Revolutionizing Real Estate Data ft. Mark Hockridge | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 58

0:03What's up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closures, the podcast where we explore the minds of industry leaders and innovators. Today's guest has over 25 years of experience in creating, innovating, and optimizing businesses. As the CEO of Property Radar, the most comprehensive source of real estate data and owner information, he leads a dedicated team to delivering unparalleled insights and solutions. He's also a former chief innovation officer in commercial real estate, due diligence, a trusted leader, and a mentor to entrepreneurs across multiple industries. Get ready for some invaluable insights.

0:49Join me in welcoming the CEO of Proper Radar himself, Mr. Mark Hoppich. All right, Mark, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You flew in special for me, man. Thank you. Yeah. Well, it's been good. We've been working together a bit. And so it's an opportunity both to be on the pod and also get some FaceTime with you. Yeah, this is the first time we actually met face to face, been working together for years. I've been a big advocate of your product and I'm glad to see you guys are finally making a storm. It's like people finally woke up to the importance of data. It has been going nuts, especially in kind of this compressed market as people are waiting for things to change to the positive.

1:24Yeah, people are being scrappy. And so they've been needing to get more inventive and creative about how they approach their lead gen. Nice. Now, I'm going to talk to you about the importance of data and how data really implements, how people can really implement data and your data product into their vertical, and not just the mortgage vertical, but across all real estate verticals. But before I get into that, I like to start my show off the way I start every show off. And Mark, what's your morning routine? Morning routine. So I typically get up around 530. It starts with just feeding the dogs and so forth.

2:00And then I go out for a little hike walk with the dogs and get some exercise. And the sun's usually just kind of coming up. And I like that as a place just to kind of clear my mind. And I try my hardest to avoid getting on my phone and checking emails and things like that. Try to let that wait until I've had this kind of decompression time and just focus. Come back, often exercise then, either jump on like, you know, Peloton bike or do weights and get ready for a big day. Yeah, it's always a big day. Yeah. So you guys are all, Property Radar is pretty much for the most part decentralized. Everyone works remote.

2:37We are fully remote at this point. Yeah, that's right. Were you guys ever, I feel like. We did have, we have an office and we did have more folks in the office for a period of time. And we've always had a decentralized component to the business, our development staff in particular. But, you know, once COVID kind of came, people, you know, went to their homes and we found that we were reproductive. Just as effective, yeah. And I think, you know, our founder, Sean, put a lot of energy and effort into making sure that we had really good communication systems in place. And it served us really well.

3:11And so we continue to do that. And it's also been great because we're now able to hire the best of the best wherever they happen to sit. That's awesome. Now, has Property Radar really grown in the last couple of years, you would say? Yeah, we've grown on all fronts. We know both on revenues as well as on customers and also employees. And we're continuing to kind of be on a tear right now. Love it, love it. Now, when did you start with Property Radar? Well, so I started as the CEO just over a year and a half ago. but before that I was working with Sean, the founder of the company in kind of a coaching capacity and a consulting capacity and he did that for I guess maybe two and a half or three years and Sean is brilliant but he's kind of a guy wearing all the hats and as you know as an entrepreneur there's a point at which you just can't do that and allow the company to continue to grow at the pace you want and so he recognized that and also recognize at the same time, like where did he want to really spend his time?

4:13And he wants to be that product visionary and he's extremely gifted in that. Yeah. Whereas I'm much more the integrator, much more the people and process person to make his vision kind of reality. Yeah, he's just the guy in the back end making the product happen, huh? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't categorize him as back end at this point. I mean, he's definitely in the business day in and day out and has a strong voice about a lot of things. But yeah, we have a really good relationship in that we complement one another very well, where he has really strong capabilities. I'm weaker and vice versa. So it just works out really well.

4:54Now we'll type it, why did you decide to enter the data business coming from commercial real estate? It's a great question. In fact, I think it wasn't the data that really turned me on. I've always had businesses that were based on data or technology, but at the end of the day, the through line through my career has been businesses that help entrepreneurs and small businesses to succeed. And early in the days when I was just kind of consulting with Sean, the product or the platform was more geared around people doing property or property owner research for the sake of their marketing efforts. But he didn't have that last mile of how to then connect with them.

