Tallulah Le Merle | AI for Investors: What's Real, What's Hype, and How to Use It

AI is moving fast, and for a lot of women investors, it can feel like one more thing you're supposed to learn, master, and somehow keep up with while you are already managing deals, decisions, and growth. And that is where the overwhelm begins, because the real question is not how do I become an AI expert? The real question is how do I use AI in a way that actually helps me get my time back, make better decisions, and stay focused on what matters most? Today I'm joined by Tallulah Lemaral, Andresa Guidelli, an AI investment strategist whose work focuses on where technology innovation and the future of investing are headed. In this conversation, we talk about cutting through the fear and the noise around AI, the tools you can start using today, and how AI can help you spend less time buried in tasks and more time focused on the strategic work to move your business, your investing, and life forward. Let's begin.

Welcome to the Real Estate InvestHer Podcast, a top 1% show Helping women achieve financial freedom by investing in real estate.

And now your hosts, Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli. Tallulah, AI is moving fast, as I said, and I want to understand from you, what are you seeing investors getting wrong right now with AI?

Ooh, okay. We're jumping in straight with what they're getting wrong.

Yep. Let's go right there.

I think, you know, it's true. We've been in a really fast-paced, noisy, enthusiastic moment since end of kind of 2022 when GPT-3.5 came out, that was sort of like the coming of age for AI, right? I mean, just for everyone, this technology's been around since the '50s. It's had many different iterations, versions. It's kind of as old as the internet in many ways, but it's really come of age in terms of our compute capability and thus the power of this technology in the past few years. So as a result, very noisy and huge amount of capital flooding into this space. Which I think is no surprise to anyone. I mean, we're hearing about valuations of companies, you know, like seed rounds going for a billion, or, you know, these things are just sort of unheard of from the investor lens. And I think, yeah, when you ask what are they getting wrong, there's so many angles to answer that from. But I think accelerationism in this moment is not necessarily a good thing, 'cause the other flip side of the AI equation, right, aside from all the noise we hear, is a lot of fear.

Yeah.

And a lot of uncertainty for very valid reasons. I mean, this is the most powerful innovation we've ever developed as a species. There's a huge amount of risks if we develop it wrong, and therefore, if we fund the wrong things that aren't considering the ethics, data privacy, safety, security, right? All these things. And so the noise and the hype and the excitement and the frothiness has meant it's harder to be discerning. And many investors haven't been 'cause they just want in, which is valid as well, right? They recognize this is a huge value creation opportunity.

Yeah. Now that is really fascinating what you're saying. 'Cause I think there's like these such level of like fear and uncertainty and it's not just like a 5 outta 10, but it's like strong emotion around that. And then on the flip side, you have people utilizing it as well as investing, certainly as you've worked with, but utilizing it. And that's the, the women that are listening right now is like, okay, how do I cut through the noise just as a user, right? How do I know the best way to utilize this as a, you know, the women listening right now are real estate investors, some of them are developers, some of them are, you know, into multifamily, regardless of the strategy, regardless of the niche. We're all asking those questions as business leaders, as entrepreneurs, where should I be spending my time in utilizing this and where should I not? So how do you unpack that for folks that are using it but might be dabbling and, they really wanna be efficient, but also they wanna make sure they're not listening to something that's not accurate.

