Why the Iceberg AI Summit Matters for Estate Agents (with Mark Burgess & Rob Brady)

The estate agency landscape is shifting and this episode explains why.

We break down why the Iceberg AI Summit on 6 February matters, what an AI operating system actually looks like in practice, and how tools like Predict and AI Scouts are already driving instructions and market appraisals.

You’ll hear how Iceberg has moved beyond the “CRM company” label, why the evolution from Uzair 1.0 to 2.5 is a turning point, and how clean, connected data fuels better nurture, smarter marketing, and stronger pipelines.

We also preview the 2026 roadmap, including the “Impossible Edition,” and explain why community and peer learning are essential to making AI stick.

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Transcript

Why Attend The AI Summit

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So in this short episode of Estate and CX, I'm going to sit down with Mark and talk about if you give a shit about your estate agency and where AI is going, why you need to attend the iceberg AI Summit happening in February. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Estate Aden CX, the UK's number one Estate Agency podcast discussing the future of Estate Agency, entrepreneurship and business. Host Mark Burgess and Rob Brady. So this episode is for the AI Summit up and coming mock. If you're an avid listener, you've probably come across some of these before in the past. So specifically, we're talking about the event. So date of the event?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

6th of February.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

2026.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

2026, yeah, it's like the future, eh?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Isn't it? And um yeah where is where is it located?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

It's in uh a place called uh Here East Plexall, which is in uh Westfield, Stratford. So you get the train to Stratford, you get on a shuttle bus for two minutes, and you arrive at uh again, you arrive in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah, it's a pretty cool venue as well. So previously before we've had iceberg summits.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah.

From CRM To AI Operating System

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Started them from quite small, different to our the EX events, and they've grown bigger and bigger each year. And this one is specifically the AI summit. So what uh firstly, why do why did we why have we decided to highlight it being just the AI summit, iceberg AI Summit?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Um so last year um at the Iceberg Summit, I made a change to um Iceberg Digital. Iceberg Digital had always had a strap line of modernising a state agency, but um I sort of felt like it was just a little bit, nah. What does that even mean? What are you doing? Are you doing sales progression? Are you doing conveyancing, mortgages software? What does that even mean? Um so as our focus became a bit more laser, lasered down on artificial intelligence and our and our artificial intelligence operating system for estate agents, because you know people people tend to associate us with CRM. I get uh referrals all the time from people going, oh, this guy's looking for a new CRM and stuff. But you've got to remember that our agents are using us as an AI operating system that's covering their prospecting, their CRM, their marketing, their compliance, and in some cases their website, all in one platform, all in one place that's all connected with each other. So as that started to become clearer for us with AI, then it became uh obvious for us to change the strap line of iceberg digital to the AI operating system for a statement. And in in doing so, obviously the iceberg AI Summit makes more sense now than just the iceberg summit, like where we talk about random stuff, we're talking about the future of our AI operating system.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

What's even more batshit crazy when you just said that is I've been I've been now, it's like seventh or eighth year iceberg.

unknown 3:00

Yeah.

What Attendees Will Learn

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Even when we started, like lifecycle didn't have a CRM. No. And then all of a sudden we've we've we're known for the CRM, we're known for the marketing, and now more and more so it's evident that the AI is coming forward with it. So, so um what's what have you got planned for the day without giving too much away? So, what what would you say would you be your uh what do you want to get out of the day for people to maybe come thinking about coming along?