5:37And so a year and a half ago, as I joined as CEO, the change was that he had reached that evolutionary stage where he was able to say, okay, now I want to be that last mile as a product. And also he shares the same passion for small businesses that I do, not just on an economic level, but just recognizing that small businesses are the glue of local societies and cultures. And that is our driving passion and force. And so that was really what drew me into the company. You know, the beautiful thing I love about what you guys are doing is you guys give small businesses the opportunity to have what big businesses have.

6:18Exactly. Which is like incredible data intelligence. Exactly. That's really kind of been the value proposition for us is like empowering small businesses with the strengths in public records and just in data in general that big businesses have enjoyed for many, many years. The other thing that we were able to bring to that is to bring practices to these small businesses that don't scale, purposely don't scale, because those are the things that big business can't come chase them on. I mean, to the degree that a local mortgage broker can target a finite group of people and talk to their specialization and how they can serve those customers.

6:59Larger organizations can't chase them. Like a Home Depot can't chase the local hardware store when it comes to doing, say, mailers or local phone calls. They just can't scale that across the entire population of the United States. You know, you guys aren't just specific to mortgage companies. You guys, investors, realtors, commercial agents. agents. I mean, pretty much anyone looking at anything real estate. That's right. That's your market. Yeah. I mean, beyond the ones you mentioned in home service providers, I think solar HVAC, roofers, anybody that's able to leverage business and also needing a constant flow of leads.

7:41That's our ideal customer. And you guys also just are outside of data. You're also offering like, like mail solutions. That's right. So that's the, what I was talking about with the last mile. So in the past, people would come to Property Radar and build an audience of potential leads. And then they would go take it away from the platform and do whatever they're going to do with it. It could be door knocking or making phone calls or whatever form of marketing. So now we're building those capabilities in. Specifically, we're building in what we call targeted outbound channels. So that would be the ability to do phone calls through dialers, direct mail we have a driving for dollars app so you can go do door knocking if you're that type of lead generator seem to be programmatic ads and email and so trying to create this ecosystem of outreach to help these small businesses to connect with their next best customer because they don't know what to do once they have the data and that's the biggest problem with so you know one of the things yeah we condone and we we advocate for property radar and they're like, okay, we'll get the data.

8:48Okay, now what? Well, you take the data from here and then put it there. And they're like, oh. But they're like, getting them to step one is hard enough. Then making them execute on step two, it's like. I think this is the case in most small businesses, but these folks start out because they either have a skill or have a passion for a thing. And that was to take the roofer, right? I mean, I like working outdoors. I understand construction. I like being out in the sun. and whatever those things are, they have no idea when they signed up for that. But all of a sudden, they need to be a marketer and they need to be a manager and they need to be a finance person.

9:24And so all of those are kind of the surprises and the things that they don't have just core competencies in. So we have to help them with that. We have to help them with not only the tools and the data, but the playbooks, right? So the how to go about marketing. It's the execution. Yeah. So that's good that you're actually on the cusp of helping them execute so they could see the fruition or the fruits of Property Radar really kind of pan out. That's right. So you guys are just on step one of that milestone now, which is the mail. And you're going to add the dialing. So we have a dialer built in already.

9:58We have direct mail. Email is launching here shortly. And then programmatic ads will also deliver this year. So you have a dialer built in where it's just like a penny a minute or something? Just sign up for, we have a partner firm that provides both a single line as well as a multi-line dialer. Oh, that's awesome. It does DNC scrubs and all of the rest. And so you can just dial right from the application. That's amazing. Yeah. That's great. When did you roll that out? It's actually been in place for a while, but we've retooled it and are about to relaunch it with some new capabilities. Yeah, once you relaunch that, we've got to do another demo to show people how to really leverage that.

10:35Yeah. Because outside of the, and then we'll do the same thing. We'll do a promo. Like, hey, you get 250 minutes or something. for free or just to get people to start leveraging the dialer. Because, again, it ends there with the data. Like, oh, I got the spreadsheet now. What do I do? Exactly. That's very common, yeah. And then what about texting? And does the dialing solution also have? Yeah, so we also have SMS capability built into that as well. Through the dialing solution? Correct. That's amazing. You're figuring this all out. Now, obviously, the API is integrated with folks' CRM, so it's all.

11:08Yeah, so we have two forms of integration. We have Zapier connections already built into the platform so that anybody can come in to snap that in and hook it up to their CRM. For people that have proprietary systems or want to go deeper, we also have a public-facing API that we've built in, and so that allows them to make direct calls and pull data. Back and forth. Back and forth, yeah. Two-way integration. I love PropertyRadar. I love what you guys are doing with it. I love the perpetual innovation behind it. Um, now I'm gonna dive into just kind of the regular protocol of the show, which is like, you know, your entrepreneur spirit, you know, like when did you start your entrepreneurship?