Well, yeah, I mean, this is sort of the issue of the moment because I think the biggest lack of trust is in some of the big incumbents right now in the space, right? Like foundation model players where there's been a lot of news coverage or even of the leaders of those companies, right? And as individual use, that's what people mostly know, right? Like some people, like they've used ChatGPT, for example, or Claude or whatever it is, or maybe in a corporate context they're using Google Gemini or Copilot or something that their corporate's embedded. So that's mostly how they're touching this technology is through almost like the chatbot interface. And there, of course, I mean, there's productivity and efficiency. People now, you have people saying like, well, I don't want a productive, efficient life. I'm not like this thing to be optimized. I want a human life. I want— but the truth of the matter is so many of the ways that we work today, and I'm sure anyone listening resonates with this, is like very dystopian in that we spend so much time on screens doing these tasks and things that like don't really dignify our human experience. And so if we now have a tool that can take some of that away, like what does it free us up to do? And so I think like, you know, feel empowered to get back your time to spend with, you know, family or to put back into your business or to be scouting for new interesting savvy investments or whatever it is. That's the benefit of this technology now. I would say use it warily though, right? Be discerning about what type of data you're sharing because it's not really secure or safe yet. You know, it's same as internet in early days and still internet isn't the safest place to be, right? Safety and security always, I feel, take time to catch up. They lag behind innovation. Unfortunately, we just get so excited and put the cart before the horse.

I love that. The one area that I see a lot of a lot of women investors, real estate investors struggling with, and that I've been hearing more and more people using it this way, is on the financial side, right? So I might have 5 to 10 properties and I need to, you know, I've been doing all the bookkeeping myself. So I've either— I can have hired a bookkeeper or I'm doing the bookkeeping. But, you know, you and I would agree that having a pulse on your properties, what's working, what's not, and everything matters, right? Especially in real estate as an asset class. Let's take one step further. So, okay, I know all that, I get all that. Now I'm gonna utilize Claude or ChatGPT and I'm gonna upload all my financials inside to give me, say, an analysis. Okay, how do I reduce my expenses on a property? How do I increase income based on the other rental, you know, projections that are in that market? Is that a safe way to utilize this technology, you know, in that scenario? I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, I'd have to know specifically what, what is in that data that's being uploaded. Sure.

Like a P&L, P&L, balance sheets, things that I can, I can download from, from our QuickBooks, if you will. That's what ha— or our rental management software, if, if you will.

Yeah, I would look into that as an individual, and I think it will vary case by case.

Sure.

If you're operating truly as an individual or on behalf of an entity, right? Sure. Like obviously, my asset management firm, for example, we're, we're an RIA, so there's pretty much nothing that I can share with a public platform. I mean, these are public platforms, right? It would be like the, the, you know, whatever you type into Google as a search that can be, you know, pulled up later if needed. This is kind of the same as that. So I would think of it that way. But what I would say, unfortunately, I wish I could give like specific examples of like tools that are available for investors, but there will be, you know, application layer AI software tooling that that's sitting on top of an LLM. So it's not Claude or ChatGPT, but it's making use of that, use of that foundation model, then adding, you know, guardrails and other safety measures on top so that users can use it more safely. So there should be things like that popping up. And yeah, it's a shame I can't point to a specific one.

Yeah, no, the safety part I think is a really important one because I think people are just utilizing the software and creating bots and doing all these different things. And in the same vein, you know, there's, there's this lack of did I verify this information? And I think there is a level of people not verifying what they're getting. And it's just like, okay, that's really important in this day and age. And so for folks utilizing it for a variety of reasons, right, especially like market analysis, right, analyzing a market, if I should buy a property there, I want to buy a property out of state. Done with the California market, which I know a lot of women in our community are in the California market, get very frustrated with the, the prices and such. And they're looking at Cleveland, Ohio. They're looking at another state, another city. What would you say to them of like, how do they cut through the noise to ensure what they're getting is accurate and how can they verify or utilize these tools to verify what they're actually getting and trust what they're getting?

Yeah, well, again, look for specific tooling that does this type of thing. But if you're using the broad-based— Sure. —kind of elements for this, that's still on us for now, right? Like the model is not going to flag when it might be biased, when it might be inaccurate. We have to do that. And probably people have seen this, right? Like you might ask for a specific answer to something and then it doesn't seem right and you say, that doesn't seem right, can you double check it? And it's like, you're right, oops, I kind of made that up, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And you're like, hold on, I, I catch ChatGPT doing that all the time. I'm like, that doesn't sound right.

