Lead gen isn’t your problem. Your client experience is. In this Stay Paid episode, Sheila Reddy, founder and CEO of Mosaik, joins us to share how she transitioned from healthcare leadership to building one of the most client-focused real estate...
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Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
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Our guest today is Sheila Reddy. Sheila is a former healthcare management professional who made a bold pivot into real estate, founding her own real estate company, Mosaic, a new technology platform offering workflow management, a client experience engine, and advanced analytics. Mosaic's wish list based search engine allows users to find properties based upon requested features or conditions. Sheila, welcome to Stay Paid.
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Thanks so much for having me, Josh. Thanks so much for having me, Luke.
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It's.
C
It's a pleasure to be here.
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It's exciting to have you here. I was able to hear you speak at the BAM conference, which you did a phenomenal job, and I've been hearing and learning about your product Mosaic for a while now, and I think it's really applicable to the real estate industry. So I wanted to get you on the show. You're also, you do a lot of sponsoring of BAM like we do, so. So there's kind of a community there and synergy there that we have. I would love to start though, because you are, you know, Eric, the broke agent, describes you as one of the smartest people he knows, which I can, you know, as I've heard you speak and I've kind of done some research on you, I can quickly see that. But I have a question for you. Why would you choose to go from healthcare, which seems to be a booming space, you know, awesome, to a bold, like Josh said, a bold pivot into real estate, where the real estate market feels like, oh my gosh, just turmoil upside down. Like, why would you want to get into real estate as a founder and build this company, Mosaic?
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Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, thank you for the kind words. I will try my best to live up to them here today. But so it's interesting because Mosaic is really kind of the convergence of two parallel paths that were happening in my life right out of school. I got into the healthcare world, hospital management specifically, and climbed the corporate ladder in that space. But as that was all going on, and even while I was still in school, I actually had started dabbling in real estate. So not full time or not professionally, but just kind of small time investing, you know, a few flips, a few rentals here and there. It was kind of on the heels of like the 2008 financial crisis. So it was a time in real estate where there was an ability to get in at a younger age than compared to anywhere in any other time. In history. And so it was just made a little bit more accessible to me at that point from a price point perspect. So I was always doing a little bit of real estate as my career in healthcare was progressing and worked with a few different agents, had a lot of different experiences in that realm. Like, I had a cross country move, you know, was buying and selling as, you know, on a personal level, on an investing level.
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So it was, did the agents do a good job? I just have to ask, did they do a good job or is it.
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Yeah, I had a couple really phenomenal agents. And for the most part, I'd say the agents that I worked with were pretty solid. But in the back of my mind, I was always, like, keeping this mental list of just points of friction that I was experiencing. And it was largely, you know, when I go back and peel back the layers of that onion, it was more so byproducts of, like, systems and what agents had access to relative to, like, the agent themselves. So Mosaic was just always this, like, back of the mind, just kind of list of personal problems I was trying to solve. Right. As I was going through these different journeys. And so, you know, a few years ago, I was kind of at a point in my health care career where I had gone as far as I could go at the company that I was at. And I really had to make a decision of, you know, do I double down and maybe pivot to large organization or take on more verticals, or do I make a big change? And I had always thought that I would get back to doing real estate in a more kind of permanent, full time capacity. That's always what I really enjoyed. Health care was something that I learned a lot from, got a lot of great experience from, but it was something that I kind of fell into straight out of school and not necessarily something I was inherently passionate about. So I decided to take a leap of faith or make the bold pivot, as Josh described it, and ended up leaving the world of health care. I was actually going to take a little bit of time off and do kind of like an eat, pray, love sort of thing. But this was like early 2020, so you can pretty much, like, imagine how that went. I was living in downtown Chicago at the time, so I was pretty much just locked in my condo for like a year and.
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Great time to decide to start a business.
