AI, Authenticity & Agency: A Proptech Deep Dive with Toby Martin

In this powerful episode of The Viking Chats, Kristjan Byfield is joined by the sharp, funny, and endlessly insightful Toby Martin—a former agent turned consultant who’s on a mission to help agencies thrive in a tech-powered world.

This episode isn’t just about AI—it’s about how you, your team, and your business can stay ahead of the curve, remain unmistakably human, and stop sounding like every other agent in town.

🚀 AI: The New Industrial Revolution?

Kristjan opens with a bold claim: AI is our generation’s Industrial Revolution—and it’s moving at warp speed. From automating operations to powering marketing, AI is transforming every layer of the property industry. But for many agents, it feels overwhelming. Toby gets it—and offers clarity.

Together, they explore two sides of AI:

1. Embedded AI – Your suppliers (like The Depositary) are integrating AI into your platforms for you.
2. Direct AI Use – Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini that agents can use to save time, generate content, and boost creativity.

You don’t need a computer science degree to get started. You just need curiosity—and a good prompt.

🧠 From Chaos to Clarity: Getting Started with AI

Toby lays out a super-practical roadmap to get agents from “Where do I start?” to “Why wasn’t I doing this sooner?”

His advice?

• Treat AI like a top-tier assistant or co-pilot
• Give it your brand guidelines, customer personas, and tone of voice
• Learn to write better prompts—or ask AI to help you write them

Agents can begin simply. Want a marketing plan, video script, social media carousel, or localised blog? Ask the right questions and AI delivers—fast, consistent and tailored.

🎥 One Podcast = Ten Content Assets

Kristjan shares how Base Property and The Depositary take a single podcast and transform it into a dozen powerful pieces of content using AI:

• Full video and podcast
• Social video snippets via Opus Clip
• Blogs, email campaigns, and Google posts
• AI-generated LinkedIn content and graphics

All in about 30 minutes of effort. For smaller agents with tight budgets and busy teams, it’s a game-changer.

🎯 The Biggest Risk? Sounding Like Everyone Else

AI can make you faster—but also dangerously generic. That’s the warning bell Toby rings throughout the episode.

He urges agents to use AI to amplify their humanity, not erase it. His approach? Use ChatGPT’s Projects feature to train AI with your brand tone, values, services and customer voice—so that every output sounds like you.

Because in Toby’s words:

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. Blending in is the same as being invisible.”

🔍 Differentiate or Disappear

The duo reflect on a real-world scenario: an agent couldn’t name a single thing that made them different from two local competitors. No surprise, then, that fees were in a race to the bottom.

Their advice? Use AI to audit your competitors. Feed it websites, social media content, and ask: What actually makes us different—and how do we say that louder?

💡 Final Thoughts: Don’t Fear AI—Talk to It

You don’t need a plan. You don’t need a strategy. You don’t even need to know what you’re doing.

Just open ChatGPT and start a conversation. Ask a question. Explore an idea. Repurpose a blog. Build a brand.

Toby and Kristjan’s message is simple: if you start now, AI can elevate your marketing, sharpen your brand, save your time, and help you truly stand out.

🎙️ Listen now to learn how to make AI work for your agency, your team, and your voice.

Transcript

May 20, 2025

Viking Chat: Toby Martin - Transcript

00:00:00

 
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Viking Chats and I am delighted to be joined today by none other than Mr. Tobius Martinus.
Toby Martin: Well, as if as if Christian I could teach you anything when it comes to prop tech, but I'm going to do my best. Thank you for having me.
Kristjan Byfield: So uh for those of you who are not aware who this fine young man is, uh Toby and I met uh during his time at Reside Bath. Um, so Toby knows a thing or two about letings and operations. Um, and then Toby has recently made the adventurous step into the murky world of consultants.
 
 

00:01:01

 
Kristjan Byfield: Uh, and is now out there to help you with all of your business needs, whether that's understanding and adopting AI, figuring out your video content, looking at your letings ops, whatever it is. If you want a delightful smiley face to tell you all the s*** you should be doing, get in touch with Toby.
Toby Martin: I love that sales pitch. Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. The murky world of consultancy. We were just saying there's something about the word consultancy that sends a shiver down my spine. But I guess I have to embrace it because that's kind of where I am now.
Kristjan Byfield: It's who
Toby Martin: But
Kristjan Byfield: you are. I'm going to buy you a cape.
Toby Martin: cut me. I bleed consultancy.
Kristjan Byfield: Come in agents and reveal yourself.
Toby Martin: Yeah. But you're right. I am I I I I have lived a life of of agency as well. I have all of those hallmarks of a life and agency. colossal bags under my eyes, PTSD, flashbacks, and now
 
 

00:01:58

 
Kristjan Byfield: the glamour.
Toby Martin: I help other businesses try to avoid that.
Kristjan Byfield: Hazar. So, look, dude. Um, one of the reasons I really wanted to get you on, apart from the fact that you're a bloody lovely chap that knows lots of things, is um really wanted to have a bit more of a chat with you about AI, right?
Toby Martin: Yes.
Kristjan Byfield: So, uh, not a new subject if anyone in there. Um, a bit like prop tech 10 years ago, agents are probably already hating the tag AI um, and wondering what all the fuss is about. But that's one of the reasons we need to have a chat, you know, is look, I I I I keep on having the same kind of uh sound bite put out there, but I I genuinely passionately believe that this is our generation's industrial revolution. I think I think the transformation that we're going to see over the next three to five years and obviously beyond that, but in the next three to five years is going to be of a scale that I don't think we've seen in the last 60, 70, 80 years or more.
 
 

00:03:05

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um, and I think it genuinely is that shift of, you know, horsedrawn plows to to machinery. We're going from uh an array of work done by humans being automated and managed um
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: almost certainly to the same standard if not higher by machines. And so yeah, I you know I'm I'm really passionate about agents engaging in this conversation. I think um AI is overwhelming because there is so much there are so many things and I think at the best of times agents are presented with so many tech solutions something stupid don't know how many there's over like 400 prop tech solutions that get offered to agents
Toby Martin: There's more
Kristjan Byfield: thank
Toby Martin: plot tech than there are consultants.
Kristjan Byfield: I mean know it would make a very good battle scene survival of the physist Um so yeah that's throwing me off a little bit but um yeah
Toby Martin: I
Kristjan Byfield: so
Toby Martin: agree. Yeah. No, you're right. We We're at a dawn of a new age, aren't we?
 