No, exactly. And I, I think there will be more built in to be transparent around where there's possible errors or bias in the answer it's giving you. But right now, that like internal sense check is still on us. Yeah. And that, yeah. Anyway, there's a lot more I could say about floating cognition and the fears around that and our intelligence. But I think for the purposes of your specific question, that's what I would say. Yeah.

We constantly are telling, you know, our community and the women in it, 'cause you know, they're asking, you know, different questions and utilizing it on different levels, right? And it's like, okay, I could trust but verify. So I can certainly utilize it to a certain point, but then, You cannot replace like that human connection. And I've been reconciling that even in my own head of, okay, how far do you use AI? And then at what point do you want to ensure the information you're getting is accurate with an actual human being who knows that particular market, that, that real estate broker that has literally sold 100 properties in, in Market A? Well, I wanna run this by them because they have the experience, right? And I think people are on different extremes, and I think both can exist together. Like you were saying, it's like this, tech with the human connection. That's why we believe in community. That's why we have Investor Community. So I don't, I don't think AI is going to replace community. I don't have a crystal ball, but I don't think so. And for the very reasons I'm, we're saying right now, what are your perception of that? And where, where does community relationships play into all of this?

Oh, I, yeah, this is kind of now the crux of the type of work that I, well, aside from my investor hat, but I actually believe, well, my conviction is that this technology has the potential to restore us and reconnect us with more deeply human ways of being. Really? And when I say that, people go, what?

Yeah, tell me more.

Yeah, it comes back to, I sort of hinted at it, so much of the way we work, live, interact today is relatively dystopian. And I only use that term because people keep talking about a future dystopia that they're afraid of. And I say like, look around at how we live, like we spend so much time We spend so much time on screens. We're very sedentary. Our children spend a lot— they spend 9 times more time on screens than outdoors in nature at this point. And we have a crisis of loneliness and anxiety and depression, like all these figures, right? So there's a lot of— we have lost our connection already, both to ourselves, our physical bodies, because of the way we live our lives, many of us. To nature, for sure. I mean, never in the arc of human history have we ever spent less time outside. Actually, there's this concept of the biggest migration of our lifetime is indoors. And community, to the point you mentioned, we don't have that. We used to be tribal, then even when we were agrarians, we lived in small community, and now we are global and we have a lot of individualism, and there's benefits to that, but we've lost community. So then you're like, okay, but how the heck would AI not just make all of this worse? And there's so much I could say about that, but I'm trying to say like the most concise answer is that it arrives as this great disruptor to everything we do. It's gonna disrupt work, it's gonna disrupt how we interact. It's, and it also makes cognition no longer scarce. You know, it's a tool that can do what our brains can do better than us. So it gives us this existential crisis of like, what is a human now? And actually what comes at a premium in the future we're moving into, and there's a lot of talk about this, is other forms of human intelligence, which are our ecological intelligence, our somatic intelligence, our communal intelligence, and things like empathy, intuition, things that were soft skills before, our relational abilities, our EQ. These things all, it's in the WEF Future of Work report, you can look at it everywhere, these things come at a premium, our creativity, our imagination, our adaptability, our resilience, not our rigorous data-driven problem solving, which has kind of built the world we're in today. So, and even in saying that, it still sounds fluffy. It's like, I really could, but I don't wanna talk too long unless you've, you know, I'll let you ask further questions if you have 'em, but there's still a thing.

Yeah, no, please keep going. Please, yeah, finish your thought, please.

Well, so there's that. These are the things that come at a premium in the future. But they're, yeah, they're what remain uniquely human. And so we have this opportunity to remember and return to these forms of intelligence, these ways of being that we've gotten very out of touch with, which are deeply human. I'll take one, another one, concrete one. People worry AI, they look at AI and they think of it as just more tech. And so it will create more of the problems tech has created, i.e., being on our screens all the time, being disconnected from one another, replacing that human interface. Actually, one of the promises of AI is to use the internet on our behalf in future. And you already have the first AI, AI-first mobile devices where we basically, so right now, you know, we go on our phone, so we wanna book a flight, we go into an app, da da da da da, or you wanna buy a property, we're going in some, you know, we're looking up the zip code.