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Exactly, exactly. So it ended up being a great opportunity, though, a blessing in disguise to just like, really sit down and map out, like, what I wanted Mosaic to be and kind of what I wanted to do in the space and. And I've been doing it ever since. So that's how I ended up here.
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Was the pain point with dealing with the agents. I just know my pain point, what my pain point has been, which is the way that they handle inspection and they handle the documents. And it's like, feels like my experience felt like it's last minute. You don't know what you're signing, what you're getting. You're getting it through a DocuSign system. So there's no explanation. And I know agents have improved since my time of buying my house years ago, but that's how it felt. And so the frustration. And I told my brother Steven this because we buy a lot of investment properties and investment might be a little bit different because of, you got to move on the deal immediately when the deal pops up. But it felt like last seconds. Oh, gosh, you need me to notarize this thing right now. You need me, like, what the heck. Is that what your frustration was? And is that what led to Mosaic?
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It was some of it. You know, Mosaic really spans three key pillars. Search, transaction management, and then post closing, client retention. So there was definitely pain points in each of those areas that I experienced that we've subsequently tried to solve in terms of empowering agents to deliver those solutions at scale. But I think what you're referencing. Absolutely. Experience that actually had some of those last minute, oh, this needs to be notarized. I didn't realize. Or you need the wet signatures on.
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You're like, what do you expect me to drop my day right now and just go notarize?
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Exactly. I've had a, you know, those, those 11th hour fire drills. I don't know that I've had a deal that didn't have them. Maybe few exceptions, but yeah, absolutely. That was a big part of, you know, what we've tried to solve from a transaction management side digitally anyway, through Mosaic. But a big part of those, those pain points was not knowing really like, what's going to come next. It's funny, I am originally from Southern California, moved to Chicago for a while back when I was in the health care space. And when I was buying my condo out in Chicago, it was certainly not my first rodeo. I was, of course, new to, you know, the city and the Illinois market and, you know, this concept of like downtown condos and that sort of thing. But in terms of just like a real estate transaction was far from my first. And I remember the agent I worked with at that time, his assistant, when we went under contract, sent me this Google Doc and it was just color coded. It was something like red means something's overdue or at risk, black means it's coming up, I think some other color, if it was in progress, something like that. It was just one page, dates of what was going to happen and when, then they just go in and update the colors. There's a couple times where I had a lot of other stuff going on in my life at the time, just professionally and with the relocation that I wasn't always able to just be super dialed in. So I just go onto that sheet and see where things were at and send questions if I had them. And I remember like my mind being blown and feeling like, wow, this is the first time like actually have somewhat of an idea of like what is coming next. And that's not to say there weren't other points of friction that we've, you know, addressed in other parts of Mosaic, but from a transaction side that was probably the most like clear one that I had had. And then I remember thinking to myself, because this wasn't that long ago, it was probably like 2018 timeframe. So I remember thinking to myself, I am this excited about a color coded Google Doc. Like the, the, the bar for transparency anyway was not really that high at that point.
