KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Build Your Real Estate Business with Investment & AI

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Summary:This episode features Omid Akale, who shares his journey from small-scale property investments to becoming a successful eXp Realty agent. He discusses the mindset shifts required for success, the importance of building a strong network, and how to effectively leverage AI tools to streamline operations and increase efficiency. The episode provides valuable insights for both new and experienced agents looking to grow their business and scale their investments.

Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey everybody, it's Kathy Burns and I'm here with Real Estate Riches and my guest, Omid Akaley. So excited to have you. Excited to be here. Thank you.

Yes. So we just met last week, wasn't it, or the week before I can't remember. We did. We met last week at EXPCon. Yes. And wasn't that exciting. You're with EXP. I'm with EXP, but you weren't always. You just came over last May, right? Or this. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. This May. Yes, this year. So just a few months ago. So I wanted to have you on here because I saw an article that EXP did a press release on you, which tells me you're kind of a big deal. And so when you came over, I said, this guy does investments, there's more to the story. There's a lot of agents right now that want to work with investors, right? And you and I had talked about like what's happening with this forbearance program and are there going to be more issues with foreclosures and you thought maybe yes. And so there's a whole opportunity there. So I wanted to see first, let's just kind of start with your story. Like how'd you get into real estate and you live in Minnesota? You don't look like you're in Minnesota. It's very. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty much, I consider myself in Minnesota and I've been here since I was 14. And I got into real estate right out of college. I was in school for civil engineering. But real estate was a little bit more appealing. And I've been in it since uninterruptedly. And it's been a hell of a ride. Lots of ups and downs. I've been through many different cycles, started on the retail side and then figured out how to get a lot of. And it's been a hell of a ride. Lots of ups and downs. I've been through many different cycles. Started on the retail side and then figured out how to get a,

a little bit on the investment side. You said that it started in real estate and then the market hit. So when did you actually start in real estate? What year? 2002. Okay. So you had a few good years. I had a few really good years.

And then in 2006, 2007, things died down quite a bit. Luckily, I did a lot of BPO's to, you know, keep food on the table, thousands and thousands of them. and I would work for third-party companies that provided BPO services for the banks and asset managers. And so it helped me a lot with learning how to do really good valuations and learning the immediate market areas in the state where I live. And so it was tedious and it was repetitious, if that's a word, you know. But it really sharpened my skills with valuation. And after that, sometimes I would get listings from the asset managers who are out of state.

they may not have known any agents, but since I was doing the BPO, they would ask me if I wanted to sell it. And so that's kind of how I dipped my toes in the investment world. Yeah. And then it actually even evolved where you became, when you came over to EXP, you came over with your license. However, you came over as one of the I buyers. I buyers, yes. So we are investors, a small team and I in Minnesota. And we buy quite a few houses from the EXP Express offers platform. And I got to know quite a few EXP agents through that. And I just thought it was a really good platform for agents who want to work a little bit more on the investment side. And during COVID and right coming out of COVID, it became a really good alternative and option for sellers who wanted to sell their house more conveniently.

So I was very attracted to that platform and how easy it is to work with it. And, you know, we got to help a lot of sellers that way who just wanted a convenient quick sale and not go the listing route. So that was my introduction to EXP. And through that, I met a lot of agents at EXP. And so I was able to see how the company is set up and how impressive the platform really is. It just gets getting more and more impressive. I'm mind-blown when someone doesn't even want to talk about it. I'm like, it just don't know.

You just don't know. Yeah. Anyway, so, EXP also has this program called Revenos. And these are where investors want to sell off like some of their portfolio. A lot of times it's a lot of their portfolio. So they'll agents get trained in how to do the BPO's and all the specifications. And there's a whole system that they follow where they have to input the data. And they're given all these listings on one day and it's expected back like in three days later.

Sometimes they'll get 25 listings and it's just boom, boom, boom. And one of my agents is one of my partners, I was saying, man, it's just so time-consuming. I don't know how to get it all done. And I said, tell me what it entails. And she told me about the form and showed me the form, how it had all these questions. And I said, chat TPT can do those first three ones. And I said, you can upload the form. so we'll have chat TPT analyze these pieces of it and I said and then you have to we tried it to see if it

would do the comps it didn't work on the comps I saw she said well I don't have any problem full in the comps I said then great then we'll upload the comps in and we'll have it analyze it you double check it and see if it makes sense and now you'll start to save hours off each one now you still have to drive out to the property you still have to take the pictures get a lay of the land but you can take those notes and also feed that into the GPT. And you can literally make your own GPT where I told her to name it, what was it, Brenda, the BPR. And we taught it all the rules.

