In our latest real estate tech interview, I’m talking to Jim Plunkett of US Answer. Without further adieu, here’s a bit more from his own mouth…

What do you do?

I am the Founder and CEO of US Answer, a Salesforce powered, cloud based, small business answering service. Many of our customers are in the real estate industry, including users of Rentlinx, which in a study of 8,000 calls of from prospective tenants, found that 80% of the callers that were sent to voicemail-hung up and that more than 50% never called back again. We are also the only virtual receptionist service that can automatically populate phone sales leads into Salesforce and Salesforce powered CRM’s like PropertyBase.

Why do You Do What you Do?

I hate voicemail! I especially hate, how, in the 90’s, the US cellular providers, inserted mandatory instructions in their voicemail message to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU). This has created an increasingly uncomfortable situation in the small business world. In the consumer world, the exodus from voicemail is being lead by the younger generation which favors text when no one answers.  In the small business world, text is not an option and hang ups mean lost sales leads.

What are you most excited about right now?

The transition that is occurring in the US workforce. In the 90’s non-employer companies (solopreneurs and 2-3 person partnerships) numbered 15 million (US Census).  Today they number 45 million and many estimate they will be half the US workforce (70 million) by 2020.  This is a fairly unnerving transition for enterprise companies, yet these new entrants to the US workforce represent the change in our work force that will forever define how we do business in the US. and these percentages are already there in the property management sector today where smaller firms represent more than 60% of the market. This type of non cyclical change creates a tremendous opportunity for firms that service the new “solopreneur” workforce.

What’s next for you?

I don’t see myself ever not being in the digital world.  I am not sure what’s next, but I do have an idea that hasn’t completely crystallized, for a Uber like service, based on text messaging, for locations outside the US like Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

One personal goal is to leverage the success of US Answer to support two organizations I strongly believe in Austism Speaks and Wigs for Kids…I am not sure exactly my strategy for this, but in the short term, I am growing my hair out.

Thanks to Jim for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’re interested in connecting with him further, you can find him on Oh Hey World and LinkedIn.

We’ll be featuring other real estate tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the real estate vertical (past or present), and want to be profiled, please follow the steps outlined here. Remember, you can always discover other people in the Geek Estate community here.