About Kenner French

Kenner French is an Amazon #1 Best-Selling Author, AI strategist, and leader of VastSolutionsGroup.com, where he helps entrepreneurs use artificial intelligence and smart tax strategies to build wealth, save money, and protect their financial legacy.

Praised by Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary of ABC’s Shark Tank for his innovative approach to helping business owners “save on taxes,” Kenner’s methods have helped countless entrepreneurs reclaim IRS dollars and unlock new levels of growth and freedom.

He’s also a FinTech contributor for The AI Journal, a seasoned real estate and venture investor, and a thought leader whose work bridges AI, finance, and entrepreneurship.

Important Links

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• Modern Millionaires AI – https://a.co/d/6I98SqK
• Vast Solutions Group – https://vastsolutionsgroup.com/
• smrtPhone – The only phone system built for real estate investors (5,000 free minutes)
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I can tell you one thing: technology is the single most important aspect of every business that has successfully scaled.

It’s time for That Real Estate Tech Guy, your weekly chance to explore how technology can help your real estate business explode. Each week, you’ll hear from real estate investors who have been there and done that, and find out their favorite technology tips.

Listen in as Jordan speaks with tech companies and learns about new technologies and new ideas that will help you scale your business.

And now, join your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of SmrtPhone, for this week’s episode.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. I’m your host, Jordan Samuel Fleming, Chairman and Co-Founder of SmrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors.

Oh man, is this ever a fun episode. I say that to my son every time, but this one really is fun. My guest today is Kenner French. Kenner is someone I only met at the start of this year, and I’m already incredibly grateful that I have.

He’s an author, an AI strategist, and someone who is absolutely worth talking to. His book, Modern Millions AI, is an Amazon #1 best-seller, a genuine Amazon best-seller, not a fake one. And it’s such a fascinating book.

His knowledge and understanding of AI and how it can really help entrepreneurs in finance is incredible. How many people don’t think about using AI from a tax point of view, from an asset protection point of view, and all of that? Kenner is really leading the charge, and has been for a long time.

I will say this: this episode kind of goes off the rails a little, mainly because I genuinely love talking with Kenner. I think he’s a fascinating man, and he and I could geek out way too much together. But we really dive into some fascinating AI topics in this one, as well as the mindset shifts that need to happen for you to become an AI-first company, and an AI-first person in terms of how you approach work.

I learn something every time I speak to Kenner. I love his enthusiasm, his background, his experience, and what he brings to the game.

So you’re going to love this one. I’m going to shut up now and let you dive right in with Kenner French, author of Modern Millions AI. Let’s get right to it.

Thanks so much for joining us today. I’m excited because I’ve had one great conversation with you, and I’m excited to have a second great conversation with you.

Why don’t you give a little introduction to yourself and some of the things you’re involved in?

I’m a famous author. That should be the first thing you lead with. Modern Millions AI, the number one book in the entrepreneur space on Amazon. So that’s all you need to know.

Just kidding.

Yeah, I wrote Modern Millions AI, the number one book in the entrepreneurial space, which still blows me away.

I’ve been doing artificial intelligence for years, starting in 2010, and basically now I’m kind of starting to get a name. My backstory: I live in Washington State on Bainbridge Island, right outside of Seattle. I went to Washington State University.

I started working with small business owners pretty much right out of the gate, and then came on board with a company called, at the time, Koons Financial in 2006. I’ve taken it over now, and it’s VastSolutionsGroup.com. We do tax, finance, and artificial intelligence along the way.

I’ve written a couple other things, and I’m a tech writer for The AI Journal. I’ve written for Forbes.com. But now, I’m really running the company and having fun doing the Modern Millionaire roadshows, and I’m having a blast.

Well, I’m super excited to geek out with you on a number of things. Definitely. We can continue the conversation on AI, voice, phones, communication, and all of that. I think we’ve got to dive into that.

But let’s start with your book, because I do want to start there. I love the subtitle: “Make millions, save millions, protect millions.”

Yeah, Modern Millions AI.

And given that at SmrtPhone we’ve got about 2,500 active real estate investment companies that use us, these are people dealing with relatively large sums of money. They’re looking at building legacy. They’re looking at building a solid financial future.

