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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Micah Johnson interviews Clay Lehman, an expert in integrating AI into the real estate industry. They discuss the importance of building systems before implementing AI, the evolution of AI technologies, and the future opportunities for AI in business. Clay shares his journey of escaping the chaos of entrepreneurship and emphasizes the need for education and mastery in AI tools for long-term success in real estate.
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Micah Johnson (00:00)
do from here?Clay Lehman (00:00)
Well, especially becauseyou feel like you’re doing all the right things. You’re working really hard. You’re probably successful, meaning your business is growing. And that’s exactly what’s keeping you trapped is that your business is growing, but it’s not scaling. And there’s a difference between growth and scale. Growth is something that occurs, which is it’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t necessarily occur in a manner that’s sustainable because you need to add people or you need to change your processes.
Scaling anticipates those things. When you build a business that scales, it’s a business that grows without growing your discomfort.
Micah Johnson (02:06)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Clay Lehman, who’s been making some serious moves in the AI industry, particularly for how it involves the real estate space. So I’m excited to dive in today. Clay, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.Clay Lehman (02:22)
What’s up, Micah? Thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here.Micah Johnson (02:26)
Absolutely, absolutely. I’m glad for you to be on with us today. I think our listeners are really gonna take something away from how you’re approaching using AI and the experience that led you to it. Really giving folks understanding these tools are accessible and they’re very useful. So let’s dive in. For people who may not know you yet, what’s your main focus right now and what markets do you operate in?Clay Lehman (02:49)
So I’m helping busy professionals take back their lives, take control of the chaos. We all started our businesses to create freedom and we wake up one day and we’re kind of feeling trapped. I help people escape from that, primarily in the real estate world. And ⁓ I’m located in central Florida, but I work with agents all over the country.Micah Johnson (03:10)
Man, love that. And the way you said that, that sounds like a guy who’s had some experience with that particular trap feeling. So what led you to where you are today?Clay Lehman (03:20)
Absolutely. So I started my own business in 2009 and a few years in, I looked around and I said, man, this isn’t what I signed up for. In fact, my son asked me one day, goes, Hey, can you tell your boss to let you have some time off? And I said, well, actually son, I am the boss. goes, that’s awesome. You can come home anytime you want. And I felt like, it’s the exact opposite. And then I, over the years figured out how to change things around and create some margin for myself. And now that’s what I try to share with others.Micah Johnson (03:31)
YouYeah.
I love that man, cause it’s, not intuitive. And that’s what we were talking a little bit about pre recording was every entrepreneur gets into their business to create freedom. That’s the ultimate thing that we’re trying to create. And a few years in you do start to realize, man, I don’t feel so free. I don’t, I don’t feel what I thought I was supposed to feel right here. And like you’re saying you’re
Clay Lehman (04:08)
Right.Micah Johnson (04:13)
Your son, Hey, can you get some time off? And that was the thing you were trying to do was I want to, I want to see my kids grow up. I want to be around for the games. want to, like to pick mine up from school, right? Like it’s like, are you building a life that actually lets you do it? And it’s a sobering moment when you realize, no, no, I actually didn’t. So what doClay Lehman (04:18)
Exactly.That’s right.
Micah Johnson (04:34)
do from here?Clay Lehman (04:34)
Well, especially becauseyou feel like you’re doing all the right things. You’re working really hard. You’re probably successful, meaning your business is growing. And that’s exactly what’s keeping you trapped is that your business is growing, but it’s not scaling. And there’s a difference between growth and scale. Growth is something that occurs, which is it’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t necessarily occur in a manner that’s sustainable because you need to add people or you need to change your processes.
Scaling anticipates those things. When you build a business that scales, it’s a business that grows without growing your discomfort.
Micah Johnson (05:56)
Ooh, I love that definition of it because scale that word, it’s like a buzzword. gets tossed around so often and people mean quite a few different things by it. And I think some have used it to get themselves in a little bit of trouble. They, they, confused it for growth and, pour gasoline on a fire that they weren’t about to be able to control.Clay Lehman (06:01)
Mm-hmm.That’s right.
Yep.
Exactly.
