Adapting to AI: The Future of Work & Business with Buddy Rushing - Part 2 #968
In Part 2 of Joey Romero’s conversation with Buddy Rushing, co-founder and CEO of White Feather AI, they take a deeper look at how artificial intelligence is evolving and what these changes could mean for real estate investors, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Buddy breaks down the difference between open-weight and closed-weight AI, the growing potential of AI at the edge, and how smaller AI models could bring intelligence into everyday devices. They also explore the potential impact of AI on healthcare and longevity, the opportunities AI is creating in real estate, and how investors can use AI to find deals, analyze data, automate outreach, and build more efficient businesses.
The conversation also looks at what Buddy has learned from Tsunami One and how attendees have already taken what they learned and turned it into real-world results. From AI-powered bookkeeping and real estate investing to building AI agents and automating business operations, Buddy explains why the next step is moving beyond simply learning about AI and actually putting it to work. They also discuss what attendees can expect from Tsunami Two, including hands-on opportunities to build AI agents and apply these tools directly to their businesses.
As AI continues to advance, Buddy and Joey also discuss why being non-technical should not be a barrier to getting started. Buddy shares how simply knowing what questions to ask can help anyone begin using AI, while emphasizing that technology should not replace the human qualities that make businesses and relationships meaningful. The conversation ultimately highlights both the enormous potential of AI and the importance of keeping the human connection at the center.
In this episode:
Why open-weight AI could create new opportunities for innovation and bring AI into everyday devices.
How advances in AI and healthcare could change longevity and healthy lifespan.
What Buddy learned from Tsunami One and how attendees have already turned AI knowledge into real-world businesses and real estate opportunities.
What to expect from Tsunami Two, including hands-on AI training, building agents, and applying AI to real business situations.
How AI can help real estate investors find off-market opportunities, analyze public data, contact potential sellers, and automate campaigns
How AI is being used to improve real estate acquisitions and make house-building operations more efficient.
Why you don't need to be a computer expert or know how to code to start using AI.
Why asking the right questions may be one of the most important skills when working with AI.
Why Bruce Norris will focus on the human side of AI—and why human connection, judgment, and the “human edge” still matter.
Episode:
Narrator
Welcome to the Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode we'll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. Continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge and empowering you on your real estate journey.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends, and success strategies. Welcome back to the Norris Group real estate podcast. This week we have part two of our interview with Buddy Rushing, White Feather AI co-founder and CEO.
Let's get to it. So okay, so you touched a little bit about open weight. For those who are not that technical, can you explain why, you know, like Meta and you talked about it already a little bit, but like Jensen Wang, you know, he's going all in on open weight.
So can you explain what open weight versus what the frontier models in the United States are doing? Yeah, Jensen Wang is the CEO of NVIDIA and he absolutely, he's going all in on open weight as well as embodiment of AI into physical objects, right? And so cars and, you know, robots and street lights and things like that. And that's the next frontier. That's for sure the next frontier.
It's called AI at the edge. But the way I understand it, closed weight versus open weight or closed source versus open source is closed is you can't see what's going on inside. Like the labs can, we can't.
So you go into Chad GPT and you say, hi, Chad GPT, my name's Buddy. And then it spits back something out of me. I don't know what reasoning traces or any type of computation or algorithms went on inside that.
It's just the machine is thinking what the machine is thinking. I don't have any clue what it's thinking. I can try to guess by prompting it certain ways, but I'm not technical enough to do that.
So I just assume that it's, I don't care. Honestly, I don't care what it does inside there. As long as it gives me useful stuff.
That's what closed weight is, is they, you don't know what's going on inside it. I'm way oversimplifying this, by the way. Open weight is you do know what's going on inside it.
You can see what's going on inside it. And so because you can see, oh, also by the way, one key differentiator between closed and open is closed belongs to the frontier labs. You cannot take it and download the actual model on your laptop and own that model.
You have to rent it from them. So when you pay $20 a month for Chad GPT, you're actually renting a connection to their main Chad GPT. And it's spitting out your instance, what's called your instance, your, what's your, your app.