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So that it makes so much sense because the industry, or I should say the consumer's view on a real estate agent is that they don't do much and that they stick a yard sign in the yard, they maybe hold an open house, call a few people and they get a massive paycheck. That tends to be a standard assumption on a real estate agent, which is why you always have this, a little bit of disdain or lack of respect for the real estate industry. So Mosaic is all about, from what I understand, you know, it does a lot of things, but you can showcase the people, you can give your client basically a visual into what is happening during the transaction and everything you're doing for them as an agent.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because if you think about other industries, even ones like real estate that are complex, high stakes, high financial component to it, you know, if you've got a financial advisor, you probably have a portfolio you can log into and you may not know, you know, exactly like why they picked a certain stock or that sort of thing, unless you ask, but you can more or less see what's happening and if they're making trades on your behalf and how that's moving. Coming from the healthcare world, like when I started my career in Healthcare, most, you know, organizations, if you wanted, as a consumer, as a patient, if you wanted a copy of your medical record, you had to, like, call a number. And then hopefully you had access to a fax machine, because they'd fax it to you in like, 10 to 15 business days. Or you'd go pick it up. And, you know, now you go get your blood work done, and like, a day later you can access your lab results. And that doesn't mean you're not going to talk to your physician and have them interpret those for you. But you have that transparency, you have that visibility, and you have, you know, kind of respect for that autonomy. Because at the end of the day, it, you know, if it's your blood work, it's still. It's your body. If it's your financial assets, it's. It's your life savings, right? And so similarly with real estate, it's. It's the consumer's transaction at the end of the day. So, you know, what we try to do at Mosaic is really offer that same experience on the transaction side of as an agent. You know, you have all these productivity tools within Mosaic on the transaction side to make that more efficient for yourself. But really you have this ability to bring the client in and let them see kind of what is it that they need to do next, or what are the key dates that are coming up. Or to the extent as an agent, you want to share, what is it that you're working on? Because that does a few different things. At one just showcases the value that the agent's bringing, because transactions are inherently complex. But it also just meets that consumer expectation because they're already getting that in every other industry. They have the ability to see what's going on.
A
That's so true. So even with making a Domino's pizza, you know what's going on?
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The pizza tracker.
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It's funny because I feel like the industry has been talking about the pizza tracker for years and years and years. And I think a lot of the reason, like, we don't have one, have this, like, a universal tracker that's been adopted across the industry is because I think, like, we were pursuing the wrong thing as an industry. I think a lot of people thought that the reason the consumer likes the pizza tracker so much is because it's simple and easy. Right? I can see my pizza's in the oven, my pizza's on the way. But I think that's maybe where there was a misstep. It's less so about the simplicity. The simplicity is Just a byproduct of the fact that there's only so many steps that go into making a pizza and delivering it. What people really like about it and what it is that makes it so powerful is less so the simplicity and more so just the transparency. Because now if I know my pizza is like 15 minutes away, I'm going to make an informed decision about whether I'm going to start snacking out of my refrigerator.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Or I don't have to call and ask where it is. Like it's going to save me that effort. Unless it said it delivered and it doesn't show up. I only have to call in extreme scenarios. Whereas 10, 20 years prior, you had no idea what was happening or when it would arrive. And so I think there's been a lot of discourse about this pizza tracker, and I think a lot of people have tried to achieve that in terms of bringing that simplicity to a transaction. But transactions are inherently complex and they're inherently unique. And I think it's less about trying to simplify it for the consumer and more about just bringing them into the complexity, not in a way that makes them do the work that they're paying to be done, but in a way that empowers them to understand what's happening. It's same way if you go to get like a surgery, your surgeon's probably going to walk you through what it is he's going to do when you're in the or, and if there's a complication or if something goes wrong, he's going to fix it. But when you come out of it, he's not just going to say, everything's fine. He's going to walk you through, hey, what was the. What was the complication? You know, what did we do to solve that? And then how does that impact your recovery or subsequent next steps? So I think it's really bringing that same level of transparency and information to the consumer in real estate.
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It is. It's a great way to kind of say what your product is. It's like the Domino's Pizza tracker of real estate in a good way. Like it. It really adds that clarity for the client. And yes, it's, you know, I wouldn't say necessarily simple, but I think your visuals are done really, really well. From what I've seen with the actual platform, I want to pick your brain selfishly, like switch gears as you're a founder, entrepreneur. And I'm curious to you, what has been the biggest challenge of trying to get your messaging out to this industry? And what have you found? Because I think a lot of people can gain from this. If you're a new agent coming into a market, if you're get just getting started, like how have you thought about how we get the word out and what has worked for you, what hasn't? And I feel like you guys crush it with your ads. Your ads are freaking hilarious. The video ads you guys do, it's just phenomenal storytelling. So everybody, if you guys haven't seen Mosaics ads, just go to YouTube and Google mosaics ads. They are hilarious. They're really great. But can you share with me like what's been the challenge and how have you learned of how to bring a message to market?
