AI for Real Estate Agents: How to Automate Your Business & Win AI Search | Alex Mehr

Alex Mehr (00:00)
Let me tell you a practical tip. If you are a real estate agent right now, probably you have and if you’ve been in the business for a while, you have thought about SEO quite a bit. Okay. So there are whole there’s a whole lot of things people do to be SEO optimized. What people should be worried about or think about right now is AEO. AI engine optimization.

How likely is ChatGPT or other AI platforms, how likely are they to recommend me if a home seller is trying to find a broker or a buyer? And that’s a completely different art.

Dylan Silver (02:13)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Alex Mehr, a serial entrepreneur, former NASA scientist, and the founder of Supercool.com, where he helps businesses leverage AI to automate operations, marketing, and growth. Alex, thanks for joining us here today. Now, when we talk about the current status of real estate and AI, there’s a lot of folks adopting all of this technology and

Alex Mehr (02:31)
Thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (02:41)
that’s out there. But there’s also some level of confusion about where this is adding to and what the next six months and year look like. As someone who is in this space, what is the playing field that we’re on and where do you see this going to?

Alex Mehr (02:57)
Yeah, so the way to think about AI and AI tools in general is they are gr it’s a great leverage to fill the gap between your ideas, your creativity, your taste, your connections, your human relationship, and execution. So think of AI as the bridge. And you know, it used to be that people with ideas or with skills, with know how, with a deep contact book, they used to like struggle with execution a little bit. And again go into details of what different areas of execution. AI has made that significantly easier. So has allowed us as professionals to sort of elevate ourselves from worker bees busy with little things and trying to hire a lot of people to do these little things too to going from idea to action immediately or very rapidly using AI. And there are a lot of things there that I can unpack. You tell me what which piece you want me to unpack first.

Dylan Silver (04:02)
You mentioned, you know, having to go from or being able to go from worker B to higher level tasks. This is a source of a lot of concern for for some people. I think realtors, and I’m throwing myself into this group, are maybe less concerned because we feel like, well, how long is it gonna be until someone doesn’t need a realtor at all? But there’s also a differing opinion on this, you know, do we need realtors in the process at all, or can people trade homes the same way you might trade Bitcoin?

Alex Mehr (04:31)
Right. Well, if you want me to guess, my guess is you’d need realtors. And Bitcoin and homes are completely different things. Bitcoin is fungible, a home is a home. It is where you live. You plan to grow your, you know, family and have a life there. So for sure it’s like it’s not a commodity and I don’t think it’ll be There’s a place for a human to be in the equation. Now, that human in the equation, what they do is gonna change. So, right now, a realtor needs to think about okay, I need to create marketing materials for this. Or if you’re building your career, you need to think about, okay, I need a website that captures my customer information, therefore I need a you know, to maintain a newsletter, a way to contact people, all the things realtors do, right? So the That part is gonna be significant made significantly easier with AI, and we can talk about how. but the end result of that is not removal of human in the loop, it’s just the allocation of how much that human in the loop, in this case a broker, how much of their time goes into nitty-gritty, you know, mindless tasks versus higher level level things, which is How can I tell the story of this property? When someone comes in, how can I overcome their objections? How can I tell them an honest opinion about this property and how it will fit in their lives? Something that AI cannot do. and that part gets amplified, the execution piece becomes smaller, which is good for people who are skilled at what they do at their craft.

Dylan Silver (07:03)
Right, versus spending a lot of time, you know, coming up with a first draft of a sales contract, filling that in and having, you know, to check for spelling errors or or something of that sort. When we talk about, you know, the the side of the business where you’re interfacing with real estate operators and and you know, brokers, et cetera, automations. There’s so much talk among investors, among realtors about What is kind of fair game, right? I you know, people want to be speed to lead is the term, speed to lead and first to get in front of that person, but they also are concerned about well, I want this person to feel like I’m alongside them, not just replacing myself with an AI bot. What where is that happy medium?

Alex Mehr (07:46)
Well, it depends on exactly which task it is. So to give you an example, I see realtors using our platform Supercool.com and they use it, you know, for example, they take photos of the property, okay, with their iPhone, so it’s not like very well done. And then they they just drop them in Supercool and say, Hey, can you create a slideshow video of this property? Right. So that is the part that AI can do really well. It will clean up the photos. They’re in different angles and different lighting. It harmonizes them, puts them in a nice thing, and puts a background music. It kind of creates a presentation material. Or you can use it to create, like, you know, market a PDF or something like that that that that improves your product. That is net gain. That there’s no downside in that. so it is essentially a it a brainless task, which is, I have these photos, now I have to like clean them up and make harm like that’s a brainless task. Another example would be writing the Zillow listing or whatever else you want to do. so those things are given. Now there’s like also another side of it, which again, none of these things that I said are taking anything away from the human touch. Another example is let’s say you’re a realtor and you want to have, you have to have your own customer contact list and a website, right? So, okay, so you just go in and type, hey, I want a website. Here are some of my photos, here are some of the properties I’ve sold. Can you put a website together with a contact capture and a CRM? That used to be a lot of brain damage. Now it’s just literally three prompts. Okay. So, so So and it will put a really nice website for you, lead capture, CRM backend, then you can say, Hey, you know, who in the past seven weeks has joined my newsletter, for example, or write this newsletter for this new property that I have listed to my audience. Does that make sense? It what is what does that do? That actually enables you to focus on what actually matters, which is getting clients. Delivering good results and doing the parts that the AI can physically cannot do.

