KGCI: Real Estate on Air - AI & Social Media: Adapt or Get Left Behind w/ Tristan Ahumada

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Stratic. And on this podcast, we talk about two things, the wealth machine and the cash machine. The cash machine is how we make money by trading our time for dollars. But if you stop there, you are going to be working for the rest of your life. You're on the hamster wheel for the rest of your life. Nobody ever goes to a real estate agent's retirement party because you don't

retire unless you build wealth. So what is wealth? Wealth is when your money works harder than you work. When you go on vacation, your money does not go on vacation. When you get sick, your income does not get sick. So we've got to learn how to do both of these well in order to get financial freedom. And today, we're talking with a friend of mine, somebody I've been buzzed with for many, many, many years. And I'm super pumped. We were able to reschedule. He was caught in some of the, like, thankfully he was safe, but out in L.A. with all the fires and everything. So thank the Lord, he was safe. But he has done some amazing things in the real estate industry. Anybody that is an agent knows of what his major platform, but he also is a business leader that does a lot of other things,

LabCode agents. But with that said, I get to ask him and grill him for the next half hour. So Tristan, tell us a little bit about yourself. How are you, man? Thanks for having me. And thanks for rescheduling. I lost my voice completely as of the smoke. And then I got sick from the stress and anxiety. I'm like, I was watering my house. I was like, holy shit, you know. But yeah, I. all good now crazy i've been in real estate for 21 years as a real estate agent and my claim to fame was was purchasing online leads and i was the number one purchaser of online leads for realtor com for a while i was doing so well on conversion that they said can we take you around the nation

and have you speak so i did that for them for a few years created lab code agents created lab code agents because of it. And then from there, companies started approaching us, one of them being Facebook, and said, hey, we see what you're doing. You've got a group. You understand lead ads. We want to break into the real estate world. Can you help us? And then they had me lead their real estate advisory board for four years, which then gave me all of these other opportunities to connect with companies that I would have never had. And then that then gave us the ability to pick up ownership and equity, tech company, software companies, and then just continue to help out the real estate world with what's happening and where it's going.

That is incredible. Well, tell us a little bit about, you know, I still remember I've got a friend of mine. He's in the political world. You know, we're here in the D.C. area. I remember he was all in on blogging as a high school kid. And like early, early on, he was a little bit younger than I was. Actually, a lot bit younger than I was. but he was all in on blogging and then he just, you know, through college and everything else,

he got into just social media and just that whole side. And I mean, his life has exploded because he was in early. Now there's all these Facebook groups. There's all these other groups out there. But you guys really were the OG on like a massive, massive real estate Facebook group for people going to. And, you know, for me it was really cool. Like, you know, when I was back at KW, you know, when I first got into Gary Keller's group back when it was like a small group of people, there was a group that would share a lot of information. But the only other place that I was really seeing a lot of people having high level conversations was on your Facebook page.

And I'm kind of curious, what did you guys see? Like, was the genesis of it like, hey, we're going to have like a, you know, Mitz, or did you see it kind of becoming what it became from the get-go? Oh, so interesting, man. And when I created it first, I was sitting in the room with my lead coordinator. And I said, I closed the, as I can close them the door, I go, the goal is to get to 100,000. And we were at zero. And he laughed.

And I always had a vision to give back for just for the pure purpose of giving back to our community, because I am where I am because of everything we've done in real estate specifically as agents, right? and I wish somebody would have helped us out when we were growing and going through all of the problems that we had. And so I just wanted to give it back. And yes, I imagined it being this big. I just didn't imagine what it meant financially and what it meant to other people. Like I envisioned the number. But no way in my mind did I ever think I would go through this ride, which is kind of cool, right? You know what? I've learned through this and I want everyone to listen in to, think about this all the time. You know this very well, Chris. And that things don't all,

things will never remain the same. So you're always having to rediscover where you're going. Is it the right path? Is this still going to be working a few months from now, a year from now? And you can see that not only in real estate, but just in the world that we live in because AI wasn't around just a few years ago. And look at the impact. It's our making. So I think we just need to pay attention to where our world is going, continually test things out, and give yourself time to wander a little bit. And I don't know that agents get that ability to wander as much because we're so reactive. We get an email from an angry client. We get a lead or two or three. We're at an open house and we have to follow up with people.