11:49You know, at what age did you, you realize that you're going to be an entrepreneur? Well, so I come from a very entrepreneurial background, um, all facets of my family. My parents had an automotive repair shop. We had a lumberyard at one point. Grandparents were, you know, like florists, we had a bakery, all these different things. And so I kind of grew up this thinking that was normal. But as it turned out, when I actually was going through college and after college, I worked for IBM. So I went the exact opposite. I found myself in kind of big corporate America. And I think the big kind of key moment for me was I was actually in Europe on an IBM trip.

12:26And I was coming home. And I was thinking, man, because I had talked to my dad earlier that day. And he was at the time had an automotive repair shop. and he was bemoaning just normal business issues. I've got to deal with these people. I've got to deal with this State Bureau of Automotive Repair regulations, all these things. And so I was thinking on the way back, boy, it would be so cool if he could take advantage of these top-tier technologies that I'm promoting and selling at IBM. And so I guess because I had such a long flight home, I just was thinking about this more and more and thought, well, shit, why not?

13:02Why can't I bring that kind of capability to small business and help them through data or through technology that they normally don't have access to? And so from that, I came back, pretty readily left my job, and started a company called CustomerLink, which was, again, helping small businesses with marketing capabilities, automating their marketing. So from that point forward, it's just been entrepreneurial endeavor after... How old were you, or how many years ago was that? um this was in uh 99 was when they did that and so um so yeah i was like 30 years old uh just about and um uh and never your first company yeah so i'm now in terms of kind of startups or entrepreneurial endeavors i'm like eight in at this point i mean i had a number of turns on this and this flywheel and it's been a lot of fun and i really love it and not just um this is the ticket though right here this might be the yeah well this is great and I really enjoy this and again it has that that uh passion point for me which is helping small businesses or helping entrepreneurs and so that's my big driver that's my why yeah and uh yeah I you know but I can't I can't even uh think about the next phase honestly I just like of like being done or retiring like I'm just I think in the groove of business, I like it.

14:26I enjoy building teams. I enjoy process and technology. And so, yeah, I mean, I hope this is the long run, you know, but I'm also thinking that even if this finishes and whatever that means, that I'm not done, done. Yeah. I mean, listen, if you love what you do, you're still not working, you know? Right. That's exactly right. you're still not working um so where do you think you continue to find that motivation is it because you like helping small businesses is it your work ethic is it just because yeah it's a little of everything i mean work ethic wise i mean i'm i'm a hard worker i don't know how not to do that and and that comes from that that upbringing that i had right i mean it's like you're scrappy we're all scrappy we're gonna make it happen right and so um so i have that work ethic for sure.

15:14And then it changes day to day. I mean, there's most of the time I'm very centered on like, how do we help this group of people, these small businesses or these entrepreneurs? And I do that both in work. I do that through mentorship and incubator programs and things like that. I just love that. But other days it's just helping the team develop or helping one individual professionally develop, you know? So I get a lot of reward from that. And so those are the things that I lean into on a daily basis. Nice. Now, after like all this success, you know, like how do you continue to find motivation?

15:53I mean, at the end of the day, I just, I want to do a good job of whatever it is that I'm doing. And if that's, you know, that goes through my recreation activities to family to, you know, whatever. It's just, I think kind of how I'm wired. And I think most people are wired that way. And everybody wants to succeed and they want to do well. Some people mobilize around that and others don't. And I'm maybe one that mobilizes more on that. I just look at each thing that I'm doing and want to do it well. So yeah, that's my motivation, I guess. I love it. Now you've been in like the data technology space for a few years now.

16:31And prior to that, you were still in technology. You know, you've always automation technology, marketing technology. Is there a specific mindset that one must have right now to really succeed in, well, now it's going to be AI automation. Now it's going to be data technology. I mean, what kind of mindset must one have to really succeed in this vertical? I think ultimately it's curiosity. I mean, I think it's just the landscape is changing so quickly now and there's so many new tools and capabilities, it starts with wanting to understand how these things work and how they can be applied and having a natural desire to understand that.