Micah Johnson (06:16)
So from your experience of working with business professionals, what’s the typical thing you see them making that mistake on? Where’s that first place you point them to say, all right, welcome in, glad you noticed, this is where we’re gonna start.Clay Lehman (06:31)
Typically people are reaching out to me saying, can you help me implement AI in our business? And I say, I absolutely can, but it’s not where we’re going to start. Because usually AI is not their issue. Their issue is a lack of systems. That’s the number one thing I see across the board is they don’t have their processes documented, so they don’t have their systems systemized. And there’s just so much opportunity to fix things before you even start talking about implementing AI. It’s usually a systems issue.Micah Johnson (06:58)
I’ve seen that throughout my career as well, same kind of things. it’s one thing I like that you’re talking about is you build for growth. You build for scale. You set yourself up for it to happen before it happens. Cause if you get that in reverse, now you got your cart before the horse. You can’t really see what it is you’re trying to do. You’re moving things and you’re pulling levers, but you’re not sure like what it’s doing. And you get this.Clay Lehman (07:16)
Exactly.Micah Johnson (07:24)
Okay, your bottom line goes up, great job, revenue is higher. So you get this odd reinforcement that you’re, like you said, doing that right thing, but you don’t even really know what you’re doing. You’re just doing stuff. And that’s kind of where I, in my own life and other people that I’ve met that build businesses, entrepreneurs, that’s that no man’s land you go through, where you got the passion, you got the drive, you got the idea, you’re willing to work hard.Clay Lehman (07:30)
That’s right.That’s exactly right.
Exactly.
Micah Johnson (07:52)
But now you’re going to plug it into something that’s existed for a long time. So based on your experience, how long you’ve been doing this, is it new stuff that you’re seeing applied besides the AI part living more in the process and systems, or is it time and tested, true ideas?Clay Lehman (08:08)
Well, the fundamentals haven’t changed. I mean, the fundamentals are the same from probably the time we were writing on Papyrus. I mean, the fundamentals of business growth are the same. But we do have tools to make it easier. And this is where we might start talking about AI when I’m working with somebody. I encourage people to document their processes using a method called the Camp Quarter method that Dan Martell wrote about in Buy Back Your Time.Which effectively means just record yourself doing a process and it’s so much easier now than it’s ever been because you can use a program like Loom that’ll record you and record your screen. You talk to the screen while you’re doing the work. Then when you’re done doing the process, Loom will create a transcript and this is where AI comes into it. We can take that transcript, drop it into chat or Gemini or whatever, ask it to turn that transcript into a standard operating procedure. Boom, you’ve got your first process documented.
Micah Johnson (09:03)
And you could be that’s so true. Loom is a program I use quite often. And if you’ve never heard of it out there, it’s a free plugin. You can download it on Chrome or you just, I can see it on my screen right now, or you click it, you get 25 free videos. You only have to pay for anything out of the gate that they do max at five minutes, I think on the unpaid one, but you should be able to document it pretty quick, right? Make a couple videos of it, a couple of transcripts, but it is it’sClay Lehman (09:14)
Yeah, me too.Yeah.
Or you
pay for a month and get your stuff in and move on.
Micah Johnson (09:33)
Right. And it’s not, these aren’t crazy expensive tools either. They’re not things that are going to sink you, especially when it comes to this, the unsexy part of business, right? It’s like, it’s the inside. We all want it to look like the sports car on the outside, but behind that, you know, the beautiful veneer is all the same stuff. You got to have an engine, you got to have transmit, like you got to have all these things that make it go. And they’re the unsexy parts. If you just saw one of those sitting onClay Lehman (09:54)
Great analogy.Micah Johnson (10:01)
the side of the road, you wouldn’t be like, wow, look at that. That’s a great drive shaft. Right? Like it’s, it’s just not what you would do.Clay Lehman (10:04)
That’s right.That’s right.
