REality

AI for Real Estate Agents: The 4-Step Prompt Formula Plus How to Use Gemini to Save Time

Gary Scott

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0:00 | 58:38

Buyers are walking into showings with ChatGPT “research,” bold opinions on price, and a level of confidence that may or may not be backed by facts. That new reality can feel intimidating, so we brought on Rider Harris, an AI trainer who works with teams across the country, to explain what AI is, what it isn’t, and how real estate agents can use it without losing their voice.

We talk through a simple, repeatable way to get better results from tools like Google Gemini and ChatGPT: assign a role, add context, give a clear command, then tell the AI to ask you questions. Rider explains why that structure boosts both speed and quality, and why “grip it and rip it” AI content on social media is easy to spot and hurts trust. We also get tactical on Gemini inside Google Workspace, including planning your week from your inbox and calendar, and creating a realistic open house follow-up plan that gets you beyond the touches where most agents quit.

Then we zoom out to answer engine optimization and the buyer and seller shift: people are skipping ten blue links and asking an AI for the best answer on neighborhoods, schools, comps, and even which agent to hire. Rider shares why you should search yourself and your listings with AI, how to respond to hallucinations, and why the winning formula is still human plus AI. Subscribe, share this with an agent who feels overwhelmed, and leave a review with the one task you want AI to take off your plate.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Reality Podcast. Special day today. We got a good friend of mine that I met a couple years ago, Ryder Harris. Ryder, welcome. Good to see you, man. So Ryder started his career after I think you graduated University of Missouri in 2021. Yes, sir. And as I read through your bio, I got inspired by a couple of things. In November of 2022, you were working as inside sales at what then was super new. And uh the thing that I think is most impressive is shortly thereafter, you saw an opportunity with AI to do something unique and to be yours. And so today, as you know, we had you with our top 150 agents at Realtor Summit. And we're just so excited to talk for a while today about what AI is and what AI isn't. And uh so I'm just gonna start rolling and just say, welcome to Reality Podcast. Uh, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02

I'm doing fantastic. Uh, thank you for having me. I mean, seeing you, you guys, you and the team, Amy, uh, Mark out on the road, you guys are my favorite people to see. So it's been a blessing to get to do work with a lot of you guys, uh, get to travel around. And it's just such a blessing to get to do what I do. Um, I mean, sometimes I get a little bit tired from the travel, and then I think to myself, you know, I could be doing something else right now that I did not like. So getting to travel the country and, you know, teach so many people how to use these groundbreaking tools, these historic tools that, you know, we're gonna look back on this time and it's gonna be known as the AI boom. So for me to be a name that people come to to learn about it is something that is very humbling and very inspiring. So super excited to be here uh and looking forward to talking with you more. Great.

AI As A Tool For Agents

SPEAKER_00

Well, you hit it out of the park today. Uh, you know, uh uh our team has all we've gotten since the end of it, which was only about an hour and a half ago, is questions about uh when can we have rider back and when are you gonna have webinars and when, when, when. And I think one of the great pieces of advice you gave today was take one thing I shared today and focus on that because it can be overwhelming. Definitely. It can be intimidating. And uh so I think one of the keys to our conversation today is you know, that this isn't about replacing agents. And I think one of the things you hit today was how does a real estate professional, we call them a trusted advisor, utilize the tools of AI to be better at their craft so they can actually spend more time in the relationship piece. And then the other piece you brought up, which I really want to get into, is you also shared what the buyers and sellers are using AI for, and you better know it as an agent. So let's start with the agent perspective uh from your vantage point. And what are the things that a real estate agent today really needs to understand about AI, its impact, and its influence?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you look at your day-to-day and you look at repetitive tasks, you look at tasks that you don't like to do, or maybe tasks that you do like to do, but you're not that good at, and maybe you can lean on AI a little bit. Uh, and just finding ways to save yourself 10 minutes a day and then 20 minutes a day and then an hour a day. Um, I think there are so many different tools out there right now that my advice is to always pick one and do a deep dive on one. So that's why I really wanted to focus on Google Gemini today and not overwhelm people with, hey, use ChatGPT for this, use Cloud for this, use Gemini for this. I think that gets to be a lot. So, you know, you look at the at the agent aspect and you think, you know, social media. I need a social media presence, but I'm so busy, you know, doing these tours, taking these phone calls, marketing this property, I don't have time for social media. So maybe I can lean on Gemini to generate scripts for me. Maybe I can lean on Gemini to generate images that I can post on Instagram and Facebook for me. And if that's just one use case right there where if it can save you 10, 15 minutes a day, and then not only do that, but also boost your presence online, which, like you had hinted at with how buyers and sellers are now using AI, you've got to have a digital footprint or else you're not gonna show up in those AI answers. So that's why my advice, and like you had touched on with just implement one thing today, um, that's my biggest advice is for for agents that aren't taking a shot at it yet. Test a few different use cases, see what it's good at, see what it's not good at, because it's not good at everything. Uh, just find your way into saving 10, 15 minutes a day and then keep it rolling from there.

Why AI Feels Intimidating

SPEAKER_00

So why do you think agents today are intimidated or may be intimidated by just the thought of AI? What what is your perspective from just this, uh, as I said, overwhelmed, intimidated, uh, nervous, anxious, scared, whatever those words might be. Yeah. Uh what's what's your why uh from your perspective?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that goes for any job title that you could say that's intimidated by it, but especially one that is so personable and so human connection oriented, it feels a little funky to rely on this new software, this new tool uh to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish. People have also done what they've done for so long a certain way that a lot of people are like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And while I do agree with that, times are changing and times are changing fast. So there are gonna be people that maybe they're brand new, they're brand new real estate agents, maybe they just graduated college and they're about to enter the game. And these kids know AI like crazy. What if they start making some noise? And then all of a sudden you're behind and you're like, dang, I stuck with the old ways it was working. But now we've got social media, now we've got answer engine optimization. We've got these college kids that are dominating AI. Now stuff's not as hot as it used to be. So I think with how much of a relationship-oriented job it is, I can totally understand why people wouldn't want to lean on it. Uh, but I've also seen and you know, traveled the country and worked with so many different industries now. I'm about to speak at a conference for people that run like haunted houses in in St. Louis and on on Saturday. And those people are curious and looking into AI as well. And that's a very in-person, personable job. So I would say that's why it's so intimidating, but I also urge you know these people to check it out because this isn't like any tool that's been slid across their desk before.

