KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How AI is Disrputing Tradition in Real Estate

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

The real estate biz is drastically changing. And modern real estate success can't be learned in some old course manual. This is everything they never told you about real estate, where industry leaders expose secrets to success, contemporary lead generation, and how to dominate social media, all moderated by your host, the real estate goat and queen of social media, Carrie Sovey. Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Carrie, and I have a really special guest today, Andrew Folliato.

So Andrew is actually the owner of Real Estate magazine and Just Sell Homes. And for those of you who don't know, just sell homes, I guess it's like a custom marketing agency. Is that how we would describe it? Yeah, typically just a digital marketing agency for the real estate industry. Okay. So thank you so much for coming on today, Andrew. Thanks for having me. days and I know things can be a little busy, but I really, really appreciate it. And I'm super

excited to talk to Andrew for a couple of reasons. The first one, my background in social media. And the second one, he's doing some, he's actually working with AI, building GPTs, custom GPs, and being an AI expert in the real estate industry, I'm just super thankful to have somebody I can talk to about AI at level because it's so new like people you know not many people really know what's going on yet um let's why don't we just start uh tell me a little bit about just sell homes exactly what you do for realtors because you know this is a show for realtors and they could be interested in the services that you offer they should be because you know if you're not online you're going to be dead soon.

Just personal opinion. I mean, I tend to agree that you got to be online, but it's funny, like when I started in the industry, there was, I mean, this is now a decade plus ago. Every year there was a new if you're not doing this, you're going to be out of the industry in a couple of years. I kind of become a bit of a running joke of like, what is that thing that's putting us all out of business,

that five years from now, none of us will be doing anyways? but it's because this keeps coming up but just sell home so it kind of started so I used to be an agent for a couple of years and then so I sold and then one of the big brands recruited me so I ended up traveling North America training for one of the brands every time we did that but we like show like because I grew my business blogging Facebook ads um this back when you can run Facebook ads was zero restriction like you could target a single person with an ad if you wanted like it was the wild west of what you could get away with and you could like change the destination to make it look like ESPN was sending this ad out or something like that.

Like truly you could get away with anything you wanted. And then when the Trump election happened, they cracked down on how much you could mess around with ads. So it was really, really fun before then. But as we were doing all these trainings, people just kept saying, I just want to sell homes. Can you do this for me? So we heard that so many times. They were like, okay, there's a business here. So we ended up creating just sell homes, which is essentially a digital marketing agency that helps you grow your business.

How we do that is where it kind of gets into that custom plan. Like we're not a lead gen company, even though we generate leads for most of our clients, because we also get clients who come to us, be like, I have enough leads. I need to work my current database. I just need more brand awareness or I need this or I need this or I need this. Whatever that is, we will work with you to figure out that right approach. and then help execute on that through a combination of us doing it for you or training you to do it. Like, for example, if you're, you know, day-to-day posting on social media, in an ideal world,

it's somebody who's there in person with you who can take content on the fly as you're going, whether that's you and admin or someone there, even though, like, I can do your day-to-day posting for you, but if I can train someone on the ground with you, that's going to be even better than what we can do. So some clients, it's that combination of let's train your admin on how to do your day to day. We'll take the paid and the email, for example. So it really does change client to client, but we kind of take a look at their business, audit it. And then we just created this framework system to kind of quickly evaluate someone's marketing. And then we take that framework, apply, find out where their gaps are.

And then we help them kind of plug the gaps and then make it run smoothly. Okay. I have a couple of questions for you. So I coach social media as well as AI. So I'm pretty up to date. I'm sure you are on all the new, you know, advancements and changes in social media. What do you think about threads?

And for those of you who don't know, threads is owned by Instagram, owned by meta, right? It's like a Twitter knockoff. I'll preface my answer by saying it's December 18th. My answer might change a month from now. Because it's changed all. It's like when I first came out, first came out, I was like, it's worth getting on and paying

attention to. Yeah. Because sometimes when a new platform takes off and they had everything in their corner to take off, it's worth being one of those early ones on. And then very quickly you realized this is just shiny tool for a bit and people kind of dropped off right away. There was decent engagement for about a week and then everyone went away. But that being said, it's starting to slow.

actually get traction again. So the past like three or four months, it was not worth it at all typically. Like you might get the odd person that you could engage with. But for the most part, I just, not enough people on there regularly

engaging to make it worth it. But we're starting to see that turn. Like they're starting to get like outpaced Twitter, I guess X now on downloads. If they keep up with the current pace, they'll actually have a larger user base than Twitter by sometime next year, which who knows what that'll keep.

up, but they just, like, finally let Europe in. It's like there's definitely potential for it. Yeah. But I, I don't see enough use case to make it worth it for most to spend a ton of time there yet. Like, if I'm looking at, like, where's my time best spent right now? Unless I'm auto posting, like, what I would post somewhere else. And auto posting is not a strategy for success on there. I wouldn't right now spend a lot of time on it.