Micah Johnson (10:09)
So moving on in that idea of how you’re applying, so you’re working with them, making sure they have the fundamentals, and then you’re plugging in on AI. So tell me about that. What are some big opportunities you’re seeing in 2026 for the further application of these tools in your business?Clay Lehman (11:00)
things that are evolving the most quickly that I think can help impact business. The first one is ⁓ AI voice agents. They’ve come so far. It’s just getting to a point where when you talk to an AI agent it’s getting harder and harder to tell. Now to be clear I don’t advocate necessarily tricking people.you know, into thinking they’re speaking to a human, but at the same time, if it says, hi, you’ve reached Lehman strategic partners, I’m an AI agent, I’m Clay, I’d love to help you today. I just think the…
objection to that is going to be lowered more and more throughout 2026 because when you call businesses like I called Bank of America this morning, you know who the first person I talked to was? Their AI agent. As more and more people do that, they’ll get accustomed to do it, you know, interacting with the big businesses using it. Smaller businesses like us can start to implement it. So I think voice AI is a huge opportunity.
Micah Johnson (11:48)
Right?The one thing I love about that idea too, and watching its evolution is one of the things we all call people and deal with AI agents and actually deal with humans too. And one thing an AI agent removes is that person having a bad day on the front end. When you know that you can guarantee the first experience is going to be pleasurable, which is one of the most important ones anyone’s having with your business out of the gate,
Clay Lehman (12:16)
That’s right.Absolutely.
Micah Johnson (12:27)
That’s something I’m watching people’s minds change on is I don’t so much mind talking to AI if it can solve my problem and it treats me well, right? It’s not, I don’t have to worry about certain parts. And like you said, its whole goal isn’t to replace a human, it’s to get you to the right one, right? We just have a problem that we want solved, get me to the right place. And that’s where it’s getting faster, better, it’s learning and it makes it way more powerful. So I love that. I’m excited for that too.Clay Lehman (12:44)
That’s right.Absolutely.
Micah Johnson (12:57)
Who do you see can benefit from that? Is that who are you recommending in your world? We ⁓ are real estate investor specific. What do you see the connection there?Clay Lehman (13:07)
Well, I could see that being like if you advertise for leads to buy houses, let’s say you’re doing a we buy ugly houses or any type of place where you’re advertising or to for sale by owners. You could use that as an initial screening because I know that when investors are dialing for houses and whatnot, a lot of them are bad fits. This could be a great initial screening where it says, hey, I was calling. I see you’re interested in selling your house and you can trade it so easy to train theseMicah Johnson (13:29)
Mm-hmm.Clay Lehman (13:37)
models just to qualify people or inbound calls. If you get a lot of inbound calls before it routes to you, you can have it qualify people. That lead qualification would be a huge application for this process.Micah Johnson (13:50)
And you’re right. It’s where a lot of time waste happens. Well, not really waste because you have to sort through it anyways as someone who’s made those calls, right? you’re, you, and especially in most deals don’t work for an investor. Like most don’t because of what you’re looking for, what you’re trying to do. So it’s, you’re sifting through so many leads that are just not fits. They’re not, they’re never going to do something. So having that ability on the front to one, keep yourClay Lehman (13:56)
It’s an investment of time.Micah Johnson (14:18)
team a little bit slimmer, I guess, and then keep you doing the money making action. Right. That is so important in business is how many times you actually doing the business or you just working on it to make it do what it’s supposed to do. And if you’re stuck in the in-between, that’s a lot of money you end up losing.Clay Lehman (14:23)
Exactly.Yeah, I could. So I see pairing a voice agent with a chat agent or a text agent, because that’s another area where you can use your eyes to nurture your leads, not just over email, but also over SMS. It’s really easy to set them up on text. And again, they’re very good at natural language conversations. And then you can train them that, when when we get to this point, hand them over to me. And I know a number of real estate professionals that use a chat.
that are just seeing the praises of how well it does in nurturing and handing off qualified leads. ⁓
Micah Johnson (15:53)
Absolutely. I see it in the mastermind that I’m with, where the tools where we’re using it at, it can have a real conversation. Based on what we’re talking about, there’s a closed environment it’s taking place in because there’s a particular conversation we’re trying to have, but it’s good at having it. And again, I don’t think it’s so much trying to trick people. It just, it doesn’t matter, right? ⁓Clay Lehman (16:04)
Exactly.think so. mean that’s the other thing.
