When AI Exposes the Truth About Your Business

Most estate agents think they’re falling behind on tools.

They’re not.

They’re falling behind on how they think.

This episode starts with an industry article claiming digital market appraisals are “the future”… and quickly unravels why that kind of thinking is exactly what’s holding the industry back.

From there, we get into what’s really happening inside agencies trying to adopt AI:

•  why teams fixate on the 10% of errors instead of the 90% of opportunity 
•  why AI systems feel “wrong” when they’re actually working as intended 
•  why most agents aren’t actually selling — and what happens when AI forces them to 
•  and how increased visibility is about to expose what’s really going on inside teams 

This isn’t about tools.

It’s about what those tools reveal.

And right now, they’re revealing a gap between how estate agencies think they operate… and how they actually do.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of AI Operating Diaries. Um, just my ramblings, meandering thoughts about the things that I've learnt and seen around AI and business this week that I hope is useful to some of you guys and getting some good feedback from the first few episodes, so I'll continue with it. Um today I want to talk about a few different things. Um the first thing I want to talk about is the industry's illusion of progress. So um on I think it was Thursday last week, Thursday or Friday, um I saw an article in the industry press around uh digital market appraisals and how digital market appraisals uh apparently have a higher like conversion rate than the state agents who don't use digital market appraisals. Of course, like you know, we our agents who use our software do digital market appraisals, so you know I'm not against the idea, but I read the article and it just made me think, um, what the fuck is wrong with our industry? Like, is this really something that needs to be in the fucking industry press? Are we for real people in today's world don't even go for a shit without taking their mobile phone with them? And there are people out there that are not sending their market appraisals digitally, really? Is that really a thing? I mean, I get it, like some people want to hand deliver stuff because you know that makes all the fucking difference, right? That's that's real service. Um but um if if you're if you are not doing digital proposals after you've been on a valuation and you're not tracking them and nurturing people and all of that sort of stuff, just just stop. Right? Just give up now. Because it's just fucking stupid. I mean, we've been giving this to people for a decade, a decade, and when and the industry press still genuinely thinks that that's that's news. We better we better tell everybody about this innovation about digital proposals, like fuck off. So it's a broader point about our industry celebrating basics. This isn't innovation, this is just noise. It's just this is like a child could fucking tell you that people would rather receive things on their mobile phone. You're more likely to get a response if it lands on somebody's mobile than if it lands in their the letterbox or in their even just on their laptop alone. Like it just just just wake the fuck up, right? So that was the first one. You can kind of see how this episode's gonna go, right? Um the second one was um about more around AI and the mindset again. Spoken about it on a couple of other other episodes. I'm gonna keep talking about it because I think it's a really big thing. Um, and this is what companies are gonna need to really solve as we go over the next few years. It's what we've been trying to solve inside our company for the last few years, and you know, definitely what's gonna what's gonna happen in our state agency and beyond that in other businesses as well is this mindset of uh the 10% versus the 9% in our last episode in another episode I called it the 33%. Um so people are focusing on the wrong thing. Uh I went to see a great agent last week, really nice people, great team, love what they do. They know I love what they do. Even if they're listening to this, they'll they'll they'll pick up who that probably who they are. So I don't mean any offence by this. This is just a general observation that I'm seeing everywhere, even in my own team and it and beyond that. Um, so we went to see them, and one of the things we spoke about was again the AI scouts, and they brought in somebody to who's been working in there so they can show us the things that are not working properly in there. Um, and so what we've been programmed to think over the last 20 years, the way software's worked is it's either working or it isn't. Right? It's either sending an email or it's not sending an email. Um when you click a button, it's either saving something or it's not saving something. So it's either working or it isn't. AI just does not work like that. Right? It's a probability engine. It's pulling together tens of thousands of data points and bringing you information that you otherwise wouldn't have seen. So we went and looked at the iScoat, show us some of the things that are wrong with it. And one of the main things that they showed us was like, here you go, if you look at this property, uh, it's pulled in all the information from the portals, it's been on the market for eight weeks with this agent, but it also says that it's available. Now, if we go to right move and check the information, we can see that uh it's SSTC. So it's not working. And it was like, oh, that's not good. Do you like do you how do you always check for these properties? And they were like, Yeah, we have to, because we don't trust it now. So we have to check every single one. I was like, wow, okay, so there must be a problem somewhere. Like, how often does that does it does it get it wrong? Like, oh don't know. Like, well, you know, give us a bit of a guess. Maybe 10% of the time? Right. So 10% of the time there's an issue. 90% of the time it's right. Yeah. Okay. Again, it's just getting your head around this thing because the world we come from is one whereby you quite rightly would be able to say, but why isn't it getting it right 100% of the time? I don't know. No one fucking knows. Because that's how AI works, right? It's going out, it's it's scraping data, it's put pulling together different points of information, and it's bringing you bringing you stuff that you otherwise wouldn't have known about, wouldn't have even crossed your mind to check on some of this stuff that AI is doing. And because of that, you're able to do loads of work much faster than you ever could have before. But don't stop focusing on the wrong thing. It's not broken, it's not doing it wrong. Like, okay, yeah, I mean, that's a that's obviously it's a clear example, but no one I can't solve that. I don't know when AI will be perfect. When it does, I don't I'm not sure what sort of world we'll be living in. I'm not don't know if it'll be a good one, but it's not how it works. So the real problem isn't the AI, it's not a system problem, it's a thinking problem. Introduce the probability versus