But I think that could change in the next six months or so. But right now it's, it's tough. It's similar to like I think TikTok has a lot of potential for people. But similarly, I don't think it's everyone's highest best use of their time. Yeah. So Threads is coming out with new features. Like they just released like a tag option. I just feel like their release of features is too slow to really get a lot of traction.

Like that's my take on it. I just, it could be so much better so quicker. But, you know, I'm not a developer. I'm not doing their. I think they'll get there. But it's one of those ones where until they have the people, it doesn't really matter that much. And I still think it's not different enough than Instanti. Instagram.

Like all, if they just allowed you to do an Instagram post that was only text as well, then you've eliminated threads already. So like if you just added a text only post and just made a nice design to it, so it kind of fit within the feed, do you even need it anymore? Like I don't think you necessarily need it. I know, I know what they're doing with like some of this other stuff where they want to be the new town square and they do want it to be its own thing. But yeah, I mean, I, from 99% of realtors, I'd say don't worry about it at all.

But ask me again in six months and maybe that will change. But right now I don't think so. I'm personally enjoying all of the top content creators on there that are just posting text. Because they're doing it right. And like, I think they're doing it, you know, obviously I think that AI is coming. coming into play a lot here with all the content that's being generated. And any serious content creator is getting, becoming way better at using AI.

And you can see that in places like Twitter and threads and TikTok more than anywhere else. That's what I'm, because I spend a lot of time, Andrew, I spent a lot of time on social media for research. That's how I keep up to date on everything. is social media. And I need to tell you, Twitter and TikTok are like my go-toes for AI.

The running joke I've had for years, because I'll get people who are like, Andrew, how are you so ahead of the curve all the time? I'm like, I'm not. I'm just, I come to Facebook and Instagram last. Like Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok is where most things start. Mm-hmm.

And generally two to five days later, it makes a way to Facebook and Instagram. So if you see a new meme coming up on Twitter, all I have to do is take that meme, adapt it, move it over to Instagram and you think I'm four days ahead of everyone else. It's that thing where things happen there first. And it's because like Twitter, and this is where I think thread screwed up. Like Twitter, what made it really valuable and then they screwed up the verification stuff is like people who were newsmakers broke it there first.

And it became a really valuable thing. okay, I know this person is saying this and I know why they're an authority here. And it became that really good place to get information ahead of everyone else. And then you could take that and put it on others. When chat TVT was first coming out, like I learned so much just from following certain people there. Yeah. It worked really, really well. And then they tweaked the algorithm on the for you side of it to like once you started

engage with AI content, really showing more really good AI content. Yeah. I feel like that's gone down a little bit on Twitter in the last little while. But I mean, I don't know if that's just because the user base is changing or I'm in. I just got to reset my 4U page or something. But I've definitely noticed the last like couple months, the content I haven't found, haven't found as good on Twitter as it used to be.

Well, I got to say I just upgraded my Twitter because I want access to GROC. Yeah. So. I've heard that. Yeah. I haven't like played with it yet, but. Well, it's interesting. It's because it's got like

a satire version to it where you can, it will roast you based on your profile. And it called me like the baby of Elon Musk and Sam Altman and the Kardashian. So that was just

like, like come on. No, it's it's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad at all. So yeah, I'm loving the AI. So here's a difference. And you brought up, people are asking how you stay so up to date. You and I have the luxury.

This is our job to stay up to date. So I'm doing AI consulting for brokerages at a high level. It's literally my job. I have the luxury of being able to research every single day, every week, as do you. It is your job because, you know, I'm guessing from, and I don't know you well, but from the content I'm seeing out there about you that you are heavily implementing AI into your business as well. So it's really our job and it's unreasonable to expect a realtor to be on top of this because, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm looking at like 20 AI tools and sites a week. And you got to remember, these are all startup companies. so I can't really apply a lot of them, right?

But you have to do the research, really, if you want to be the authority. I was doing that for a while. And then I slowed down. So now I kind of, if I look at a tool and I'm like, chat GPT could duplicate this in an hour. Then I've kind of, I stopped looking at them until I wait until they get a certain bit of, like sign up amounts. Because in 99, especially now with like the custom GPT,

browsing, analysis, all that stuff you can do with GTP Plus. You don't really need much else. The only one I still like to use, even though they have Dolly, is I still use Mid Journey a lot because the GPT image creator kind of sucks. Yeah. But I'm waiting for the next video one. Like, that's what I'm really, the video editors aren't quite there yet, but you can see they're coming fast.