SPEAKER_00

So I think what's so fascinating to me, and you made a comment and you got a big response out of the audience earlier, which was you know, I'm a I'm a veteran of this industry. And I've been in it three years. Yeah. I mean, that's the perspective. You know, I've been in this industry for 40 years, and I just wrote a blog uh about uh Billy Chee, who was the president of the National Association of Realtors in 1995, two years after the internet. Remember, we can go through decades of these things that were going to monumentally change our business. And Billy Chee sat in front of 3,000 members of NAR Rider and he said, uh, the lion is coming up over the hill. And he basically challenged our industry that said, the internet is going to replace you. Now, remember, this was 31 years ago. Fact is in 2025, 91% of every seller listed with a real estate agent at the highest percentage ever. And I think AI is gonna have a very similar effect to the internet, and that is it's not going to replace us. However, if we don't embrace at least some of it, there's probably a chance you get left behind.

SPEAKER_02

Do you think that's I think it's very possible? And the the cool thing and the fun thing about it is no one knows for certain. And that's why I love this industry so much, and that's why I can be a veteran at three years, um, is because there is no playbook to the future. No one has a crystal ball and knows exactly what this is gonna look like. So it's everyone taking their experience, looking at what happened with the internet boom, now seeing what happened with the AI boom. And there's so much of this fear-mongering when it comes to AI, but like you had said, I think it can just be a tool or a crutch that you lean on to make yourself even better. This position is never gonna get fully automated. People are gonna want to deal with a human when they're buying a house. That's just how it's gonna be. A lot of the repetitive tasks and a lot of the admin work, we may look back in 20 years and be like, wow, I can't believe we used to do that manually. And now it's all just automated, it's documented, it's tracked electronically, and the paperwork is super easy and you don't even have to go through all these hoops anymore. Uh, so I think it is gonna continue to evolve. It's gonna be a completely different game. And I think the people that at least are willing to embrace it and check it out, they don't have to change everything about their day-to-day or how they go about business. But I think the people that are curious about it and attack it are ones that will have an advantage for however the game has changed in the next few years.

The Internet Parallel And Mindset

Four Steps For Better Prompts

SPEAKER_00

Excellent. So, one of the things you shared today, and uh you asked a question because some of us in the audience have heard you before. And at every session you share the four keys. Yeah. And I noticed you looked at me uh when you wondered, did anybody remember it? Uh I will remember it now. But I think for our listeners and our viewers today, like as I listened to today, which as I said was really uh extraordinary, and that is those four things as we begin to use it. Why don't you just share, you know, kind of briefly those four things uh just so people can grasp it? Because I think it prevents people from going onto ChatGPT, Gemini, wherever, and typing something in that is not going to be anything like them. Yeah. So we just go through that fairly quickly, the four keys.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. So for the past couple years now, um I've done, you know, use these AI tools so much and I've tested out different prompting strategies. And what happens when I just tell this AI to write me an email, as opposed to when I, you know, give it all this information, tell it who I am, maybe have it act as a certain persona. And you compare the output, it's undeniable that a well-crafted prompt is going to give you much better output than a low quality prompt. So I've been teaching a four-step process. I didn't invent it. It was kind of just uh I tried a bunch of different combinations. I found some on YouTube when I've started doing what I was doing, then you see some on Instagram. So I kind of just made my version of a bunch of stuff that I saw and researched. Uh, but it's been assigning a role is the first sentence whenever I, you know, am prompting an AI to carry out something for me. The reason you do that is these AIs are trained on so much data that you really want to narrow its focus and help it lock in. So you can tell it to act as a 20-year veteran realtor. You can tell it to act as a 10-year veteran social media strategist. And its ability to really take on that persona is very impressive, kind of a little bit creepy sometimes, but it can be super helpful and give you better work. So assigning a role and then providing a little bit of context is the second step that I advise people to take. That's the step where you say who you are, what you're looking to accomplish, and maybe giving it some background on uh a situation that you're dealing with. So these are already two things by telling the AI how to act or the vantage point you want it to think from, and then giving it context on who you are, the business you work for, the situation you're in. Those are already so many things that if you just went into an AI and said, write a social media post for me or, you know, fix my website, it's gonna do it. It's gonna give you some sort of answer, but it's not super tailored. Uh so assign a role, give context, and then give a command is the third one where you're just shortened to the point the exact operation that you want the AI to carry out. And then I like finishing by actually telling the AI to ask us questions, which I always get some weird looks in the audience whenever I say that one. But if you can do that, that allows the AI to analyze the role, context, and command, think to itself, you know, what more ammunition do I need from this person to make sure I can carry out the task at a high level. When you do those four steps, what I've noticed is it's tailored specifically to you, the output that you have it generate. And it's also just much higher quality than a lazy prompt. Because I think a lot of people get caught up in using these tools only to save time, as opposed to save time and boost the quality of work. So if you take time for a well-crafted prompt, you boost both of those.

SPEAKER_00

So I love that. Save time, improve the quality. Yeah. I mean, that's an equation, right? Saving time and improving quality. It's interesting. While you were talking, I went on to ChatGPT because I have it on my phone. And uh I was uh writing a leadership blog on the importance and significance of mentors. And so I didn't do your four step, and I just went in and said, I think mentors are really important. I want to write a leadership blog. Here are the five mentors in my life, and write it. Came out. I then went and said, Hey, I've been in the real estate business 40 years. I've been really fortunate to have five of the greatest iconic mentors in the industry. And I'd like to provide a perspective of what made them unique in building their companies and what lessons that I have taken from them that could be passed on, uh pay it uh play it forward. And so what was interesting is as I began your prompts, it became far more real, far more real. And then uh I remember this from the first time is you know, uh AI will often hyphens, commas, hyphens. I mean, there are some things, and so then I went in and I said, eliminate you know that. Now didn't use the word delve, but eliminate that, right? That's surprising. That one's all over the place. It's crazy. But but it was interesting just in that and and the other point of that is that was all in five minutes.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That was all in five minutes. And I I think that's part of the opportunity, but it's also part of the challenge. The other thing you said, uh, and I and I want to I want to touch on this. So if if if our listeners, uh viewers today said, okay, love it, I I'm aware of it, I'm you use the word curious. You gotta have a curiosity about it. Three things. So one of the things about our viewers, we could have people, we could have agents considering getting in the business, we could have one-year agents, 30-year agents, 10-year agents reinventing their business, singular agent wanting to build a team. So our listenership is is really the broad spectrum of real estate professionals. The three things. What are the three uh things that you highly recommend that they uh do with AI to save time and improve quality?