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Yeah. Wow. This is, I feel like this is such a layered question and layered set of answers too, because I don't know that there's really been like one thing as far as like a challenge or lesson learned or what's worked. It's really just been this combination of, you know, we try something and then it doesn't quite work how we think it will and then just like tinkering and refining. I actually was just at the Thousand Watt Brand and Marketing summit last week and was able to share some of those lessons learned. So this ended up being good timing because I'm coming off the heels of trying to distill all of that. But I would say like, you know, I guess the two things that have been challenges and lessons learned along the way. I think the first was just for me it was like a mindset shift in terms of thinking about our marketing as like experiments that we're running and like a hypothesis we're trying to prove and just taking the data as it comes and understanding where to refine and tinker it. I think early on I was always trying to hit a home run with a marketing campaign and be like, oh, if we run this ad, we're going to be flooded with customers or this is going to be the one thing that really just lights everything up. In reality, marketing, I think never really quite works that way. It's an accumulation of all of these little things that you're doing both consistently, but then also refining as you go. I'd say the biggest challenge wasn't inherently one thing. It was just really trying to adopt that mindset and that structure. And once we started doing it that way, things really started to shift for us momentum wise from a marketing perspective. So even the ads that you're referencing, we run a lot of them on meta ads. And it was a lot of trial and error to get those working. And we'd start and then we wouldn't see the results. And so we would just stop for a few months and not even touch meta ads. And it wasn't until we just started consistently doing it and tinkering and refining and finding the right people to help us with that those started to show results. And then I'd say the other thing was just kind of following the zeitgeist of sorts. We've always been about client experience. That's the core of what we've done from the very beginning. We inherently do other things and bring value in other forms, like the ability to consolidate some of your tech stack and the analytics that come from having these different pillars in one place. And I would say early in our journey of going to market, people were still coming off of the boom times and there was less inclination to really, like, learn and listen to the importance of the client experience. So early on, a lot of folks just wanted to hear, like, how can we consolidate logins for them or how can we, you know, our productivity tools make them more efficient? And then, you know, cue the, the big lawsuits and then the NAR settlements and you know, all these headlines that start hitting the newspapers. And we started to see this really palpable shift where now, like a lot of the agents who are coming to us for demos or asking us questions or even the ones that we were already working with, now we're starting to prioritize, like that client experience more, starting to realize how powerful like referrals and repeat business and that sort of thing can be. So we saw this like, significant shift. So some of it was just even though our message and our core values have consistently stayed the same, we've had to be like, responsive to what was top of mind for people. And so I think that's something even outside of proptech, like just as agents too. So it's revisiting your marketing and to understand if that is aligned with whatever the topical things that consumers are thinking about, whether it's aligned with that. A lot of the times we see people still marketing off of this concept of we'll help you find your dream home. But we're living in a time where some buyers don't even know if they can afford to buy a house, let alone a dream home.
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It's literally a dream.
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Exactly. So that was, I'd say, the challenges and the lessons learned is just being agile in those different ways.
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Well, speaking of top of mind, what everyone's thinking about, about right now, obviously AI You've partnered, I think recently with an AI platform. How are you incorporating that or how are you seeing AI being.
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Yeah, so we use AI in a few different ways. You know, sometimes through partnerships, sometimes through our own, our own models and that sort of thing. But yeah, so, so we use AI. You know, I know that's, that's such a hot topic. Right. Like everyone's talking about AI, every company's trying to.
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Every day there's a new tool and something to play with. Yeah.