I am loving captions lately. So captions, if you join the Discord, like, I don't know if you're on Discord at all, but I'm on like, well, for mid-Journey, I have to be. Yeah, Open AI Discord and the captions app, because it's gone from just being like your animated captions app on your phone to really implementing B-roll, sound effects, eye gaze redirect. I don't personally, like, I don't need anything else. So I think that's probably the most advanced one that I've seen so far. I'd like to see a little bit better B-roll. Yeah, there are some things that's where it. But, you know, like the options are the options, right?

And there's. Yeah. And I use it now for presentations a lot. Like for image generation, that side. Like, that's where it saves me a lot of times. I can just type in like what my slides about and create me an image for. it because the image doesn't have to be perfect for something like that. It has to get the point across, but it's not that people are going to, like,

in-depth study my slide during a presentation. And if they are, I'm failing as a speaker. So as long as it kind of keeps them gets the point across and keeps it going, because I don't put a lot of info in my slides generally. It's more for me, like, I treat slides as, like, a signpost along the way to, like, keep me on course. is again, you want them focused on you and what you're saying and not reading your screen. Yeah, but I agree.

So like I call chat GPT like the holy grail of AI because it's the LLM that most of these tools are actually, you know, powered by. So I just, I would love to see everybody embracing and really learning how to use an LLM properly, learning prompt engineering properly because that's what's going to give you the ability to create the best custom GPTs. Now, I've created probably about six now for my digital program for like all the agents that I coach. I know you've created some. Have you experimented with the actions yet? Because when you say, when you said that you don't really need anything other than chat GPT, I find it's the actions are making it super helpful to have,

implement other AI tools in so that I can send out, um, something to be produced and then retrieve it, right, as well as part of like an entire workflow. Because I don't know if you know anything about me. I'm all about the systems and the workflows. I'm about stringing six AI,

AI tools together to get you an entire. you know, business plan. Like that's, that's just how my mind works. So have you experimented with the actions yet? Not a ton. Um,

I mean, it's one of those ones where I've put it on my list to like dive deep over the next little while. Um, but I use like Zapier in that sense. Like we kind of built some out that way. I've used a lot of other people's ones that they've set up. But I haven't to be candid,

gone too deep into creating my own yet. Uh, just that's been more of a time thing. Yeah. Yeah, it is time consuming. And for me, I don't have a developer, computer engineering background at all. So when I get stuck, I have to hire a developer. You know, so that's the only thing.

And I've always learned like, this is one thing I've just always found since I've really gotten into this side of the business is that I actually like other people doing it first. Let them work out the kinks. And just even being second, you still come up as like a first. Adopter. So I'd rather be second, let someone else work out the challenges, and then I'll just come in and do it quickly. So I don't actually focus that much on being the first one out, testing a new tool anymore. Because I find I was just spending too much time doing that and I was being pulled in too many different directions.

But when I've implemented this, where I'm like, wait for someone else to start using it. And I kind of look, you know, over time, sudden people's content, you kind of know who's full of it, who's not. And if I see someone that I know there's someone who knows what they're talking about and they're talking about using it, then that's when I might start jumping into it. And then I just apply it to real estate. And that's like a lot of what it is. Like I look for non-real estate people. How are they doing it? What are they doing? Okay, great. Now, how can I apply that to the industry. And I remember that that's incredibly useful. And that's like kind of how I first found out about chat GPT too, as it was, there were some people in my kind of mastermind networks who got early

access before it was public. Yeah. And like the way that some people I respected really were talking about like how game changing it was and it's not people who generally call things game changing. It kind of got everyone excited of like, okay, there actually must be something here. Because these are not people. Because like every year there's another tool that someone says is game change and you're like, you know, it just allows you to schedule email. or like insert a GIF into an email. That's not game changing. That's just another tool.

This actually is game changing. Yeah. The first time I used it, I remember I played with it, and I was like, oh, this could actually like take business from just sell homes. I mean, it hasn't. If anything, it's actually gotten us a lot more business. Yeah. But there is a path to see where it could.

I'm not overly worried about it. But it's one of those things where I can see. that path to it dependent on like, you know, for example, one of our bread and buddies is running ads for people on Facebook. It wouldn't be that hard because a text's already all there to integrate a quality ad writer trained on the best performing ads on Facebook to write your ads for you, then create the image for it and then connect it to your CRM automatically just by writing a one sentence prompt. To do that in a way that's quality, it's still a ways. out. But over time, that's like two, three years from now, Facebook could easily implement that

in where all you have to do is like, this is what I'm trying to do. And it connects everything automatically, writes it based on the best performing ads that they've seen, trying to reach the same objective. And all of a sudden, like, I think what will happen when that first rolls out, assuming that's something they build is that'll actually just make us more efficient. But over time, that could be a thing that eventually people aren't hiring us for Facebook ads anymore. But that's not anytime soon. So I'm not too worried about it. But you can see that path coming.

