DGS 330: The AI Illusion: Protecting Your Reputation in a Manipulated World

When your property management business isn’t growing, hiring a salesperson might seem like the obvious solution, but what if that’s actually where most owners go wrong…

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull break down why most BDM hires fail, the critical mistakes owners make with commission-only roles, and the exact systems required to make a salesperson successful. They dive into DoorGrow’s Three Fits framework, the three non-negotiable ingredients for BDM success, and tease a game-changing new growth model designed to help property managers scale without burnout, bad leads, or broken systems.

 

You’ll Learn

(00:00) Introduction: The Three Fits for Hiring
(01:16) The Challenges of Hiring a Business Development Manager (BDM) 

(02:42) The Three Key Ingredients for BDM Success 

(04:40)  Mistakes in BDM Compensation: The Commission-Only Pitfall 

(05:40) The Three Roles of a BDM and the Problem with Buying Leads 

(09:54) The "Door Machine" Teaser: The Easy Button for Growth 

(14:39) Advanced Community, AI, and Final Thoughts 

Quotables

“A BDM has zero chance of success if you hire the wrong person.” 

“If they’re not all three, they will fail. Or you’ll fire them. Or they will leave you because they’re not making enough money.” 

“If you do not have the right system to plug a BDM or a salesperson into, you can hire as many of them as you want, and they will still not work.”

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

DoorGrow Academy

DoorGrow on YouTube

DoorGrowClub

DoorGrowLive

Transcript

Jason & Sarah Hull (00:01)

Five, four, three, two, one. All right, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.

 

We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right, you can probably hear our dogs losing their mind in the background. Maybe not. It was perfect time. Yeah, great time. You started the episode and then they decided. And then they started barking. Well, somebody's outside. That's why they're barking. Okay, they're protecting the house. All right, so what we wanted to talk today about is protecting you a little bit. And so.

 

One of things that's been going viral lately all over social media is this Molt book. So if you haven't heard of Molt book, it is a social network, supposedly. It's a social network created by AI bots. It's basically just only people that have access to it supposedly are AI agents and they go in there and they're talking about their humans. And this is this new AI tool that was originally called Claude, spelled like a claw, which is not the Claude.

 

by anthropic, ⁓ but it's different Claude bot. And then they got sued by Claude for name infringement or confusion. And they changed their name to something else and then to something else. And now it's called open clock. But basically there are these, it's like an AI tool that you can build or put on your computer and it runs locally and it proactively tries to do things for you.

 

There's a lot of security risks with this AI tool because it has access to all your stuff and it can figure things out and start to buy things for you and like do things for you. And so ⁓ it has access to all your stuff. And so you got to be careful with this. However, there's been a lot of false hype and fear mongering around multbooks. So we wanted to chat about this. And so if you've seen these scary posts about multbook, this AI social network, here's what's actually going on. So

 

what this social media network is. you been seeing posts? Have you heard about this? Only from you. I don't follow any of that stuff, you sent me a post that was talking about all of these AI things, I guess, and the chat room that they created, and they were talking to each other and interacting with each other and asking each other questions and kind of talking about their humans, human...

 

users, I guess, so to speak. And I went, yeah, I don't know if I'm believing all of that hype. So I had asked chat, Chippy Tea about it. And it essentially said, no, AIs do not work on their own. They are human prompted. They are user prompted. So if there is such a thing, it might exist.

 

but it's not something that the AIs are just going and creating their own little community and having discussions as humans would have their.

 

So let's about the hype. So their mold book is claiming and bragging that they have 1.2 million agents registered, but only 10,000 verified humans using the tool or something like this. And we know like at least a million of those agent accounts came from one guy. He ran a script, he posted about it on X on Twitter. And he said, FYI, this isn't what everybody's claiming it to be.

 

The MoteBook has a REST API. Anybody can literally post anything they want using that API. So if anybody knows how to use any AI tool now to create any sort of code or software, like using Cloud Code or even Cloud, you can create software in pretty much anything now that has access to this API that can go post there. And so it's not, are there agents posting there? Yes, there are some agents, but some of the articles on there are probably created by,

 

nerds that think it's funny to create posts that say my user is cap. People are capturing things with screenshots or my, my, my owner is like telling me to do unethical things. And so it's hard to know what, which of any of this stuff is true, but definitely the stats are not true. When this guy sent a million verified accounts he created to the founder of Moldbook who's a human and

 

said, are these accounts, like here's this security flaw you have, this really isn't legit, but I don't think they care. I think they like the hype, they're getting business from the hype. And so this points out a bigger problem. And the bigger problem is with the advent of AI and with all of the AI slop, as people are calling it, you have to now verify things. People are using AI to create content, to beat the algorithms and to manipulate humans. And so

 

A lot of posts that you see, a lot of news article posts on Instagram, they're fake. It's sensationalized, it's you AI slop BS, and it they make these sensational claims because sensationalism gets people to go, wow, I can't believe this. This is so noteworthy and newsworthy. I'm going to share it with other people and people aren't verifying this. So these things go viral and it's giving that account.