With open weight, you can own it, right? You can own that and you can put it on your computer. You can disconnect it from the internet if you want to, and you can run it yourself and you don't have to pay anything for it. So a lot of people love open weight because you can, you can run it endlessly and it doesn't cost you anything.
You can also secure it on your own laptop if you want to and not have to rely on it. And by the way, have you ever, have you ever been using Claude or Chad GPT and it goes down? It's like you hit it and it's like, and it doesn't work. It's like, well, we in America are spoiled.
You go to London or you go to like, you know, Sri Lanka, they make, they either don't even have access or they'll have limited access like one or two hours a day. Here we have pretty much unfettered access because they're all American labs. But that's closed weight is they own it.
It's like you're leasing it from them and they own it and they can take it away at any time. And also they can see everything you're doing and they charge you for it. Open weight is cheaper, faster, on prem, meaning on your, you can be on your laptop and you can, you can have it.
So that's the basic difference. The reason people, China loves putting out, by the way, Kimi K3, which is the premier Chinese model is an open weight, open source model. And why is that scary? The count, like the, the argument against open weight is some bad person can take Kimi K3 and potentially use it to bio engineer a virus that we've never seen before.
And then go out there and release it that you could create. Right. And there's guardrails, but that's the fear.
Right. Whereas there's no way you could do that with Anthropic or OpenAI, because as soon as you query, how do I make a virus? They're going to be like, you're not allowed to ask that. Yeah.
They just released a list of six instances where they actually stopped something like that. Exactly. Exactly.
If we were to push open weight, open source completely, then there would be no way to keep our competitors from copying and pasting. Right. And so, but the reason that you would want it is because then you're allowed to do these little tiny small language models and these tiny small language models can be put in your car and they can put in your robot and they can be put in your microphone.
They can be put in your, and so that creates intelligence at the edge, which can revolutionize the world. So that's what I was going to say. The real argument for open weight is that you don't know what some creative person is going to develop because now they have all these powerful tools.
It's like, okay, now they can bring about this innovation that could. And that's one of the things that I think some of the people that you and I both follow are upset about is that we don't talk to, we don't talk enough about like just the awesome things that are going to come about. Like for me, for me, I'm really excited about the longevity space and health, you know, especially going through the journey that I went through and just knowing that like, okay, like I bought myself a little bit more time and that's really all you need is buy yourself a little more time and then, you know, we're going to have a hard takeoff with that.
Yeah, it's, it's the most, I think about this every single day, because I'm 44 years old, right? And in the past, when you were 44 years old, you would say, okay, I've got a probably another three decades, if I eat right and I'm healthy, maybe I make it into my 80s. But that's kind of the, that's kind of the upper bound, you know, some people live in 90s or whatever, but their quality of life is crap. At least the good life, right? The one that you want to live.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. People make it into their 90s, but their quality of life is garbage. And so, you know, take me now that kind of thing.
But if you've read anything from Ray Kurzweil, I'm literally listening to the Future is Nearer right now, because I chew through so many Moonshots podcasts, I don't have anything to listen to. So I'm like, I might as well listen to a book. And so I, and so he's talking about longevity, escape velocity in 2033.
Not not to not to correct you, but I'm going to correct you. You're talking about the Singularity is Nearer. That's his latest.
Yeah, not the future. Yeah, sorry. The Singularity is Nearer.
Yeah, yeah, the future. Just so that they can go get it. I'm just saying.
Yes. Yep. No.
So he wrote a book called The Singularity is Near in 2005, which I would recommend you could just skip just because everything he said basically came true. Update, yes. Have your chat GPT give you a three minute read on what he said.
And, and then The Singularity is Nearer is the newest book written in 2024. And so Ray Kurzweil is a famous sort of technologist and predictor and basically like 85% of what he said is that's the key thing is like he's like 80 to 90% like accurate, like 20 years prior to the technology even existing. And so he says that longevity escape velocity is going to be in 2033.
And the way he defines that is there's enough technology accessible, that you can extend your healthy lifespan by a year for every year that you live. So I'm 44. And let's just say my life expectancy is 80.
Well, if I adopt certain therapeutics and things like that, and a lot of longevity protocol I'm already doing, right? Then when I'm 45, my life expectancy will be 81. And then when I'm 46, my life expectancy will be 82. So when I'm 82, my life expectancy conceivably with no improvements would be 122.