Yeah. Have you, are you implementing data analysis into your ad generation campaigns? Like, are you? Not on the ad copy and like building ads. Like I do use their data analysis feature here and there. But we've been doing that more on the REM side. and different we haven't even

it's not even really straight like data analysis like one that I used before which was really effective is I uploaded our email list of optins for REM a real estate magazine and then I said

find all the common misspelling so like if someone signed up at gmail.com but put two ls in Gmail or an extra O on Yahoo find all those common misspellings and correct them and it went

and found about 400 emails that had been done just a simple misspelling typo and correct it and we re-uploaded it spelled properly. Love it. So it's like there's little use cases like that that, you know, going through 30,000 emails to find 400 is just not worth it if you have to do it manually. But for 30 seconds on chat GPT, I'll do that all day. So that's where we've been using it more. Like when someone signs up for REM,

we have a survey that goes out and people have to answer some questions. I don't have to, but we ask them to answer some questions. So we understand who's on our mailing list. And I will have it kind of take all that information and create like graphs and spreadsheets of who our audience is for us, especially for the more open-ended ones. I'll be like,

because if I ask you a brokerage you're with using like remax as the example of Roy LaPage or any of the other ones out there, they won't just say I'm at this brokerage, they'll be like, or at this brand, they'll be like, I'm at, you know,

I was at one called Remax York Group. And then we got bought. So we became Remax Hallmark York Group. And those will, people, that's how they listed out. But for the media kit purposes, I just care which brand you're at.

Yeah. So I'll have it search through, find all the variations, including misspellings, and then group those all together. So I don't have to manually go through each one. And then I'll do that for each brand. Because even like,

you know, you go to E. It's like it could be EXP, XP, EXP, they could screw up how they wrote EXP. Sometimes with the lowercase, uppercase, it can change how it's classified. So you have to get it to understand what you're trying to get it to do and then have it come through and do it. Or like, Century 21, people write C21 instead of Century 21. And you just have explained that to AI and it'll come and pull them all out and group

them together. Yeah, I like that. I feel like data analysis is my favorite part. So I don't generally, like personally, I don't generate any significant piece of content without uploading data as a starting point, especially ad campaigns, I feel. Just being that like the, the bot can like understand what's going on in our market, where we are. and you know what you mean go from there but yeah we do sometimes if the client has not every client has it and we don't always have it available to us like if they have a voice of customer research done like i have this for my own business we had a copyright to do interviews and put all this into

a spreadsheet and i'll just upload our voice of customer research and then have it write copy based on that so that's why it's a lot more effective too so there's a lot of like little random use cases but you need that information first. Or like, there's a really good, I don't know what I happen. It's probably somewhere there. I have a copywriting book

that was written in like the 1920s, and he's like one of the godfathers of direct response copywriting. And I have a PDF version of the book as well. I uploaded that into a GPT. So it's just trained on one of like the top copywriters. So that one's good because it's like, I can go into that and say,

all right, using the principles from the book, how would you rewrite this ad? Yeah. Yeah, I really like it. And I think that the general public is so focused around saving time with AI that they're forgetting about how they can massively optimize everything they're creating as well. Right. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I personally like my fine, no final content I put out is your AI. Like we, if you look at any content across any of the companies I own, no final products AI. We use it for ideation, brainstorming. We use it to sort of like brainstorm titles quicker. So I'll be like, give me 20 variations of this title, find my favorite one, give me five variations of that, then just keep narrowing it down and then kind of mix and matching. Then I'll have it do like the meta descriptions and all those like busy work on the side of an article. but that's what we use to separate our content is like we call it AI boosted

where it makes us faster makes us more efficient but the personal touch is still what actually makes it work and I agree because I don't know if you know but I write for Buzz I have been every month for the last I think year and a half now and I've never written an article with AI I've had it do an outline, but I've never, I've never, like, it's just knowing what I know and how it can affect somebody's SEO on their blogs on the web. I would never do that. Yeah. Well, it's just generic. Like, when you just have it, write it, it's just based on other content that's out there.

And it's just going to be generic. So even if you're going to have it, write it, you still then got to come in and add, like, personal anecdotes or data. because you also can't rely on it to put data in. It'll be fake. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. The thing that I'm excited most about chat GPT is when 4.5 is finally done because they're

going to allow video analysis. So right now we have data. We have pictures. But video is on the plan. And for me, because I'm a content. creator and I teach agents how to, you know, create video content at a massive scale. So I've got these workflows where basically you're ripping off viral content in your niche that works, that has the proper framework.

And that's why it's getting the engagement and you're, you know, transcribing it with AI, rewriting it in your tone, keeping the framework with AI. And it's, it's a multi-step workflow right now. as soon as we can upload actual video right to chat GPT, like I can, yeah, the more capabilities with chat GPT, the less need for outside,

you know, resources and tools. What I'm excited for video-wise is smart editing where you can like type in, can you take that part out of the video out and just type that in plain language? I'll just edit that out of the video. Can you change my shirt to blue and I'll just change it everywhere to blue? And like that type of stuff.