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As using AI. Our whole strategy to AI has been less about AI for AI sake. So it's less about just putting in chatbots and these type of things to say we have AI and more about where incremental points in the process where AI can make something a little bit better. So for us on the property search side, we do a whole ranking system of properties. So rather than just filtering things. And now so if I say I want to be 20 minutes from work, we don't want to necessarily not show the consumer property that's 24 minutes away from work but has everything else they're looking for. So we've kind of moved away from just this like binary filters that you see in most search portals and towards a more like property analysis based search experience. And so, you know, we use AI for components of that like analyzing images to see, you know, color the kitchen cabinets is the view obstructed things that might not be easy to get out of MLS data itself. And so like similarly we ingest certain points of the process versus trying to just do AI for AI's sake. We kind of look at it as like a tool more than anything else.
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That is really smart to analyze the images and features. Based on that I learned I can upload a picture of my food and it'll tell me the calories with.
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Are you serious?
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I'm curious how accurate that is because like how does it know if you put half a stick of butter in versus like a teaspoon that?
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I don't know about the stick of butter, but it didn't know my salad had dressing on it because it said based on the shine from the leaves, it's probably a light vinaigrette.
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Crazy. No way was it a vinaigrette.
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It was, yeah. I showed it to Dave. He's like, that looks right.
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That is. Yeah. It's just, I like your view on AI. It truly is a tool to help you be more efficient. It's not AI for AI sake, it is AI to enhance a process. You know, like we have AI in our company right now. But one of the main, I mean, we have it for chat from a Zendesk perspective. We use that company that has it built in, but we're mainly using it to process emails. So we have a, you know, hundreds and hundreds of emails that come in a day from clients and there tends to be like a couple different buckets, things like deadline moves for their magazines and some other things. And you can kind of easily bucket those into workflows. I like how Salesforce thinks about AI. They tend to think of it in terms of flow, in terms of like workflows, where they go, well, what is the workflow you're doing? So for an example would be like our magazine. Adding a recipient to your list is a workflow is like you want to add. It's just a flow that you go through. So AI could handle that. So you could change your. Like we're working on changing our phone prompts to be able to where right there. An AI agent can help you add a name to your list or a text, you know, number can help you add a name to your list, stuff like that. But it's, it's through that same lens that you're thinking about it. It's like you don't have this overall agent that's doing everything for you, yet you just have components of your system being enhanced.
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Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that approach. At least for where AI is today is, you know, it's injecting it into those.
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Does it make you nervous where it's going tech wise?
C
I feel like I should have like a more philosophical answer on this.
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It makes me nervous. I don't know why. I'm just nervous. I'm nervous, Nancy, over here.
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I mean, I think AI is one of those things, like most technology innovations where there's like this potential to do so many amazing things with it and in that same way there's this potential for it to be abused. But I think that like, I think we're so early in this journey that you know all the different ways that it could be used and in both cases good and bad still like remain fully unseen.
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So are you experimenting it with your coding? Like, do you have the copilots for your coders or.
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So our development team does use it.
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Yeah, same with ours.
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But like, I think purely from a just, you know, increasing efficiency or just kind of helping brainstorm a solution sort of thing versus actually, you know, I know there's like this new trend of like vibe coding or whatever, it's Called where?
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Oh, I haven't heard of this, like.
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Creating little mini apps and like mockups and things like that. Using, using AI and stuff. We don't really use it in that way. We use it more to just increase the efficiency of our existing team. And then also like, I think, you know, tools like ChatGPT can be really helpful just as like thought partners to just kind of help you unblock yourself on certain problems.