Three High Value AI Uses

SPEAKER_02

That's a really good question. I think it comes down to different things for each people, depending on what they are good at. I think everyone has their own skill set. Some people are really good at writing, so they shouldn't ever use AI for writing. So, you know, if you like writing your property listings, you like writing your descriptions, you like writing your articles, your blog posts, your Instagram captions, that's something that you should stick with. There's no reason for you to replace that just because it's easier if that's a superpower that you have. On the flip side, if someone struggles at writing, they get writer's block, their grammar's not very good, they just don't like writing, then that's a use case that someone should use it for. Uh so I think, I think writing, uh communication, emails can definitely be one that people use it for, only if that is a skill that they do not excel at. If it's a skill that you excel at, I don't really find many reasons to implement AI in that regard. Uh so I would say that for number one. I would say for the second is to learn new things, lean on AI to learn new things. A lot of people are caught up in learning AI, which is great, but you can also learn how to use AI to learn new things. And that's where my superpower kind of is and why I've been able to have so much momentum, especially over the past year. I've been able to work with so many different industries because I know how to use AI really well to research those industries and understand the pain points and understand where AI can be used and understand the efficiency, the inefficiencies. So I would say um communication, I would say learning. And then I would say with the last one, if I had to give three, would maybe be creativity or strategic thinking or planning. So I think if you don't excel in planning and you're not a very organized person, I would say that you can even dump all of your weekly tasks that you need to be completed into an AI and say, look, I'll be straight, I'm just not the most organized person in the world. I need help planning out my week. These are the tasks I need to have done by here. And it can give that person an organized schedule. Um, I also know, you know, a lot of people that, especially with Jim and I, you can connect it to your G Suite so it can have access to your emails. It can have access to your calendar. So it knows all of that stuff. So you can go in and say, look at my emails for this week on Friday, help me organize my Monday right now. And it can do that. And it can look at all of your emails from the week, look at the action items you were given, look at the meetings you have next week, and help you plan in that regard. So uh those are three that I think are super beneficial. But I also will say it just depends on the person and what their superpowers are and what their weaknesses are.

Gemini Inside Google Workspace

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So I love that. You know, I think don't replace something you're good at and enjoy. No reason to. And I think the other thing that really resonated with me is there's one thing to learn uh about AI. Yeah. There's another thing to learn with AI. Yeah. You know, they always say sharpen the saw and things like that. So interesting. You just went down the path of my next question, which is Gemini is a uh is a Google platform. And so one of the things I was uh thinking about as you were talking is, you know, uh emails and maybe uh uh topics within my email. So uh walk me through something Gary Scott could do today or tomorrow. So I want to go in and I wanna I want to uh I wanna address everything that's in my email for the last month that has to do with X and whatever X may be. X may be our uh our communication on a sports sponsorship. It could be an acquisition we're working on. Like, is that something that is it that I'm capable of I love the scheduling thing. I'm gonna start doing it every time. That's a good one. I'm gonna start doing it every Friday.

SPEAKER_02

That's a really good thing. You can schedule it out too to where it does it automatically. So now you're taking me to AI 2.0.

SPEAKER_00

That's 2.0 for the 10 years.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, sorry, I get except my tail starts wagging the way.

SPEAKER_00

Well, the first thing we're gonna do is have a consultation with you and the people that I that work with me because I think you're you're beyond me. But I but I think it's so fascinating, right? It goes back to what is the one thing that could save me 10 or 15 minutes a day? The one thing. Not because if you think about the five things, you're not gonna do any of them.

SPEAKER_02

No, you're gonna get overwhelmed, you're gonna get burnt out, and you're gonna go, ah, screw, we'll stick with that thing.

SPEAKER_00

So so let's expand a little bit. What other things can Gemini do because it's part of the G Suite? What are the other you just talked about prioritization for the next week. We talked about taking a topic that's been in your what else uh what other good uses are it for an agent or for an employee of our company?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, anyone that's throwing together slide decks, I will say that's a big one. So I work in Google Slides. That's where I do all my keynotes, all my presentations for. And I'm in a lane where I work with so many different companies and so many different industries that I can't get away with using the same slide deck every time. There are a lot of keynote speakers that travel the country. They don't have to do any preparation because they've done that same slide deck, that same presentation to the same audience. It's a politician stump speech, right? Hundreds of times. Hundreds. I do not fall into that category. I don't fall under that category. So one thing with Jim and I in slides, because it's embedded now into your Google tools. So your Google Docs, your Google Slides, your Google Sheets. You now can click, I believe it's in the top right corner, and you can have Jim and I populate the right hand side. So you can have it, you know, fill out some data for you in a Google Sheet. You can have it get started, um, get it started on a blog post on a uh a Google Doc. But with Google Sheets, if I want to edit a slide, instead of me manually having to rewrite it and do all these things, you can pop up Jim and I on the right hand side, you can select the slide, you can give it some instructions, boom. It redoes the slide. Would have taken me 10 minutes, did it in 15 seconds. So I have a question.

SPEAKER_00

So I may have 15 presentations in Google Slide. Can I give it a prompt to go into all 15 of them and create a slide deck based on a topic that I give them?

SPEAKER_02

So go into so create a new slide deck. A new slide deck. Based on the 15 slide decks you have?