We get emails. We don't set time to actually think about where our business is going often enough. and that's where the magic starts happening. Yeah, that's incredible. So you mentioned AI, you know, obviously you guys were at the forefront of the tech as far as just communicating through Facebook and meta and all the other stuff. Do you see AI? Like what do you see is the next step for agents and what are people missing that are not forward thinking enough on this? Well, I think so we're now invested in a few AI companies. And what we're noticing is two things.

You're seeing companies that are coming in and saying, well, why don't we use AI to not eliminate the agent, but to make them less important in the process, which means they're just going to be taking more of our commission. And if we allow that, which we are allowing, by the way I'm watching it, if we allow that to happen, our commission is going to just be more compressed and compressed. And I'm not sure that any one or two companies are going to come in and do that. I think it's going to be one of the companies that's already out there. And they're doing it very quietly and silently from what we've seen.

So Zillow, right, obviously. They do a great job with their marketing. They actually provide great quality leads. Nothing against that. But we have to go in with our eyes wide open and understand what they want to do, which is they want to take a bigger chunk. of the commission and everything tied to that commission, lending, title, everything else.

And that's the game that AI is gonna allow them to play at a much higher level. A company that's struggling right now that I'm not sure is even going to make it is Redfin. Like you watch their numbers and you watch what they're doing. They would highly, highly benefit from restructuring how they work and adding AI

and making it go deeper. They're still going to need the agents. All of these companies need agents because this is a relationship-based business. That's what makes it so hard for them, right? Now, that's one. Like, all of these companies coming in and saying, well, we want a piece of your commission. In fact, we want more. Instead of 40%, we want 60%, 70%, right?

That's what's going to happen. Now, we pivot over, and then we're seeing these other companies saying, we don't want any of your commission. We want to make your life easier, agents. We want to make sure that you've got a, marketing AI agent. You've got a broker agent. Like when you and I were just started talking, I don't know if you were recording or not, but you mentioned you've got a bookkeeper and functions as your CFO. If we can bring in an AI agent that functions as somewhat of a bookkeeper CFO,

I think that allows your CFO to them focus on other things in your business. And I think that's where, that's where you're going to see companies like Levi's, right, during the gold rush, they were the ones that benefited, right? Because everyone's trying to get into the gold rush. What happened? Nobody. It's like one or two people actually made it from that. But all these other companies that sold the pickaxes and the clothing and the restaurants

and all that, those blew up. Same things that happened here. It's the companies that are coming in and saying, agents, we're going to make your life easier. Here's how. Use us. We're working with one company right now who's layering in their tech into our teams and into our brokerage who is making an AI broker. It's already there. AI broker uploading all of our contracts into this one place.

And now our agents, anytime they have questions and they can't get a hold of us, it goes into this AI broker. And the broker then, based on everything we've uploaded and questions we put in there, it's just response. right and it loops us in and say hey was this right what's this not because it's in beta and then that allows us to then expand on what the other broker is doing or if they need to actually make phone calls jump on because a lot of the questions Chris are so stupid and it's normal because I ask stupid questions all the time I would call up my broker and say what's our license number because I can't find it anywhere and that's the that's the stuff where AI can come in and be like, hey, I can't, I don't know how to, where, where was that flyer?

Right. That's the stupid shit that we need help with. And it also makes our agents feel like somebody's listening, right? Or at least we have the tools to scale. So those are the two places that AI is really going to help our industry, helping the consumer through Zillow, making it less, giving us less money as agents. that's definitely one. And then on the other side is directly helping us, right, those tools. We're watching them right now.

How do you feel like some of this plays out? So you look like at companies like Open Door. I know Open Door has only posted, I mean, they've been open 10 years and they've only posted one quarter of profitability in the 10 years. How do you see, you know, because they're trying to say, we can do flipping at scale. Yeah. Been able to prove the model. but they're saying with tech it's it's going there obviously zillow is a little bit different because

you don't have like a cash intensive business on that how do you see some of these other companies kind of coming in and you know will they disrupt the industry or do you feel like you know something that is as cash intensive like that is going to be just more difficult at least in the short term to yeah i think open doors got a challenge they got they've got an uphill battle and a lot of these companies that you see out there that are driven by Silicon Valley money or investor money, they don't need to be profitable. They just need to sell a vision, right? And they need to sell a vision so that eventually, if they haven't gone public, that's where they make their money.