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Agree with you 100%. Because the issue is like Tom, our VP of tech told me he's been using it and trying to figure out can we use it for tech and all that stuff. And he goes, the problem is it's wrong sometimes. And, and then it's like wrong. Yeah, that's. Yeah, exactly. That is a great way to say it. It is confidently wrong. And so the problem becomes, at that point it's like I always make this example with accounting. It's like accounting, you have to be 100% right. So if you hand me my VP of Finance, hands me our financial book and it's wrong, right? There's an area that's wrong. The problem is now I don't know if I have to go verify everything, right? And so it's like you're not trying to be, what do you call it, overbearing or anything like that, but you have to tell your, your people, hey, you can't be wrong. And it's not because I don't allow imperfection. It's because if this happens, then we have to, now we have to doubt everything. And I see ChatGPT and what's happening in coding and stuff similarly, it's like, ah, shoot, even though it makes me more efficient and it's guiding me in this route, I can't be confident that it's actually right. So I have to take the time to verify. So it's still helpful and it's going to get better. And I've been watching obviously consumer that just like everybody else of like where they think it's going to go. They're predicting by the end of the year you will have agentic software engineers. So engine not just engineering from a copilot standpoint where it's helping you code, but engineering where you can tell it, you can tell this agentic, you know, bot, hey, go code this. And it actually has the ability based upon requirements and all that stuff to work. All right, last question for you. I feel like we're just getting started, but I see we're already almost 30 minutes in. Is what's been the most Frustrating thing about the real estate industry to you and can't hold back. Sheila. You got it. What's the most frustrating thing? If it's really bad, we'll clip this as the thumbnail, you know. No, I.
C
Just kidding. All right. I would say, ooh, that's a good question. Because there's so many different frustrating things.
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That's the best answer.
C
Correct as well. So. But I think that's the case with any industry. I think that, you know, from what, what I've seen, especially, you know, with so much of what we do being focused on the client experience, but delivering that through agents, we believe that people are not going to want to push a button and buy a $500,000 house. It's a really nuanced financial and emotional decision. People want to work with experts, they want a human walking them through that process. But just given how much digital convenience we're used to, people are not going to sacrifice digital convenience for the human touch. They really want both. That's always been our philosophy is how do we provide that digital touch that agents can then use, run with to deliver a more just comprehensive client experience, end to end. And you know, this isn't to say that any of this is inherently wrong, but I think just coming into the industry with that client focus, you know, so much of like what you hear in terms of industry, like rhetoric and training and like so much of what I think historically the industry has focused on is like lead gen and lead conversion, which is an important part of any business. But you know, coming from like the healthcare industry, for example, if most physicians, you know, their first couple years in practice, they're, they're going out there and they're building their practices if they're independent in the way agents are. But usually after like a couple of years, you've got wait lists and you've got, hey, my practice is full because the focus is still heavily on like the craft, right? It's delivering good care, delivering good treatment, and letting those patients then grow your practice organically. And so I think in real estate there are some agents who do that, who have built really strong referral, repeat based businesses who really focus more on like serving clients and delivering value to clients over just generating leads. And I'm not saying you shouldn't do lead based stuff. That's an important pillar of every business. But I do think there's a large portion of the industry where like that's the sole focus is how do you generate leads? And then, okay, I got this lead to convert. So now I'm going to do kind of the minimum on serving them and then just try to go generate more leads and convert more leads. And that has been, I think, a little bit of a paradigm shift. And I think we're starting to see the agents that we talk to, those people who've already been doing the client centric approach, and then there's people who are starting to see the importance of that, especially as there's all this shift and change in the world. But it has been something where it kind of feels like there was a little bit of a learning curve or a paradigm shift in terms of just thinking about it that way. And I think it's because so much of what's been out there, content wise and so forth, is just really about leads. And a lot of times people forget that there's a whole other half of that equation which is doing a really great job for the client. And if you do that, your business inherently grows and it inherently grows in a more profitable way because now you're not spending all this money trying to generate the lead. You're not spending all this time trying to build trust. You're already working with people who have heard that you're a great agent. So that's something where I think we've just had to invest more into helping outline that and making that value proposition clearer than I maybe originally thought we would have. But it's also been, you know, good in other ways in that we're just seeing that start to become more and more, I guess, known, if that makes sense.
A
Love it. Super well said.
B
Makes sense. Sheila, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Super impressive what you are doing with Mosaic.
C
Thanks for having me.