Dylan Silver (10:03)
You know, you mentioned a number of different ways where people can utilize AI to streamline their business. You know, one of the ways we’re we’re a lot of people in the real estate space, if they need leads, are utilizing it is to build those, you know, client-facing lead magnets or funnels. And for someone who’s, you know, a new realtor or they may be a smaller mom and pop investor, if we go back ten years ago, having to pay a web designer to build a custom funnel for you, even maybe before you know, these tools like GoHighLevel were around, would have been very cumbersome and expensive. And now you can basically do it on your own. But there’s still some confusion and and I think fair level of concern from someone who may not have a tech background in, well, how can I best use automations if I don’t even really understand the tools behind that? And and what do you say to that?

Alex Mehr (11:29)
Well, so you don’t really need to understand it because a I mean if you understand it it’s better. But AI can conversationally walk you through it. Okay? So you go to our agent or any agent of any a powerful AI platform you choose, and you say, Hey, I want to create a funnel that presents what I do. Allows people to book a call or just register for my newsletter. And essentially from that prompt, it is enough to put this skeleton together. It’s gonna work for like 30 minutes or whatever. And we’ll tell you, okay, here’s what I created for you. How does it look visually? And here are the next three recommended steps. Okay. And then you can say, okay, so I like it, I don’t like this part, change that part. Like it’s like it’s it’s It’s conversational and easy. It doesn’t require you understanding anything. And if you want to do some sort of thing in there, like, okay, customers will join. I want them to receive this welcome email. That is literally a matter of typing it. It’s not like, you know, old day CRMs that you had to go and figure out the chart. It’s like you don’t need to do that. It the the the AI agent fully understands your platform and your intention and will wire it up to do the right thing. And you can even ask it, can you test it? I’m gonna go sign up on your own website and then you wait if you receive the email or if you can ask AI, hey, am I now in the my own CRM? And it will tell you. So so it yeah.

Dylan Silver (13:09)
You you mentioned being able to test your tools that you’re you’re building out. This is a level on a granular level, which is really helpful to people because you know, you don’t have to be a a software engineer in order to build these types of of automations out. And then even if it breaks at at this point or if s there there’s some type of bug somewhere, a test can self-identify, triage it, and then fix it, you know, within a short period. period of time. So for folks that have this concern, you know, I’m not a a software engineer. I don’t have a tech background. They can rest assured that if there’s a a bump along the way, the tools in place can resolve it without you having to get into, you know, JavaScript.

Alex Mehr (13:51)
And and I have also news for you. Even software engineers these days don’t debug by reading code anymore. So it’s like it it it is like even the software engineers are not doing it. So it it has become I I I spend a lot of time developing code on our own platform, roughly eight to ten hours a day. And I do not read code line by line. So it’s always an AI agent doing it. So And you can go to the top AI companies, their developers are also using AI to develop code. So that thing about, I need to understand how JavaScript works to use your example, it’s not a real thing anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:35)
Amazing. You know, when we talk about automations specifically, and I mentioned, you know, where is the right place and how many touch points and this type of thing. Follow up. Follow up is something that, you know, whether you’re a realtor, a loan officer, an investor, you’re gonna be aware of where the bottlenecks are in your pipeline. If you have a CRM, follow up is probably gonna be the biggest and best use of your your time next to new client acquisition. What are the top ways that you’re seeing automations be implemented and follow up these days?

Alex Mehr (15:09)
I give you a high level thing and then I go into details. in general, automation is a little bit overrated, okay? Meaning It is the 80/20 rule. So most of what you can accomplish with automation can be captured by 20% of what people tell you to do. Okay. So that’s the first thing. now you can go and fully optimize it, don’t get me wrong, but the gate just know that the most important part comes from just having any sort of basic workflow. And basic workflow is particularly easy for AI to build because it has seen millions of patterns like that before. Does that make sense? So that I think is the first thing. The second part of it is I like in general in customer follow ups, I like to I like to do Essentially use I call it blunt instruments. I like to use blunt instruments. What is a blunt instrument? for example, people try to segment their customers too much and send like specific things to different people. I’m like, nah nah nah. How about we just come up with a simple newsletter we can send to people you know three times a week? And that does the job for everybody. It’s educational, it’s broad, it’s a blunt instrument. And it helps everybody. And that is like those are very simple things to simple things to do.

Dylan Silver (17:25)
You know, you mentioned it being s kind of complex and you can simplify it and it can achieve what you’re trying to achieve. People have AI voice callers calling and following up with their their leads. You have AI calendar booking tools, text message, you have a newsletter. You know, when we look at newsletter in particular, one of the interesting things that I heard from a podcast guest, I’d like to get your feedback is if people are getting the newsletter, they might not open every newsletter. But if they see the subject line and they’re not unsubscribing, that’s actually a victory. What’s your thoughts?