The Industry Shift And Hype vs Reality

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Um so at the at the iceberg summit, uh and this one, the iceberg AI Summit, I talk about what is going to land in the platform over the course of the next 12 months. Um so it's useful for um people obviously that use the software to come along and go, like, oh, that sounds really good, that sounds really interesting. Um but also because of our shift towards artificial intelligence, I think it's really useful for anyone in the industry, to be honest, because I know what I'm going to talk about, and there's such major shifts coming down the line, and in such a very specific way. You know, there are obviously more and more AI tools appearing by the hour, um, and more and more estate agents being probably pitched stuff that's got the w the two letters AI on the end of it. It's very important, I think, for people to start to try to get an understanding of that. Obviously, last year I wrote a best-selling book around artificial intelligence. I've been on lots of lots of podcasts about it, spoken at keynote events about it. I think I've got I've run a software company that does it, so I think I've got a very good understanding of what AI is and what it isn't, where the potholes are. Regardless of whether you come away from that thinking I I think I should put my eggs in the iceberg digital basket or not, I think you'll get a very good understanding as to how and why does AI work and how and why does it not work. You know, there's a lot of people out there that have tried things and said it's just shit. I can tell you why. Um and there's a lot of people out there that have tried stuff and said it's life-changing, and I can tell you why. And so we we'll dig into a lot of that at the summit as well. It won't just be um buy our software, thanks very much, goodbye. You know, we'll talk about the products that we're making, why we're making those products, why they're different, how they're gonna work, why uh artificial intelligence works some ways and how to get it to work. So we'll talk about all of that stuff. So so I in in a nutshell, I would say probably anybody in the industry that is wondering where the future goes, you're gonna want to be in this effect.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Just like to remind people in the past, we've always been and done a lot of the firsts. Yeah. First of this, first of that, first to have the MA proposal, you know, the digital tracking MA proposal, first do marketing automation.

Azure 1.0 To 2.5 Evolution

SPEAKER_00 6:01

First, even before that, first people to do digital magazines in the state agency, first people to do videos from photos in a state agency, first people to do, as you said, online market appraisals, first people to do tracking of market appraisals, first people to do nurture journeys, first people to do loads of stuff. Um and that's all great. And, you know, I'm not saying we were necessarily the best people at those things. We were we were, but we were ahead of it. I can see the same with AI here. I obviously spend my entire life thinking about AI, listening to podcasts, reading books, talking to companies, and I genuinely don't know any companies that are, I can think of maybe one or two, forgetting, you know, crazy companies like Google and uh and OpenAI and stuff like that. I can't find or think of any companies that are further ahead with this than we are that uh many of them not even on the set can't even conceptualize the things that we're gonna talk about at that summit. And I listen to a lot of fucking stuff, you know. So hopefully I can break that down for somebody without them having to go onto that that crazy journey.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Um one of the things I I probably want to talk about was the the Azure update that we had in December.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Because I remember when we had the demo for that, and I I thought, holy fuck.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

This is fucking nut the nuts. And and clients have sort of been training it, like, you know, is in putting their documents in and everything from the previous one and uploading it and going through that process have seen a massive change in that. So could you give any guidance around what that was? What the the up the update that we've already done. Yeah. Yeah. So And why that why that's quite prominent maybe going forward.