B
Before we close out, let people know how they can connect with you or learn more about Mosaic.
C
Yeah, so you can visit our website. It's Mosaic IO M O S A I K dot IO and then I'm available, you know, anytime to connect with anyone. If anyone has any questions or wants to brainstorm on anything client experience related, whether you're using Mosaic or not. And that's just my email, which is Sheila S H E I L A.
B
Mosaic IO thank you again so much for coming on and thank you all for listening. To dive deeper into this episode. Get the links that Sheila mentioned there as well as the video. You can go to staypaidpodcast.com and if you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube, give us a like on the video and subscribe to the Reminder Media channel if you want to get hold of me or Luke you can email us@podcastmindermedia.com and of course you can follow us on social media as well. We are at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Steich.
A
Guys, I'm Luke Acre. Sheila, thank you. You did not disappoint. Guys, go check out Mosaic. It really is phenomenal. I've interacted with a lot of clients that are using it and they love it. And I think it is something that is missing, especially the stuff that happens during the transaction. I think there has been also to add on to this whole focus on lead gen. We've always said the agent is the brand, but really it's your service that is the brand. It's like that's your product. Like, that is what the market is going to know and remember you by. And there isn't a ton of focus on the actual service of the client and what they experience from end to end. And so I think you should check out Mosaic for that. But my action item for you is this, because all of you could do this. Whether you use this Mosaic or not is you can do the whole how do I showcase to my client during the transaction what is going on and what's upcoming for them? And you heard Sheila said she was so impressed with a Google Doc that had color coding system. I mean, think about that. That's. That, that's the bar. The bar is low. I mean, do you even have a Google Doc where you're preparing clients of what to expect and what's coming next? Do you at least have that a Google form? Because, you know, obviously I would encourage you go check out Mosaic because they can do it for you and it's going to be better, but ultimately you can do it with things like that. Are you even doing that? Do you even know what the client experience is? Because you can't improve upon that which you haven't defined. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every business, it's top producers. Take action. Take action on that today.
Stay Paid Podcast: The Domino’s Tracker Approach to Real Estate with Sheila Reddy
Release Date: May 12, 2025
Hosts: Luke Acree and Josh Stike
Guest: Sheila Reddy, Founder of Mosaic
The Stay Paid Podcast, hosted by Luke Acree and Josh Stike, features Sheila Reddy, a transformative figure in the real estate technology space. Sheila transitioned from a successful career in healthcare management to founding Mosaic, a cutting-edge real estate platform designed to enhance workflow management, client experiences, and analytics for real estate agents and entrepreneurs.
Josh Stike introduces Sheila and Mosaic, highlighting her innovative approach: "Mosaic's wish list based search engine allows users to find properties based upon requested features or conditions" (00:11).
Sheila shares her journey from healthcare management to real estate, emphasizing the convergence of her parallel interests:
"Mosaic is really kind of the convergence of two parallel paths that were happening in my life right out of school." (01:31)
She began dabbling in real estate while climbing the corporate ladder in healthcare, engaging in small-scale investing such as flipping and rental properties. The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis presented a unique opportunity, making real estate more accessible for younger investors like herself.