So let’s start with your book. Why did you write it, and what does it bring to the table? How is AI going to help them in that space?

People don’t realize that artificial intelligence can help with financial growth, saving taxes, and asset protection and estate planning. I’ve been preaching that for a long time.

People used to laugh at me. People still do, by the way. They didn’t think there was a fit between AI and making millions, saving millions, and protecting millions. But it truly can help people amass net worth, lower taxes, and protect assets. I’ve been preaching that word, and now it’s kind of cool.

My son used to think I was a dork. He still does, by the way. But he thinks I’m less of a dork now because it’s kind of cool.

People don’t realize the extent to which they can use artificial intelligence in their business and their personal life.

And when I say AI, I think there’s a light-switch moment that happens with most people. I had that moment where I suddenly went, “Oh, I get it now.” And I changed my mindset to an AI-first mindset.

I’m always thinking, what tool could I be leveraging for what I’m trying to do? That doesn’t just mean automation. Sometimes it’s thinking through a problem.

I have conversations now with my AI tools where I’m trying to poke holes in an argument I’m formulating. At the end of it, I get a summary of everything. It’s still my work, still my process, but it’s been refined. And it took me 30 minutes instead of five hours of wrestling with myself.

Totally. That’s a mindset change.

I’m going to pick on you a little bit. Let’s talk about that two-way conversation. When you became AI-first, what truly put you over the top? What made you become an AI-first person?

For me, I’ve always been a writer and a creative person. When I realized it was an enhancement, not a replacement of my skills, that’s when it clicked.

I realized I could be better, faster, stronger, and accelerate almost everything I do. And I’m already a pretty high-performing person. I’m not exactly a slouch.

When I realized I could take my performance and multiply it five times, ten times, that’s when I went, “Oh, I get it.” This isn’t just a buzzword or a shiny object. This is a transformational shift in how I do almost everything.

From a business point of view, we’ve transformed our company into an AI-first company. And that doesn’t mean slapping “AI” on features. That’s one thing software gets wrong. There was a period where people would just put the letters AI on something and suddenly say, “Hey, we’re an AI company,” and not really.

For us, it was a transformation of how we view our product, how we build our product, and even how we think about interacting with our product and the user.

I don’t see user interfaces lasting much longer in software. What’s the point of me looking at a system and navigating menus when I can simply say, “I need to do this. Can you give me that? Queue up the top ten people I need to call and start calling them for me.”

If you’re not AI-first as a person or as a company, in my opinion, you’re going to be gone. I’ve been saying that for years, and it’s true. You have to adopt AI.

And it’s not good enough to just say, “Oh, I’m an AI company.” You’ve got to use it as the foundation of your company. Honestly, as the foundation of how you operate.

You can talk into an AI model and it can spit out an app. It can spit out whatever your goal is. And we haven’t even started. AI is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s only going to get better.

And when you combine that with quantum computing, it’s going to go even further. I won’t get into that here, but the book goes into more detail about becoming AI-first as a person or an entity. It will completely shape lives going forward.

What I love about that approach is that it does take a mindset shift. But once you make it, it’s like a cloud lifts and you see an entirely new landscape you didn’t realize was there.

The possibilities from a business perspective, from a personal perspective, from almost every perspective, get enhanced to an unbelievable degree.

As an example, I’ve designed most of our product for eight years. Not built it, designed it. I’m not a coder.

I used to get into Lucidchart and draw boxes and wireframe like we used to. Now I can go into a vibe coding app we have, private inside our infrastructure, and the other day in about two hours, I built a working prototype of a new feature. I can hand it over to my technology team, who now code probably 70% with AI, and say, “This is how I want it to work.”

They can see it, take the code, and then start working with it in the infrastructure layer, which is one weakness AI has right now. It won’t have it forever, but right now, vibe coding can build features quickly, and then scaling infrastructure is the hard part.

Just because you wrote the code doesn’t mean you can manage a thousand people making calls at the same time.

Some people might not know what vibe coding is, so I’ll give an example.