 

clout and attention and algorithm and they can use that to make money and they're just manipulating people. And so this is this bigger problem that now things being shared on social media that are going viral are just being engineered algorithmically based on sensationalism, not based on truth. And a lot of them are just complete lies or complete fabrications and algorithms are rewarding fear, they're rewarding outrage instead of truth.

 

And so a lot of things that you're out or noticing or things that are manipulating you, it's not even true. It's not even valid. And you're in this, get caught up in this echo chamber politically or algorithmically that really is just messing with you and playing with your emotionalism that you have hardwired into it because you're human. So I think it's really important to start to not.

 

that you have to really question and disbelieve almost everything you see and then verify it or validate it. And this shows up in a lot of ways. Like we were talking about ⁓ all the products that we see for sale on Instagram. That you see. You get targeted. I love the buy stuff. Yeah. I know. It works really well. I like buying gadgets and gizmos aplenty. You know, I'm like the little mermaid. All right. So.

 

So all of these things, though, if you go take whatever product or item you see on Instagram, you're like, man, that sounds really cool. It sounds like something I would love. I would need that algorithm already knows it knows you. knows everything you slow down on and look at. It knows everything you click on to check out. So it knows you what you'll you'll buy before you know you'll buy it. And it feeds the stuff up to you and it'll feed it over to you or retarget you over and over again until you actually buy the thing. Here's the thing.

 

a lot of these products that you see, if you go look up the same product up on like amazon.com, you'll find the same product with a different brand name, because they're using maybe the same source in China to like, and then they're white labeling it with their brand name, but you'll find the same product for 50%, sometimes 25 % of the costs that you're seeing. So they're just taking products that are doing well on Amazon. They go and

 

like find us the source of this product. And then they go do really good marketing and advertising to manipulate people, sell it on Instagram or meta ads, and they are selling it at this insane markup. People think they've got the exclusivity and they're the only way you can get this product. And they're selling it for three times the amount or at least double the amount of what you would pay normally.

 

And if you go and got it from the source, like through Alibaba.com or something like this, you probably pay a small fraction of that. And so people are overspending on this and they're manipulating you to spend more money. So just another example of how you need to go verify or find these things maybe elsewhere. And so you need to do your own research is the basic idea. And so.

 

⁓ Some of the things that I have started to do is I use AI to research the things that I'm finding online to find out if they're true. So this could be health claims, product claims, product ideas. ⁓ If a product looks good, I will go send it to Grok, one of my favorite research AIs, because it's really good at doing really good research quickly. You can use perplexity to do research, but I'll say analyze this.

 

landing page, this product, is this hype or is this a legitimate product? Do research on this. And a lot of times we'll come back and say, this is overhyped. Their product claims are not valid. It's based on studies that indicate certain things, but it's not totally true. But every now and then it's like, this product sounds legit. And then I'm like, well, do I really need this product? And then sometimes it's like, no. Right. And so you can go now leverage AI and you need to use AI to battle with AI so that you can

 

not being manipulated or taken advantage of. So you need to do your own research. Analyze the truth of this. Go ask AI to analyze the truth and give it a link. ⁓ Grok can access Instagram and Facebook posts and things like this. It can access social media currently. ⁓ Claude, ChatGPT, some of these tools are not able to access certain links because they're blocked by those social media platforms. They don't want other AI tools looking at it.

 

So far, I've had success using Grok to analyze Instagram posts, Instagram videos. So if you see something on Instagram real or a post, you can go post it to Grok and it can analyze the truth of it, which is super helpful. Not only that, but Grok has access to the entire X or Twitter database to do research and to find people, what they're saying and stuff like this, which I've found to be very helpful. Now we all have an internal compass and I think this is the most important thing of all.

 

is you have to use your own brain and use that voice within. think one thing that makes us different than just AI is we have this intuition or this knowing or this higher faculty of just our mental capacity and we have this ability, or some would call it spiritual gift of intuition or of natural knowing or of, what would others call it? ⁓ The voice deep down within, sometimes deep.

 

how I know this thing deep down, but it or some would call it the gift of discernment. You know, it's kind of a biblical gift of the spirit it talks about. Some would call it the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit or whatever. But we have this quiet voice deep down that tells you that something doesn't feel right when everybody else is sharing it or. And so, you know, start to get in tune with that, start to listen to that and to get clarity on that, because not everything that's sensationalized is true.