 

00:04:13

 
Kristjan Byfield: and look I think I think the opportunities are almost unlimited and because of that I think for many it's overwhelming and for many they don't really know where to start.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um and and I think there's kind of two sides to this conversation at the moment. I think um there's AI leveraging which I don't think agents need to think about too much because you've got suppliers like us and and lots out there who are figuring out within our individual platforms how we're going to plug in and leverage the capabilities of AI for agents to use it. So, so there is an element of AI that agents can take apathy about because their suppliers are going to worry
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: about it, you know, and so and and you know, we're we're currently in the middle of building our first AI tool within the depository, which is why I wanted to get you and Malon, I I'd say our two kind of leading industry AI experts have a bit of a chat about this
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: as we kind of build up to launching that.
 
 

00:05:18

 
Kristjan Byfield: And I'll and I'll talk a little bit more about what we're doing in that space a bit later because you also are very familiar with our platform. So um I think there's there's there's that side of AI that agents don't need to concern themselves
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: about. You know what I would say is I think the only thing on that side agents really need to concern themselves is talk to your suppliers and help them understand where you think AI would be best leveraged in the product.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: So, um, we all know the products and services out there that do really well are the ones that really listen to their client base and listen to feedback and build the features and the functionality that their agents want and need. The important part of that dynamic is it's really important that you as an agent have that relationship with your supplier and that you are telling them. Um,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: you won't get it tomorrow, you won't get it next week, but you'll hopefully get it soon.
 
 

00:06:16

 
Toby Martin: Yeah. It's um interesting starting to see AI creep into propt tech. Um there's been some early adopters on on the CRM and obviously other you know I'm fascinated to see what the depository has in store because it's clear to see with products like that how AI will benefit it but actually seeing it implemented is just going to be I can only imagine an enormous timesaver for agencies. Um and obviously that's where we want to end up. We want to end up where in a place and we will eventually where AI is seamlessly integrated within the platforms that we use dayto-day at the moment and we will get there but at the moment it's not across the board
Kristjan Byfield: No,
Toby Martin: and and and it's fantastic to see early adopters such as you um starting to bring it into the platform but at the moment as you were saying that there's two sides to it and the other side to it is the the AI which if you want to make the most of it, you have to go out and proactively use on their own platforms on ChatGpt or on Gemini or whatever it is.
 
 

00:07:28

 
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: And um and you're right, we we're at we're still in the starting blocks. We're at the dawn of this new industrial revolution, this new age, and it is things are moving at a bonkers pace. But my I guess concern is that if for those users who don't start to embrace it, start to learn it now, if you're already feeling overwhelmed, then that feeling is only going to snowball over the coming years
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: as AI becomes more omnipresent, more integrated in our lives. So when I talk to agents, I'm still fascinated and uh bewildered when I come across people who are still quite alien to AI and do find it overwhelming because obviously having kind of gone there myself and played with it and learned it and and don't get me wrong, I'm I'm not um I'm not from a tech background. I'm from
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: an agency background, but um I've tried to learn how to use it, tried to learn the possibilities, the capabilities, what you can do with it. Um and and and so I I I consider myself to be an advanced basic user of AI, but even to that extent, you can get a huge amount from it.
 
 

00:08:54

 
Toby Martin: And so I do really think that if you are going to be someone who is included in this revolution then you got to start getting on board now and learning the basics now. Uh because otherwise you are going to feel that overwhelmed and there's that risk of being left behind as things evolve I think.
Kristjan Byfield: Well, like you said, I think it's about taking those little bites, right?
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Those little bites at the process. And I think I think for most agents they'd be best off taking approach similar to to how I think agents should take an approach to prop tech which is you look at your business
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: you look at where things aren't great or and and what that means could mean anything you know whether not great means the size of that part of the business the profitability turnover whatever
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: um that could be your performance that could be your fee earning That could be operations, how efficient you are. That could be the job satisfaction of your team within that role.
 
 

00:09:56

 
Kristjan Byfield: You know, you can look at what what what is classed as an issue or a problem to solve can be a multitude of things, but you as a leader will lean in a certain direction, whatever your kind of style of leadership is.
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: Um, but I think much like I would say to an agent, hey, if you're overwhelmed by prop tech, sit down, look at your business and figure out, right, tenant on boarding is a mess. You know,
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: want to streamline it, great. Go out and look at the three, four suppliers in that space and figure out which is the right one for you and commit, on board, refine and and yeah, move on. And much like that I think like you said you look at the operational side of business but outside like I said away from industry specific products and looking at the generation side. So for example within base our letting agency so we you know we leverage the tools in a handful of ways at the moment. So chat GPT obviously a lot of that um around ideas around marketing
 
 

00:11:00

 
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: you know that's great for a lot of agents who are overwhelmed you know you can say right here is my website here are my social medias this is what I want to achieve in the next three months help me understand how I achieve that what sort of content plan should I have etc etc and you can keep flashing it fleshing it out blah blah
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: blah um we uh we leverage it immensely in terms of how we take a single piece piece of content and turn that into a multitude of assets. So, you know, this podcast is a perfect example, right? So, from this hour or so chat that we will have, um, I don't mind sharing how we then kind of disperse this across many channels. So, you know, we're recording this and Google is transcribing it straight off the bat. Gemini AI engine is also taking notes. Um, so there'll be interesting actionable suggestions that will come out the back of that.
Toby Martin: So, you've already got three resources out of a single recording.
 
 

00:11:58

 
Toby Martin: You got the video, the transcript, and a summary.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. So we'll publish the video. So we publish the podcast as a full format video. We then drop the video into Opus Cut AI, which you'll be
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: familiar with, platform that just really easily disseminates a long format video and breaks it into 10, 15, 20 sort of short form videos, puts subtitles on it and everything else.
Toby Martin: Gives each clip a score out of a hundred to tell you how successful it's going to be on social media. I love that.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. And you can tweak and refine that, you know, of the 1520, we'll probably use five, six, seven. You
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: know, we'll pick and choose those ones. you can tweak where it edits and blah blah blah. So, so sorry, we've already got a long format video. Uh, we chop that into a short format video. We strip out the audio file and that becomes our podcast. U, we use a really cool platform called Buzz Sprout, which if people haven't heard of, go and check it out.
 
 

00:12:52

 
Kristjan Byfield: If you want to start a podcast or if you're running one, super easy. It's got lots of cool tools to help you upload your stuff, publish it to every podcast, you know, platform out there. And it also helps you track listeners and all that sort of stuff. Um, we then take the trans the transcription and I will put that into chat GPT and for chat GBT I will actually generate two blogs out of that. So I will give it a prompt um around what we want to achieve for the depository with that
Toby Martin: Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: content and then I will go in and give it another prompt for a blog and what we want to achieve with that content for for base
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and so out of that you know we've got video podcast short format videos two blogs and then chatbt if anyone's using it recently when you create a blog it will then prompt you to say oh would you like me to generate a LinkedIn post for you.
Toby Martin: Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: Would you like me to generate a short format version of this to post on your Google business page?
 