I was on my book tour in LA. There were about eight big-time entrepreneurs, all real estate investors. I finished the presentation early and said, “Instead of me talking about it, I’m going to show you how it works.”

I asked for app ideas that would help them. Two people wanted an app that could analyze real estate in a certain area very quickly.

So I asked Claude, in that case, “How can we help these guys get to their goal?” And instead of writing code, I talked to the app, and it built the software for them during a live presentation.

Instead of typing it out, which takes days, months, years, I spoke to the computer, and it gave them exactly what they needed.

That’s the way we’ll be doing things going forward as entrepreneurs and as humans. We’ll be able to do things that quickly.

There’s going to be less need for some SaaS companies out there, but that’s what we’re looking forward to.

I agree. And the skill in software won’t be typing lines of code. It’ll be the idea, the understanding, and the context.

You can build things, but if you try to vibe code a large system, you’ll miss a lot. The expertise will be making sure everything is squared away, how things move, and making sure it scales.

For example, we’re in real-time communications. I can’t have lag when we’re talking about phone calls.

If a CRM lags for a second, you might say, “It’s slow today,” but it doesn’t stop you from working. If a phone call lags for two seconds, that call is dead. You can’t speak.

That infrastructure understanding of scale is the next big thing AI needs to solve for vibe-coded solutions.

And that’s going to help you gain more clients and beat the competition because you’ve adopted AI and you’re doing vibe coding internally.

The people who are adopting AI are going to be so far ahead, it’ll be hard to catch up if you haven’t.

My message is: if you’re not adopting AI, if you’re not AI-first, you could be a thing of the past. Please think about adopting AI and becoming an AI-first entity.

Honestly, just pay for ChatGPT. Start with ChatGPT. It’s user-friendly, easy, and you’ll be amazed how quickly you start going.

If I’m doing LinkedIn posts, I’ll record a video, grab the transcript, drop it into ChatGPT, and say, “Give me three LinkedIn posts based on this content, aimed at these people, with this call to action.”

In 20 seconds, I have three posts that are good enough to post, and then I tweak them slightly. That saves me hours. I can do three posts, recording and everything, in about 45 minutes, versus seven to ten hours, or hiring a video guy.

There’s still a human component, in my opinion, maybe even in the future.

There’s always going to be some human component. But what I’d say is, people say, “Oh, AI is always wrong.” Sure, but it’s the worst it’s ever going to be.

We’ve been doing AI since 2010. We had our own tax model in 2018 called Einstein.

We found there’s about a 14% error rate. Humans are probably wrong more than that. But the combination of humans working with AI brings the error rate down.

That’s helped us mitigate risk and lower tax liability for entrepreneurs because we combine tax attorneys, CPAs, and tax professionals with the AI model. It’s the way to go if you want real change.

Now, I’m sorry to interrupt this amazing conversation, but I wanted to make sure you knew that SmrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors, connects to the best-in-class real estate investor CRMs.

And because it’s my show, and I am the Co-Founder and Chairman of SmrtPhone, I got some great deals for you. Click the link and take advantage of 5,000 minutes of free calling with SmrtPhone, the only phone system built for real estate investors. Click and call, close more leads.

Back to the show.

Let me ask: you not only run the business that handles the financial side, but you also consult companies around AI.

A little bit. We’re opening that up because we’ve done it for so long, and people are asking us to do it for them.

Before, it’s been behind the curtain, but now we’re opening it up.

I didn’t realize this. So behind the curtain. I’m outing you.

No, that’s fair. There’s a real lack of people in a lot of spaces that are genuinely knowledgeable. There’s a lot of hype and a lot of people who talk big games, but not many people who actually know what they’re doing.

Honestly, you could probably retire helping accounting firms get their head out of their ass, because historically they’re some of the slowest movers.

I mean, they still want you to fax stuff. They still want checks. I haven’t had a checkbook for 20 years. What are we talking about?

That’s funny, because I run a Clubhouse group with about 10,000 accountants and tax professionals. For years I’ve been beating my head against the wall saying, “You’ve got to adopt AI,” and it’s been slow. Same thing with insurance. Certain industries are very slow, tax especially.

But now it’s changing. I got a call yesterday from a big-time tax guy who wants to start using AI. Same thing with a big bookkeeping group.

