The Achieve Podcast - Eric Chebil (Nest Navigate)

Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs— those who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industries, and having an impact. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and excited today to be joined by Eric Schiebel. I think I said that right. Founder and CEO at Nest Navigate, and you can find them at nestnavigate.com. Eric, first off, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Taylor Baker Baker, for having me. It's a great opportunity, and I'm excited to, uh, to, to talk a little bit about, uh, Nest and, and answer some great questions that you have drummed up.

It'll be a good one. I'm, I'm excited as well. So for those getting to know you a little bit, give us the backstory on how you got into this space and who you're currently serving, because you're in a bit of a niche here.

Yeah. You know, I've always been passionate about real estate. I've been a real estate broker and mortgage broker since 2014. I've been, I've been doing it for a while, and, you know, the reason is, is it's all about helping people. And really, there's kind of been a void of understanding about anything about real estate or even building. So, um, you know, I went to school, uh, back at University of Washington, studied engineering, and, and have always been really on the forefront of trying to be innovative and supportive of home buying. You know, when I first bought my first home, I co-owned it actually with my dad, and it was very confusing trying to buy a home on your own. And so I was very, very nervous, and so I could only imagine how others felt as well. So that's why I got into the space And I'm serving primarily first-time home buyers. Okay. And that's, you know, those who haven't really done this in the past. And I've also helped before, uh, uh, as this kind of other audience, uh, people who buy, uh, their first-time property, uh, investment.

So, gotcha. Okay. And how big is the team in the organization now?

At Nest Navigate, we have a team of 17. Okay, we've been around since July, uh, end of July we were founded, uh, back in 2025, and it's been growing ever since. It's a really exciting opportunity that we're, uh, and, and problem that we're addressing.

Yeah, and that is a quick speed of growth. That's awesome. And what would you say is driving growth for you guys right now?

Uh, right now it would be the The— a lot of the games, uh, that ultimately what's out there right now, people are a bit confused on, uh, and kind of frankly kind of bored about how to learn. There's not really an engaging and exciting way to learn and get rewarded at the same time. So what we're seeing are a lot of games out there, uh, that you know, whether it's for like history buffs or for finance to learn quickly, there seems to be a big trend that's shifting towards wanting to have a more engaging, personalized way to learn. And that's where we're starting to see a lot of traffic and people, first-time homebuyers, wanting to use some of these unique tools that we have, such as personalized gaming and and along with customized AI avatars that you could personalize and making it just less, less scary, but more of quick 60-second, you know, micro lessons that you can quickly scroll on your phone and, and learn on the go.

That's awesome. Now, looking back, what would you say for you, what turning points have had the greatest impact on how you think about running the organization?

Whether or not we want to go more towards the AI route, uh, and, uh, versus having more on the, the home buyer specific, uh, we're actually having actual personal, uh, you know, personalized, uh, you know, humans having a customer support team. And, and I'd say that was, that was one of the challenges, uh, we found that actually based off our surveys a lot of people actually prefer to ask what they think are redundant or silly questions to an AI personal chatbot versus actually talking to customer support. But so we do provide both. So we're right now, we're trying to decide, okay, you know, which is getting more attention. But ultimately I don't think the customer support team from human interaction, I don't think that's going to go away. I think, you know, ultimately the AI that we do create is helping them answer faster questions and then getting them to the right department. And I'd say the second problem that we faced was, do we want to be more of a game as an entertainment type of aspect? Because ultimately we sit in the top of where before you even can think of kind of buying a home, before you've applied for a loan, That's where we sit, is very, very top and in the application process. So do we want to be, you know, more like a Sims, or do we want to be a bit more like a Duolingo, or, you know, where do we want to kind of be? And so we've found that being kind of more on the simulation and less on just the strict animation game has driven more educational results. And people are actually more engaging and, uh, and they understand what they're, what they're watching.

I love that. And these life lessons you're not taught in school that everybody has to go through, so it's nice to have a source for that.

They should teach it in school. There should be some, some course or something.