SPEAKER_00

Based on the fifth based on a topic that could be interspersed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um, because it should be able to connect to your Google Drive so it'll know the presentations that you've made within Google Slides. That is a good question. I'm not 100%, but I would say 90%. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So I think that's a good, you know, because that's one of the challenges I have is I I I do try to make them different, customize for sure. Got to and then you have to start over. Yes. And the number of times I'll ask somebody, can you print that for me? Or if I went in and said, okay, that's in 2025, I had 16 unique presentations. I want to do another one. But what I want to do is take everything that talks about real estate data.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it just goes and then it creates uh so again, I just I think it's interesting.

SPEAKER_02

Or again, you could download them or be able, you could go into just regular Gemini. And if your drive is connected, you could upload all 16 of the slide decks and say, I'm trying to generate this. It's somewhere in here, or the topic is somewhere in here, or I want you to grab this piece from deck one, this piece from deck two, this piece from deck three. It should be able to do it. It's pretty, it's pretty incredible technology. Um, but I would say yes. I would imagine that can be done.

Hallucinations And Why To Verify

SPEAKER_00

And I think the other thing that you shared today, which I thought was really impactful, and it might have been your last statement. You said, no one uses AI more than I do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then you paused and you said that, but no one questions AI as much as I do. 100%. Share that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, after you use it a lot, you just understand more and more how it works. And I remember there's so many viral posts about these AIs saying dark things, and they think that like that's the mind of the AI. When in reality, these AIs, you know, they they Don't have minds of their own yet. So I've also done enough research to where I've seen enough hallucinations, which for those of you that don't know, a hallucination is when an AI essentially makes something up to give you an answer. It's not true, but it would rather make something up and give you that answer instead of tell you that it doesn't know. So I've witnessed that enough. I've read enough stories. I've told the one today about Yeah, because I don't know, I don't know, uh not that I would want to say the name of the firm or kid or anything, but because I don't know those specifics. But there was an instance an incident where a kid was looking for legal precedence for a case that he was working on. He was up against the clock, pushed it off, and ended up resorting to ChatGPT. And this was early days ChatGPT. So now ChatGPT at least does a better job of searching the web and providing you with sources. Early days it was the Wild West, and you, it was a coin flip of whether it was true or not. Um, so he gathers this legal precedence, delivers it, and it is 100% fabricated and made up by ChatGPT. The court case never happened. None of the people in the case were real. It was all made up. So that was a big red flag to a lot of people. And that actually hurt me at the time because this was early days. I'm trying to get going and I'm trying to tell companies, you know, this is the future. Right. Start training your sales team now. Start brushing up the CEO. Like the CEO needs to know what this is right now. So then stories like that come out and it it put me behind the eight ball because, you know, it's being proven that it was making stuff up. So all that to say, I've seen so many of these instances of where it messes up. And I know the the AI tools so well now that I can almost tell when it's lying without even fact-checking it, just because I've I've used it so much that I'm like, that was not a confident answer. So all that to say, I've seen it mess up enough that I question it just as much as I accept it and am um happy with its output.

Open House Follow Up Plan

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, I think it's important that as we all increase our awareness of it and our curiosity of it, is that it's not perfect. You know, it's not 100% perfect. And I think that's really important. I think the other thing that you talked about today was a really practical application. And it was uh to have Gemini help you in some planning and some strategy. I think it was over a 14-day period. So let's walk through that. So obviously, open houses continue to be such a big part of our business, and you know, inventory's growing in our business, and we're coming into the spring market rider. And, you know, I think what happens unfortunately is we go to an open house and I've got five, six, eight, ten couples come through, and I have all best intentions of following up and following through. And you know, one of my greatest, one of the greatest stats is you know, 80% of every sale is made between the fifth contact with someone and the twelfth contact. And if you look historically in the open house space, somebody would come in when I was listening and selling years ago, somebody would come in and and I would call them and they might not call me back, and I might call them again and they might call me back. And if you look at the the percentages of agents that stop following up after like three or four times, yet 80% of the sales are made from five to twelve. Yeah. And so the mat it's a math problem. And and our team knows that that's one of my favorite phrases. Everything is a math problem to some degree, right? You're you we're in a relationship business, but it's a numbers game. It's just the way of the world. And so you gave an example today, which I think is r was really compelling was you have an open house, you then go into Gemini and you ask Gemini using your four principles and prompts and things like that, of how they can how Gemini can set up your follow-up follow-through over a 14-day period. So you're connecting with those people five to 12 or 5 to 7. Want to just walk us through that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. That that was a super simple prompt that I thought made all the sense in the world because everyone follows up from you know, an open house. But can you stick with it? And I feel like just having an AI generate a plan for you that you're like, I'm not gonna follow it to a T. You don't have to follow anything to a T that AI generates for you. But to have that plan that exceeds the fifth touch or exceeds the seventh touch, to at least stick by that and hold that person accountable to continue going is all the nudge you you need. Because what if you go over because you stopped at four? But because you use little AI to draft a seven-step follow-up process for you, and then you closed one on the sixth. I mean, that's a deal that you got as opposed to you didn't because you were willing to lean on an AI to just help you stay organized. Again, you don't even have to listen to the exact copy that it generated or send out the exact copy. But if you just followed the structure of what it generated for you, I mean, that's the difference between closing a deal and not closing a deal. That's literally the the name of the game. And that's what I try to explain to people is it's we're not automating our entire careers here. It's just it's a little tool that if it can nudge you in the right direction, no matter what the use case is, I mean, that's what it's here for.

What To Stop Doing With AI

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. So I I think one of the things uh that we always I've asked you a couple times, what should they start doing? What should we start doing? So I'm gonna I'm gonna shift the script. I'm gonna pivot. You use the great deal select away. And that is what should everybody stop doing? Like you know, I always say, start doing, stop doing, do more of, do less of. Yeah. And so as you think about AI and you think about the life of a real estate professional, yeah, is there one thing, and there may not be one thing. And again, one of the things you said earlier, which I think I want everybody to really pay close attention to, is know your it's almost like you do your own SWOT analysis on AI and social. And so you decide, what am I strong at? What am I and and leverage your strengths, you know, kind of mitigate your weaknesses and take advantage of the opportunities.

SPEAKER_01

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00

And so I think you know, you kind of do your own AI SWAT and then you decide. But is there anything that you think of that says, Cash, if you're doing this, man, I I this will save you 10 or 15 minutes if you stop doing this and leverage it, Gemini?