Zillow. Yeah, you go on Zillow.

Yep. You're, yeah, I'm trying to do a relevant one for your audience. Yeah, yeah. And we're looking it up and we're scrolling and then we gotta click and find the person to call and call and then there's, you know, So in future, and we're not there yet, and it will maybe take a little bit of time, but you should be able to just talk to a personalized agent, which is on-device, and on-device, on-premise private AI is a massive thing that's coming. So anyway, so you talk to it and it will go then use Zillow for you, browse it, blah, blah, blah, and then find, you know, interact with maybe an AI real estate agent. They correspond, figure out, you know, they can see both calendars of both people. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Go straight in. That's one example. There's a huge amount of model infrastructure now being built to allow this, to allow AI to use the internet on our behalf. And when you think about how much time we are in screens now doing that, you know, bog work that again doesn't dignify our human experience, that would have the potential to keep us in the real world. You know, I'm saying a few things here and then I'm back here with you. Yeah.

You've heard us say it before, real estate is a relationship business. And one of the most powerful ways to build those relationships is through meaningful conversation. Communications. That's one of the reasons we love podcasting. It's allowed us to connect with incredible women, build deeper relationships, and open doors to opportunities we never expected. But to keep the show running consistently at a high level, we don't do it alone. We have an amazing team behind us at Social Chameleon who handles all the behind the scenes work, the production, the content, and distribution, so we can stay focused on serving you. And growing our business. So if you've ever thought about starting your own podcast or taking it to the next level, they can help you do the same. With Social Chameleon, you press record and they handle the rest. Check them out at socialchameleon.us. That's socialchameleon.us. The concept of that, it's not just more tech, which I often would think, and I've spoken to people about, it actually can create more get people back to their— what skills make us uniquely human, I think is a really fascinating point. And I think that actually is irrelevant— very relevant right now. And it makes me feel hopeful. And I think there— I think that would make a lot of people feel hopeful because there is a lot of fear, right? It's literally just going to replace every human being doing every different job. I saw a Facebook post or a Facebook ad just saying, okay, before your kiddos— my son's only 12, but before your kiddos go off to college, make sure they know what they should be majoring in, if they're even— what they're majoring in is going to be completely replaced by AI. So there's so many layers of this, right? From kids going to college to, to obviously the corporate world, to entrepreneurs, to how we do day-to-day life. I really appreciate what you're saying. I do think that brings an element to all this as we navigate how do we use these tools to advance our businesses and to take things off of our plate. So let's talk about that in terms of like taking things off of our plate. So many of the women listening in our community and their biggest challenge is they're usually doing, as an entrepreneur, right? Small business owner and property owner. They're doing this full-time, part-time, but they're doing the jobs of many, right? They're doing the jobs of many and like many small business owners, but more so if they're doing this part-time because they may not have a full-time employee running their portfolio for them because they're maybe self-managing or even not self-managing. There's an element of all this. So, The biggest challenge, the biggest frustration is they need to start firing themselves from different tasks, right? What's the $20 task to the $200 task to the $1,000 task, right? What, where should they be spending their energy and time? And that's something that women work through. So knowing that that could be a challenge of them, I know that the idea of these agents is something that's coming up more and more. And it's not that I've built all these agents and I'm robust at all. It's something that's on my horizon. But what would you tell women who are exploring that, right? They wanna get through, they wanna go beyond using ChatGPT to draft emails or to do some basic things that quite honestly my kids know how to do now. My, my 8-year-old knows how to do. How do they use it to build out the agents so they can free that time so they can get into what they do well? 'Cause I do think that's a huge opportunity right now. Yeah.