And I said, now Brenda, once I say, hey, Brenda, are you ready? You're going to remember all these prompts. She said, okay. And so it was amazing what we're able to do with that now and saved hours of stuff. It really is. amazing what you can do with it. Yes. I'm so excited. We met yesterday to just sit down and kind of brainstorm on it and we were hoping it would do all the comps, but it does not. Yeah, it just doesn't get it. So, but we can for the paid for version, you just upload that in there. Wow. Yeah. Doing BPO's

now is so different from when I used to do them. Yeah. I had a digital camera and I had to print directions on MapQuest. So that sounds really easy, an easy way to do a BPO compared to what I did. Yeah. But that's great. And it sounds like a great tool and a great asset to agents. Yeah, it is. You know, and we were just sitting there talking to tell me your problems. And I'm always trying to think how Chachipiki can solve time efficiency.

Because that's some of the stuff that we were being trained on when we were in Miami last week at the EXP convention. There were agents there teaching us how to create AI agents who do the grunt work. and it was, oh, I can create that? Oh, yeah, I'm so interested in that. So when she was telling me the grief, I said, I've created my own GPTs because it'll touch how to do it. Right. You just print that part out.

You've got your steps. And now you just go do it on all the different things. And you keep playing with it until it's right. Yeah, that's the thing about it. You have to train it to be the responder that you need it to be. Yes. And it's apparently not that hard. and it's just such a leverage producing tool, you know?

It's great. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. So I wanted to tell you that and everybody on here, because if you're doing BPO's, there is a shortcut. Just reach out to me. I'll help you. Yeah.

I'll definitely want some help with that. Okay, great. Yeah, because we really solved it in about 30 minutes. And at first I thought, well, I didn't cut off enough time for her. But when she told me, well, I can do the comps because I do it anyway. and she goes, and my partner is the one who goes out to the house, takes all the pictures. I said, well, just have her type up what she's found.

And we'll import the pictures, we'll import the notes, we'll import the comps, and boom, it'll analyze everything. Yeah, that sounds like a really efficient way to do comps, especially so my team and I, we got a ton of leads, and speed is definitely key. So a better way to do comp, and due valuation is pretty critical. It's game-changing.

It is game-changing. And that was one of the topics. You know, people are saying AI is going to replace your job. It's going to replace some people's jobs, like all the little grunts that were doing that, maybe. Yeah. But as a realtor, if you're not doing it in learning efficiency, the ones who are will replace you. Yeah. Yeah.

I definitely don't think AI is going to take jobs. I think it's going to help people improve with what they're doing. And for those that it doesn't, I feel like they get a chance to become creative at something else that they're passionate about and, you know, figure out what else they can do and maybe leverage it with AI. Yeah. For me, I find it makes my mind go more and more creative. Yeah. Today I was at a B&I meeting, which is a networking group that I go to. I've been going since 2008.

And a lady comes in and she was saying, hey, we had a problem with our realtor, not our realtor, but. a realtor's property we wanted to see. It was an hour's drive away, and the guy said he wouldn't show it to us unless he was paid. I said, really? That's his fiduciary responsibility to show that property, even though you're out of area. I said, let me just look that up here in the Code of Ethics for North Carolina. Boom. I had the whole thing, and I shot it over to her. I said, just send them that. And then I had another one, what was that one about? Another person had an issue with water in the house. Oh, mold. It was an FHA loan. And the FHA inspector came out and filed mold all over the place, except in these three bottom cabinets in a kitchen.

And so the mold guy, who I was talking to, said, I'm not going in and not do those cabinets, but the FHA is, you know, not really responding. I said, what exactly did they say? And he said, whatever the mold guy says you need to do. Well, the seller didn't want to do it. I said, well, now it's a material fact. So they got to do it. And I said, you know what? Let's just go into chat GPT, which I did.

I explained the situation. And I printed out all the whole story. I sent that over to him. And I said, there you go. That's solved. Now just turn that into the seller and now they'll understand it. And it's just, I use it for everything in life. I mean, it's.

I do too. Yeah. I use it before. I rarely use Google anymore. because chat's ability to scour through billions of books or articles, publications, materials that it has gone through and just give you the most concise, relevant piece of information in a digestible form is pretty amazing. Well, I learned two new things this week. So one is in chat, T, the paid-for version. If you want your verbiage to be more fluent, more natural than AI sounding, you use the O-1 preview.