Alex Mehr (17:58)
I 100% agree. That’s exactly what the point I was saying. It’s like try to, and my number is like three, four times a week. and try to have a really good informative, actually provide genuine value to customers and have a newsletter with a good subject line that is relevant to your customers, and send it three, four times a week so your email list list remains warm, and people self select on which ones to open. So based on the headline. And I and try to avoid super clickbaity subject lines because people will click on those once or twice, but then they stop clicking altogether or even worse, report to you as spam. and it did raise the quality of your newsletter. So I try to be real informative, say what the newsletter is about in the first line and in the subject line. And I would Vary it. So different people self select, okay, I’m interested in this, I’m not interested in that, and they click on. So I 100% agree.

Dylan Silver (19:01)
Pivoting here, Alex. You’re someone who has a really interesting background, NASA, right? But you’ve also co-founded Zoosk, right? Built and sold a business. When we talk about the stage of growth of any, we’ll call it medium or or larger company, businesses now are looking at things from a totally different perspective than they were 10 years ago. You know, do we need these many people to do the same tasks that we did ten years ago, you’re obviously in this game. How are, you know, companies at your size, or maybe a little bit larger, approaching hiring a workforce right now compared to how they were ten years ago?

Alex Mehr (19:42)
So I’m very optimistic on this. I think the need for human ingenuity is going up, not down. Okay? Meaning we need people who have creativity and who have what I call agency, meaning able to operate and push the ball forward on their own without being told exactly what to do. Today more than any day in the in in the past. So in a way it is gonna be kind of like two offset two factors were offsetting each other. The need for people with creativity and ingenuity and agency is going up. the need for brainless jobs is probably going down. Does that make sense? So these two offset each other, which is good news overall, if you look at the labor force, I believe it’s gonna be a net positive in terms of both quality of the jobs that will be available and how satisfying the job is, because I really think like for a job to be satisfying, it needs to be it needs to tap to the highest and best use of your brain. So I think the jobs are gonna be more satisfying, and I think net There are going to be more of them because of economic ec economic expansion. So I’m optimistic on that.

Dylan Silver (21:05)
Creatives are going to be valuable, right? You won’t necessarily need the people, maybe in the near future, right? You won’t necessarily need the peop people who can do the coding, but understand what the end result looks like and how to implement that in their their business. One one final question that I’ve got for you here, Alex. You know, we’ve talked about investors, we’ve talked about realtors. How does the other side of of this, you know, sellers interface with

Alex Mehr (21:07)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dylan Silver (21:34)
with AI. Are folks who are looking at selling their home, are they now going to be utilizing these tools to potentially look at either doing this on their own or maybe get a better idea of, you know, how can I do this with the assistance of the traditional real estate apparatus?

Alex Mehr (21:53)
Well, that interesting point. Let me tell you a practical tip. If you are a real estate agent right now, probably you have and if you’ve been in the business for a while, you have thought about SEO quite a bit. Okay. So there are whole there’s a whole lot of things people do to be SEO optimized. What people should be worried about or think about right now is AEO. AI engine optimization. How likely is ChatGPT or other AI platforms, how likely are they to recommend me if a home seller is trying to find a broker or a buyer? And that’s a completely different art. Okay? And I bet you a lot of people are not even thinking about it. Okay? Yeah. And and that’s the part that I want to say if you are in real estate Broker, either side, buyer seller. right now, that’s what you should be thinking about. Because the search volume is gonna search from keyword search to AI search more and more and more. And all you should be thinking about, if someone in Austin, Texas types in, Hey, I’m trying to sell my property, who are the best real estate agents that can help me? That list of 10 people that ChatGPT will spit out. It does it include you or not?

Dylan Silver (23:18)
On yeah. Are you on that list? What what do you gotta do to to get ranked higher in

Alex Mehr (23:22)
Exactly. And it’s a d completely different beast.

Dylan Silver (23:25)
We are coming up on time here, Alex. Any new projects or activities that you’re working on? Also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience?

Alex Mehr (23:33)
obviously the reason I am on your podcast and I’m talking to people is one, try to leverage AI instead of thinking of it as a an external threat. So you your mindset should shift. So AI is here, it’s gonna be here. How can I take advantage of it? Like the AEO example that I told you. On Supercool.com, for example, it’s just as simple as, here’s create a website for me. Now what can I do to optimize it for maximum AI search visibility? Okay. And it does the things that it needs to do to your website. and that’s a shameless plug, but I wanted to just put it out there that that is the type of thing that is feasible right now. And if you’re not thinking about that, and is and instead of thinking about that, you’re worried about AI replacing your job. you don’t have the bandwidth to think about okay, so how can I leverage it? So that’s a that’s a point I’m here to

Dylan Silver (24:33)
Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for your time.

Alex Mehr (24:37)
Absolutely. Thank you for having.