And by the way, it's when you said women, having multiple, multiple roles or whatever. I was like, yeah, even if they're not doing it, like women are always having these multiple invisible roles. If you're a mother, if you're anything, right? So, so yes, I mean there, I think it was Anthropic at one point that said that they anticipated by 2030 there would be the first single-person unicorn company, as in, you know, the first company to get to a billion-dollar valuation that where the, there was only one employee. Because so much now can be done or can be, you know, you can, you can build, train AI agents to do many, many tasks. And the bar's never been lower for individuals to do it either, as you're saying, because we do, I mean, there's like everything from vibe coding to tools like Lovable and others, which allow you to do, to play around with that. Now to make it, I'm trying to make it real estate specific continuously, but like, what are those, what are the type of tasks that you think take up, like when you're saying they're playing multiple roles? Yeah.

What are those? Sure. I mean, even just from a, say, acquiring new opportunities, right? Some of these women have a portfolio and they're like, okay, I'd like to, I'd like to buy a new property in a new market. There's a level of finding a new market based on job growth, right? There's a, then there's, okay, this is the right market. Now I need to figure out what the right property for me, the right asset class or what have you. So there's just, I think on the front end of finding opportunities that align with their, their lifestyle, their portfolio, et cetera, I think will always be something that, you know, that could be a potential agent, quote unquote. On the assistant side, I've heard women using, you know, the agents to check their emails. Like, I mean, talking like key things, basic things, but that actually make a difference. You know, I don't know what you, you've seen on that end, but I think sometimes even just the household, right? Taking the tasks off of, I've heard someone creating an agent for their personal man, like a manager of the house. I said, that's really smart. It's really brilliant. So yeah, I wasn't sure. Yeah. If you, you've seen that, especially for, for busy women who are doing a lot of things.

I mean, I use like Superhuman now for email, which is my, my favorite tool for that. I don't use any of the note takers, but I've had people who find that really, really helpful because you can then make it as interoperable as you want with the rest of your workflows, right? So you're having the conversation, but it can, you can then automate some of the follow-up as well and things like this. I would just say, like, think to yourself, where do I have the least joy from what I do on a day-to-day? Yep. What really just is a slog? And every time I sit down to do it, I'm drained of my beautiful, joyful, vibrant energy that especially we women have access to in spades. And what's also taking the most time? And then I promise you, there's some tool or solution for it. Or if there isn't, there's a way you can pretty easily architect something for yourself that's very fit for purpose. And that's really like AI as a democratizer or as an equalizer and giving people back agency. That's a real potential of it. And like, even outside of the people listening to this, I do a lot of increasing, increasing work in emerging markets. And this technology in the, in the hands of those people allows unprecedented access to financial inclusion and pathways to education, knowledge at your fingertips, to, and for them to like, you can have $0 in your bank account, a phone, access to the internet, and you can build something or launch something or share an idea that reaches the world. Like, you know, it's really powerful in the hands of people using it for good.

That's the biggest thing that I hear, especially from like the older generation, my parents. I'll get into interesting conversations with them. And what are you, what are you using these tools for? Right? And I think that's always something that helps cut through the noise. I love the idea that you're saying about what brings in the least amount of joy, you know, day to day. I think that really is important. And, you know, we always talk about building wealth on your own terms and that aligns with the lifestyle that you're creating versus just, you know, more money for more money's sake or buying another property because you wanna go to an event and tell people how many properties you own or whatever random reasons people talk about that kind of stuff. That's not the women in our community. It's more about alignment with lifestyle and intentionality. And so I love what you're saying because when we start to get intentional with our time and our resources and like what's bringing us joy and what's going to move us towards building the portfolio that we want on our own terms, it gets very clear, like laser clear on, okay, what can I— need to let go of? And then finding a tool. The Superhuman tool, is that like a software? What is that? I'm not familiar with that.

It plugs into your email and it works with, you know, Outlook or Gmail or anything that you have. And it is just a smarter email solution. It can draft emails for you. It can help you like with a click of one button, you can ask for an email to be resurfaced later for it to, you know, it's just, it's helpful in categorizing, especially if you have many streams and of things that you do, which you're, we are mentioning these listeners do. Yes. By the way, I was, I wanted to just make one point on this like joy thing. Not, I really think it's a big one, right?