That’s why we’re opening up from behind the curtain. They have to adopt AI.

And pretty soon, so many things are going to be automated. You’ll be able to go to a website and get the information you need about everything. That’s already happening, even in taxes.

We signed something called the MIT Open Source Pledge. So a lot of our technology is going to be out there for free. People can do our stuff on their own now, it just takes some hard work.

For the people who want access to our technology, it’ll be out there. For the people who want us to help them with it, we’ll do it and charge a premium.

That brings up a really good point about the future of SaaS. It’s easy to say everyone will build their own stuff.

But have you talked to people? People are lazy.

And tools have been available for a long time, and yet we’re still using faxes. So I’m not worried that everyone is going to start vibe coding phone systems.

Good luck. And good luck on that first TCPA lawsuit.

There’s still a need for real companies. The difference is the power people will have at their fingertips: speed, information, intelligent analysis, and the ability to say, “Give me all this and look for a pattern.”

The other day, I took churn customers from the last six months, put it into one of my AI models, and said, “Here are the variables. What am I missing? Tell me what’s going on.”

It found patterns with concrete numbers that would have taken me hours.

That’s a whole bunch, by the way. But it hit me: you’re in an industry where, if you’re adopting AI, you’ve got a moat around your business. It’s hard to replace phone systems.

We’re in decent shape in a couple senses. Real-time communications are not easy. You can vibe code a phone system quickly, but the problem is when you try to get more than five people using it.

Plus there are compliance barriers. Telecom has an enormous compliance burden that most vibe coders don’t think about until the FCC or the TCPA comes knocking.

Phone systems are complex.

Have you ever heard of something called VCon?

No.

You’re going to geek out and love this. This is a telecom thing, cutting edge. We’re at the start of the VCon revolution right now.

VCon stands for Virtualized Conversation. It’s about taking communication conversations in telecom, like recorded calls, and translating them into structured data that can be easily ingested.

It solves one of the biggest problems with voice agents: memory and rapid recall of conversations and information.

If you have unstructured data, like a transcript, an AI can scan it quickly, but not quickly enough. Two seconds or three seconds is too long in a real-time conversation.

With VCons, we take every call made in our system and immediately convert it into a VCon, a structured data format built inside our platform.

Our agents can access any communication in under five milliseconds and pull key details because it’s broken up in a structured way, like a JSON string.

So what’s the result for me? I’m a small business owner. Let’s say we have ten people, and let’s assume we make a lot of calls. What’s the benefit? Bottom line: how much money does it make me or save me?

Here’s the benefit. A lot of real estate investors are shiny object people who only look at new leads. But they have 300 leads sitting in their system that they’ve ignored.

We’re building voice agents where you can say, “These are all my leads. Follow up and try to move them to the next stage.”

And here’s where memory comes in, because context is currency in sales, and memory is the key to context.

If you’re following up and trying to build trust, the best way is to say, “Kenner, last time we spoke, you were going to talk to your wife about whether you wanted to sell that property on Elm Street. Did you get a chance to do that?”

That’s rapport. And your agent can’t do that unless it has instant access to that information in a way it can process quickly.

That’s where this is going, and we’ve built that infrastructure into SmrtPhone.

Every call made in SmrtPhone is structured data. So if a lead comes back five months later, eight months later, two years later, your agent can say, “Of course, last time we spoke, this happened.”

That’s instant connection and instant rapport. That’s the value.

I agree. That trust factor is huge. And AI agents can do that now.

And I didn’t even know that was already set up.

Yeah. I’ll show you offline if you want. You’ll love this stuff.

Instant recall turns your follow-up AI agents into something totally different.

I was testing some voice agents today. I asked, “Why do you want to sell your house?”

I said, “My wife is really sick.”

The agent immediately came back with empathy, referenced it throughout the call, and at the end, when I said, “I can’t talk now, can we talk tomorrow,” it scheduled the meeting, sent a Google invite, and closed by saying it wanted to send best wishes to me and my wife.

That’s because people don’t understand the difference between agents and scripts. Most people think you have to prescribe everything like a chatbot. But agents, you train and set parameters of behavior, and they navigate the conversation based on that.