So that one is the language skills are better, but you can't upload documents to it. So you've got to go back to it. And then the other is on the app or on the computer. You'll see a little globe. That globe is Google Search. How about that? Oh, wow. Very exciting.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty amazing how it's evolving so fast and it's so present in our world already. So it'll be interesting to see what we can leverage with it. I think it's going to go at such a rapid pace. And people are already feeling overwhelmed. And I said, I get that. But just stay the course of what you're doing.

Learn the basics. Like we had so many classes at that convention. I was at a lot of the AI ones because I really wanted to absorb that, that in the international. Because the international was so powerful as far as expanding our ability to work outside our little territory. Sure. Like you're normally working. Maybe you go outside your state because of the investors that you work with, but you're probably got a central area. Well, most realtors have a little, like I worked a Lake Norman area.

That's kind of my territory. I will go on the lake. And what I learned since being with EXP as a global company, and they announced three more countries they're taking on, that I can do business globally like crazy, and I've done outgoing referrals on steroids for large dollar amounts. And I thought, well, that's a lot easier business. I like that a lot, right?

Yeah. And so let's do that. I'll teach people that. I'm kind of going on a mission that that's going to be my plan. where I do it. Yeah, yeah. That's something for me that's super exciting about EXP being able to do real estate on an international level on the same platform that you're doing it domestically. Yes. All under the same umbrella. It's a priceless. It's pretty amazing. Well, and the internal systems to be able to make it seamless where I don't have to

worry about different government stuff, it's all handled, right? Yeah, yeah. So what would you do As an investor, how are you going to do that internationally? Do you have investors that want to do outside of the country? Is that it? You know, I do, but I've thought about doing our investment business outside of Minnesota. And it sounds like a lot of fun. But we are so busy just where we are and we're a small team. So we haven't really thought much about or we haven't really acted much on being outside of our territory.

but because of my background and naturally the way my life is, I have friends and family overseas and I travel quite often. So mostly for the team building aspect, I like it, you know, the networking and the connections. And of course, also seeing what other opportunities are outside of the U.S. I'm really interested in that. It's sort of always been my dream to embark on some international real estate transactions. So I'm hoping to figure out a way to do that. hopefully you can introduce me to your people in Portugal.

I'm really excited about that. Oh, I'll do it. And I think, I'll go ahead. It's what we can do in our world that we have. Yeah, yeah. So I do believe that the world is becoming smaller and smaller and more and more easily accessible. And just everyone I know I'm involved with travels often. They go overseas.

They like different places. And it's just easier and easier. So, you know, in the next decade, I think it's going to be a hundred times. easier, especially with the speed at which technology is moving. And so it'll be more likely to buy places, fractional ownership if you don't want to be there all the time. And just different places are going to influence other places around the world when they find something new. So it's exciting to see. Yes. And that's one thing I love about EXP is it's a great platform to explore that. Yes. Well, and because they are so global,

25 countries now, and they make those systems seamless, and then our communication is all done in the computer on a world platform that looks where we're all little avatars bouncing all around, but it's so organized. Like I've chosen today to talk to the head of Portugal, and I said, hey, do you have the latest updates in Portuguese and English for me to be able to explain EXP to someone in Portugal so that I can send it over to them. He goes, yeah. He goes, they're imprinting right now because we just made some big changes. So as soon as we get it, I'll get it to you, Kathy.

I said they also made some announcements if you bring an agent on. There used to be a buffer in our rev share plan, which is complicated. I'm not going to get into that. But where you can buddy up with someone who's in, let's say, Portugal, who's already an agent over there, and they're your buddy. and they come into your organization and they get a piece of how you help grow

your business. They get a piece of it. And I'm like, that sounds amazing. I need to know the exact details on that. So he sent me three videos today that adds up to about 20 minutes. I'm going to study the data out of that. And I want to work that because that's an agent recruiting

opportunity to bring agents to XP because they're just going to get pieces of all of it for nothing, just like basically training somebody, and I'm like, oh, this is attractive. Yeah. The way I see it is kind of like reciprocity for all the work that we do early on as agents that we never get recognized or paid for. You know, it's a way to reclaim it on the back end.

I love that. Yeah. It's just amazing. Well, I'm really glad you got to go out there and feel the energy. I had a guest there who came from Portugal. and when she was there, she goes, I feel it, I see it. Because when you come to these events, it is kind of earth-shattering to actually see the power of everything that they're doing.