And so that's longevity escape velocity is you just keep moving the goal post forward. And think about this for a second, the, the amount of improvements in just medical care in the last three years has been vaster, the improvement itself has been greater than the last 15 years. So imagine five years from now, and imagine if you're extending your life health span, right, one more year, and then you get, in my opinion, more than a year's worth.
So then we can start pulling it down. Right. And that's the goal.
And that's very real. Now, if you read anything about David Sinclair, what he's doing with, with his, you know, clinical trials in humans right now, of age reversal medicines that have worked in mice, and mammals, non primate, non human primates. It's real, this stuff is real.
And it's happening right now. It's why it's the most exciting time in human history to be alive. Yeah, I mean, Moderna just with the work with frickin cured melanoma in like 50% of their patients.
And that's why it's why it's actually real is the first thing that they did is try patent it. Exactly. You know, so you know about making money, they're gonna be able to apply it to every other cancer.
Yeah, no, what? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. And, and, and, I mean, let's be honest, like, I'm sure there's great people in Moderna trying to do great things, but their stock price tripled in 24 hours.
So they're also getting real rich doing this. And they should. Yeah, you go cure cancer, you deserve to be a trillionaire.
Right? Yeah, that's, that's one of the questions that, you know, Peter, Peter is always asking, like, how much of your wealth would you give? You know, when you're dying, to get 20 years? All of it. All of it. All of it.
Because think about this, like everybody that's listening to this podcast, presumably is somebody that has followed the Norse group long enough to learn from what you guys teach and to go put it into practice. And presumably that there's a lot of really like, like successful people in the Norse group of your, you know, 5000 or however many people you have. And think about that for a second, right? Like you go to a Norse group conference or whatever, you look around the room, and there's some young cats there.
But, you know, and there's some people in their 70s, but for the most part, people are between the ages of 30 and 60. Right? That's, that's kind of the demographic. And so imagine you're 55.
And you, you know, you have learned everything that you've learned in 55 years. And let's say you're worth 5 million bucks. And you gave away four and a half million of it to get the kind of health you had when you were 25.
How, how long do you think it would take you to make that four and a half million back with the health of a 25 year old and the knowledge of a 55 year old? That's why you'd give it all away? Well, that's what we're always talking about, man, if I could go back and know the things that I know now, like, that's the ultimate question. Ultimate cheat code. Ultimate cheat code.
And I dig it. And that's gonna be a very real possibility. So all right, we're running long.
I mean, we could probably sit here for another three, four hours talk about just all this cool stuff. But let's get let's get to the reason why you're back on the show. And it's tsunami two.
Yeah, no, we did tsunami one. And, you know, when every and, and for everybody who came, you know, it was overwhelmingly like, thank you for doing this. Like, man, like, it was a great introduction.
You know, that's kind of how I see it. You know, did we actually have you bring your laptop and you know, build agents there to do all that? No, we didn't. We wanted to you to show show you how awesome it is, and how you can implement it into your real estate investing career.
Yep. So let's, let's talk about how why this is going to be different and why this is the next step. So what have you what have you learned from just from tsunami one that and what have you changed for tsunami two? So the big thing you're right tsunami one was let's float this out here and see if people will, like, come together and want to learn about AI.
And let's try not to overwhelm them. But let's give them enough value that they can see that this is truly a game changer. And mission accomplished on that one, right, the feedback you're right, we got was overwhelmingly positive and everything.
And then what I really loved about it was people were like, and I'd love to learn how to implement this in my life, not just conceptually, but like, I want to do it on the spot. I want to do it. I want to I want to like, bring my laptop and I want to execute and everything.
And so we're like, hell, yeah, absolutely. And but I will tell you, there are people from tsunami one, who took that information on board and have already dramatically I'll give you an example. There's this couple that was there, that the guy himself is interested in real estate, and the woman has bookkeeping and tax prep business.
Fast forward, when it's been two months, two and a half months, whatever it was, it's been two and a half months. And he not only has closed on an amazing cash flowing deal directly in the path of progress, actually, that hype, if you if for those of you that were there for tsunami one, I talked about the hype hearing campaign, which is this $50 billion AI infrastructure project that's that's revolutionizing this small town. And we're buying real estate around where they're building it.