SPEAKER_02

That's a really good question. Um, I immediately go to the work prep example that I had brought to you of helping you plan the next week. That's one that I think applies to literally everybody. So that's one that I think is super beneficial. Uh, but you had brought up if there was something that people should stop. And I will say yes. More specifically LinkedIn, but any type of social media content. A lot of people like to, even if it's well prompted, copy, paste, post and not proofread it. There's M-dashes all over the place, there's emojis all over the place. It doesn't sound like you. Like your friends and your coworkers would read that and they're like, did someone hack this guy's LinkedIn? Like that is not, it had no personality. So that's my biggest no-no is the low effort, grip it and rip it. Written social media content. It doesn't look good. It doesn't perform well because the these systems pick up on it now. Uh, so that's my number one no-no. And I'll be scrolling LinkedIn all the time. And you know, you you see it every once in a while, and I'm like, man, I'm like, I wish I could help this person out. Um, but that's one that I would say because I think we went through a phase where everyone was spamming that. I'll be real, since I was an early Chat GPT adopter, if you read through my 2023 LinkedIn articles, it's probably a disaster. And I would probably cringe if I were to go back and read those right now. Um, that being said, enough time has come by where I feel like we went way AI and now it's slowly bringing its way back because now you see a platform like LinkedIn that's kind of just filled with AI slop. So I think either going back to the hybrid of having AI do the template for you and you making your own adjustments, or heck, dare I say a human writes their own article anymore. Like maybe that's the way to go about it. That's my number one thing because especially for people like me that use AI a lot, it's so easy to tell that it was low effort, you didn't put that much into it, and it clearly wasn't you. And I think that's not a good look for anyone.

Human Connection And The Sweet Spot

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I think what's going to happen over time, and it's not gonna take a lot of time, is all of us will be able to identify that. Like you did because of where you were in the early stages of the journey. But pretty soon, like today, I can. Yeah, you know, and then what you really find out is, and here would be my caution, not knowing nearly what you know, and you know, be cautious of what you repost or you share. Yeah. Because the number of times I've seen people share something that I know is AI generated may or may not be accurate. Yeah, you know, particularly in the religious and the political world that we live in. Definitely. You know, what what can you trust? What what can you not trust? And it's no different than getting an email from somebody that you think is legitimate, but we're we're so into the to the to the spam and the scams and the things like that, you know, cyber things and so uh interesting. So um it's in uh techie. So one of the things that I did, and uh, I think Brian Kegel uh near the end asked the question. So I kicked off the meeting, if you remember today, and I said, you know, AI, artificial intelligence, and then uh the next four that I'm gonna share, which I kicked it off with, were not mine. I picked them up from other people. So it wasn't AI, but it was actually human beings. I can actually tell who gave it to me. So Dave Sanderson, Dave Childers, Mike Staver, Matthew Ferrara, because they're national real estate speakers, are trying to make sure that the real estate community doesn't violate what Gary Scott calls the pendulum theory. So if you imagine a pendulum and you just talked about it, what happens is every time we overcorrect, like the goal of a pendulum is to go like this. Yeah. And what happens is I make a decision and I go right through the sweet spot, right? I go from not using AI to having it do my remarks and I don't proofread it. So I've gone right through the sweet spot. Right. And so a couple of things they shared authentic interaction, which is the people in the community. Uh, and one thing that that I like about your message is you're not suggesting to anybody that that go away. You actually, in your in your conversation, says you've got to enhance that simultaneously to the AI. The other is attracting influence, and that is how do I connect with individuals of influence who can help me drive my business. Uh the fourth was agent intelligence. You know, let's not rely on artificial intelligence like market data and things like that. Now we'll touch a little bit on research because you know, we have taken a 10-hour research project and had it happen for us while we're preparing and while you were on stage today. Yeah. And then the other one, and and this one was mine was activity intensity. And that's just about you know being very intentional on what you're gonna do, whether it's AI or your basic business, and choose those activities and just be intense with them, be intentional with them. So uh Brian Kaggles asked the question human connection. Talk about connecting AI with human connection and just why it's so important and how do they both coexist. And what advice do you have as people try to stay in the middle of the pendulum?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, you'd said agent intelligence was one of the AIs, right? Um and I think that was one of my driving points today is it's almost time to double down on what does make us human because AI is gonna automate so much of this repetitive grunt work that we're gonna have more time for shaking hands and for sitting down at at kitchen tables. So I think while I can see why it's it sounds intimidating to most people, it's also gonna free up a lot of time to do exactly what you want. So I think that is the sweet spot that you mentioned right there is human plus AI. And that's what I try to try to tell people. And the the mantra for a while now has been AI is not gonna replace your job. It's the guy that or girl that knows how to use AI really well is the one that will outcompete you and end up thus taking your job. Um, and that's why I think it's so important. And I think, like you had just said with the pendulum, I think I swung too far to the right uh when I first got started. And now I'm almost back so far that I feel further back than most people. I don't even use AI to write my emails. Um, I spoke at Club Management Association of America's. They had a conference and their CEO followed up with me after and I responded to his email. And he goes, full transparency. He goes, I just never know if this is you or not anymore. And that struck me hard. Right. Because I did I was writing it manually, but the fact that people see me as an AI speaker, but they think all of my communication might be automated and they're not actually connecting with Ryder Harris was something that really woke me up. So now I always talk about how you know my emails are written manually because you're interacting with Ryder Harris. I want you to interact with Ryder Harris, not with Ryder GPT. Uh, so that's something that I take seriously. And I just think maybe it is a learning curve that everyone will go through. Maybe everyone will go too AI heavy once it opens their eyes and they get really excited about it. And that's okay as long as you come back and end up finding it in the sweet spot. But I would say that sweet spot is what I had touched on a couple minutes ago. Not having to replace everything with AI. Your strengths don't need to be replaced with AI. Even if you're not that good at something, but you really enjoy doing it, even that doesn't have to be replaced with AI. But finding ways for your weaknesses or the things that you don't like to do while still keeping that human touch and being yourself, I think that's the sweet spot with it.