 

00:13:58

 
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, would you like can we generate a graphic to go with it? You know, so with an hour's chat and I would say maximum half an hour's effort across all of those channels,
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: we've generated that array of content.
Toby Martin: Absolutely. And that that repurposing is one of the primary uses of chat GPT that I think applies really well to the world of agency especially. Um, one of the things that I, um, I've recently run a webinar on it, but um, the the the building block as most agents perceive it of their sort of marketing output is is a blog. Most most agents have a blog set on their website. Sometimes it's a bit stale and musty uh, and not updated frequently enough. Um, but usually an agent puts out a blog um, and they consider it job done. But I was trying to point out that with your blog, okay, well, let's start off with the blog itself.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: So, first of all, you don't have to sit down and write 500 words off the top of your head.
 
 

00:14:58

 
Toby Martin: Obviously, you can um get Chachi GPT to help you generate that blog. Or let's say you open up Property Industry I or the Guardian or whatever publication and you read a headline, you could um easily get out GPT to repurpose something that already exists into a blog um dedicated to your company.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: And um and I want to get on maybe a little bit later about how you can make sure that that output is tailored to your company so it's not just generic.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. We're going to come around to that. That's that's a
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: really important part of our conversation today is about honing your AI voice. It's got
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: to it's got to feel authentic, right? If
Toby Martin: absolutely.
Kristjan Byfield: we all
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: GBT and we all generate articles that fundamentally sound exactly the name.
Toby Martin: Yep. Let's stick a pin in that on the repurposing front. If you've got that blog to start off with, it's not job done because then you can get chat GPT to repurpose that as a video script.
 
 

00:15:52

 
Toby Martin: Uh you can then get it if it's got local relevance to repurpose it as a press release and obviously then to repurpose it as social media content, Instagram carousel, um LinkedIn post, whatever it may be. Um so you can then get it to repurpose it as a a mail out, an email to go out to your clients saying, "I thought this might be relevant to you." So again, in the same spirit as to getting multiple uh bits of content out of this podcast, agencies often begin with a blog. Um and and just from that one blog, you can suddenly get multiple different pieces of content within minutes if you know what you're doing on chat GPT.
Kristjan Byfield: And that's the thing I think for most agents and let's not forget most agents are smaller operations. You know, running a website is relatively cheap or free depending on what what website setup you've got. Obviously, social media producing the content is free, but the time and energy is is what you put into those things. And we've all know lots of agencies that put lots of time and effort in, but like you said, it's a bit scatter gun.
 
 

00:16:57

 
Kristjan Byfield: It's a bit all over the shop, and it ends up actually being a huge investment for very, very little return.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: What things like chatb give you, like you said, is that ability to just very quickly leverage an idea, an article, whatever. You know, I think something great for letting agents um is taking your case studies that, you know, we just got this tenant out for renter rears. We just repossessed this property. We've actually just refurbished this property for for a landlord and we now get 25% more rent. Um,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: but I think where agents would struggle to sit down and figure out how they extrapolate that, the great thing with these engines now is you jump in and go right, you know, this is what we've done and this is how we want to leverage it. And again, you know, I think the thing I've learned with with all this stuff is is is more is more. Give them, you know, write a long prompt, you
Toby Martin: Yes.
Kristjan Byfield: know, give them a lot of information.
 
 

00:17:54

 
Kristjan Byfield: Don't just say, "Oh, we we removed the tenant for a landlord today." Uh,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: put that in a blog.
Toby Martin: Yeah. Absolutely. The the more basic the prompt, the more basic the output. Um and actually on that there was recently um one of the um OAI itself came out and and published what they considered to be sort of the optimum structure for a prompt. Um and and it's lengthy and you can actually I I sometimes think when I'm writing my own prompts I can imagine someone else's voice saying ah this is taking just as long as actually if I'd done it myself. That's not the point. Chat GPT is a great timesaver and especially when you get on to automating things and and saving these prompts and reusing them in future. It does save time, but the ultimate goal should be to use it to generate superior content that actually is better than you could do yourself. So, it's worth investing that time in um in in writing a a a proper prompt.
 
 

00:18:50

 
Toby Martin: And um that structure for the record because I've got it here. Start off with um the give it assign it a role and
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: set it an objective. Um then give it it instructions. Um specify what what format you want the output to be in. Do you want it in bullet points? Do you want it to be in in a in a blog? Do you want it to be a press release? Uh if you've got examples, if you've seen something and you think that's great, don't try and describe it. Just upload the examples. Whether it's a screenshot, whether it's copy and texting uh copy and pasting text. Um, then give it context, as much context as possible about your business, about who you are, about who your customers are. Um, and and then I've added this one. This wasn't actually on Open AI, but I think it's really important. Ask it to um ask you questions. So, at the end of your prompt, say before you can uh you perform the task, ask me any questions that will help you to perform this to the best of your capabilities.
 
 

00:19:48

 
Toby Martin: And
Kristjan Byfield: Interesting.
Toby Martin: get it to interview you. and it will give you a set of questions that just help to drill down on exactly what what what it is you do, what what you want to achieve. Um, and and you get something that's a lot more tailored and and
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: customized rather than generic output.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. I mean, So I would say my average prompt now is probably like three to five lines of text
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: like and sometimes longer. So I've started using quite a cool tool uh for LinkedIn called co-author.
Toby Martin: Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: Um and so that's really interesting. So um people might remember uh Christmas or just before Christmas there was those kind of equivalent to your Spotify year.
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: it was for LinkedIn and their
Toby Martin: I remember. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: um so that was a really clever marketing campaign for the company behind co-author. They did that as a PR piece um as they were building out the AI engine and you can now sign up uh to have co-author which is exclusively an AI tool for LinkedIn.
 