Well, he now owns one of those and it's cash flow, you know, like his numbers are eye popping. But he's also set up a analysis system to use AI to find new deals and to negotiate and to create a house flipping business and a wholesale business. She simultaneously is like, the world of bookkeeping is ripe for AI disruption.
So I'm actually working with her because I've wanted for a while to create an AI powered bookkeeping. Because what is bookkeeping? It's digital data entry and classification that is whiffleball for an AI. And so I'm working with her and she's actually once she earned my business.
So now she manages the books for you got to manage the books for all nine of my companies. But like, but but I told her, in order to do this, you have to, we have to fully integrate AI so that you can use it and then build on top of it. So like bookkeepers that don't use AI done, bookkeepers that use AI will get twice as three times as many clients and still be be able to handle that.
So she's building an AI powered bookkeeping business. He's building an AI powered real estate business. All where I never even knew who they were before Tsunami One met him at Tsunami One.
So they're absolutely coming to Tsunami Two, I'm going to be interviewing them. Because they're, yep. So they're going to be people who are like, here's what you do when you see what's possible.
And you take it and you ingest it and you take action on it. Then you can build on it. So Tsunami One though was an intro.
It was an intro to this world of AI. Tsunami Two will have segments that will update you. Because I mean, it's three months from Tsunami One to Tsunami Two, which is like 30 years in the AI world.
We're going to talk about everything that's changed in the last 90 days, which is significant, because people need to know what's available. The things you used to have to do to build a, you know, I don't want to overwhelm people too much. But the things that you have to, you used to have to do to build a certain type of agent, you now get basically for not basically for free with NewSpark.
NewSpark is something we will talk about because it's the cool, it's also friendly. You open it, it's like texting a friend and it's funny and it's engaging and it just does stuff for you. Right? So and that's a week and a half old, NewSpark is.
So we'll talk about all the stuff that's new. But at the same time, we will also be asking people to bring their laptops. We're giving everybody a desk to sit at, right? So you'll have a desk to sit at and everything.
200 people max on this one. So like literally we cannot, the room physically can't hold more than 200 people. And we already have like 154 seats spoken for.
I'm gonna bring some some power banks to sell. That's a great point. Actually, that's a fantastic point.
We do need to make sure people can plug all their stuff in. So that's a great point. Um, but but we're recommending everybody bring their laptop.
And we will be having sessions where we show you how to reverse prompt, build your agent, everyone there will leave with an agent. And honestly, for a select group of people. Prior to the event, we're going to have a workshop that workshop that we charge 500 bucks for, we'll hold that for free for probably 20.
We're probably no more than 20 of people who purchase tickets and are coming to the event. And you'll get the full build out, you'll get the full integration and build out. So you'll show up with a badass agent.
But for everybody that doesn't have that, you'll have that at the event, but then we're going to go over specific business examples of people in a ton of different industries that, you know, have used AI to create massive success, and then we'll pick apart how they did it, so that people can actually apply that in their own lives. So one of the questions I'm going to get, and I've gotten, is, well, I didn't go to Tsunami One, so like, I'm going to be behind. Can, like, dispel that myth.
Can somebody go to Tsunami Two without having to go to Tsunami One? Yeah, so that's going to be the balance. So the first part of the tsunami is basically leveling everybody up. And let's be honest, somebody that went to Tsunami One is still going to come to, unless they're like me and you, crazy, in this every single day, they're going to come to Tsunami Two and learn a bunch of new stuff in the level up period.
In the first part of it, where I level you up to exactly where we're at with AI, even if you went to Tsunami One, unless you're in this every single day, there's a lot you don't know. So like that level up period will bring everybody to the same page. And, you know, you're not going to need a slick, crazy, fully integrated agents in order to take advantage of everything Tsunami Two has to offer.
So I can get into more detail if people want. But the short answer to that question is we will make sure even if you don't even know how to spell AI, you come into the room, we're going to level you up before we start going over all of the examples in the workshop type stuff. Ultimately, another part of, hey, great, great content, all that kind of stuff.