SPEAKER_00

You know, it's interesting. One of the cautions I would throw out again, you know, I'm I my level of awareness has grown into the last 12 months. So I always joke I was in denial of AI, and then I began the 12 steps of recovery. Really, when I heard you do talk about mortgage the first time. Because none of that uh none of that resonated with me. Yeah. And so recently we did uh four or five short videos on why is it a good time to buy, why is it a good time to sell. Uh I did one on uh the 12-week year, and I did one on the six uh the six uh keys to success. And they're short and they got a lot of action. And I got a uh message on Facebook, and the message was from a former colleague and basically said, What an incredible AI video. And I was like appalled. Uh quite frankly, I responded in probably a little passive aggressive. Yeah, I was gonna say, and my response was this was not AI. As a matter of fact, it was one take with no notes. So I got fairly fired up, right? And but you just say to yourself, like, I would not think for a minute to create an A, and nor would our team to create an AI video to put on a reel to build the credibility of our company. And here's somebody who I used to work with, yeah, like literally drew that now. So then I say to myself, who else thought it but didn't type me a message? Yeah. And I I was passionate in my response because I was a little offended. Well, to your point, I was offended by it for sure that that number one, I would do it, and number two, that it would look so real.

SPEAKER_02

How crazy is it that now that's an accusation these days? Exactly. That was AI, and I never would have thought that that would be something that people would start getting accused of, but that's a pick.

What Buyers And Sellers Use AI For

SPEAKER_00

Well, the other thing is I I saw you dunking like MJ. So I said apparent apparently the photography of AI has gotten better. All right, so we're gonna shift gears a little bit. So uh AI for the realtor, AI for the realtor, AI for the realtor, you know, again, it's a journey and it's gonna take a while. Uh so let's talk about. I'm a real estate professional, trusted advisor. What are the buyers and sellers doing so that when I'm interacting with them, I have to have an awareness not only of what I can do, but what are they doing? And you're gonna uh it's kind of like it's it's like this like they're they're pressing, right? Yeah, basically. So you did a great job today. Buyers and sellers, again, just at a high level, what are the things they're doing uh as they prepare themselves for the home ownership journey?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. This was so much fun for me to look into. It was about a two-week journey of me really doing a deep dive on it because I've studied answer engine optimization for the past couple months now, which for those of you that do not know, answer engine, excuse me, answer engine optimization is the future of how people will be discovered on what is now known as the internet. So what we're starting to see is people are ditching the traditional Google search of you put in some keywords, it responds with 10 blue links, you click on each blue link, you read each for yourself, you come up with your own opinion, and that's that. Um, now we ask an AI a question, and AI does that research for us. It finds what it thinks is the best answer, and then it delivers us that answer in a written format. So that piqued my interest. And what I found, started to realize is people are not only going to use this just for everyday tasks. They're gonna use it for things like buying homes, finding realtors, finding properties, finding the city they want to move to, learning more about that city, uh, learning about the schools in the area of a listing that they just found. So that's what's so interesting about now the buyer side. Because I never thought about it from my perspective whenever I'm trying to do, you know, consulting retainers or land a keynote or land a workshop. I never really thought how, if this person searches me on AI, how do I come off? Right. I never thought about that. So as I did a deep dive on this topic, it was super eye-opening to me. And that's why I was super excited to educate your team about it, because I think 99% of this industry is not thinking of that. But if we can now go into a meeting understanding what this buyer may have found by looking at AI that's different than what they would normally know, that gives us a big advantage. And now you're not flying blind, and they're not going to blindside you with, yeah, I did a bunch of research. I did 20 minutes worth of research with ChatGPT. This is listed at 600,000. ChatGPT said it makes no sense for me to go above 480,000. So that's where I'm sticking. And now we're like, what is going on? So my main thing was not only search yourself using AI and see how that pops up, but also search maybe a property that's listed. That way you can know what buyers are gonna come in with because buyers are uh more informed than ever because they will get a rot a lot of correct information. And, you know, they'll get a good understanding. There's also gonna be times where that AI hallucinates and maybe they're gonna compare uh a house that was sold down the street uh a couple years ago for this price, and it was completely made up by Chat GPT. And now that's something the agent has to deal with. So they will be more informed or misinformed. Um, but what I found with research is they're very opinionated now because they're very, they feel very strong about the research they conducted with AI and they're very confident in it because Chat GPT and these AIs are very convincing and they present you with information. So I think agents at least being aware of that can give them a huge a huge advantage because eventually a hundred percent of buyers are gonna be running stuff by AI uh before we know it.

SPEAKER_00

So interesting. I went on to my home and I I I went in and I said I'm gonna list my property, and I'm most interested in the six current listings that would be my competition. And what was interesting is I clearly didn't give it enough prompts because it came back with the six listings in my subdivision that had ever been listed, which was not my question. Right. But I think about the example you just gave is that you know, I if I'm a seller and I did that and I didn't recognize that it was wrong, yeah, I could come in. And so to to go in as the can as the real estate agent and you can do you you can do a little homework on the the buyer and seller themselves, right? Yeah. Learn a little bit about them. Definitely. But definitely uh, you know, go in and look through AI, what do they what do they come to the table with that may or may not be accurate. And I think that's uh that's really interesting. I think the other thing uh that you know we have to be careful of is, and it really goes back to your point of those individuals who have simply said, okay, I'm gonna do my CMA, I'm gonna do my marketing plan, and and and if two agents go out to list a property or four agents and two of them have gone to the AI and they deliver the exact same presentation. Yeah. Right, and it goes back to the pendulum.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh so I know you well, I think I think about uh the other example, you know, prior to AI, there was what we call it automated automated value. And so you could go to Zillow, Realtor.com, Core Logic to get the value of my home. And they're all different, which proves that the algorithm can't price the house. So it was always at the end of the day, it was a support to us, not a challenge to us. Yeah, AI kind of takes that to the next level. And what it does is it me as the agent, I can go in and say, if if Ryder went in and asked for these three AVMs, what price did they give? So I know, to your point, that you came in thinking it was this price, this price, this price. So I know what you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

The Next Wave Of AI Automation

SPEAKER_00

Where before I would have had to go in, plug it into those AVMs myself, and very few people were doing that. All right, three-year veteran in the industry. What does this look like March of 2027?