A significant portion of the discussion centers on the common frustrations in real estate transactions, which Sheila sought to address through Mosaic:
"I was always doing a little bit of real estate as my career in healthcare was progressing and worked with a few different agents... but there were always points of friction." (02:37)
Specifically, Sheila highlights issues with last-minute document handling and lack of transparency:
"Experience that actually had some of those last minute, oh, this needs to be notarized... that was a big part of, you know, what we've tried to solve from a transaction management side digitally anyway, through Mosaic." (05:28)
A pivotal moment in the episode is the comparison of Mosaic to Domino’s Pizza Tracker, illustrating the importance of transparency in client experiences:
"It's less so about the simplicity. The simplicity is just a byproduct of the fact that there's only so many steps that go into making a pizza and delivering it. What people really like about it is transparency." (10:30)
Sheila elaborates on how Mosaic provides clients with real-time updates and clear visibility into the transaction process, akin to tracking a pizza:
"What we try to do at Mosaic is offer that same experience on the transaction side of an agent. You have all these productivity tools within Mosaic on the transaction side to make that more efficient for yourself... it's also about client expectation." (12:33)
The conversation shifts to Sheila’s experiences in marketing Mosaic. She discusses the initial challenges and the strategic shift needed to achieve effective marketing outcomes:
"The first was just for me it was like a mindset shift in terms of thinking about our marketing as like experiments that we're running and like a hypothesis we're trying to prove." (13:45)
She emphasizes the importance of viewing marketing efforts as iterative experiments rather than seeking a one-hit-wonder campaign. Sheila also notes the shift in industry focus from lead generation to enhancing client experiences, influenced by recent industry changes like NAR settlements:
"We've always been about client experience... Early on, a lot of folks just wanted to hear, like, how can we consolidate logins for them or how can our productivity tools make them more efficient." (16:00)
AI’s role in enhancing Mosaic’s functionality is another key topic. Sheila discusses their strategic use of AI to improve property searches and transaction management:
"Our whole strategy to AI has been less about AI for AI sake... more about where incremental points in the process where AI can make something a little bit better." (17:40)
Examples include AI-driven image analysis to assess property features beyond traditional MLS data and improving search algorithms to prioritize property listings based on nuanced client preferences.
The hosts and Sheila explore the balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the essential human element in real estate transactions. They agree that while AI and digital tools enhance efficiency, the human touch remains crucial for nuanced, high-stakes decisions:
"People really want both. That's always been our philosophy is how do we provide that digital touch that agents can then use to deliver a more comprehensive client experience, end to end." (24:09)
When asked about the most frustrating aspects of the real estate industry, Sheila identifies a heavy focus on lead generation at the expense of client-centric service:
"Coming from like the healthcare industry... if you do that, your business inherently grows and it inherently grows in a more profitable way because now you're not spending all this money trying to generate the lead." (22:18)
She argues for a paradigm shift where agents prioritize delivering exceptional service, which in turn fosters organic growth through referrals and repeat business.
Towards the end of the episode, both hosts commend Sheila’s work with Mosaic and encourage listeners to explore the platform:
"Sheila, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Super impressive what you are doing with Mosaic." (27:40)
Luke Acree adds a final call to action, urging agents to enhance their client experience, whether through Mosaic or their own methods:
"Are you even doing that? Do you even know what the client experience is? Because you can't improve upon that which you haven't defined." (27:40)
Listeners interested in learning more about Mosaic can visit Mosaic.io or reach out to Sheila directly via email at sheila@mosaic.io for further discussions on enhancing client experiences in real estate.
Notable Quotes:
"Experience that actually had some of those last minute, oh, this needs to be notarized... that was a big part of, you know, what we've tried to solve from a transaction management side digitally anyway, through Mosaic." — Sheila Reddy (05:28)
"What we try to do at Mosaic is offer that same experience on the transaction side of an agent. You have all these productivity tools within Mosaic on the transaction side to make that more efficient for yourself... it's also about client expectation." — Sheila Reddy (12:33)
"Our whole strategy to AI has been less about AI for AI sake... more about where incremental points in the process where AI can make something a little bit better." — Sheila Reddy (17:40)
"People really want both. That's always been our philosophy is how do we provide that digital touch that agents can then use to deliver a more comprehensive client experience, end to end." — Sheila Reddy (24:09)
"Do you even know what the client experience is? Because you can't improve upon that which you haven't defined." — Luke Acree (27:40)
Join Luke Acree and Josh Stike on the next episode of Stay Paid as they continue to explore the latest trends and strategies to empower real estate agents and entrepreneurs in building successful, freedom-filled businesses.