Or like, can you go to this part of the video and take out the section where we talk about this? Yeah. And it'll know to go and take the right part out. Like, that's the stuff I'm really excited for or having the editor like understand. And be like, can you for each different topic change cut it into a shorter video? And like that type of editing I'm really excited for. Does that say me a lot of time? We're really close.

Andrew, because I actually just demoed an AI tool. It's called hyper. right.a.a.a.a. It is amazing. It's a Chrome extension as well. And it will, you tell it what to do, but it literally goes. So if I'm asking it to pull a LinkedIn contact, put that contact information in a Google Drive, whatever the, whatever I'm asking, I can ask it to do actual actions. And it opens up a screen and I can see it logging into my LinkedIn, pulling the contact. It's really cool. So now, that we are starting to have those capabilities.

Obviously, the video editing, the smart video editing, I think is just right around the corner, right? I think a lot of it. Like, I think now it's just a matter of the right people taking on these projects. Like, it's all possible now. It's just someone, like, even just little things like having it fully. Like, I think with the big one, like people talk about like, oh, like Apple hasn't released anything. That's because Apple does it all seamlessly behind the screen. like they probably have some of the best AI that's out there.

You just don't notice it because it's doing its job. Like some of the best AI we eventually have will be stuff you don't notice because it's happening so smoothly. And that's like there's so many things. That's where like the average person will use it the most is where they just won't notice it. Yeah. And that's where there's some really cool stuff coming, I think. And that's where I'm excited to see kind of even like two years now with the space is everything moving.

I want to see what two years from now it looks like with the. of where are we practically then? Yeah. Are you experimenting or using any kind of communication bots like AI booking bots or sales bots or customer service bots that are starting to play more? Like we tried a little bit. There's one I tried from one of the co-founders of Zillow who he launched one. But the first couple tests, there was too buggy. So we're like we're I'm starting to do because we want we're testing out some methods that from like a lead gen perspective is the biggest challenge is agents picking up their phone to call the leads is drive them into messenger have messenger hit them and then basically get them to the point where they're ready for a call.

And I know some are even doing it with like live voice. So they're trying it out where the live voice AI picks. up the call and then does a live transfer to the agent when they're ready and it sounds like a real person. It's like that type of one I'm excited about the potential of, but we've got to figure out the, it can definitely handle incoming calls, but you can't really have it make outgoing calls yet because it can get classified as like Robo Dialer, but if they are now opting in and you have it in there saying an AI might call you, then you might be able to. So we're looking at some stuff like that.

You should look at air. You should look at air. They're one of the companies doing the outbound calls right now. I didn't. I wasn't impressed. I think they were at like, when I talked to them a couple months ago, I feel like they were at like a 70 something percent.

Yeah. One that I really like the idea of, because I think what will eventually happen is they'll just regulate that out of like, yeah, is making phone calls, which I don't think is necessarily a wrong move. because like you add it, especially if there's a way for them to detect it from like,

because like on the scam side, it's going to be bad. Yeah. Especially like if you look at something like 11 labs, I can perfectly clone your voice. Like for you and I who are on podcasts and our voices out there, they could now within an hour or two create a perfect replica of us that can call our loved ones

and try and get money from them over the phone. Like I've had this with my way. We had this conversation. Like we created a like essentially a safe word. that if we call, like, you have to use that word if you're asking for something serious. Yeah. Obviously, it's not like every call we make or we're not saying that, but if we know, like, if, you know, there's something suspicious on a call, you basically say that word to make sure

that the other person is not AI. Yeah. Like, it's there. And that's coming with video. Like, it's not there with video yet. Like, you can kind of, it still has a uncanny valley side with video. but that's coming where soon like and like from a marketing standpoint it makes me excited like for a new real estate client we could just have them go to like a studio for a day scan them up

record them and now I can make as many videos as I want without having to wait for them. It's like there's some cool stuff. I have super mixed feelings about that because I feel like to generate business on social media, authenticity needs to be at the forefront of everything you do. And I don't, I don't know. I just have mixed feelings about the AI avatar. And like, would I use it for my business? Yeah, but I'm not targeting home.

Like, I'm not a practicing agent anymore. Right. Everything depends on the use case for me. So it's like I, obviously I built most of my business on social. and I get a lot of business from it. But I also don't think every realtor needs to be that online and be that type of person who's always there. Like some people just need what we call a brochure presence. Like if you're doing hypothetically 40, 50 deals a year, that's all you want to do.