And if they have gone public, then they have to keep pushing forward to raise more and more. But dude, I don't know that Open Door makes it. Yeah. I mean, one quarter of profitability in 10 years. It's kind of hard. I think what we're going to see is that a rise in all of these AI software tech companies, and then you're going to see a dip at some point. I don't know when it is, but that dip's going to crash a lot of companies, right?

And that a lot of the AI companies or a lot of companies that have put a lot of AI into their systems, we're going to see those companies fall out. This is why I think that a company like Zillow, who's been around for a lot longer, Those are the ones we still have to, as agents, we have to watch what they're doing, understand their model, and truly understand that they are our direct competitor. And if you're going to use them,

then let's just go in with your eyes wide open and say, yeah, let's use them, know that where they eventually want to go. They just want to take a bigger chunk of my money. Yeah, yeah. So here's the question I have for you. You're obviously involved with a number of different tech companies. you're involved with a number of different folks in real estate industry.

But more important than that, you're friends with a lot of people that are the top level thinkers in the real estate industry. And so with that said, where do you think the biggest opportunities are for agents in the near future? And where do you feel like over and over and over again? Like if you're coaching the average agent, what are you saying to them to say, okay, this is how you find success in 2025? Yeah, I'll tell you two different types of agents. One, let's go for the average agent that wants to get to that next level. And then let's go to the teams that want to really scale up even more, right, and have more opportunities. Number one, the average agent deals more a mindset, issue, an attitude challenge.

So, hands down, they've got to take care of that. They've got to associate themselves with Chris, with your group, with other groups that can continually push into higher levels. That's never going to change. We're humans. A lot of our thoughts are negative, 70% of our thoughts are continually negative over and over and over, especially with social media in our face. But here's where they can succeed. You have a list of people that already like you. They already love you. In fact, it's on your phone. And the challenge is what I see. Most agents don't know how to reach out to people. They don't know what to say. It sounds so shitty. It's like, hey, Chris, it's Tristan. Listen, I'm just touching base.

How's your home? How are you? Like and that to me, you know what? It screams. It screams. You're unauthentic. You're not sincere. I can feel I do it's like cringy, right? It's like what the fuck is this? And you leave me with a feeling like, I'm not going to pick this person's phone call up. Only one is referrals every time I talk to this person or do they really care? It's all about making people feel amazing. So here's where you win, everyone. You have a few. opportunities. Number one, take time to redefine why you're calling. And I'll give you one example that works really well for us and our team. And it's a simple, I did it live and it worked amazing by accident, but it works often. I'm going to text you, Chris, and you're a past client of mine, a core sphere, right? Because that's who we want to focus on 47% of all business for real estate agents, on average, comes from referrals. That's big. So why focus on other shit to start

with referrals? I'm going to text to you, Chris. Hey, Chris, it's Tristan. Listen, I've got a real estate question for you for a change. Do you have five minutes? And you'd be like, sure, because it's, remember, it's people that know me. I'm texting. Or you'd be like, yeah, you know what? I'm at work. Call me later. I'm like, great. So then call you up. Hey, Chris, it's Tristan, man. Listen, I've got a real estate question for you. For a change. You have a change. You have a lot. five minutes, you think, yeah, talk to me. Say, great, Chris, listen, with everything that's happening in the real estate world right now, where do you think we're headed? I'm just calling my close friends and past clients and just asking, what do you think? And this is what I get. Oh, what do you mean

this or this? Do you mean Trump? Do you mean the real estate market locally? Or they'll say, oh, well, then they'll just start talking. If they say, what do you mean? What do you mean? this or that say yeah that's i mean tell me both whatever they say say yeah tell me more that's it tell me chris chris yeah and this is what happens they tell you right i did this live with a sign my past client who's a scientist so he was very analytical he got it right on i was like holy crap dude and then here's what happens here's a secret everybody they're going to come back to you and they're going to say well tristan what do you think and man that right there right there is what I was looking for.

Because a lot of the times we're reaching out to people, and this is what happens. Hey, Chris, listen, I'm just calling to see how you're doing, has your family, you know, has real estate in your area, like homes, you know, something sold close by. This is like stupid shit, man. Like, do they want to pick up the phone and hear this at the wrong time? You're bringing them to you by asking them, what do you think? They're telling you. and now you brought them exactly to where you wanted them to be because now they're going to ask you,

so what do you think? That's your opportunity. Now the energy is perfect. So this is what happens. You say, well, I mean, you just tell them, part of what you're saying I agree with. Here's where. The other one I'm not sure, Chris, a real conversation. And they're going to listen.