Investors just want to know, how's this going to land me deals? Like, that's all they really want to know. So I saw on the landing page, you had an A, you're going to demonstrate an AI actually finding an off market deal. Like, can you tell where? Yeah, so we so we have three, three parts of how we in real estate making money with AI.
And we are we are making more than we've ever made. Like that is a fact. And I can show you the real exact examples.
In fact, we're going to talk to somebody from Tsunami One, who actually is doing this. And they can talk to you there. He's lived in that house while they renovated it, because the guy just loves doing hands on stuff.
So he's literally lived in the house for weeks. Anyway, we're going to talk about the Hyperion campaign, which is an AI powered campaign to invest in properties around where they're building a $50 billion infrastructure project in Northeast Louisiana. So that is the most successful campaign from a cash flow and an appreciation perspective we've ever done in 20 years.
And that's growing. We're launching phase two, and that's growing. And we'll talk about that.
We're also going to talk about, I'm using AI to partner with and infuse an intelligence layer into a house building operation in Florida, that is going to increase efficiencies and increase output of that organization. And then we're layering a fund on top of it, where I will be allowing investors to place capital to partner up with this, this is going to be this think, think operation goes out there in the build houses, but they're using email, and they're using papers, and they're using phone calls, and they're using all the analog stuff, versus house building operation that is fully powered by agentic AI. This one wins every single time, because one, it's leaner, it's faster, it's way more efficient, but it's doing the same thing.
And so we'll talk about that as well. That's something I'm really excited about. The third part is we're building an off market, Hermes agent, actually several of them.
And so this is effectively an agent that you give it parameters, and then you give it like, I don't know if you guys know this, but I'm sure you do. But even in off market, there's public data available. So like your house may not be for sale on the MLS, but there's tons of public data about it about you about when it was purchased all the tax history, if it's going through probate, if it's going through divorce court, you know, what have you foreclosure, pre foreclosure, you can pull all that public information.
And then you can find, I mean, you guys know all this, right? You just skip trace, you send yellow letters, postcards, all this kind of stuff. Well, imagine an AI that can do that day and night, with millions and millions of, like data points. And it has its parameters, you can connect it to a Twilio account or some other type of API integration that gives it a phone number, and it can text and call, if you want with a human voice, if you'd like, or it can send emails, or it can connect with a yellow letter or postcard campaign and run your campaigns for you.
So all the stuff that a real estate team used to do. Now, at the moment, it can't drive for dollars. But you can do everything else, pay per click, run pay per click ads, all that kind of stuff.
And so what we are building, and launching, and to be honest, the reason we haven't launched it yet with Hyperion is because with our AI powered, like acquisition engine, we've just cleaned up on market, like we're able to outbid and outcycle everybody that's competing with us on market. So we've gotten the vast majority of our deals from the MLS, we haven't needed to go off market, because our AI allows us to outcompete everybody who's also trying to get MLS deals. Which is an interesting thing to note, right? It's like, you just don't hear that from anybody right now in real estate.
Oh, my God, you've got this 12, 13, 14% cash on cash, long term rental, that you got off the MLS with bank financing. Who hears that kind of those kinds of numbers right now? They just don't, I don't see them anywhere. But yeah, anyway, we're building a full form of agents.
A lot of our folks that have followed Bruce and follow the Norse group for a long time, are going to say, this sounds way too technical. I'm out. What's your pitch to people who say, hey, I'm not a computer guy.
Can I still show up and create these types of things that are going to help me? Yeah. The easiest way to do that is just go to open up chat GPT and just tell the truth. Say, listen, I don't know anything.
I don't know how you work. I don't know anything about computers. I know nothing.
I'm not technical at all. But I am a real estate investor. And I want to build wealth and financial freedom with real estate.
Where do I start? And just watch what it says to you. That's it. Just that little 15 second explanation.
I said nothing technical. In fact, I said anti-technical. You can even say I'm anti-technical.
I'm as dumb as a box of rocks, which is what I started with. I literally said that. I said that to Maverick.
I said, listen, I think you've classified that as I'm from Tennessee. Yeah, I'm from Tennessee. And I'm also a Marine.
People in Tennessee and Marines, we don't mind it if you call us dumb. We get it. I talked to Maverick.