 

00:20:50

 
Kristjan Byfield: Um and it's super cool. We've got it, you know, you spend you sign up to it. Um it actually spends quite a lot of time understanding you at the start.
Toby Martin: Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: So you put in what you do, what your background is. Obviously, it's got your LinkedIn things. It asks you if there's any other sites it should look at. What are your what are your objectives that you want to achieve? And then it will also it works through that. And then it comes up and says like, oh, we think these are your five primary objectives and these are your five secondary objectives. And then it's literally a drag and drop list. So you can reorder them in each category. you can drag them across, but you can say, "Look, 1 to 10.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Here is the order of priority of what I want to create with that content." Um, you tell it how often you want to post. Um, which I think I think typically the cheat the choices are like weekdays or
 
 

00:21:39

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: seven days a week and I've opted for seven days a week just to kind of try and get full value from it. And then you tell it when you want an email. So, I've said at 10:00 every morning, I want that email to land in my inbox. And so, 10:00 every morning, I get an email from co-author that goes, "Here are three articles we think you could do today." And it basically has already looked at what's out in the news, what's new coverage, and you know,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: global, local, everything. And it will have three things. And typically, you know, one will be something to do with letings like renters's rights bill, AML. One will be something techy, prop techy. Um, and then the third one, who knows, you know,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and you pick and choose the one you go in for, and it will have an outline of the article. And then, yeah, and then you give your 10 pence worth. And
 
 

00:22:31

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: sometimes it's a really nice start, and I will add two or three lines. Um, one I did yesterday, I think I wrote like 10, 15 lines of extra content. um et
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: very very well refined really good um tone of voice
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: really
Toby Martin: Yeah. And it's interesting that it's not um it's not presenting you with the finished article. It's asking for your input to to make sure that it um includes your your your tone, your views. Um and and that's the difference. I think that's the difference between someone who is doing that whether it's on that platform or or doing it through through chat GPT or any others um versus someone who's literally just prompt copy paste onto my social media. and that produces that kind of output which primarily so we're getting much better at identifying um spotting social media output um and we're a mixed bunch you know I think it's about 50/50 there was some research on this um but a lot of people um do look unkindly on on AI generated output in terms of um trustworthiness in terms of actually giving it the time of day that so about 50% of people are less engaged with output that they consider to be AI generated.
 
 

00:23:53

 
Toby Martin: And if you're using a very basic prompt structure and not uh personalizing it at all, it is a lot easier to spot the AI output. Um, and yes, so you want to be able to personalize it and input your own um your own perceptions and views into it as much as possible.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, so yeah, so we we talk about a few things. So yeah, so that's that's in base that's how we leverage doing one piece of content
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and turn that into what do we talk about five or six sets of assets
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: u which we can then disperse across all of our different channels. And I said, you know, and then also it's not just importantly with all content, it's not just about post and forget, you know, you want to circle back to that stuff. You want to, you know, here's
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: our favorite bits from the week, here's our favorite bits from the month. And
Toby Martin: Yeah.
 
 

00:24:49

 
Kristjan Byfield: yeah.
Toby Martin: I want to um I want to come back to that that idea of um retaining your own voice though because
Kristjan Byfield: Yes.
Toby Martin: I think that is that is so crucial to me and um I think that that that's one of the risks when I when I speak to people about AI and and how they're using it and and you know we spoke at the start about the level of engagement that people are having with AI and a lot of people are still using it in quite a basic way perhaps because they don't have that level of knowledge or um understanding of it. So, a lot of people are still using it in a basic way.
Kristjan Byfield: Come
Toby Martin: Um, there's a there's a quote that I come back to time and time again and whether um if I'm doing some training or something, whether it's about video or AI or whatever, it always applies because it's so relevant to the world of estate agency. And it's um from Seth Goden who's a master marketer. Uh and the quote is in a crowded marketplace fitting in is a failure.
 
 

00:25:47

 
Toby Martin: um blending in is the same as being anonymous. And I think it's something that we're really guilty of, especially in estate agency. You compare, you know, if you go on to if you pick 10 estate agents at random and you go onto their websites or you go onto their social media fa pages, the likelihood is they'll all have very similar appearances, very similar output, very similar text, um very similar services. Um, and very frequently they won't they won't promote their own team members in terms of they might have an about us page, but in terms of like the hero image on the on the website, it'll just be generic people shaking hands, tenants with a key, whatever. And so we do run the risk of blending into each other in estate agency. And the risk
Kristjan Byfield: is the is the greatest danger for agents, you
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know, I
Toby Martin: And
Kristjan Byfield: think.
Toby Martin: I think AI exacerbates that that risk because if we're if we're coming to AI and all using it in the same way,
 
 

00:26:43

 
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: then again we're going to be sharing very similar output which is going to um worsen that that kind of im identity crisis that we've got in in a state agency where we're all putting a lot of time and money into proactively trying to look the same.
Kristjan Byfield: Yes.
Toby Martin: And so from my angle on this is that when it comes to AI, you got to do everything you can to try and essentially be more human than ever.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. And I think I think that's the that's the bizarre dichotomy with
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: AI, right? Is is it can help you be more human if you use it right.
Toby Martin: that's right.
Kristjan Byfield: You know
Toby Martin: Yeah. and and it presents an opportunity because again the more people who are using generic output then the as a consumer the we're going to become increasingly tired of generic AI output and we're going to crave human uh interactions and and and human um you know recognizably human content more than ever.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
 
 

00:27:49

 
Toby Martin: So it presents a great opportunity. So the question is how do we use AI in a way that retains our personality u who we are you know the things that actually make connections with consumers um and for me that is um embracing things like um there's a a feature in you got to pay $20 a month it's the pay for chat GPT but there's a feature called projects um which is fantastic it's essentially a way of creating your own bespoke um GPTs they're not public only you can have access to them uh and the difference is with within projects so for example I'll give you an example I've got a project which I set up as um a uh the purpose of it is to convert news articles into estate agency blogs. So a news article on the Guardian website turn it into a blog for my fictional agency. Um, and first of all, the project allows you to upload documents. So, I I tell everyone to um have five five documents that you should want within your agency anyway.
 
 

00:28:59

 
Toby Martin: um which are the your customer avatars, your customer um your company history, you know, what awards you've won, your background, um your tone of voice guide, so maybe examples of text that you like either from you or elsewhere on the internet, um your values, your your customer values, and I've missed one. Uh your services, of course, your services, uh how you actually earn money, uh help chat. So you then upload all of those documents and then that project everything that it it outputs everything it generates will be with those five documents in mind and it will be tailored to that. So that's one half to it and then the second half of the project is you you can type custom instructions so that every time you use that project it follows those instructions. So, my instructions within this particular um news article to blog project is I'm going to give you a link to a news article. You're going to use that to write a blog for my estate agency. Um and you're going to include um commentary and analysis from me, the managing director of Toby Martin Estate Agency.
 
 

00:30:10

 
Toby Martin: Um that gives insight and that gives local relevance to my local market. And then all you got to do, you've got that saved within chat GPT. And every time you come back to it, all you've got to do is put in a single URL
Kristjan Byfield: Oink
Toby Martin: to the Guardian. It writes the article.
Kristjan Byfield: with that.
Toby Martin: It does it with your tone of voice, your customer avatars in mind, your company history. It follows that those instructions. It includes quotes from me. It makes it much much different and in my eyes far more superior to just your generic if you'd just gone write a blog about this. Um and and and so yeah, whatever you I have I now have a bank of these projects. All of them are trained to follow my tone of voice, um my customer avatars, all of it. And and it covers every single aspect of of your business if you want it to. I even have customer ad u I even have business advisers in there.
 