And here's what happens after because it happened to me. They're going to be calling you for real estate. We listed this guy's home. I hadn't talked to this guy in a year and a half. a month later Christmas he texts me he goes hey man I think it's time to sell that investment property and we have it listed right now by the way townhome that's awesome so opportunities to reach out to your sphere in an authentic manner is there but we have not been trained to do it we've been trained to be like robots and that's never going to work the other one is what I call LCM so when I worked

with Facebook, I created an acronym for their businesses, right, their retail businesses. And it was LCM. And one of the things, it's like comment message. I need to spy, Chris, on you, on social, because five most visited websites in the world, top, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and number six is X. In that order. That's where people are going to daily. That's crazy, right? Five or four are social. One's a messenger and what's just a Google. search. One's just a search. Four. So now I'm going to go, Chris, I'm online. I'll check you out on Instagram or Facebook wherever you're at because we're friends. And I'll be like, oh, you just went on a trip. I don't know if you did or not, but he just went on a trip. Cool. Snap it. Then Chris,

my message to you would be on text. I'm like, Chris, dude, you went here? This is awesome. How was it? Now it's a completely different level of conversation. Facebook loved this when I taught when I was teaching this to their people because it did something I didn't know until they explained it to me. Two things. One, psychologically, you're making people feel significant for the things that they're putting out there. And now you're like, oh, shit. Chris, why do, why do I post? I post to get likes, not to get zero likes. I post to hopefully somebody is impacted by it in some good way. I want to show people what I'm doing and I want what I'm doing to matter to other people because those are my people. And now I'm falling into this psychologically. So they're like shit, Tristan,

and this works perfectly. It's really authentic and sincere. And you're connecting with them. And listen, you're not going to bring up real estate because Chris, if I text, you'd be like, dude, I love that trip. Do you want to sell your house? That you just ruined it. Just do not bring that up. We're in a world where if you're doing it on social, they can check your profile and be like, oh, that's right. Chris is a real estate agent. Duh. Right. I love what you're saying. And one of the interesting things, I've been kind of like off of social a little bit more recently just for a short period of time.

I've just been diving in on something. So I just kind of was like, okay, I'm going to spend less time here because I've got a, you know, initiative I'm working on. Yeah. And I've been really working on my fitness stuff. Like I'm down a bunch and all the other stuff. And so I made a post, you know, just where I was to hitting my goal and just all the struggles have gone through over the last two decades of having like 50 before pictures and

zero after pictures at all the missed things but it was really interesting because you know I had a lot of conversations on social but a number of people and even people haven't talked to in like five or 10 years reached out to me like on text or like separately and those are some really deep awesome conversations and so you're just saying that it just strikes a core. because I'm like, that was awesome. And it kind of ingratiate you to the people that are wanting to engage in your life at a next level place. So yeah, as you're saying that, I mean, man, it's like bringing a core for like what I've been dealing with in the last week.

And I'm like, oh, I love that. I've got to integrate this. Here's the other piece to that, Chris. And this is why Facebook really loved it and had me teach it to their companies. They also noticed, because they tracked all this, they also noticed. they also noticed that when you're posting when you're reaching out to people whether it's in messenger or by text these are friends these people are immediately going to check back on your profile on social if you messaged them right and then you just hacked the algorithm and now you're going to pop up more on their feed and that's why they loved it they're like oh shit this this creates the community we want more and still has that that sincere authentic feel even though we're going at it on a business level look chris i pop up i pop open my facebook instagram tictock youtube x lincoln those are the main

ones i use daily and i see it i see it as a prospecting arm and i'm building a community to build the rest of my businesses i don't look for politics on it i don't look for i don't look to complain at it i don't look at it i don't look at it i don't look for all this shit that you can do on there. I look at it as a business opportunity to grow even further because I want my time and efforts to match up where people are. And where are they? Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. TikTok's in the top 20. LinkedIn's top 21, top 20. And I want my time to match where they're at. If I want to attract them, what the fuck am I doing somewhere else? that is key to agents right now on an average level.