I don’t love AI as a concept. I love the result of AI, getting us closer to freedom.

I don’t want to type prompts. I want AI to function like a CFO or a certified tax advisor, as an agent, because it gets you closer to freedom and time with your family. More money, lower costs.

And yes, AI might reduce some jobs. But it also lowers the cost of entry for clients who couldn’t afford certain services.

For example, we have a bookkeeping platform called VastBooki. It’s free. We can do that because of AI.

I love that we can give people free bookkeeping instead of them paying $20 or $40 a month for software, or $300 a month for a bookkeeper.

So I think AI helps humanity overall. Some people will lose jobs, but many people will gain access to tools that help them lower taxes and handle bookkeeping.

And we’re also in a global race, but that’s above my pay scale.

I had a conversation with my mother, she’s 77, and she can’t quite wrap her head around AI. Her question was, “How are people going to live? How are people going to have jobs?”

That’s a legitimate question.

My view is, we’re not necessarily put on this earth to drudge through mindless grind. AI will accelerate our ability to get out of that. But we have to find a model, financial or otherwise, that lets people live.

That might be the hardest conversation we have over the next 30 years. How do we transform society from a pay-per-hour proposition to something else?

I take the low road. I’m not smart enough to solve the ethics of AI. That’s above my pay scale.

But why are we working for entities when technology can allow us to do more creative things, or recreational things?

Maybe there’s going to be universal basic income. I don’t know. But we’re going to have to find a model where people can invest in their lives, not be valued only by the income they generate.

And then combine AI with quantum computing, and it’s going to propel everything forward even more. AI is going to look primitive by comparison.

I think it’s going to change society in a massive way.

Sometimes I think about people in the 1960s who thought we’d have jetpacks by 2000, and they’re disappointed we’re still using the subway.

But when I look ahead, I feel like the transformations we’re about to see could be as drastic as someone in 1790 looking at 1940.

And shrinking that time horizon to ten years, we’re going to have robots in our homes.

Take the iPhone, which is the greatest invention of the last 30 years. It can’t pick up anything. But imagine if it were connected to a robot that could pick things up.

AI-enabled, quantum computing-enabled robots are going to change lives.

And it could be used for bad too. Countries fighting with robots at the forefront is scary. Hopefully I won’t be around when that happens. Just kidding. I shouldn’t have said that.

The biggest risk is humans. Nobody can screw things up like we can. Ego, arrogance, pride. Pride comes before the fall.

And I suspect you and I could go on tangents forever.

Let me bring it back to two things.

Number one, I can’t remember when you were in Tampa earlier this year, but do you enjoy whiskey?

Every once in a while. Why do you ask?

Because you’re definitely a guy going on my list.

I purchased, with a buddy of mine, a cask of single malt Scotch, and we’ve been maturing it. We’re about to bottle it.

Something tells me I’m going to bring it to the next Tampa event, and you and I are going to sit down for a long while with a bottle of whiskey and talk.

You’ve got a deal.

Phones, music, you and I have a lot in common.

To close it off, Modern Millions AI is something that every business owner should read.

Thank you.

I agree. I’m going to say you’re right. Amazon says I’m right.

So I’m going to close this podcast with a final plug. Go to Amazon, I’ll put a link in the podcast description so you can access it.

I bought it on Kindle. It is definitely worth it.

And if you’re not fully convinced yet, the book does a great job of shifting mindset. It’s not just tactics, it’s the mindset of, “Oh, I didn’t realize I could think about it like that.”

So please get a copy.

And I’d like to have you come talk live to the SmrtPhone community at some point, because you’ve got a great story to tell and a great way of opening people’s minds around AI.

You’ve got a deal. I’m totally into that. Hanging out with you and hanging out with your community, I’m down.

Excellent. Fantastic to see you again. I knew I was going to enjoy today’s conversation. I appreciate you coming on.

Sounds like a deal.

Thanks for listening to another amazing episode of That Real Estate Tech Guy. Head over to ThatRealEstateTechGuy.com to check out all episodes and get special discounts on tons of awesome real estate technology platforms.