 

and you need to trust that little voice within because you might go, this sounds like pretty incredible. Is this valid? Before you go share it and pass it on to other people, which is like spreading a virus, you know, it may not be a positive thing to spread this thing that's not accurate or true. So that's my two cents about this. so with this, the Malt book is an example of.

 

something that's going viral that everybody seems to just be believing and it's not totally valid. So. OK, let's connect this to property management. OK, so that it's relevant for anyone who's going, how are they? How are they going to link this? So one of the things that I had heard recently, there's well, one of them I heard a couple of months ago and one of them I just heard. There's two examples that I can cite. That connects it directly to business. One was.

 

I don't remember where they were located, so forgive me for that. Do your research. One of them, they wanted to see if they could use AI and all of the tools that are available, Google and SEO and the algorithm, to hype up something that isn't real. So what they did is they created a restaurant.

 

using they did have some photos. They took a couple of photos. The food wasn't even real. I remember this. Do remember this? They were taking photos of food and people eating the food and wow it looks so amazing. It wasn't even real food. Yeah. And they used all of these photos and then somehow used bots and AI to leave a bunch of great reviews.

 

for this amazing restaurant. And then the algorithm and Google started getting all of this data going, wow, people must love this restaurant. We should promote it. So showing up in searches and they had a wait list for a restaurant that did not ever, at any point in time, ever exist.

 

No real restaurant, no real location, no real food, no real people, no real business, and no real reviews. All of it was completely fake online. However, the algorithm did not know that it was fake. The algorithm thought, wow, this is a real business and people love it, so let's recommend it to other real people. So real people are getting recommendations from

 

the algorithm, hey, you might like this restaurant. And then real people are going, oh, I wanna go to this restaurant, this looks amazing, look at all the incredible reviews. And it's fake. And you can't even go there. That's example number one. Oh yeah, look at that. It's a bleach tablet. So let me share this. So you can look this up. You can just Google like fake restaurant or something like this. The article that came up was on vice.com but.

 

⁓ I made my shed the top rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. So what he had, he works for Vice now, I guess, but before he started working for vice.com, he had a job where restaurant owners were paying him 10 pounds, 10 British pounds ⁓ to write a positive review of their restaurant on TripAdvisor, despite never having eaten there. So was like, this is like fake. And so he became obsessed with monitoring the ratings of these businesses and their fortunes would generally turn and

 

This was a catalyst. then he was like, TripAdvisor is this false reality, he thought. And so these meals never took place. The reviews were written by fake people like him. And so he was like, well, maybe I could just create a completely fake restaurant. He just decided to try it out. And so he took his shed, his shed in the backyard, and he built, made it the number one restaurant. And he called it the Shed at Dulwich.

 

and ⁓ created this cool name and this was back in 2017. And ⁓ he got a burner phone, he created a phone number, built a website, bought a domain, and then he created some images that looked like delicacies. And what he used to create the images was ⁓ runny honey, ground black pepper, and Gillette shaving cream, and bleach tablets, and just made these photos that look

 

kind of like food. See, Nevada actually looks pretty good. Right. And yeah, it's just got coffee beans. Like he just he made shaving cream, bleach tablet, cup of coffee beans on top with ⁓ with paint. Brown gloss paint. Yeah, that's supposed to be chocolate syrup. He just made fake images and.

 

It's so ridiculous. So then he went and then he started creating reviews and getting reviews and then having photos from people. ⁓ Like he just climbed the ranks and then he actually started opening it up for reservations and started getting reservations for this. And then a bunch of people came and actually, and then he used like other companies to make the food.

 

and brought it in and then fed it with the food and because their perception was this was a high end thing and a kind of a secret thing and it's hard to get into, people were like, this food's amazing. then they were giving him even better reviews about it and the food was just taken from other places that he had like kind of brought in. And so it got really, it was just super ridiculous. And so ⁓ he built this whole thing out.

 

So that's that story. What was the other story you wanted to other one is what I just heard. I'm still struggling to understand what the flaw is here. don't know why this is illegal. Maybe someone can help me. ⁓ I don't remember what platform they used, ⁓ but a guy somewhere in the US used a lot of AI agents to create music. Real music.

 

Yeah. But it was created by AI, not humans. And then what he did is he took the music and posted it to a platform. Now, I don't know if it was something like Spotify or Apple Music or whatever it is, but he used a platform, a similar platform. And instead of waiting for people,

 

to hear the music and like the music and for it to grow. He went, huh, how can I speed this up? So what he did then is he created a bunch of AI bots to go and listen to the music that his other AI bots had created. That's where it's illegal. Because people play for licensing. rankings and listen to the songs and the albums 24 hours a day on repeat.

 

multiple, multiple, multiple bots. So all of a sudden there's this fake music. Well, it's not even fake. It's real music. It's just created by AI. And then AI bots are listening to that music, which is pushing the rankings. Fake news or listenings, yes. Well, I mean, they're just bots. They're just not human listens. They're listens, right? But just AI's done. And these platforms pay you.