17:13How does this work and why does it work this way? From there, it becomes much easier to then snap together the pieces and say, okay, I see how I can apply this. But I think if you're not curious, if you're not a voracious learner and consumer of these things, you're going to get left behind right now. It's just so fast right now. It's so fast. Now, to that point, especially because AI is just coming in like a storm. Yeah. How are you guys leveraging AI to really optimize your data technology and really solve for various problems? So our first foray into it was recognizing, again, that we have data on every household, every property in the United States, and all of the people that either live there or own those properties.

18:07And we're talking very, very deep data. So in that, and I know you have direct experience of this, it takes work. It takes work to mine through all this information and find those niches where there's opportunities or to be able to assemble it so that they can go act on it. This is the same problem that you were describing with the folks like, okay, I have a list. What now? Well, even the creation of that list is challenging because you have to understand the data. You have to understand that every county in the country treats data differently. And so it's complex. So our first foray into AI was creating an AI, what we call a criteria bot, that allows you to speak in plain English what it is you're looking for.

18:51I'm looking for people that own a second home where their primary home is in a different state and they've got X amount of equity and whatever those criteria are. Our AI bot will then build you the list. That's going to be great. Is that live? It's live. It's out. It's working well. And it's multi-language, which was just another benefit of just leveraging some of these technologies. Again, another technology we didn't dive into. We should do a presentation just on that as well. Absolutely. The AI bot, just because, you know, one of the things with the technology obviously is like people want simplicity.

19:27Going through property radar, figuring out where the filters are, figuring out, you know, scanning in or zooming in and narrowing in on the city or state. I mean, it's not easy. So you have to be pretty savvy with the software. But an AI bot just cuts out all that time. Yeah. So that's where we will head with the next iteration is to then use AI as a tool to learn more about your particular business as an entrepreneur or solopreneur, whatever it is, to then tailor your experience and make recommendations for you. So that's going to be the second iteration of the AI bot. Yeah, that's some we're working on at this point, and that's a much bigger endeavor.

20:13But yeah, but there's lots of opportunities, and each day, again, by being curious and seeing how people use us or where maybe they have challenges or stumbling in the product allows us to then say, how can we apply technology, whether it's AI or something else, to make that better. And this data, it's not limited to just homeowners. You guys also have renter data. You have everyone who lives in a specific sector of apartments. Correct. So it's very, very, very broad. And even land data, right? So even where there is no structure or nobody living, we also have the data on the land as well. So yeah, just the deeds on land.

20:54Yeah, I mean, so robust. So you guys are working with developers, builders, mortgage companies, real estate companies, pretty much anyone in any sort of uh the now foreclosure companies or whatever it is you know foreclosures are on uptick so we see that how are have you are you guys seeing a huge uptick in foreclosures because we're seeing steep declines in real estate values in texas i mean not yet i mean um there are areas that seem to you know um start getting more traction there or start to see more activity but it still is not like you know what it was and i don't i don't expect that we're going to go back to that 2008 kind of i had a friend personally call me the other day in texas and she told me she was underwater 50 grand she bought her house in 2022 and i'm like and she wants out of the property and i'm like you're gonna have to short sale and then it got me thinking i'm like i've been reading about certain areas in texas and there could be like a huge swing in short sales coming up soon um i don't know if you guys are seeing that on the data side seeing it yeah i mean we are seeing some increase we're seeing more activity than when we had, but it's still not as frequent and with the volume that everybody is kind of expecting or talking about.

22:11That may happen, but we're not seeing it yet. Yeah. I mean, obviously, California is not going to happen. It's not going to happen in Colorado. It's not going to happen in Utah, but in certain states, I feel like everyone was betting on, and the bets just didn't materialize. right you know like like texas specifically we had everyone had big hopes on on texas like hey it's going to double because dallas doubled and austin doubled right but all these outskirts cities just didn't hit yeah yeah and i think there's um it's been like a couple locations like that and and uh you know there was kind of the exodus during covet where people were moving to these other states for all sorts of reasons and yeah and you know there's all that talk about oh everybody's fleeing California and going to Texas and Florida and did but I think you're starting to see movements back and so yeah it'll be interesting to see what happens relative to homes and values.

23:08Now do you think AI can predict some or model some you know some of that? Yes and we're doing some work there on predictive as well. So far what I've seen being closer to the data is that the predictions and these predictive tools are not accurate. They're accurate to a degree, but they're not as accurate as everybody wants them to be or expects them to be. So you get a lot of folks asking about it and wanting it, but the reality is it hasn't matured to the point that it's accurate enough. So yeah, I'm seeing that. I mean, a predictive AI data model would be awesome just to just give us some sort of insight.