But yeah, agreed. So when it comes to your messaging, your outreach and marketing systems, what's been working well to attract and keep clients? Our customers?

Well, what we do is we partner up with mortgage lenders right now and banks who already have a pool of homebuyers that they don't know. The homebuyers don't really know what to do, and the loan officers that are part of the organization, you know, they're calling them regularly, but there's not really a big unique offering that they can provide. And it does take a tremendous amount of time to, you know, to spend one-on-one trying to teach them what, you know, create the materials and whatnot. So, um, we actually are working with them where, uh, they market to their, their, their customers, uh, Nest Navigate. And so ultimately the clients are more engaged, they're more satisfied, they're realizing, uh, that they can actually afford, uh, different types of homes And it's not a scary process because, I mean, we're looking at the average age right now to buy a home is 40, and it's the highest it's ever been. And a lot of it's just the lack of education, and there's this big fear, right? So, you know, when as a client of wherever you may bank, right, if you were turned down before or you just opened a bank account, you know, those banks, those lenders, you know, ideally they do want you to buy a home. Um, but they're just wondering, okay, how do we approach you when you may not have the best credit or whatnot? So, um, and, and that's, that's where we really do come in is, uh, we make it in a fun and engaging way where, where we're not gonna, we're not asking like your credit score or anything like this. Uh, we're simply just showing you in a more, uh, comedic and customized personalized avatar way. You get to play against other friends. But things that you may have not even thought of, like just basic, what is a purchase agreement and whatnot. But ultimately, we look for partners.

Wow. Wow. So when it comes to your sales and marketing, where do you feel like there's still opportunity or money on the table?

You know, we do want to— with regards to sales, Uh, we have been working with, uh, with, with of course the banks, with mortgage brokers, and, and realtors as well. Uh, but you know, homebuyers, the users that come to us, they're also looking for alternative services. So such as financial, uh, advisors or other alternative services, such as it could be with home renovation, or even not necessarily directly tied to homes in general. It could just be for savings or increasing wealth, learning more about stocks, for instance.

Yeah.

So what we're trying to do is really capture, you know, their— and show that from and grow their level of trust from their early kind of most vulnerable moment of, I don't know anything about like where to get started here in homeownership, to, okay, after we buy a home, um, and, and Nest has connected me to the right loan lender, to the right, uh, realtor, and to the next, the best financial advisor, I now I'm looking at, I want to come back because of there's another service provider that I could definitely leverage. And I would love to be connected with that qualified professional.

Yes, I love this. I love it so much because you're marrying these life skills that people have to have with the gamification of it. And so people are wanting to learn these things. They have to learn them anyways. And now they can become more proficient buyers. You know what to look for, and now you're bringing all these people together of the different services they need. I love this. So for you, where do you— where have you guys found ways internally to utilize AI and automation?

Uh, through a lot of, uh, coding development, uh, using, uh, some of the big guys, uh, that's been able to speed up a lot of our production, uh, as well as using some for, uh, the customer support, but a lot— as we are looking, we're very much looking forward to using AI towards having a user's personalized experience. Uh, that's helping a lot with gathering, you know, essentially other than saying, okay, what, what's your method of learning, uh, your preferred style, right? Using AI to be able to capture some of their their habits when they're slowly clicking through as a, for a, for a, for a first-time homebuyer. What's great is that leveraging some of the AI tools that we are integrated now is that we can customize their experience. So let's say they're from, you know, we would survey them. They say, okay, you know, I didn't like this question. It was really boring or the video wasn't very engaging. We want to make sure that that's fixed, you know, hopefully before they even come to that conclusion and saying, ah man, I don't like my experience. We wanna make sure that we can provide the best service and really the most engaging. So from a home buyer readiness, uh, service, you are fully engaged and you are aware and coming out of Nest Navigate and even returning just much more informed. And so that's, that's, that's where we're leveraging AI in those 3 aspects.

That's awesome. That is such a good use of it. So Eric, if you had to pick one constraint that could change the trajectory of the business, you'd focus on it the next 90 days to solve, what would it be?