It's a big one. That's what we're all after at the end of the day, right? Why do we wanna build wealth? Why do we wanna take control of our financial future? Why do we, why does InvestHer exist, right? Ultimately is to create more joy in people's lives so they can live life on their own terms. So this is super relevant. So please.

And also, but women, right? Stewarding money is such, I mean, This, it's wild to think, was it in the '50s that you could even, you were allowed to like have a credit card or a state, you know, so it's only— Bank account.

You couldn't open a bank account. I'm almost certain in 1978, which is the, I'm gonna show my age now, the year that I was born, there was the, you know, there was moments in recent history where we couldn't do things obviously that men could. Yeah.

So it's really like the past 50 years. Yeah. That this, but women are such natural money managers and actually like, again, 'cause I talk a lot about the eras of human life on Earth, but when we lived more tribally, it was tip, it was the role of women to manage and distribute resources. And resources didn't mean money then, of course. Well, not in the same way that it does today. But the men went out and hunted and gathered, well, often men, and brought those resources back. And the women and the elders distributed it also, you know, amongst with the children. And so this is such a natural role for women that we're now stepping back into. And I do think We should decide how we wanna steward money and investments in future. It doesn't need to look the way it has looked. And I think about this a lot because I am in, in the investment world and I work with asset managers and wealth managers and family office and all these things. And I'm also so convicted that, you know, inflowing capital to more conscious ends and doing it in a different way that feels just like alive and human and soulful and brings those qualities back into the money equation, which it's devoid of. In many ways. So anyway, I just wanted to say that, and I love that your baddie women listening are all like money managing rock stars.

Yeah. And I think we've mentioned this on different podcasts, different opportunities, but there's an enormous wealth transfer, right? That's happening due to the fact that the baby boomers were the wealthiest generation and they're passing their wealth down. So there, there's a lot of interesting parts of this, the culture that we're gonna be going through, the transfer of wealth over like $100 trillion, and, and the majority of it is going in the hands of women specifically. And so it's fascinating. Then you start to think about how quickly AI is moving and all these different elements that are happening that are just happening, right? They're, they're happening. And it's like, okay, how do I navigate this? Cut through the noise to, to our original point and start to just really get basic. What is, what is not bringing me joy? What is gonna help me grow my portfolio on my own terms? What is draining me? Let's start there, right? And I, I think that is such great advice and it's really the next step. So I, I love that we, we discussed that and I, and then it's like, okay, what's gonna help me there? Superhuman, I think is my biggest takeaway. I'm gonna be putting, putting that. Oh, I love it as well. I'm gonna put that on my email like today. Yeah.

Well, and so I didn't come prepared with a list. I should have, you know, reminded myself what my whole stack is that I use across everything.

And then, well, maybe we could get that in the show notes if that's something that's something easy to send along. Sure. Yeah, I think the women would love that. And Tallulah, where can everyone listening learn more about you, follow you along on your journey, and connect with you further? Mm-hmm.

So my website, tallulahlemorel.com, has a lot of information both on the invest side of what I do, but also the broader, the case for hope. Platform, which is sort of a series of talks that I— and conferences I've spoken at now becoming podcasts. And I launched on socials recently, also under The Case for Hope. And there's a book in the works, which is all about— it's just meeting the moment of fear and uncertainty we're in and cutting through the noise with nuance on any given front, like AI is taking jobs, disruption to specific industries, that it's making us less intelligent, concerns over its environmental impact in the hands of bad actors. Like, really spans the whole gamut. So I'd say the website's the starting point, and of course you can always connect with me on LinkedIn too.

Love it. Tolu, thank you so much for being on. And for everyone listening, do something with what you got today and take some action. And thanks for being here. Thank you for listening. I hope you found today's conversation valuable, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And share this with the women in your life that needs to hear it. I'll see you next week.