2026 Roadmap And “Impossible Edition”

AI Scout And Predict Results

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So we launched Azure 2.0. So let's go back to Azure 1.0. Azure 1.0 was back when um property descriptions first became a thing that AI could do. And everyone was like, wow, you've got to get this in the software, you've got to get this in the software. So we launched an AI that had three buttons you could press. You could press for a property description, you could press for a blog article, you could press for the system to pull together some vendor feedback for you based on what it knew about the property. There was no conversation. You just press the button, there's some statistics that get sent to the AI uh or bullet points about a property or whatever it might be, and it writes it writes the stuff that you needed. And that people found it pretty useful. It got used a lot. Um, so that was all right. And then we made Azair 2.0, which was conversational. So instead of pushing a button saying, write me a property description, you would now have a conversation with Azair and you could say, like, uh, I've just been out, uh, we've just taken on a property on this address, and these are the good things about it. Write me a property description. It would write it, you could go back to it and go, I don't really like this, change that, I don't really like that. Um, and you could you could upload stuff to the brain of the AI so you didn't have to keep telling it the same things. We did that was a Zair 2.0, more conversational, but still really just based around the same three things that when we had the buttons, which was property descriptions, uh, vendor care, and blog articles. Um But the basics of a conversational AI brain inside their software had been built. As far as the agents were concerned and the users, it still just did pretty much what it used to do. Um but from our point of view, from a technical point of view, we had now built a conversational AI and started connecting it up to different parts of the software. Um so then what happens is you launch an AI, and unfortunately, every time you launch an AI, it's slightly disappointing. People will have experienced it if they're ChatGPT users. Think back to ChatGPT 1 versus ChatGPT 5. One's a bit crap, two's a bit better. Even when five came out, people were like, oh, I thought it would be better than this, and already it's better than you know what it was. So it's not, it's technically a lot, it's technically not learning anything, but for the for the ease of conversation, let's just call it learning, um, what's actually what's happening is you're having conversations and you're getting frustrated. And at the back end, we're able to then monitor the frustrations and make the changes, you know, so it then so it's getting better in that sense, you know. So um because we launched Azure 2.0 in June, we then had what six months worth of data, five months worth of data of what people were doing, how they were using it, and uh their frustrations that we could pull together, find the main core of the problems, find the frustrations, make the tweaks, set it free again, because we already have this centralized brain. So the update that you're talking about was huge in terms of and I an a state agent being able to have a conversation with Azair that you could you could go off on a tangent and start talking about, yeah, but what would be the best way of me running a Facebook ad for this, or you know, what would be uh a good some good text for me to put on the landing page? Agents can start adding their keywords, uh their SEO keywords and the the terms that they want to get found for in large language models into the Azure brain to make sure that when it writes blogs, it's got superpowers so that it starts doing the right sort of stuff for them. So big, big change happened in Azure 2.5 that came out in in December. Um and that just again lays the foundations for all the stuff that will come in 2026. If you look at like the difference between Azure 1 and Azure 2.5, it's like night and day. So you can uh from that you can start to imagine what 3 and 3.5 and 4 start to look like as we go through 2026.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And it and it is and I assume that's what that's what you will discuss in February, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

In February, I will talk about uh what the problem is, where we are as a company, what problem we're trying to solve for a state agents, uh, and a lot of that stuff revolves around AI. Um, and I will talk about specifically what is coming in the iceberg operating system in 2026, some of which people will be excited about and they'll be able to be familiar with. A lot of it, they're not even thinking it's possible. You know? I mean, you've had a you've had a look inside uh some of the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I was I wasn't even privy to to some of the bits working on like the EX stuff. And then when I came to the meeting, you discussed it all. I was like, only fuck this is fucking minimum.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

That's what I mean. Like, you know, I've I've sort of codenamed Life Cycle Six the Impossible Edition. It's just it's just fucking outrageous, to be honest. Like, if you've if I know it's a day out of the office and all of that sort of stuff, but if if getting to Stratford is even in the realms of reality for you, you know, we've got people travelling down from Scotland and all that sort of stuff. So if it's even in the realms of reality for you, you will not regret coming and listening to what's going to happen to your industry in the next 12 months.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Uh one other thing I wanted to talk about then, uh just to sort of understand how uh AI can impact you maybe a little bit if you think about coming to something like a summit, um, rather than impacting you on like making a description better. So the AI Scouts predict.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah.

Community, Tickets, And How To Book

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Um yeah, we were talking about it the other day. Uh we've spoken in in the iceberg community group about it. Uh we only launched it in October.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Well, it was a trial in October for a few agents.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, a few agents. So so uh run through some of the results that you've seen from that.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, so it's been well you it's not you can't really count the last two weeks of December. Um I don't think I even had the stats past that anyway. I think I got the stats like mid-December that I'm gonna talk about. And as you say, it went it was a trial with maybe two agents in October. So that's only uh a couple of months of usage, and not all of the agents that were using it used it for a couple of months, because that would be just the two agents that were on the trial had it for a couple of months. Everyone else sort of maybe had it for a a week less than that, and then another one for a week less than that, and another one. In total, I think there were about 20 agents that were on the trial. Um, some of them had only had it a week, some of them the maximum would have been two months. Um it won 178 instructions, 221 new market appraisals, and updated just over 5,000 market appraisal statuses. Mental. It's just it's just insane. And that's honestly like those agents, as great as it is, and the results that they're getting, they're still not using it properly. So, like the changes that we make in 2026 is quite scary. What could actually happen?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