Uh, that would be the, the, the style of, the style of education that we provide to our users. You know, we're continuing to test, and but given the allocation of, of, you know, resources that any company would have, right, is which direction do we want to go in. And, you know, we talked a little bit about, about having these simulated games and, and where you users actually can learn and earn NEST coins. They can spend on, on actual real-world purchases, which is great in NEST. Uh, but what are the, what are the best games that serve the majority of the audience? Um, and so that's, that's why we love user, we love homebuyer feedback. If you sign up, uh, we, you know, we have always have a survey form you can always fill out that we really encourage you to do. And you also get rewarded for in-app, um, for in-app purchases that are, like I said, Nest Navigate is completely free to use. So, uh, I would say that, that would be really defining what is the best, uh, the best educational, uh, tool to improve a homebuyer's cognitive memory, uh, and, and make sure that they walk away not just feeling like, you know, they got the dopamine effect, they're happy, they're excited, but we want to make sure that they are— they're actually learning, um, and, and not just only having fun.

Yes, I love that. So when you look at your own journey, the wins, the mistakes, what lessons stand out to you, and which ones do you feel like maybe took longer to learn than they should have?

Uh, from the, from the journeys, uh, you know, I've been, I've been entrepreneur for about, what, 6 and a half, 7 years now. Um, but it would be choosing the right people. Team is what's core, that's, that's for sure. Uh, you know, people who are believing in what— not only what you're solving, but also making an impact in society. I found that those staff tend to not only do the best work, but from, from working with other of our customers, or, you know, whether the homebuyers or clients They seem to be more personally involved because they would use the product and they resonate with the mission and they're in it to do good, not just to get a paycheck.

Yes, that is very true. So last question, when you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?

It would be, I know this may sound cheesy, but ultimately helping more homebuyers, uh, because right now we are, we are in web-based right now. I would say the biggest next exciting phase is going to be going to mobile, being on Android and iOS, and making it much just, just a little more easier for people to download our app, uh, on the, on the App Store. And so, uh, for now we are web-based, but yeah, the next phase would be, uh, to continue to develop more partnerships, getting this Navigate out there more and working and piloting with more, with more people across the United States, not just only in California and in other states.

That's awesome. So how many homebuyers or how many people are you currently serving and what's the goal like in the next 12 to 18 months? Would you like to see it grow?

Yeah, we, we help. We are at about 1,200 homebuyers that we have helped start getting, at least get them over the first hump of watching some of the core lessons about what is a loan. And, you know, and doom scrolling, right, where they don't feel left out. But the next phase is, is we are looking to get by the end of the year, ideally we're targeting around 7,000 users to be, to be there. And, you know, as we continue to pilot, we have great partnerships aligned with several mass— several large nonprofit organizations and, and some for-profit as well. But, uh, it would be the tech being developed for the 12 to 18 months, getting, uh, getting by the end of the year those 7,000 users. I would say from 12 to 18, getting to pushing to the 10,000 mark then, uh and making sure that our tech is really customized and agile for each and every individual user, uh, so they're— that they actually feel like— and it is that they have their own personal space customized for them because everyone's on their own learning path. You know, people have 9-to-5s, they also have side hustles, and we want to make sure that we are adaptive to them, uh, that's also cost-effective and appropriate, right, for the company, but Ultimately, the home buyer and the customer, they come first. So any way we can do that, that's our target.

That's awesome. And so for those who want to learn more and want to reach out, NestNavigate.com, LinkedIn, anywhere else you want to send them?

Definitely check out our social media as well at Nest Navi on Instagram and/or LinkedIn or Facebook at NestNavigate. We would love to, feel free to engage, ask any comments, questions. We post a lot of great content and even check out our blogs at nestnavigate.com as well.

That's awesome. So yeah, reach out, get educated and do it in an enjoyable, fun fashion. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you're a first-time homebuyer, you're not sure where to go or where to start, reach out to Eric and the team, get familiar, they'll walk you through the process in a seamless fashion. So reach out and we'll see you all in the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.