Like, hey, you want to level this up? Decide how you're going to show up on social media. More importantly, decide how you're going to show up when you talk to people. Like, how are you making them feel, right? And do that daily. In fact, probably everyone listening in, because I know I feel it daily. I know you feel it, Chris. We're just not doing enough.

We've got it in us. We're not doing enough. Right. Improve the quality. of the context, you'll see you will improve the quality of your business. Absolutely. Oh, brother, I love that. That was so good.

All right at the end of the hour here. Let me ask, I've got two last questions for you. One, what's something I should have asked you that I didn't ask you in this last 25 minutes? Oh, good. Good question. What books do you recommend or what books have you read recently that you think impacted your business or life? Always good questions.

I think those books behind me aren't for show. I hope they're law school, so we had to learn how to read fast, our briefs and all that shit. I would recommend, if you're looking to read, a brand new one is one by Mel Robbins. I just wrapped it up. It's called Let Them. That's a really powerful book. It's making the rounds. It's going to be bestseller.

It isn't already. That's an amazing book. An old school one where I think. we can all do a better job with ourselves because I don't know about you Chris but some days I'm not having the greatest day and I start talking to myself the ways I shouldn't it's just it's just human right and I catch myself and I'm like dude okay this one is called I'm looking it up what to say when you talk to yourself what to say when you talk to yourself it's an older book but it was just re-released in 2017-19 updated and doctor what is his name dr shad helmstetter when he first released

the book it made a lot of waves but you read it and it's like really just kind of like what to say to yourself continuously you finish reading and you're like oh shit it all makes sense right so there you go yeah i'll tell you i think that's that's so powerful like i i play a lot of a racquetball. You used to play a lot of racquetball now. I play a lot of pickleball. And one of the things I realized is like when I make mistakes, when I don't do well, I used to always say things that I'm like, man, if somebody else said this, talk to me the way that I talk to myself, probably fight them. Like straight up fight them. But I allow myself to say things like that that are just not helpful at all. So I love it. And here's just as you're listening,

Here's one thing that I'll throw out. This is my cadence for reading. I'm on Audible. I get the two credits a month. I always do two new books every month. And then I take one old one. So I get through three books to get through one old one like Jim Collins or like Tristan said, an older one like that. So you know, you're able to to listen to new ones. But here's here's the rule of books, in my opinion, is never pick your own books. There's too many good books out there. Only, only, only take that somebody you respect says is worth your time. So don't get your time on that. That's a good tip, bro.

I like that one. Thanks, right. Yeah. Originality is forgetting who you stole it from, and I definitely stole it from you. Oh, well, I'm just from you. I'm like, oh, well, Chris, what book do you recommend? Like, what was the last one that really impacted you? Oh, my gosh.

Well, I just reread this again. And it goes back to what you say to yourself. I just reread Psycho-Cybernetics. And you've never read that book, brother. I am telling you, it is life changing, life changing. And oh my gosh, it's incredible. And it was kind of republished again. But it's all about how you are, we live into the view we have for ourselves.

And how do you reimagine how you see yourself, right? Like if you see yourself as a fat person, when you lose weight, you're going to just give yourself permission to eat until you get back up. When you put on too much weight, you're going to say, oh, I'm too high and I come down. And I always, like for my agents, I talk about it like a success thermometer. If you do a bunch of deals, then the next month, you're going to slow down because you're off where you're supposed to be. But if you can raise your success to be, then you live into that new world that you have for your son. Dude, I just ordered it. I ordered it on Kindle and Audible because I read them together. I like it. Good. So good.

All right. So last question here. You are doing, you're doing so many big things. Where can people find you? If people want to follow you and just like like life. Best place, probably Instagram. Just go to my name, Tristan. Dot Almada. It's the one with the blue checkmark because I've got a lot of fake accounts. And I'm not selling crypto. Okay. So if I'm selling crypto, that's the wrong one. So find me on Instagram. Message me there. I'll answer any questions you've got. Oh, brother. Thank you so much for being. generous with your time. I appreciate it. And until next time, if you have been in here and got something great out of this, please leave something in the comment wherever you're listening to this podcast. Please give us an honest review. If you loved it, let us know. If you hated it, it'll make me sad. Let us know that too because we want to know. And until next time, go out there, kill it, build wealth, don't live on that treadmill of trading your time for dollars for the rest of your

life. Go get it. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to Chris Craddock.com.