And run run through if anyone's listening out there going, what's it talking about? What the fuck is we up talking about AI Scout?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

So an AI Scout, um you can you can there's a part of our software called Predict, which is essentially, I guess, prospecting. How do we get new houses on the market? The system knows enough stuff to be able to predict where it's best for you to spend your time to try and get some new listings. Um then what you can do is you can employ an AI scout. So even without the AI Scout, the system's going to bring you some of that information. We think you should speak to these people. Maybe this guy had a market appraisal six months ago and he's just been on your website reading what to do if you're thinking about listing your house. That sort of stuff. That's all in Predict. You can then employ an AI Scout. So one scout per postcode. The first part of the postcode. So uh, you know, EN7. You employ the scout to work in EN7 and you name the scout, let's call him uh Tom Smith, and off he goes. 247-365, Tom Smith monitors the portals for uh the pro all the properties that were on the portals and what's going on with them, and he tries to find the full addresses of those properties. So he's pretty successful with it. It doesn't get 100%, but close to. Um brings in the full addresses of the properties to the software, along with what's happening with them. So here, these properties are on the market, these are the agents they're on the market with, this is how long they've been on the market, these ones have had price reductions, these ones have had sales that have fallen through, these are the ones that have been withdrawn, all of that sort of stuff. Uh you can get software to do that already, but hit the scout's doing that for the postcode 247-365. And then what uh the scout is doing is it's looking across your entire contact database, uh, archive, everything, to see if you have got any contact details for the people that own that house. Surprisingly, agents at that point think, oh, well, I probably haven't, otherwise, my team would know. Yeah, that's bullshit. You've got them. There's fucking loads of them. Um he finds the contact details, he matches up the contact details with the prospects. Then what the scout does is uh the scout looks at which buyers you've got or tenants that match against that property very specifically, not in a broad way, but very specifically would be interested in buying that that property. So it gives you some numbers and some breakdowns so you could see how likely you would be to be successful with it. Then what it does is it looks at what you've sold nearby, so you've got some context as to like, you know, how successful you've been. Then what it does is it writes the fucking outreach, the WhatsApps, the emails, the letters if need be, with all of that information and the context of how they came into the system, how you're trying to help them. Like, so for instance, this person came into the system via right move. They've been on two viewings with us, the two houses they looked at, they said the garden was too small for both of them. They're on the market with Bearstow Eves, been on the market 12 weeks, just had a price reduction. We've got 17 buyers that match, four of them are first-time buyers, three of them have got nothing to sell. We've also sold four houses within a half a mile radius in the last two months. Get all that information and it writes it into a better than anyone could write it. Um so the staff then just send it, check it, send it. And uh yeah, as I say, 178 in new instructions, 221 new market appraisals. It also keeps the status up to date of your old market appraisals. So something you went to value six months ago, you've lost interest in it, it's gone on the market with another agent, you haven't noticed, so you've still got the status of a waiting answer or proposal sent or whatever it might be. The scout will go in and go, No, the status is instructed another agent so that your data stays up to date. Which is very important in a system like Lifecycle that's also your marketing system, because now it knows it's on the market with another agent. When they go to your website, what they see changes the nurture journey that they're on, the content they're being sent, all changes for them to start leading them back to you. Um which is mad, right? None of that's 20. Just to be clear, none of that's in the future, that's now.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yeah, so

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Imagine what I'm gonna unveil in the fucking future.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Six was it six hundred grand, whatever it was, within new instructions.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