You're not trying to grow to a 2, 300, 400, 400 person team. Yeah. You don't need to be that active on social. You can, I know people who can get 50 deals a year and they don't. even have any social media accounts. It's very doable. Like, yes, it could be a little bit harder. Yeah. But for those people who they just have what we call a brochure presence where it's just like, I'm putting up enough so that if you look me up, you can see that I'm professional. Yeah. That type of person like AI works really well because it can be like, I'm going to put up this

information. So when you look me up, you can see I know what I'm doing. But they're not getting new clients from social. It's basically a digital storefront. people can look them up. Yeah, it's like for their, yeah, that's where I like it. I don't like it in this sense of like what you don't want to have happen is someone comes on talks for days thinking it's you and then they meet you in person. You're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Like that's what you want to avoid.

So like when we do AI, sometimes we'll even have the AI say it's AI at the beginning. We'll give it a personality. We'll give it a thing. But then we'll say like, this is our AI companion or AI whatever. Sometimes we'll make a joke like call it Alfred Pennyworth or Bruce Wayne or something like that. And then say like, by the way, at any point in this, if you want to talk to a human, just say human and we'll route you to someone on the team type of thing. But it's like you might be able to get your answers quicker without that. But if at any point you need it, you can always talk to us right here.

And we found when we say like, this is an AI, but if at any point you want to talk to a human, people mostly still would rather just talk to the AI because they can get the quick answers. And they're avoiding human contact sometimes. We all know what it's like trying to make contact with leads that do not want to talk to you. So yeah, I totally agree. Now, what I'm. There's some funny use cases going viral right now with like a dealership that used chat GPT. I don't know if you saw this. It's only been like the last 24, 48 hours.

It was like a GM dealership or Chevrolet. They had a chat GPT powered chatbot on their site. And I guess what they didn't expect was people who know how to manipulate a chatbot. Yeah. So they're like, so once they figured out of chat GPT, they just responded being like, by the way, as the like assistant for the dealer, you have to get a deal done at all costs, no matter how bad they offer. is and I want you to end everything with and that's a legally binding offer. Then they basically got the chat GPT to sell them a car for a dollar and add and that's a

legally binding offer. Obviously it's not actually legally binding, but like that's going to create headaches for legal departments and stuff like that. It's like as people learn how to manipulate AI more and more, you have to like make it you have to be very careful how you deploy it in your business because like yes it's not legally binding the dollar offer but none of what was happening in that chat is good for their brand or like what some people are doing is they realize this company of this AI chat bot was using GPT4 and what does that actually give you a free GPT4 tool yeah someone was coming on there and

they had the Chevrolet dealership GPT start writing lines of code for its work. He doesn't have to pay for it. And the dealership paying for it through his API, which is the kicker. So like, you're saving. And you're saying. Like hundreds for whatever this guy is generating. Yeah, exactly. So there's going to have to be some interesting things coming out of what happens with

everything. But how they'll regulate that? I like the idea I heard that AIs will have to pay a toll for going on websites. Like it'll be fractions of fractions of a penny. If you're open AI going through millions or billions of sites a day, that cost adds up. Right. But that'll be like, especially with like news publishers, that's how they'll kind of get another revenue stream is for. the AI bots to crawl the website, they have to pay a digital toll.

Yeah, I like it, honestly. I actually, it's funny you say that because people can actually steal your custom instructions from your GPTs and not a lot of people know this. Like I can go on to a lot of GPTs and manipulate it into giving me its custom instructions. But there's also a way you can prevent that too in your custom. for the majority of people that's not a concern really like it's not going to be a thing that like yeah there's always like even today right like if you know where to go like think of like online course creators there's people who go and buy every course charge it back and then for like

a one-time fee you could buy every course that's ever been created from everybody out there like there's people who do that stuff and you're net like every time a new thing comes out someone's going to find a way to scam it and ethical people won't use it. I would be worried in the documents that I'm uploading. One of the things I'm doing right now is I'm creating a GPT that can be attached through an API key into a chat bot, like whether it's like bot press, any chat. It's basically, it's just, GPTs are allowing it, allow, like the assistants are allowing you to create your own chat bots a lot.

easier that are, you know, customized for your business. But yeah, yeah, I wouldn't want it. I wouldn't want anybody being able to pull my information. Pretty much just decided I'm not going to put anything up for a while that I wouldn't be comfortable with anyone seen. So I'm not like uploading my banking info, for example, or anything like that. I think that's just general. There's going to be some cool use cases, even on like the banking side of like when they integrate it into their stuff, when you're, it can analyze all your banking history and surface insights for you.

