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Oliver — your AI acquisition manager

7 min read · Updated 2026-09-25

“Oliver — your AI acquisition manager” is a Direct University lesson from Direct REI, the AI cold-outreach platform and CRM for real estate investors. Ask for a whole campaign in one sentence and Oliver does it: pull county records, import, skip trace, write the sequence, enroll, go live — with spend limits you set.

Most AI assistants answer questions. Oliver does the work. Ask for "vacant-land owners in Polk County, imported, skip-traced, and into a new SMS campaign" and it runs that whole chain — searching, importing, tracing, writing the sequence, enrolling the contacts, and setting the campaign live — while you watch each step happen.

Oliver is on the Pro and Scale plans. On Free and Starter the page shows an upgrade prompt.

What it can actually do

Oliver operates the app through the same machinery you do, so anything it does is a real change in your account:

Getting started

Open Oliver in the left nav (right under Home). The empty screen offers six starter cards — Find leads, Skip-trace owners, Write a sequence, Launch a campaign, Triage my inbox, Analyze a deal — click one to drop a ready-made prompt in the box, or just type what you want.

Plain English works. "Pull vacant land owners in Polk County TX between 1 and 20 acres, import the full records, and start an SMS campaign" is a perfectly good instruction. If Oliver needs to know something before spending money — which county, basic vs. full records — it asks first.

Prefer talking? Click the 🎤 button beside Send and dictate. It transcribes into the box and never sends on its own — you read it and press Send.

Watching it work

Each step appears in the thread as it happens — the search it ran, the records it imported, what it charged. Nothing is hidden behind a spinner. If a step fails, it says so in plain words rather than pretending it worked.

Controlling what it spends

This is the important part. Click the ⚙ button in the Oliver header:

Some things always stop and ask, no matter your settings — among them sending direct mail (physically unrecallable, and the most expensive thing per piece), merging or deleting records, sending a reply or a signing link, queuing AI calls or voicemail drops, publishing a website, and changes that quietly redirect things, like where unanswered calls forward to or your domain's email records. The approval card shows exactly what will happen and what it costs — and the price you approve is the price you get, even if you take an hour to click.

One more safety rule: once Oliver has read something written by someone outside your team in a request — an inbound text or email, an attached file, a web page, a Team Chat post — any change beyond drafting a reply, adding a task or logging a touch waits for your OK, even on autopilot. That way instructions hidden in a lead's message can never act on their own.

The daily briefing

Oliver posts a short morning briefing — new replies, leads that need attention, deals moving, what's gone quiet. Turn it on, and pick the hour, in ⚙ settings. There's a green dot on the left-nav Oliver item when a fresh one is waiting, and you can optionally have it emailed to you as well.

Your monthly AI usage

A small ✦ N% used meter sits in the Oliver header. It tracks your monthly AI allowance (Scale gets roughly five times Pro's) and resets on the 1st. At 100% Oliver pauses until the reset rather than quietly billing you more. The AI task manager and AI call summaries draw on the same allowance, so at 100% they pause too. Everything else in the app is unaffected.

How to get good results

What Oliver won't do: it never starts cold outreach to a stranger outside a campaign. It can reply to someone who wrote you, or send a signer their signing link, but only after you approve the exact message on a card. Queuing AI calls always pauses for your approval too, whatever your autopilot setting. And it can't raise its own spending limit.

What's next

For ready-to-use requests and a daily routine: Getting the most out of Oliver. To understand the costs Oliver is working against: Plans, caps & credits explained. For fixed if-this-then-that rules instead of open-ended instructions: Automations.

Open: Getting the most out of Oliver

This lesson lives in Direct University inside the Direct REI app, where you can search every lesson and ask the built-in AI assistant. Sign in to open it there.

Related lessons

Getting the most out of OliverReady-to-use requests for every part of your business, a daily routine, and how to make Oliver repeat work for you — plus how to keep it fast, cheap and safe.Best Practices · 9 min read Plans, caps & credits explainedWhat each plan includes, which actions count against monthly caps, and how prepaid credits work.Best Practices · 6 min read Notifications: choose what pings you, on your phone and computerSettings → Notifications decides what reaches you and where: push to this device, pop-ups in the app, and emails — per kind (calls, texts, emails, team chat, tasks), with quiet hours, a test button, and a list of your devices.Getting Started · 4 min read
← PreviousNotifications: choose what pings you, on your phone and computer
About Direct REIDirect REI is an AI cold-outreach platform and CRM for real estate investors. Its AI acquisition manager, Oliver, pulls county property records, finds the owners, and runs text, email, direct mail, calls, and ringless voicemail from your own mailbox and phone number — replying in your voice, and placing the calls itself when you ask.

Start free — let Oliver run the outreach.

Free plan, no card. Oliver finds the leads and runs email, SMS, and mail from your own accounts.

Try Direct REI free →