And also the excitement and the energy that happens in there, the collaboration. I also have a recruiting arm of my business that I've been doing for over five years. And I mainly do it because it's a great way to network and keep a good business. pulse on the business. You know, I just talk to agents about their business and tell them about what's going on in my real estate world and they tell me what's going on in theirs. And one thing I've learned over the years is real estate can be a very isolated business, especially for successful agents who are just used to selling a bunch of homes and they're caught in the silo of their transactions and deal flow, right? And they only interact with people that they need to interact with

like title companies or their one or two go-to loan. officers and there are one or two go-to inspectors. So it's really cool to go to these events and know that you're sort of not in this silo in your business. And there are all these other people. So you don't always have to be self-driven. You can see what other people are doing and it's inspiring, right? Yeah. So it's good culture. Yeah. Well, this has been great. What would you say to somebody that's an agent out there, been doing residential, and they think they might like to do some of the BPO's or that path, like, or getting with investors. What would you say is a way to do that?

You did it one way, but what have you seen? I will say reach out to local investors, network as much as possible. Do a lot of self-education on what investors are looking for so that you can bring valuable information. But it's so different from the retail side when you work on the investment side. There's a lot less emotion and it's very pragmatic. So if the numbers make sense and if the numbers make sense and the location is great, it's either or, right?

You're not really dealing with a lot of, you know, the kitchens painted yellow and I would like it to be red, right? You're not dealing with a lot of, not that there's anything wrong with emotion, but you're just not dealing with that side of it. Alternatively, if you have good investor clients, instead of doing one deal every five to seven years with the same client, you're usually doing five to seven deals every or with the same client. I know those numbers are kind of rough.

So it's just an inverse for productivity. You just produce a lot more. You learn a lot more. There's so much I learned so far on the commercial and on the investment side that I never would have learned on the retail side. Right. So I would say a lot of self-education. There are so many resources out there to find out how to get into the investment side.

Well, one of the guys that I've, talked to that I met through EXP. He's in Kentucky and he was working. He went to investment groups. That's how he started to meet investors. So he was just a culture there. He makes a connection with this guy and the guy says, I want to buy a hotel in Portugal. I think I started to tell you this story. And he says, I want to buy a hotel in Portugal. I see him post that he, well, in Europe actually. And I said, well, Portugal work. And he said, I think so. And then I ask him what's his budget. And the budget was 35 million. I go, perfect. And so I connected him with my contact there because I knew if anybody could handle it,

she could. And so we get on a Zoom and that's when he says, yeah, I really want that. He gave his specs on the hotel, but it was a flip. And it had very specific requirements that he was looking for because he wanted her to find all the people over there that would do the work on it and stuff. So he wasn't prepared for his crew. So there was a lot involved in that one. And that one's around five million. But while we were talking, he casually says what I really want is, in addition to that, is a castle and friends. And I go, we can do that. And we're going to. Now, I'm not getting that because I gave that referral to him. But you're a part of it. I'm a part of it, that I was able to do it. And that's what's happening in this world today. And what I was thinking of,

you know, when you just said there's a whole like formula that investors have, if I knew, my formula for that investor and I created a GPT on that. Now I've got each investor's formula. I just plug it in. Now I go looking for those properties based on that formula. Boom, boom, boom. It's faster. Yeah, yeah, it is. Have you done that? I have not, but I feel like that's the way it's going, you know? Yes. Yes. Yeah. I love that. We're working on some things internally at my company that are kind of similar tools that can read data and figure out the best profitability or the optimal locations to buy or you know what helped us what we were able to profit in the least amount of time and the things with the lowest risk and that kind of thing so it's pretty interesting you typically

need data for it yeah but the data is out there and it exists so oh i believe that i put my blood work into chat GPT. I said, hey, I can't read all these little initials and stuff in here. I'd like you to analyze it, talk to me like I'm a fifth grader and tell me how I'm doing. It was amazing because I put it in for years just so I could see it. So you can upload data all the time in there, kind of like that video where you put in your comps. You put in the data in analogs, it. Love it. Yes. Well, this has been fun. I appreciate you so much coming on here.

Thank you. I appreciate you having. me. Yeah, it was great. And I loved meeting you for a minute in Miami. And we'll do that again. Yes, that was fun. All right. Thanks so much for joining us. And if you like this, please check it all out. We've got a lot more people that are great on these interviews. And he was pretty special, though, wasn't he? All right. Thank you. So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real Estate Riches. Wasn't that great? I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below, share it with everybody, make some comments, we really find that invaluable. And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more, let's schedule a business strategy call.

I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can't empower each other. That would be great. So until next time, signing off. Hope to see you on the next one.