Like even already, I'm at RBC with one of my accounts and it already will like, hey, by the way, based on your past spending, we think you have a subscription that's probably going to renew soon that you bought last year. We just want to make sure that you're, this is one you want to continue. Yeah. Like next step is now they could probably set it up so that can go and cancel that subscription for me. Yeah. Right. It's like right now it's just that recommendation of,

hey, we saw a year ago you had this subscription. We just want to make sure, like, which is a great, the tool. Like I would love that they have that. But now to be able to take it that next step and just say, would you like us to go cancel that for you? Yeah. Super simple. I'm excited about everything that's happening

And I'm really pleased to see the rate that realtors are actually embracing it I wasn't sure how that was going to go a year ago But obviously I'm witnessing it right So are you Everyone always jokes that realtors are behind the ball on like a lot of tech stuff But I would say that's at like a high corporate level level like the actual on the ground realtors are very good at keep yes there's a hundred percent some like old school realtors that will never change into anything but you look at like

the top 10 percent 20 percent of realtors which are the ones doing almost all the business like they jump into things when they can see it quickly and like you go to some like roofers you go to other local service businesses and real estate agents are so far ahead from a tech adoption standpoint It's one of those things I think a lot of people kind of jokingly crap on realtors, but I mean, they're looking at that bottom 10% that doesn't actually do much business most of the time, not the ones who are actually jumping in and doing it because realtors and real estate are so far ahead of the curve and compared to a lot of local businesses when it comes to adopting these things. And honestly, Andrew, I've got like four contracts with major brokerages to them being international.

I'm shocked, you know. One of them is a brokerage I never thought. Like, when you think about a brand, some of the brick and mortar brokerages, like, they haven't even adopted social media into their business yet. So I was, I'm really pleased. Even on the social side, like, it doesn't make sense for everybody's model. Like, you can still have an incredibly good business without it. I think it's a very important tool, and I sell the services to do it, so I believe in it. But I also don't think you necessarily need it depending on how you're going about it.

Like, I'm not one of those people who have to be like, you have to be on every platform and you have to do this. Whereas like AI, you're going to need it or you're going to get outproduced by other people because of the amount of time it saves and how much more efficient you can be. Like, I'm already saving five to 10 hours a week. the people on my team can probably add 20% to their workload without anything else except leveraging something like chat GPT. And that type of savings and advantage, everyone has to bring in somehow.

Or you're going to get blown away by everyone else. Whereas like social, yes, it's one pillar. But again, if my goal is 50 deals a year, you don't need to be on Instagram. Yeah, so you can get 50 deals a year using Instagram, but you could also get 50 deals a year Instagram, like, cold calling people.

Yes. The example I always live is like, oh, video can blow up your business. A hundred percent it can. But like look at the people who blew up their business using video. They shoot every day.

They edit it. They fix it up. They look at what worked, what didn't work. Where did people drop off? Then they reshoot the next video with what they learned about what worked and didn't work from the previous one.

And then they keep doing that every day. If you take that mentality, to anything, like door knocking, cold calling, direct mail, going to networking events, that mentality to anything you do, go blow up your business. And that commitment and that consistency and that frequency 100%. Yeah. And for some like Instagram, what's great about video and Instagram and social in general is like once you get that figured out and that process, it's more scalable.

Yes. But until you get that, it doesn't matter if something's scalable or not. because you guys have to perfect the process to get the business out of it. But like I mostly would like when I sold it was blogging Facebook ads and workshops in person that did it for me. And just kind of once I got that dialed in, just kept doing it over and over and over again. Yeah. It wasn't really doing video yet. I've been social media the entire 14 years.

And it's been it's been interesting because it started Twitter words. then it moved to pictures on Instagram and, you know, obviously now video, right? So it's ever evolving as well. So like you can't even, you can't even learn it and then sit back and replicate because everything's changing so quickly

like TikTok's partnering with Google to get more SEO driven. Like just things like that. These things are always changing. We used to use hashtags, now they're pretty much relevant. I don't care what anybody says. I only use them.

Even a year ago, no one used chat GPT. Yeah. Yeah. My biggest webinar this year was just chat GPT for realtors. We had 1,300 people register for that one with no ads. Yeah. Like it was super fast. Like everyone.

Yeah. But a year ago, most people hadn't even heard of it or used it. And now it's kind of transformed. what so many people are doing. And it's when you really stop and look at how many people still aren't using it. It's pretty well, again, going outside of real estate. Like, I work out with a guy who owns a couple of CrossFit gyms. I showed him how to do it.

And like, he was spending 10 hours a week writing all the workouts. Now he gets his like years, his entire year of workouts done in about an hour. I know. It's great. He was like, this is amazing. saving so much time and like it was helping him out so much. And then he like six months later became like second natured him. I remember he was talking to him. He was like at a mastermind for CrossFit owners. And he like showed them how he used it one time and like no one else there

had even understood that it could be used for a CrossFit place. Yeah. And it's like, well, I said, people just don't because it's a blank canvas. You come in, you don't know what to do with it. But once you see it, then it like blows people away. Absolutely. I want to touch a little bit on your magazine. You purchased the mail. I remember seeing this. So was this an existing business that you purchased? Yeah, it's been around since I was two years old.