 

00:31:07

 
Toby Martin: I've got one where I I've said, um, I want you to act as Daniel Priestley, and when I come to you with with a question, I want you to advise me in the knowledge of Daniel Priestley's business strategies and and and advice. Um,
Kristjan Byfield: which
Toby Martin: so
Kristjan Byfield: I imagine at the moment is he tells you to move abroad and stop paying tax. Did I say that out loud?
Toby Martin: it's it's in your business plan.
Kristjan Byfield: No,
Toby Martin: So
Kristjan Byfield: I
Toby Martin: yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: think I
Toby Martin: my my
Kristjan Byfield: think
Toby Martin: message is do everything you can to use the tools available to you to personalize these platform.
Kristjan Byfield: I think I think the really interesting thing is I think for a lot of estate agents they struggle with creativity,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: right? A lot of agents that's that's not a criticism that's just
Toby Martin: No,
Kristjan Byfield: an observation because
Toby Martin: it
Kristjan Byfield: a
Toby Martin: seems
Kristjan Byfield: lot of
Toby Martin: as
Kristjan Byfield: people
 
 

00:31:54

 
Toby Martin: a luxury, isn't it? It's
Kristjan Byfield: come
Toby Martin: something we do if we have
Kristjan Byfield: back
Toby Martin: time. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and creativity can feel like a luxury.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um, and I think, you know, agents have, the vast majority of agents have enough on their plate just running their business to to to invest time and energy in in the fluffy element of creativity. But I think, look, you you you quoted Seth. Um, I absolutely adore Tom Durant at DCTR.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um, I'll probably pronounce that. Tom Dur. I think it's probably more I love putting weird weird accents on everyone's name, but um Tom and I really bonded over
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: I adore his absolute passion for creativity. Um and quite you know I agree with a lot of what he says is what a lot of us do as agents is insanely dull. You
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know a lot of us churn out that same oh hey get a free appraisal look at our market share.
 
 

00:32:53

 
Kristjan Byfield: Oh, you seen our board. We've sold on your street. You know, like look, if everyone else is doing it, it's not setting you apart. And
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and I always come back to I talked about this actually already on an earlier podcast, but I always come back to this conversation I had probably about 10 years ago at a networking event. I sat down with an agent I'd never met before, and he was bemoning the fact that over the last like two years, their fees have basically halfed. And like his job like so many others is predominantly commission. And so he was doing the same amount of work and earning nearly half the amount of money. And he was bemoning this fact and how unfair it was and blah blah blah. And you know we we very quickly got into I was like you know what why do you think that is? And he was like well you know there's there's three agents in our marketplace and we we pick up 95% of the listings and it's you know cool.
 
 

00:33:49

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: what's the difference between the three of you? And and literally his response was like, what do you mean? I was like, well, what differentiates you? And he was like, I don't know. We all we all do the same thing.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: I was like, okay, but like are you better at something? Like do you do something basic like do you do professional photos and they shoot it on a mobile phone or like you know do you do premium listings on the portals and they just do I I don't know like is there anything I I don't know you know and and
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: literally you couldn't he couldn't muster up a single clear differentiator between him and their two main competitors
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and as such neither can the consumer. Right?
Toby Martin: Absolutely.
Kristjan Byfield: So when they were presented with those three agents propositions which they you know 90% of clients would talk to those three
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and if you can't differentiate typically on service delivery everything else how are you going to differentiate which agent you pick very simple you're going to pick the one that is the cheapest because if they all sound the same look the same claim to do the same stats same results more or less you
 
 

00:35:04

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know oh this one does 2% more. Um
Toby Martin: Absolutely.
Kristjan Byfield: there
Toby Martin: I don't know.
Kristjan Byfield: is no clear differentiator then
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: there is only one way to differentiate and that is fe and I think that you know agents can be what purple bricks did to the market or you know what tech is doing and and blah blah blah. But we all know there are agents out there who are showing that that is absolute bollocks. You
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know, there are agent there are sales agents out there getting 3% on
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: a sales fee. I wouldn't say that's common, but I know a lot of agents that get two to two and a half% plus VAP day in day out,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: you know, and then you've got agents saying that it's impossible to get past 1%. You know, we've got I was speaking to Ian Krempton at Ferndown Estates the other day, you know, and that was great to talk to a north uh uh northern region agent where typically I find talking to letting agents around more the you know southern end we tend to do quite well on fees.
 
 

00:36:05

 
Kristjan Byfield: I often find when we talk
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: to the northern half of the country and Wales and such like there's a very common conversation about going you get how much. Now what was really lovely talking to Ian was he was saying you know with this pivot with the renters's rights bill and everything else
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: you know they are quoting what I consider standard fees 15% plus that 18% let managed
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: like we're picking up landlords every day of the week like that you know non-negotiable done but to get to that point they have differentiated themselves from their market in multiple ways they've got they've picked up some awards they've got a stellar reputation with reviews that plugs
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: into the guild. They, you know, do this, that, and the other. It's it's yeah,
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: you you've got to define that tone. And I think, you know, with our agency at base, we've always being different has always kind of been very much kind of one of our objectives
 
 

00:37:02

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: because there was a lot of things that we didn't necessarily like or agree with about the general kind of channels and communication that agents use and the way we talk to people. I hate industry jargon. Like I,
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: you know, it's just
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: so boring. It's so dull. And and as an industry, great. When you're when you're at a conference and we're talking with all of our mates and our colleagues and our competitors, of course, we all know who an applicant is and a vendor is and conveyancing and all this sort of, you know, like of course technically great. You have a technical conversation. Brilliant.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: That's not how consumers talk about people. They don't they don't talk about them in any kind of way that we
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: do. If you want to engage your customers and win new customers, you've got to talk in a language that they embrace and understand, feel comfortable communicating in.
 
 

00:37:55

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um, and yeah, you've you've just got to drive that communication being different and and like you said, it's you know, we we we went kind of big and bold with our website last year because I
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: did I think it it it's been quite eye opening as becoming a supplier um because I always looked at kind of generally what the market was doing. But again, as we tal touched on earlier, we got busy days. you got businesses to run and staff to manage and everything
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: else. Um, now working in the supplier space as well, obviously we look at a lot of agents websites
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and what you realize when you start doing it on mass is how similar agents
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: appear. you
Toby Martin: There's
Kristjan Byfield: know,
Toby Martin: a
Kristjan Byfield: this consumer impression that they get if they're looking around and you've all got an almost
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: identical templated website from the same website company and
Toby Martin: Yeah.
 