That's just fucking mental. It's just crazy. And as I say, no one's even using it properly. They're just on a trial. When I put some stuff in place that I'm talking about at the summit, it's it's it's just ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Um I mean I would love to just have a podcast on on the what we're about to talk about, actually, and like what's gonna happen, but I know we can't do that because it just gives the summit away. And I'm sure there'll be a podcast afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

No, I mean, as as you say, we can't talk too much about it. Um we don't need to drag the episode out just for the sake of it. Um the the bottom line is uh I've never been excited about anything as much as I am about this of February the 6th. Of course, you know, once we've done it, the news will get spread. People that weren't there will get to hear it, and some bits and pieces maybe get missed, but nothing's gonna replicate it, and nothing's gonna actually, you're not gonna actually like feel it or uh know that you that everything's been covered the same as if you were actually there. So I know it's a bit of a hassle. I know that you have to buy a ticket and all that sort of stuff, but if you have the possibility of being able to be there, you're definitely not gonna regret it.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

And and uh as as we stand now, how many how many tickets we've got left, you reckon?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

I think I think about last time I looked, about 70% were gone. Yeah. So there's about 30% left. And that the room holds I think the room holds somewhere between 100 and 100 and I think it's about a hundred to be comfortable, because it's not a huge space. So, you know, there's probably about 30 tickets left, maybe something like that. 30 is button.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

And also, like one bit that I always get from clients I speak to, and we always have repeated over and over again, yes, the conversations around and what you're gonna present is gonna blow people's minds. But also, just a day out the office to actually come and hang around with a different community that you might be thinking about doing something differently, and just hanging around with the agents that are in that room that have gone through that transitional process, and just like those conversations that we had, you know, that agents have um what was it, one last year's one. It was like a I was only chatting to an agent the other month, and they were saying like they started to invest more into lead generation, yeah, because they were having a coffee with another person and a pastry, and like it just they said like if I hadn't come to that and just got a sense of the whole iceberg community and knowing about that, like they were talking about how much their business has just generated further on, forgetting even the stuff that's even in forgetting the content, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, you're right, you're you're very right. And I think we take it for granted because we're only around those agents. Yeah, but last year at the summit, you're absolutely right. There was quite a few people that had never been around that they they were they were either prospects for iceberg or they just decided to come along. Maybe they weren't even prospects. I remember I invited along Mike Griffiths, who started Expert Agent. You know, I consider him to be one of the sort of godfathers of a state agency software and just thought it'd be nice for him to come and see it. And people that weren't had there was no there's no commercial viability to bringing these people along. And all of those people, I remember made a big point of like, I've never seen a community like it. It's like it is like stepping into the future of a state agency, the way these people talk about stuff. They're all collaborative, they're all sharing ideas, they're all talking about stuff that you know. Normally you go to an estate agency conference, it's just I, you know, it's grey suits telling you how to charge 1.5%, isn't it? All right, there's none of that going on.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

No.

Subscribe And Support The Show

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Um so so yeah, if you're if you're thinking to yourself, I wonder if there's another version of estate agency that looks a bit more like 2026, I that's that's the that's the event to come to.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

It's an agency in 2030. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Perfect. Right. So yeah, if you've been listening to this, 30 tickets probably left.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, I mean, you'll find we're on event, the tickets are being sold on Eventbrite. So if you're thinking, yeah, what's the link? I'll put it in the I'll put it in the show notes. Put it in the show notes, just Google it, you know, uh Iceberg AI Summit. Um, or just go on Eventbrite and search for Iceberg Digital. Either way, you'll I'm sure you're going to be able to find it if you know how to use the internet. If you don't know how to use the internet, probably don't bother coming along. Cool. Cheers, mate. All right. Thanks for listening to this Estate Agency X podcast. Can you make sure that you're actually subscribed to this podcast channel if you liked the content? Uh, it helps us massively to get better guests, and it just helps us generally. So you might think you're subscribed, but just have a double check, whatever your um podcast platform of preference is, that you're actually subscribed, and then that way we can continue to grow the channel and get better and better guests for you.