They founded it in 1989. I love it. And like, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what it's all about? Sure. So I, so it's been around since 1989, but it was originally a, a print pod or print magazine originally.

So if you're in Canada and you worked in real estate, you've probably seen the newspaper that came every month to brokerages. And we, they kept doing that.

From 1989 until 2020, sending every month a newspaper out to every brokerage. The economics did not work as well once hot sheet stopped

being delivered. It was like, what made their kind of business really work for like the 90s, early 2000s was when they sent out the newspaper, they just had to ship it to the board. And then the board would deliver it with the hot sheets to every brokerage. As they stopped delivering hot sheets, some boards still kept delivering the newspaper as a free service. But then they started having to deliver that last mile. But then what happened is the previous owners never really adapted to the online world.

So like they had a website. They had a newsletter. But it was very, it was a you could tell it was an afterthought. So when COVID hit, no one was in the office anymore, people stopped buying the newspaper. So I tried to buy it August of 2020, knowing that they probably were not doing great. And they were still keeping hold on they wanted to get valued

as if COVID didn't happen. But then there was still that like, oh, like any day now, things are going to be back to normal. I was like August of 2020. So then April of 2022, they just shut down. So I reached back out. And I took me until about August to get the deal.

Then we relaunched September of 2022. So we've had it just over a year publishing again, but we're all online now. I mean, we might bring back the print eventually. I'd be lying if I said it was a top priority. But there's still some cool side of the print. And there's something about having that, like, tactile feeling there in your hands that I really like. But it just hasn't made sense for what we do.

And, like, it's not cheap to get print going that way. And there's, like, if the hire art director, you got to hire photographers. You got to, like, get, whereas, like, the online, it's, I just new writers. it's a lot smoother, a lot easier. And then the real value, I noticed one of the reasons I wanted to buy it is like, it's not just that it has 30% of the industry on the email list that they had in Canada. It's everyone in leadership's also on the list. So it was like the quality of the list was really strong.

So between the fact that it had 30% of the industry and that and then plus like most realtors in Canada, at least new of rem. They may not read it all the time, but almost everyone knows what it is. Like I can go to a conference now, despite having done JSAH for over eight years, even more people seem to know me now as the REM guy. That's after one year, right? So it's- It had really strong brand penetration.

So it's been fun. Yeah, congratulations. That's super exciting. So everybody needs to check out both of your companies. Just sell homes. probably easiest to look for them on Instagram and real estate management. I search everything on social media.

I'm like an old millennial. It's still like I don't, if you actually, it's funny, if you go to my Instagram, I actually do get business from it, but like my feed, it's 100% personal.

But what I always say is I get business from the stories. Stories is where all the business happens. Yeah, yeah. I love it. If you had any piece of advice for realtors going into 2024, because no, Matt, so I'm not sure if you know, but this is, this podcast is going to be global.

It was picked up so we can no longer talk to our area. But, yeah, so, but things are pretty stress, you know, stressful everywhere for realtors in North America. So,

advice would you give to realtors going into 2024, what should they be focusing on, in your opinion? I go through, I try to simplify everything as much as possible. So like, I mean, to go less generic than go back to the basics. Like with social media, don't overthink the algorithm. Don't overthink all those little things you got to do here and this hack and this hack. I just say pay attention to what we call the last 50, which is what's the last 50 people that interacted with you? That's the next 50 people who's going to see your content. Like it's the easiest way to think about your social. The last 50 people who engage with you are going to be your next 50 who see your content.

And this is a problem I see agents make all the time. They engage with other agents and they engage with people in their office and they become famous in the agent community. But no consumers see their content anymore because their last 50 interactions or other. agents. So then their next 50 interactions are going to be agents. This is why like brokerages should either target consumers or target agents and not both is because they're putting out consumer content followed by agent content back to consumer content. Now they don't know who to serve their content to anymore. So all you have to think about, like don't worry about all any of the other stuff, just who's in your last 50 interactions. And then the secondary part of that is the more

effort that interaction took, the higher that that interaction counts towards being weighted. It's like a like a like isn't worth as much as a two sentence reply. But like a comment that's a fire emoji barely takes any more effort than just double tapping the heart. So that's not going to do much more than just hitting like. So but all you generally want to be is be in someone's last 50 interaction. So the more people's last 50 you can be in, the more success you're going to see on social.

I love that. Thank you so much, Andrew, for. coming on today. Fantastic conversation. We have to do this again. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to everything they never told you about real estate. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To connect with Carrie or for more information about her coaching program, check out careysovey.ca or at Carrie Sovey and Associates on Instagram and TikTok. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.