SPEAKER_02

March of 2027.

SPEAKER_00

Specifically in real estate or just AI? Let's go AI general, then we'll come back to real estate. And I know you do a lot with mortgage, so we'll talk a little bit about that, but AI in general. Okay. AI as you see it in our industry.

SPEAKER_02

So AI in general is going to be a lot less of the clicking and doing the work that we've known as work for our whole lives. So Anthropic is a company whose AI tool is clawed. It's essentially a chat GPT, a gym and I, whatever. So they have a tool called co-work, um, where you do you're onto your computer and now it has access to all of your files and it can carry out tasks for you on your computer. They then connected something called computer use, I believe it's called, where you will be able to give your computer a task. Your laptop will be open in the corner, and you can say, schedule a Zoom call with this person at this time, and then Send me a confirmation email, also send that person a confirmation email. I could text it from my phone to my laptop. And then I could watch my laptop in the corner, open up a tab in Google Chrome, open up Zoom, name the meeting, time the meeting, set the meeting, send the meeting. So I think this time next year, there's going to be a lot of us giving instructions to an AI that is literally just going to carry out the brunt work for us. So less of the back and forth prompting, less of the back and forth. It's crazy because that's already a big time saver. And now you use AI so much that you're like, man, I can't believe I have to keep prompting and follow up with prompting. So AI as a whole, uh, that's truly where I see it. I think we're going to give instructions to an AI that is going to do the work for us. And we're almost going to become managers of an AI that does our work.

SPEAKER_00

So I think one question that was asked at the end, she had trouble articulating it. Remember she? Yeah. I remember it. So I think I know what. So she was asking, Ken, can you is there a platform to train the people that work for me? Because I'm not going to do like it was like a layered approach. But but I think that's a legitimate question. Because there are a lot of, you know, the average age of a real estate professional is 57 years old. Which says a lot of things, right? Number one, it's a mature industry. Number two, uh, a lot of the success of agents that have been in it 20, 25, 30, 35 is relationship, which is perfect. Uh, but the world is changing. And uh I'll share with you a story which you will appreciate. And I have a good friend of mine in the financial services business, a financial advisor, and they just replaced uh an executive assistant who left with co-pilot. Like just completed it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And and the comment back to me was the early returns. It's not you know, it's unbelievable. It speaks to what you just said. You know, you go into the CRM, you say, here's what I got to do, yeah, and and it and it's doing it. And so, you know, I think that you know, there is a reality, I think, out there that some jobs in the world, yeah. Now I loved what you said earlier, it's not gonna replace jobs, it's gonna replace people who don't utilize AI to do their job more effectively, efficiently from a time perspective. Uh so 12 months real estate business, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02

A lot of the brunt work, a lot of the the admin tasks, a lot of the paperwork, a lot of the back and forth, I think that is just going to continue to get automated more and more and more. And it's just gonna be more in-person. It's gonna be more shaking hands, it's gonna be more sitting down like this and talking and the agent taking notes and doing a good job of understanding exactly what the buyer wants. Um I think it's just gonna free up a lot of time for the in-person human stuff. And that's why one of my main messages towards the end today was double down on being human. Because the good with AI is it's going to take away from all of your time sitting behind a desk going like this. So, as we can automate more of that, it frees up more time for you to be out and about and interacting. And I think that's definitely the bright side to it. I could be wrong, but that's what I think.

High Payoff Activities And Sphere Plans

SPEAKER_00

So double down on human connection. I love that. Yeah. I shared a story recently. Uh, so I grew up in the real estate business, worked for my father, and back in 1993, when the internet came out, I'll never forget he he preached to us all the delicate balance between high-tech and high touch. Now, we've all heard that saying before. I know my father did not invent it, but he was the first guy I heard it from. And one of the things that happens is the more things change and evolve, the more things stay exactly the same. And what you have said today and continue to say here as we get a chance to chat, is you're gonna double down on high-tech, high touch because you're gonna double down on human connection. We talk to our sales team all the time about HPAs, which is a high payoff activity. And so when you look at your day, you know, how many hours are we spending on things that are not driving revenue? What are and I know I do. Like I look at the end of a day and I say to myself, gosh, I've been super busy, but but I I didn't drive revenue. I I didn't uh benefit an agent in our company to do more transactions. I didn't attract someone from the competition who would be a benefit to our company. I didn't have a connection with a company that we might be trying to acquire. Uh I didn't talk to some of our top people about why using mortgage title insurance is so important. So high payoff activities. And so when you say double down on human connection, I'm gonna take it a step further for our team, double down on HPAs and be laser focused on high payoff activities, which is going in. So it's interesting. One of the stats out there is 40% of every home today rider is owned by a baby boomer. And baby boomers have to sell their home someday because someday they have to sell their home. You know, 40% of the population has no mortgage. They're not necessarily the same 40. Yeah. And 65% of mortgage holders have more than 50% equity. The tremendous amount of equity. Now I'm shifting a little bit from AI to real estate, but it's all connected. Yeah. So I say to myself, I'm thinking out loud, okay, here are my sphere of influence. Walk me through this little exercise. I have a sphere of influence of 500 people in my sphere. 150 of them are baby boomers. I know they're baby boomers. And 40 per and so I want a strategy to connect with the baby boomers because I know they're going to be selling their house. And so you could go into your journey of Gemini and do all your four things in my 150 names because they're in my Google contacts. Nice. And here's Ryder and Tiffany and Matt and Phyllis, and here are all my people. And I want a 24-month plan to connect, and I want it to include what we call a home physical. A home physical is I come out and I give you an assessment of the value of your home and I identify the things that you might need to improve and expand. Because every one of those people is going to become a seller. And what we'd like to do is educate them on the process, because our part of our challenge is that too many consumers out there, too many homeowners, too many home, maybe homeowners, are reading a headline and they're not really understanding what it really means. And I think I always say that the media is one of our challenges in this world because very few people read onto the second page of the of you could and they read the headlines.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And they read the headline about the real estate market, and it happens to be about Texas, not Charlotte, North Carolina, or Asheville, North Carolina. By the way, first time to Asheville, North Carolina? Second. Second. Yeah, pretty nice, isn't it? Love it. View is crazy. It's amazing. Yeah. So the other thing is I think about your schedule. I think my schedule's crazy. Uh today, when uh Thursday, March 26th, I fly from Las Vegas to Asheville, North Carolina, which is just getting renovated after the tragic hurricane male. And you arrive at the Omni Grove Park Inn, which is just phenomenal. Yeah. And you talk to 150 of the top real estate performers in our area. And then you'll get on a plane and you'll go to the haunted house convention. So, I mean, I'm not saying I've been thinking about that. So, like, do you use AI to prepare yourself for what that keynote might look like?