certainty idea to your team. Like you sit there trying to write a blog, and you just in in years gone by, like you sit there just staring at the wall, just wondering where the fuck to start with it. Now you can just say to Isaiah, I need a blog, I need a blog that's relevant at this point in time. You know, there's a war going on, people are talking about whether they whether interest rates are gonna rise, people are talking about the they're worried about the rising costs of fuel. We're just heading into summer. Uh, the way that conveyance is going at the moment, it's going to take people six months to get uh a property through to exchange and be able to move in. So I need an article that really appeals to people that want to move at some point in 2026, and I need it to talk about how no one can predict the future. There's always something in the news, otherwise the news wouldn't work. So, do you put your life on hold or do you get on with it? Can you write that blog for me, please? And bang, it writes the blog. Now, is it gonna be perfect? No, I mean it might be. You might read it and think that is just perfect, and that'll be great. But when it isn't perfect, you don't go, oh bin it, just delete the whole thing. I'm gonna sit here and staring at the wall, trying to work it out for myself again. You just edit bits of it, and that's the brilliance of it. It's fucking amazing that it can do that. Just stop, stop with the whole like, oh, until it's perfect, I won't use it. Like, you just will end up getting left behind. It brings me on to my final point, it sort of ties the whole thing together. When talking to the agent that had a few concerns around scouts, it they were saying that in the time they've been using it, they've managed to get two new listings out of it, which is great, right? You know, if if you say average fees, I don't know, four grand, eight thousand pounds, like that's and it pay for the scouts many times over, which is great. But again, I'm gonna talk about my own experience here with my own team and what I've seen over the last couple of years, and how I how it relates to estate agency. Like, people say estate agency is a sales-based business, but it's not really. Like, there are not many estate agents out there that actually do much in terms of sales. People contact you in order to ask to view properties and you take them, and they either offer or they don't. People phone you or contact you in order to ask for valuations and you go around and see them. Okay, yeah, there's a bit of bit of selling involved trying to sell your services when you're out on evaluation. But in terms of prospecting, cold calling, getting people on the market, convincing people to come on the market with you that didn't just phone you up, none of that really takes place. And if I can relate it to my company, we had salespeople, and eventually I came to realise that those salespeople would rather do anything at all other than sales, they will find anything to do other than sales. And I I'm telling you now that if you think that all of the data that was flowing through this company's account, all of the probability and all the matching that AI is doing, all of the evidence that is given as to why these people should switch agents and the the outreach that is right in, that if somebody was totally focused on that, that over the period of time it's been used that you would just get two listings, you've banged your fucking head. And what AI is gonna do as we start to connect the phones, the WhatsApps, the emails, and all the communication, it's going to start showing you that people are not quite doing exactly what you thought they were doing. I know because I've been through it, right? You're gonna suddenly get a bit of a surprise that these people that you were giving the benefit of the bet doubt to, or these people that were telling you it's not as it's just not that easy, suddenly turns out are doing absolutely anything but sales, and sometimes you will struggle from looking at how many actual conversations are taking place to figure out what the what on earth are they doing during that period of time, and that's gonna lead to a mass amount of change inside your company because once you have that insight, you you you'll be you're just you're just gonna be left wondering like what's going on. You might have a gut feeling about it at the moment whereby you kind of know that if you jumped back into this thing yourself, the results would be better. Now, you know, you could argue maybe that's because you're the owner of the business or because you're a highly, you know, a senior member of staff, or you've got more commitment, or whatever you could argue whatever it is, but there are people in your organization that are telling you things are things are harder than it seems. And I'm telling you now that once the AI starts to really lay out for you, these are the conversations that are taking place, these are how many conversations are taking place, these are the conversations that are taking place around these subjects, these are the ones that are not getting followed up, these are the ones that are not happening. You're gonna start scratching your head going, this isn't worth it. I've got below average people here that are getting paid above average money, and it doesn't add up. So there's just good there's just a resistance around the whole thing of AI, people getting found out, people people saying, like, oh, it's not as simple as it seems because you know, 10% of the time it's wrong, like really whatever. Um, and then there's nowhere to hide now. Uh the visibility of effort is going to start to become very clear for people, and owners are gonna learn uncomfortable truths. So it's a bit of a landshift, it's a learning thing. Like I've said before, this isn't just this isn't a sturgency, this is the entire business world. This is my business, your business, and everyone else's business out there. I'm I'm hoping that my own scars that I've got from this and my own learnings mean that some of you can have less deep scars when it comes to your learnings on these things, because it's gonna happen. It's probably happening for a lot of you right now. Uh the tools aren't the story, the story is what happens when you give business visibility, data, and opportunity before it's ready to use it properly. So wherever you're listening from, whatever size of state agency you're running, just know that everybody's going through these issues, everybody's wondering whether they're doing the right thing or not, whether you're using AI or whether you're not. But wake up from this world whereby we did a state agency on a pen and paper, and just step into the new world. With a state with with with artificial intelligence, it's it's it's a learning curve. There's never going to be a perfect version of it. Just embrace it, just use it and just look at the magicalness of how it works. It's really quite incredible the things that you can do now. When just a few years ago, that was science fiction. So just embrace it and just let us know if you find things that you think could be improved in it.