23:55you know it's accuracy no one's expecting accuracy but just so so we could see like hey this might happen right it may happen like it's like reading about the stock market might i mean no no data ai tool is going to tell us you know if nvidia is going to go up to three grand but right you know it'd be nice to know i wish it did i wish it did but like it'd be cool to see what cities in texas are declining you know uh or where you there's short sale opportunities because it just presents more opportunity for investors. I mean, for me to hear that at a personal level from someone that I personally know, it's just crazy to hear.

24:35That was just one person. That means her whole neighborhood is wiped. Assuming that they bought in at that time. Yeah, it was a new construction. So yeah, they could all be in trouble. Yeah, it was all new construction that was purchased in 2022. 50 grand underwater. That's like, that was crazy. Yeah. um now uh well it's not a loss if you can hold right so yeah it's not a loss you can hold but you might have to hold for three four years exactly yeah um you know what i really noticed about and what i really love about uh property radar is that you guys have like great talent and to have great talent in like a data intelligence space number one how did you find that talent But number two, how are you continuing to foster such great talent at a virtual level and, you know, and continuing to really just bring them up within Property Radar?

25:26That's a great question. I mean, I think, and I don't want to gloss over and just say, well, it's all just by design. I mean, there's a lot of design. I'll talk to that. But there's also just a lot of, you know, luck and drew some great people. And we have a great team and they're very committed and leaning in and trying to better themselves. And kind of going back to that comment I made about curiosity, I mean, that's kind of one of the key things that we look for when we hire and recruit is people that have that natural curiosity that want to understand how things work and how to make them better.

26:02Because we believe that that is, you know, a driver to that kind of behavior and to excellence because they really want to understand how to make it better for that client. That said, we also have what I would argue be a fairly regimental process for how we recruit and how we go about that. And it really is not about the candidate or having some trick interview questions. It's about being really clear for ourselves what a given role is going to do and what our expectations are around it. We have expected outcomes on a role as part of what we write up in a job description. And it's something that we use to then determine, like, does this person have a really high likelihood of performing that thing?

26:46If they do and they have these other elements and they share our core values, then that's somebody we want to invest in. But if we feel like, geez, I'm not sure if that person can get to that outcome, then we're quick to cut line and keep moving on. So it's a little bit of design on the front end and some luck in terms of the people we've acquired. and then in terms of the development I think it's just about giving a shit it's about caring about those people how do we not just hire them and stick them in the chair but how do we continue to foster an environment that makes it fun for them where they can thrive and that they can develop and again data is not that fun no it's not but talking to a small business person and helping them achieve when they talk to us they have fun Absolutely.

27:37Absolutely. So I think that's the thing that drives folks. There are people in our organization that really love data and they geek out on that. And that's cool too. Yeah, data geeks are cool. But these people on the front line that you're interacting with, these are just people that really care. We also try to bring people from those backgrounds. So like one of the success coaches that I know you've worked with, Katie, she was a realtor and she's sold insurance. So she's been in the chair. She understands firsthand what it's like and now has an opportunity to help others succeed. So I think that's what it's about.

28:15Can Property Radar be used for insurance agents too? Yeah, sure. Yeah. In what way? I mean, depending upon what you're trying to sell or position, I mean, you might be looking for higher affluent homes or people that have other assets. I mean, you can start to look for those sorts of attributes on people. Wow, that's crazy. It's like it can be used for anything. It can be used very broadly for targeting. That's the thing. And so as we think about our future, while we're very real estate centric today, as you mentioned, kind of realtors and investors and so on. We believe that any small local business that can identify attributes about people or about their properties or financial situation, they can all benefit.

29:06So that's where we see the future for ourselves. Yeah, it's like, what's the future for Property Radar? Can it help a restaurant, for instance? attract more people to eat at the restaurant? Or is that something on the roadmap? It's not really. I mean, it's not super central because, one, the transaction volume is super small, or the dollar volume is small. Secondarily, like, once you've established a customer there, then, you know, now based on how good your food is and your service... Yeah, you'll continue to keep that customer. So businesses that tend to need a constant flow of new volume, new leads, and then have transaction volumes that are a little bit higher.