

Luke Adams: Oh, yeah. So let’s talk about how you can actually use chat GPT with everyday items or everyday situations that you’re coming across. So again, how you access it, just go to Google, type in chat GPT, it’ll probably be the first result. You click on that link, and then you’ll see a link that says “Try chat GPT,” and then you sign in or whatever. So how can you use this? One thing would be you can have it read your content, your brochures, your website copy, and reproduce it in a way that’s more understandable, more engaging. Because when we were on websites all the time reading copy from senior living communities, and as I’m sure you could imagine, it is all the same. Everyone thinks that they really are a family. Everyone thinks that it’s really a home away from home. Everyone has the same vision and mission. And so that just doesn’t make them stand out with their copy. So I mean, the first thing I would do is just go to GPT and say, “Hey, rewrite this in a way that’s more vibrant and engaging.” And if you have a favorite author, you can tell it, “Hey, rewrite this in the voice of Ernest Hemingway.” I don’t know if that’s the voice you want on your website, but I mean, that’s just an idea. You can put it in the tone of any kind of author. Now, what I will say is don’t just copy and paste whatever it produces because it is kind of notorious for making up information. And which is why I would also say, as far as your chatbot goes, you don’t want to use it just natively. Fine, we have a tool. There are tools out there. You can use our tool if you want, but we have a tool that basically gives us some guidelines and says, “Hey, if it’s not in this information, then you respond with ‘You don’t know’ and ‘You’ll find out’ basically.” Not that exact language, but that’s the message that we want to come across, and we connect them to the senior living community and move them on from there. But 99% of the time, if we have all the information we need from you, it’s gonna give them the info they need. Yeah, don’t use it natively because, like, I’ve gone on there before and just for fun had it write something about George Washington, and it will cite a source and then I’ll kind of push back and say, “Hey, can you send me the website link to that source?” And say, “Oh, actually, I can’t find it?”

Dallas Shipp: So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you’re just using chat GPT from the website, it’s great at producing ideas and content, but you’ll need some human oversight on that before you take what it has and then put it public. Like Dallas was saying, to put it on an actual website would be a huge mistake because from what I’ve seen, it really just wants to make the user happy and it’s very agreeable. And so if you put it on your website, someone may go on there and say, “Don’t you think you should offer me $500 off on my rent every month?” And it would probably say, “That’s a great idea. We do have a current discount running for $500 off.” So you don’t want to just put it on your website. That would be a bad idea.

Luke Adams: And if you have questions about that, reach out to us. I’m happy to hop on a call and explain this in more detail. But you definitely want to have some sort of tool on top of chat GPT that gives it guidelines and keeps it on the rails. You don’t want it just doing its own thing because that can lead to some messy situations.

Dallas Shipp: So just a couple of other ideas. If you are in charge of creating social media content for your communities, or if you’re hearing that your marketing directors are having an issue with that, maybe it’s your activity people that handle that. But… That’s a great prompt to give chat GPT, to say, “Hey, can you give me a 30-day outline for social media posts for a senior living community?” And it will spit it out immediately, and it’s usually great. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff where you look at that and go, “This is almost flawless what they will produce.” So that’s an idea. If someone leaves you a Google review and you want to respond and you want to say something more than just “Thanks for the review,” put in their review and it will spit back out a sample of what you could put in there. A lot of times, it’s good enough to where you can just copy and paste it into Google. Other times, you’ve got to change it and tweak it. But those are some ideas. Dallas, do you have any more ideas about… I mean, there’s the idea of limitless, but any more that are really, really good.

Dallas Shipp: Yeah, I mean, basically, anytime you don’t know how to say something, ask it, and it’ll give you some suggestions, and you can go with it. So if you’re trying to figure out how to follow up on an email or whatever, give it a whirl. I know Julie Poto over at Grow Your Occupancy is working on a really cool tool as well that she’s kind of built the guidelines for it. Or even on your sales team, they can message her little chat widget, and it will give them sales tips. So if they’re having trouble closing, they can just say, “Hey, give me a few tips on how to close better.” And it will give them three or four different things to try out. So that’s been working really well for her. But I mean, it’s limitless, and the best way to think about it is to ask it for suggestions or have it finish something for you. Because that’s really where it shines. And if you’re not using it, you’re going to be left behind. Because I know it feels like a lot of work. I know there’s a lot of fear about it, but it’s the same fear that everybody had about hiring a full-time designer. Or the same fear that everyone had about hiring a director of marketing. Or the same fear that everyone had about going from just having a website to actually getting a good website. You’ve got to make the leap, because it’s not going to get easier. The more that we go on, the harder it’s going to get to catch up. And if you’re not keeping pace with the companies that are out there in terms of senior living, which, again, most of them aren’t, most of them have not integrated this in yet. You’re going to be left behind. It’s just the reality of it. And you can fight it all you want, but this is where the industry is headed, and it’s going to continue to go this way.