 

00:38:55

 
Kristjan Byfield: really fundamentally the only difference is the color palette and the logo.
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: Um,
Toby Martin: there's a bit of a uh a trend I've noticed uh speaking to business owners of saying the the phrase um I don't pay attention to my competitors. I just focus on what's important for me. And I get the essence of that. But I do like to say just look at them and just to see what are the similarities and what are the differences because once you compare your marketing your self-promotion, you might be surprised how little difference there is between you and your competitors. So from that perspective, I do think it is worth looking at their services, their promotion uh their promotional materials. Um because it's a bit of an alarm call because like like you say and and I know that obviously Bass is wonderful at this and and I love your new website. It's got video throughout it. You've got to remember that that stat of um okay, by the time you meet someone for a market appraisal, they could be up to 70% of the way through their decision already because we live in this age of information.
 
 

00:40:04

 
Toby Martin: People like to feel in control of their own decisions. They're not just waiting for you to turn up the doorstep to make a decision. They've already gone out. They've already done their own research because they want to feel in control. They want to feel like they're making a a well-reasoned decision. So by the time you meet them, they might already be 70% of the way through their decision-making process already. So have you given have you laid a breadcrumb trail for them to follow of outstanding content and materials for them to lap up because that's what they're looking to do. And if you haven't, then you're missing out on a wonderful opportunity to turn up to the market appraisal already having made that impression. And if all you're giving them is materials that don't set you apart, that don't create a point of difference, then you're arriving on the same footing as all of your competitors. Whereas, if you have somehow differentiated yourself, then at the market appraisal, you've already given yourself an advantage over your competition.
 
 

00:40:59

 
Toby Martin: Um, and and so many uh agents unfortunately are arriving at the market appraisal having not given themselves that head start. And it's a wonderful opportunity missed.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. And I think look, I think nothing of what we've just said is new. Like
Toby Martin: Quiet.
Kristjan Byfield: the fundamentals
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: of marketing, of differentiation, of you know, setting out who your ideal client is, who your market segment is, your language, your style, everything else. None of this is new. You know, it's kind of the the the advertising 101 for the last 50, 60 years. And I think bringing this back to AI, um I think there's plenty of agency directors, bosses, marketing directors, whatever out there who kind of know they should be doing this stuff, but up until recently the tools and the capacity to do that been very very difficult to do
Toby Martin: Yes.
Kristjan Byfield: or very time consuming, not very difficult, very time consuming. Um, and again bringing back to AI, what we've talked about now is look, if you want to differentiate and you can't figure out how the f*** to differentiate,
 
 

00:42:04

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: start using chat GBT to help you or or you
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know, Gemini or whatever tools. I know we default to calling Jack GBT but
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: um but go and take your five competitors websites and social media pages and drop them all in a fact sheet you know uh and
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: like we said give chime a really decent comprehensive prompt. What do you want them to look at? What do you want them to identify?
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: What do you want them to understand? And what actions do you want it to deliver you off the back of that? So it could be that simple of, you know, here are our four competitors in our local marketplace and their social media channels. You know, please look at, you know, from a consumer point of view,
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: if you were visiting these agents, what what primarily sets us apart
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: from them? What do we do differently?
 
 

00:43:01

 
Kristjan Byfield: What can you what can a consumer identify as a tangible benefit of
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: choosing to go with our agency over these other four? You
Toby Martin: absolutely.
Kristjan Byfield: know, and again, you know, you keep refining it, right? It'll come
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: back to an answer and you go, "Ah, that's not quite what I was looking for. I'd really actually like to understand it more from this perspective." You know, and you drill down, you drill down, drill down until you've got a really concise kind of report on what that is. And then you turn around to chatbt and go cool now how do I go about implementing that
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: you know
Toby Martin: I'm
Kristjan Byfield: what
Toby Martin: see
Kristjan Byfield: do I do about my website what do I need to do about my coms what do I need to do about my social media you know and I think that's I think that's where people kind of are missing the trick I've spoken to people and as people get used to it as people embed it more I think people are getting to grasp this more but again I remember having a conversation actually it was at Propex last year.
 
 

00:43:58

 
Kristjan Byfield: So, Propex uh and I was chatting to a chat uh in the bar um after the event in the in or was it the hotel the night before? Hotel the night before. Um
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and I was chatting to a gent who um was very proud of the fact that he was using chat GBT for his content. Um but what was fascinating was he was like, "Oh yeah, well, you know, I'll go to chat GBT. I'll give it a subject that I want to talk about and it will give me a piece and then I copy and paste that into a word document and then I make it me.
Toby Martin: Right.
Kristjan Byfield: I was like, "Right, okay. Um, why?" And he was like, "Well, you know, because that first one is, as we touched on at the start, that first one's fine.
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, it's great. It's gone and found a couple of other sources that back up what it says and but it's not me, it's boom. And I'm like, cool.
 
 

00:44:57

 
Kristjan Byfield: And what's your prompt? Like what are you asking
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: it? Oh, well literally I'm just like here's here's the subject. Write me an article on it. Like,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: okay. You know, like I was like, think about it like your personal writing assistant. like your like your ghost author was like would you ask someone to write would you give someone a title of a book and then go write me a novel
Toby Martin: See
Kristjan Byfield: I'll
Toby Martin: you later.
Kristjan Byfield: an hour um and he looked at me and I was like no exactly you wouldn't and I was like even if you did do that I was like would you look at the first draft and go cool thanks for doing that now I will now wade my way through and tweak and shop and he's like well no I suppose I'd probably go back and I'm like, "Yeah, and that's that's what you do with chatb is like give them more information up front like we talked about,
 
 

00:45:50

 
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: but when you get that first draft, read it and go, you know, if if you get two paragraphs in and it sounds like a load of waffly bollocks that you would never say, you don't need to read the whole thing.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, get into that prompt and go like, I'm sorry, dude, but this feels very generic.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, this is this is where I would sit on it. This would be my key viewpoint. You know, just to remind you, this is what I sound like.
Toby Martin: Yeah, exactly. That's that's my comment. It's that he's he's generating the output and then making sure it sounds like him. Switch it around. First of all, train your GPT to sound like you.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: All all those previous articles, say the ones that you love, save them in a PDF, upload them every time you use chat GPT and say, "This is my tone of voice." Then you then you don't obviously check it through but very unlikely you'll have to do a lot of editing after you've
 
 