 

for each listen. Spotify, Apple Music, paid out him because he's getting so many listens. Of course. I believe he's getting sued for $10 million. He stole $10 million in fake listens, basically. Right. had AI create the music, had AI listen to the music to then make real money. Now, I don't know, but I think he's getting sued for things like money laundering, which I don't...

 

quite understand how that's money laundering because the platform is designed as such. So any platform, and this is my point in telling you these stories, any platform that is designed and built on attention, things like likes, comments, views, clicks, engagement, which is almost every social platform in existence.

 

can now be manipulated. yeah. Now what does that mean for you as a business owner? It means two things. One, despite your best efforts, anyone can now create fake things that will outrank you. So when it really comes down to it, does your Google ranking or your SEO ranking, does it actually make sense and is it real? Because you can take

 

a fake business or even a real business and now promote, get all these, you know, clicks, views, likes, attention. And then all of a sudden the algorithm goes, ⁓ people like this, I should serve it to more people. Now, if your competition starts doing this, what does that mean for you? Right. So again, don't be one of these people trying to manipulate.

 

others with AI. Like you need to be upfront about it. Nobody wants it because the one thing you have is your reputation and your brand. And if you destroy that, I mean, you could get in trouble legally. But if you do something unethical or you trick people into thinking that it's a human when it's AI or stuff like this, you destroy trust and trust is the foundation of business. And in the future, people are going to it's going to be really difficult to trust anything because

 

the majority of posts now on Facebook are probably written or drafted by chat GPT now. A lot of people are using different things. So you have to be careful. ⁓ And do we want to use these tools? Yes. Use the tools, create some leverage. It's smart. But you also need to make sure that you find that right balance of what's true, what's actually you, what's verifiable, ⁓ and not do things that are unethical. And so this is where

 

Property managers, you gotta be careful. You do not wanna use systems to create fake reviews on your profiles. You don't wanna get other property managers to give you reviews on your property management business and trade reviews. You gotta stop doing the shady shortcuts and focus on real connection, real people, real reviews, real results. Focus on real stuff. And this is why.

 

We've always focused on getting real video testimonials from our clients, ⁓ real results. And you can get in trouble. You can get in trouble with the ⁓ FCC with false claims. You can get in trouble like people can sue you over stuff. you be smart. Like you do real stuff. Don't look for the shady shortcuts. It's tempting. I know it is because you're like, man, it's hard. But if things are hard,

 

and you're trying to do shady shortcuts instead of doing the right things and doing the real things that work, there are things that work. So I guess that's our message to property managers is like, do things the smart, ethical way and don't be the shady person trying to manipulate others taking those shortcuts. So and, but use AI, you should be using tools to, you know, shorten time, collapse time, make things more effective, improve your writing.

 

learn, but make sure things are done your way in your voice, that you've done it, and work on improving yourself. So AI could either be making you better all the time, or it can be making you dumber and dumber. Kind of like that movie, Idiocracy, where... I'm sorry that I watched that movie. I really am.

 

Yeah, it's pretty dumb. watched that. But yeah, mean, the idea is if we just continually use AI to do all our thinking for us and decision making for us, which is the one brilliant piece that we have as humans ⁓ and that creative spark that's within us, we can use AI as a tool. But some people are just using it to do everything for them and they can't think anymore. They're unable to make decisions. You take away their access to a phone or to AI and they're like, whoa.

 

Right? So don't become dumber. Use AI to improve your thinking, to improve your ⁓ thought analysis around things, to help challenge you and challenge your thinking so that you grow. It can be a phenomenal growth tool. Like, what am I missing? Here's my current thinking about this. And it can give you some different ideas. ⁓ I didn't think of that. Then you can get curious. You can ask questions. You can do more research. And AI could be a tool to help you collapse time on becoming a better human, or it can...

 

replace you maybe, but then you're obsolete. And if we don't need you, then your job's going to be, you're going to be out of a job. You're going to be not usable or necessary in the future that's coming. So that's basically it. So, um, so if you are a property management business owner and you're struggling to figure out how to make things work and you're feeling tempted to do some shady AI stuff or whatever,

 

then maybe you just need a little bit of extra support or help. So reach out to us at door grow dot com. We would love to help you grow your business, help you figure things out ⁓ for a free training on how to get unlimited free leads. Text the word leads to five one two six four eight four six zero eight and we will send that to you. Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners at door grow club dot com. And if you want.

 

tips, tricks, ideas to learn about our offers or about DoorGrowth's programs, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgrow.com slash subscribe. And if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe to us and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Until next time. Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. everyone. All right, and we're out in five, four, three, two, one. Bye everybody.