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Oh my god. I must say, though, the sphere of influence thing that you just brought up gets me so fired up because that is what I tried to achieve with everyone that hears me speak. I can only give you so much, but you've clearly done a good job of taking what I've taught and also like taking it upon yourself to take it further. Because I never talked about that use case that you just mentioned. That's that's not something that I talked about.

Final Advice And Closing

SPEAKER_00

By the way, it it just hit me today. Like, good. I haven't thought about it. Yeah. But what's happened is you insp you inspire thinking. And, you know, one of our challenges, let me interrupt you, but one of our challenges in every business, and you do a great job, is we're so busy working in it that we don't work on it. Yeah. And we and so we've just been blessed the last two and a half days. We've been able to take our top 150 agents and help them work on their business because we're so into the negotiation of a home inspection and making sure we're navigating the mortgage and the complexity of multiple offers. And a seller today who thinks if we didn't sell it in three and a half days, you know, we're not a very good real estate agent because they're thinking about 20 and 21, you know. And so I just I think about what are, you know, it'd be interesting to sit down with those 150 people after they got a day or two to digest your message. I've heard it four times. And, you know, one of the things that we have to do as an organization is we got to remember what we call the rule of seven. And the rule of seven is as adults, we need to hear, see, touch things seven times before it gets into our DNA. And so, like I had like this moment just now where now I'm thinking about how I can go to a business meeting at one of our offices, and based on what little I know, and I know little. You know, I I would just I I thank you for the compliment that says I've taken and what I've done is taken what you've taught me and asked other people to do it because I am a realist about that. But but I think it's about how do we leverage something that can enable us all to spend time on our high payoff activities. First question is identify the high payoff activities. Yeah. So there's a whole journey to that. For sure. And then where does AI help us? And that's where Ryder Harris can can help our company uh uh in a big way. So uh I'm gonna wrap this up. Let me just see if I uh I'm gonna go off of my questions and see where it comes from. So let's see. One piece of advice from Ryder Harris. So you've talked to hundreds of organizations, and you've gone from the mortgage business, uh, you've gone to the real estate industry, you've gone to the haunted house industry, and I'm sure you've gone to many, many more industries. But you know what is the one piece of advice? You've shared some nuggets, but what is the one thing that Ryder wants everybody listening, everybody watching to just say, you know what? That will change uh the trajectory of my career.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think it's manually identify taking some time to manually identify what your days look like. And like you had just said, your eight is HPA, is that what you said? HPA. That's a good one. Identify your HPAs, identify what you do, identify your most time-consuming activities, identify your most repetitive activities, and I would say rank them. That's what I was trying to tell people is is rank them. Yeah. Um, and then based on, you know, whatever the most powerful one is, see where you can lean on AI for that, and then just keep going down the list. My advice to business owners or executives would be it's time to enable your employees with these tools. Stop shutting down people wanting to use Chat GPT because they're gonna do it anyways. Stop shutting down people wanting this, give them access to a Microsoft Copilot, give them access to a Gemini, and then I don't know, you know, let them let them go crazy and discover use cases and document the use cases, um, you know, bring people together, have 30-minute meetings where people are discussing use cases, things like that. So there's one for individual and then there's ones for for organizations.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, uh, you know, certainly, as I said a year ago, I went I went uh I went into recognition from denial of AI. And uh what's interesting, about 18 months ago, right, or one of our branch, uh our regional vice presidents, we were in a meeting and he was talking about ChatGPT, which I had never heard of. And so uh you will appreciate this story and the power of it. So uh I, as you know, I talk about my my father in a lot, super mentor to me, and uh I've been working on a book about him for 18 months, or 18 years, excuse me. I wish it was 18 months. And so, you know, it most people that say they're gonna write a book, and only two percent of the people that say they're gonna write a book area. Oh, for sure. So I'm today I'm 98 percent. But let's go. So I went in to Chat GPT and I I didn't use your four specific prompts, but I did more than the general question to write the introductory the introduction to my father's book. And I and it came out and I sent it to my sisters. And I said, I just want you to know I finished the introduction to Dad's book. And they sent me back, they said, How long did that take you? Because it went back to his high school days, his college days, his early business career when he sold his company 38 seconds. Man and my sisters who knew him believed that it was it. Now, there were some things that weren't quite accurate, right? And you know, one of the things that I really picked up today was ask Gemini, ask the chat, ask all the AI to ask me questions back.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like that that my biggest takeaway was that. And the other big takeaway was the um make sure you question it. Make sure you proofread it, make sure it sounds like you. Don't let it replace you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Let it compliment you, let it strengthen you, let it build you. So anyway, uh, appreciate everybody listening and watching reality podcast. What a treat, Ryder Harris, go bananas.ai. Think about this. November 22nd, he gets a brainstorm shortly thereafter to embark on this thing called AI. And now, three and a half years later, four years later, he's traveling the country, probably traveling the world for all I know. And I can tell you he's a friend of Howard Hannah, Alan Tate, a friend of Howard Hannah, Beverly Hanks, and a friend of Howard Hanna, the one company mortgage title and insurance. And uh, we all will be better for the relationship that we have with Ryder. And uh, that's my prompt to let him know that I'm gonna be texting him a lot of things over the over the period of the next couple of months because I'm gonna surprise the entire team at Howard Hanna and that I'm gonna know more about uh AI over the next six to twelve months and uh and leverage it so that I can do my HPAs and make a difference for our company. Thanks for joining us, Rider. Appreciate it, partner. Good to stay with my friends. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Thank you.