00:46:37

 
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: done that.
Kristjan Byfield: And again also I was saying to you know like you don't need to edit it in word like go back to and go oh look I don't like the third paragraph that isn't something I would say and like paragraph five feels like it should really be paragraph two and it might be nice to chuck a bit of this in.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: And I was like just write that. He's like sorry what I'm like yeah you know that like hour and a half you spend editing the article that it took 30 seconds to spit out for you.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: like maybe spend five to 10 minutes just having a conversation with
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: CH going love this flesh out that let's drill down on this can you find an example of that
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: you know
Toby Martin: There
Kristjan Byfield: just
Toby Martin: was um
Kristjan Byfield: having the world's best assistant who
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: never has an off day who never gets pissed off with what you say who doesn't get offended and you go that's a bit bollocks because you literally
 
 

00:47:31

 
Toby Martin: I sometime I had I sometimes get a little bit pissy with chat GPT.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, why
Toby Martin: Do
Kristjan Byfield: not?
Toby Martin: you find yourself doing that? Sometimes
Kristjan Byfield: And then
Toby Martin: it'll
Kristjan Byfield: you read
Toby Martin: do
Kristjan Byfield: it
Toby Martin: something.
Kristjan Byfield: back in and remember just to keep
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: your, you know, our overlords happy
Toby Martin: keep
Kristjan Byfield: with
Toby Martin: it on side. Yeah, but I do find myself sometimes
Kristjan Byfield: your
Toby Martin: saying
Kristjan Byfield: work.
Toby Martin: sometimes it writes something and I'll say to it that's just rubbish.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: It doesn't get offended. It just produces something better. I
Kristjan Byfield: And
Toby Martin: might have
Kristjan Byfield: isn't
Toby Martin: been put
Kristjan Byfield: that
Toby Martin: on
Kristjan Byfield: great?
Toby Martin: an AI kill
Kristjan Byfield: Imagine
Toby Martin: list, but
Kristjan Byfield: turning
Toby Martin: I
Kristjan Byfield: around
Toby Martin: don't know.
Kristjan Byfield: to someone who just crafted a f****** thousandword blog. You just went, "What is this s***?
 
 

00:48:01

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: What is this? Like if you just if you just copied this, if you just Googled it and just copied and pasted it onto a word document, yuck. You know, that's that's the awesome thing. And I think
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: that's, you know, I think that's
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: that's why when people question how far AI is going to go and how much it is going to transform the way that we work from an individual basis to to entire corporations
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: is exactly that. It's always on call.
Toby Martin: Yep.
Kristjan Byfield: It never rests. It never gets tired. It doesn't need compliments. It doesn't it doesn't get offended if you don't like what it does.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Um yeah, it never has an off day, even if you do. Uh and I think, you know, like as you attested to, I
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: think, you know, not that I would advocate like talking s***** to anything or anyone, inanimate or otherwise, but that's
 
 

00:49:03

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: the great thing. If you're having a s***** moody day, you can be like, do you know what? Not in the mood today. That's
Toby Martin: Absolutely.
Kristjan Byfield: rubbish. I could have done that better when I was five, you know. Fine, write it. You won't get away with saying that to your staff, but you will get away with chat GBT.
Toby Martin: I genuinely do know people who refer to chat GPT as their therapist. So So if you're having if you're having a s***** day, there's there's worse people to speak to than chat GPT.
Kristjan Byfield: Look, it's random. It's not relevant to what we're generally talking about, but I loved that Reddit thread that you posted about the band. Was it the God question? the band, the
Toby Martin: Oh
Kristjan Byfield: the
Toby Martin: yeah, the God prompt. Um, yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: which I never followed up and did the second one, but I freaking loved that response.
Toby Martin: Yeah. So, this was a prompt that was basically meant to pull apart your personality and tell you your deepest, most flaws.
 
 

00:49:54

 
Toby Martin: And the everyone who I shared it with said the same thing, which was, "Oh my god, it is freaky how accurate that is."
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: And it was it was designed to deliver it in a kind of fairly brutal tone of voice. you know, absolutely no BS. Just like this is what's wrong with
Kristjan Byfield: And
Toby Martin: you.
Kristjan Byfield: I love that each one it went, would you like me to be more honest? Because like that's lightly brutal. I can be moderately brutal if you'd like. You'd be like, "Yeah, go on then." And it would give you a bit more. And you go like, "So you like the moderate brutal, do you? How about I get brutal? Brutal.
Toby Martin: I
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah,
Toby Martin: want it. I want it. I want it tougher. Give it
Kristjan Byfield: I
Toby Martin: to
Kristjan Byfield: want
Toby Martin: me.
Kristjan Byfield: to destroy me. I want to be a sobbing mess on the floor by the end of this.
 
 

00:50:41

 
Kristjan Byfield: I found it absolutely bloody fascinating.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: But yeah, and for me it kind of crystallizes that, you know, this this big, oh, it's not, you know,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: oh, but it's not a human doing. It's not the nuance. Jesus Christ, man. The amount of stuff that this can pick out
Toby Martin: Oh,
Kristjan Byfield: is
Toby Martin: it is. I mean do do never underestimate it sounds like a stupid thing to say but do not underestimate the intelligence of artificial intelligence. Yes it may be artificial but the intelligence word is critical here. um you know that that so the very first iteration of chat GPT which was built in 2022 um was trained on 175 different parameters and over 500 gigabytes of text covering books, Wikipedia. That was the first version. This knows a lot of s***. This is a highly knowledgeable, intellectual, intelligent creation. And
Kristjan Byfield: Ultimately
Toby Martin: yeah, I I I wouldn't be as bold to say that it is more intelligent than you or I, but it certainly knows aspects of everything that you you and I will not.
 
 

00:51:52

 
Kristjan Byfield: if if you know if your knowledge is gained from a series of experiences and learnings right fundamentally
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: it is learning and absorbing everything we create.
Toby Martin: All the
Kristjan Byfield: Now
Toby Martin: time.
Kristjan Byfield: the reality is much like if you're taught bollocks you'll know bollocks. You know there is nonsense out there that it's absorbing. So there is that that blend
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: but just like us I mean you know think of your Sunday dinner sat around with your family
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: there's a lot of varying degrees of knowledge and information about various subjects that you cover there right
Toby Martin: that's right.
Kristjan Byfield: people like to think they're informed depends where they're getting their information from so
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: yeah I think that so so let's just bring it back because we need we need to kind of bring this uh to a bit of a close. We could we could talk forever. Um and I'm also cautious. I don't want to steal Mal's thunder because um I'm chatting to him tomorrow and we're going to talk a bit about um you know how AI is transforming search as well.
 