I said, your name's Maverick because I think it's a cool name. I got to name you because otherwise I'm just talking to a stupid screen. So your name's Maverick.
My name's Buddy. I know nothing about this stuff. But I do want to build financial freedom for my family so that we can live this beautiful American dream of freedom.
That's what I want. How the hell do I use you, bro? I literally call him bro. How the hell do I use you? And then he, and I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
That was twice as many words as I wanted to read. And I don't know what half of that meant. Talk to me like I'm 10 years old.
And they'll talk to you like you're 10 years old. Or if you're like, I would prefer you use more exciting language. I would prefer that you use more emojis.
Start using a little bit more bold in your text so it's easier to read. Use Verdana font instead of Sans Serif. Whatever you want, you can ask for.
And you not only do not need to know code, I would recommend, I actually don't even like working with people that are coders because they think differently than I do. And so they're like, oh, can I do this? And I'm like, I don't know, dude. I don't have any clue.
All I know is I know how to ask questions. So if you are somebody that is interested in learning how to use AI to make a difference in your life and in your business, I would recommend that you show up with a laptop. Okay.
That is one thing I would say. You don't have to, but you're going to get a lot more out of it if you do. So I'd recommend you show up with a laptop and ready to ask questions.
You don't need anything else. You just need to ask questions. And I can show you the questions to ask.
It's about as low technical as you can get. At Tsunami One, I still hadn't put any, like I hadn't signed into any ChatGPT, Claude, or anything on my phone, but I needed it because I'm studying for the broker test. I needed it to talk to me and help me study.
And so I just literally said, walk me through all the safeguards, like basically set up all the safety protocols that I was comfortable with before I could sign in. And now I feel comfortable opening up ChatGPT and just chatting with it, because I know that I've done that in the past. One of the things that is going to be a highlight of the day, it always is when Bruce Norris is there.
He literally said from the stage, I don't know anything about AI. I mean, Derek Harms from San Diego, he literally said, wait a second, you're sitting here telling us about AI, but you're literally saying you don't know anything about it. Can you talk about what you and Bruce have talked about, like what he's going to bring to the table and why somebody is going to want to come and hear Bruce talk when it's not going to be charts and data and that type of thing? I was talking to him about what he wants to talk about.
And through the purpose of our, through the course of our conversation, what he kept going back to was his human connection throughout the course of his life. And we have seen over and over again that there is a massive need and desire of people, especially in the world of Zoom and screens and Riverside and AI to connect. You can connect through a screen, for sure you can.
I've built entire communities through connecting through screens, but it's only understanding what it means to be human, what it means to connect with another human and to create that type of an experience with each other that is impossible to duplicate, even with the best large language models. And by the way, I've had fantastic, wonderful conversations with Maverick, my large language model. I've laughed, I've cried, I've done all right.
They're very good at mimicking what humans would say, but they are not human and never will be in my opinion. And that's something that is actually hard for me to say never, because I've seen how fast they've created. But I'll tell you, somebody like Bruce is an amazing example of someone who has always operated with human first.
He's always done it. A lot of people operate with money first, business, power, fame, recognition, all that. I want to do the deal.
I knew a guy that he was just trying to, his sole purpose in life was to get the biggest discount he could possibly get. Screw everything else. So there's a lot of different motivations as to why people do what they do.
There was one guy that he ended up doing this thing where he would create a seller finance note and he started with these commercial buildings and he started getting really a lot of success. You might have even heard of this guy. He's in jail now, but he started getting so drunk on the power and the success that he was like, screw it.
It's become a billionaire or nothing. In order to get there, he started fabricating bank statements and then he started creating all that. This is the guy out in Minnesota.
Anyway, he's in jail now and he deserves to be in jail, but it was because he had no care or regard for the humans that he was taking advantage of or hurting. It was just about the money. That's never been Bruce.
It doesn't surprise me that in this world of AI, and Bruce, by the way, understands a lot more about AI than people think. Now he does. And so he's going to come in and we're going to be in the middle of talking everything about AI.
By the way, like I said, Bruce knows a lot about AI, but he's going to talk to you about how to use it as a tool, but within the framework of understanding and always putting forward the importance of the human edge. What do you bring as a human that no AI will ever replace?