 

00:52:55

 
Kristjan Byfield: I
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: mean this is
Toby Martin: I'll
Kristjan Byfield: Okay.
Toby Martin: be fascinated to listen to that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but I think that my my my kind of I think from what we've discussed today that the the critical takeaways from for me are to to appreciate the importance of um almost to appreciate the risks of using let's say chat GPT which is don't lose your character your personality don't lose your creativity and understand how actually uh AI can can uh amplify those elements. if you instruct it to do so. So, it's understanding the opportunities in AI, but also the risks and um using AI to turn those risks on their head and actually to make them what sets you apart in your business.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. And I think look, you touched on and we touched on at the start the the overwhelmingness of it, the the da the daunting task of all things AI, you know, again, leverage AI to figure out AI. You
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know, I think the one thing we we we keep coming back to here is just go and have a chat with AI.
 
 

00:54:06

 
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: You know, whether it's chat GBT or Gemini, whatever you whatever you gravitate towards,
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: just go and start having conversation with it. And I think that's what people don't understand is I think they have I think they feel like they need to go and do research and figure out something quite complex and come up with like a
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: strategy.
Toby Martin: earlier. I
Kristjan Byfield: just just go and get on chat GPT and just ask it a question
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: as as small or big as you want it to be. But again, treat it like the best assistant, researcher, confidant, companion, business partner that you've ever had. you
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: know, remove all of those filters that you would normally put in most of those conversations where you're considering people's emotions and reactions and thoughts and desires and everything else and just go in there and start having a
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: conversation and work with it. Start playing around with some stuff. I mean, I
 
 

00:54:59

 
Toby Martin: Earlier
Kristjan Byfield: keep
Toby Martin: um
Kristjan Byfield: and going in there and chucking at some random question. The amount of times I sit there giggling, I'm like, "This is fascinating.
Toby Martin: yeah, earlier in the podcast I I I set out quite an elaborate kind of six, seven stage um prompt structure. The ideal prompt structure. If that's overwhelming and intimidating, tell chat GPT to write you the prompt and it
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: will do it for you.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: Just like you say, play with it.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Toby Martin: Discover the extent of what it's capable of.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. So, look, I think we'll I think we've we we've waffled well there and I think this might
Toby Martin: And
Kristjan Byfield: be the
Toby Martin: we
Kristjan Byfield: first
Toby Martin: we
Kristjan Byfield: podcast
Toby Martin: could waffle more.
Kristjan Byfield: actually bringing it in under an hour, which is Woohoo.
Toby Martin: I never thought
Kristjan Byfield: No
Toby Martin: it was
Kristjan Byfield: help
Toby Martin: possible.
Kristjan Byfield: with AI doing it either.
 
 

00:55:46

 
Kristjan Byfield: Take that AI. Um but um but yeah, no dude, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Um for those of you who uh don't know enough yet about Toby, um Tobes, what's your what's your website?
Toby Martin: My website is to Martin Consultancy.co.uk
Kristjan Byfield: There we go. you know or just you know Google Toby the consultant of consultants Toby King of consultants and you will you will find him.
Toby Martin: or find me on LinkedIn. And that's much more entertaining. We can chat.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. So, uh, check out Toby, look at his website, check out LinkedIn. Um, if you want to kind of just discover any which way you can leverage Toby's knowledge, insights, personality, humor, uh, into your business. And as we talked on, whether that's understanding how you going to leverage AI, how you're going to develop your marketing, looking at the effectiveness of your agency operations or all of the above, or you just want a lovely chat with a
Toby Martin: Yeah,
Kristjan Byfield: rather lovely bloke, then reach out to Toby.
 
 

00:56:49

 
Kristjan Byfield: Dude, thank you for your time. Um, we
Toby Martin: I'm so grateful
Kristjan Byfield: will,
Toby Martin: to you for having me. Thank
Kristjan Byfield: yeah,
Toby Martin: you.
Kristjan Byfield: soon. And look forward to catching up soon. Did you do the dragon boats last weekend?
Toby Martin: I was not on the water. No,
Kristjan Byfield: No, neither was I.
Toby Martin: I had a house full of chickenpox and other
Kristjan Byfield: Oh,
Toby Martin: family
Kristjan Byfield: the
Toby Martin: crises
Kristjan Byfield: guys.
Toby Martin: and so I wish I was on a boat, but I wasn't.
Kristjan Byfield: So, yeah, I think when's property mark soon, right?
Toby Martin: Property
Kristjan Byfield: Property Mark
Toby Martin: one is
Kristjan Byfield: one
Toby Martin: the 13th of June.
Kristjan Byfield: 13th of June.
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: First, the first proper big conference of the season. It all kicks off from
Toby Martin: Oh,
Kristjan Byfield: there.
Toby Martin: it's going to get hectic that it is such I mean there's more and more conferences that you just can't say that the EXP conference
 
 

00:57:31

 
Kristjan Byfield: Well, we've
Toby Martin: is
Kristjan Byfield: got
Toby Martin: great
Kristjan Byfield: the shy and retiring Mr. Simon Whale,
Toby Martin: conference
Kristjan Byfield: you
Toby Martin: right
Kristjan Byfield: know,
Toby Martin: yeah
Kristjan Byfield: buff on the day before the agents giving ball. That's going to be a long 48 hours.
Toby Martin: Christ
Kristjan Byfield: Don't don't let me near AI after those 48 hours because I could plot the demise of the universe. But no, um hopefully mate see you at Property Mark One in
Toby Martin: certainly
Kristjan Byfield: about
Toby Martin: will.
Kristjan Byfield: like three three and a half weeks time, something
Toby Martin: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: like that. Um if not before. Good. Like have you got half term next week with the kids?
Toby Martin: Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.
Kristjan Byfield: How's that come around? I feel like it was Easter holidays literally like 10 days ago.
Toby Martin: Oh my god. Actually, I no. Okay, so speaking of kids and things like chickenpox, I had a moment. It was like 3:00 a.m. Um, our two-year-old was uh covered in spots, would not sleep. What was I doing? Of course, I was on my phone on chat GPT saying, "How can I get my 2-year-old with chickenpox to bed?"
Kristjan Byfield: See, it's
Toby Martin: It
Kristjan Byfield: not
Toby Martin: did.
Kristjan Byfield: is lifech changing. It is literally your personal assistant. Not just for smashing it as business, but resolving yourself and and and stepping back from trying to strangle your child at 3:00 in the morning so that you can get some sleep. I didn't say that. I love my kids. Food. Thank you time. Talk soon. Lots
Toby Martin: Pleasure.
Kristjan Byfield: of
Toby Martin: Thank you, Cheerio.
 
 

Transcription ended after 00:59:06

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