The big thing is you know especially in the state of Florida or whatever if you’re in a state where you’re required to disclose voice recording make sure that you program your voice agent which I don’t think I mentioned this and it’s not really program training your voice agent is so easy anymore.
You simply would tell it, hey, in your initial greeting, disclose that it’s a recorded conversation. I don’t know that you necessarily are under any obligation, nor do I feel like there’s a reason to disclose necessarily to say, hey, I’m an AI agent. Although many, when you talk to it, I think that that’s the area of AI. Everything’s evolving in terms of what’s.
Micah Johnson (16:57)
ofClay Lehman (16:57)
you know, where’s the line, which way do you go with different disclosures? But I just think in this case, you hit the nail on the head. What people care about is, am I getting my question answered? Am I getting what I need from this interaction? You know, I read a book a while ago that talked about that people don’t get angry about customer service interactions if they solve their problem.So if they call and get a recording and that recording solves their problem, they don’t care that they talk to a recording. It’s when the recording doesn’t solve the problem and then the next person they talk to doesn’t solve the problem. And they call it channel switching. It’s like the more channel switching you do. So if you can implement an AI agent that doesn’t channel switch people, that answers their questions, I mean, it’s a win.
Micah Johnson (17:20)
Right.Right, right. And that’s where, I mean, just watching the evolution of it, because when did, what year did you get involved in AI? How long have you been working in this space intentionally?
Clay Lehman (17:51)
would say it was end of 20, mid 23 towards the end of 23 when I really kind of dove in.Micah Johnson (17:59)
And what’s the biggest change in evolution you’ve seen so far in all of it?Clay Lehman (18:04)
Man, that’s hard to nail down. I would say that its capabilities have broadened. one of the items that we talked about leading into our conversation was agentic AI has been a huge evolution where it’s gone from you giving it questions and it giving you answers to you giving it tasks and it giving you results. That’s been a huge evolution.Micah Johnson (18:26)
Mmm.And dig in a little bit deeper there. Cause so often right now, if you’re not digging into AI, you kind of get stuck at the early tools, right? You’re, know, Grok, you know, chat GPT, you may know Claude, right? You’re, those are the ones that you may know those, but there’s, there’s tools out there that are beyond those. And that’s where, once you start digging into the world of it, you start finding things like you’re talking about. Cause there was one tool you were talking about beforehand.
Clay Lehman (18:37)
Sure.Right. No, you’re nailing it.
Micah Johnson (18:57)
Phragentic. Was it Manus? Is that the correct name of it?Clay Lehman (19:01)
That’s right, MANUS, M-A-N-U-S, it’s a very powerful agentic AI model. And agentic AI is, like I said, you give it a task and it gives you a result.For example, I’ve used it, one of my clients was starting a new business. So I went into Manus and I asked it to research the specific business, the geography within which that person was starting the business, successful marketing plans that they could mimic, and then I had it design the marketing plan. It took it a step further and even implemented a website for them. So it can do all of those things. Yesterday I had it build an app for me. I had
Micah Johnson (19:41)
Wow.Clay Lehman (19:47)
someone asked me, hey, do you have any custom AI tools that will test someone’s aptitude with AI?And I said, well, I don’t have a custom tool, but I could see that as a great app. So I went into Manus, I described what I wanted from the application, and within, I’d say, five to 10 minutes, it had produced a fully functional web-based app where people could log in, take their assessment, results were emailed to them, results were emailed to the person that signed them up for the testing. And it literally took me 10 minutes to design the And I didn’t do anything, I told it what I wanted, and it built the app for me.
Micah Johnson (19:58)
Right?Clay Lehman (20:24)
That’s a JITIC AI.Micah Johnson (20:26)
And that’s powerful because those processes used to take months, right? It didn’t, it was a long, tedious thing. Usually you went through multiple developers because they just didn’t understand what it was you wanted exactly. And then they would put in, this is the common complaint I heard the most. They’d put their own twist. They’d think of something like, this would be another great thing to add that you didn’t ask for. And now you’re just like, what? I, what? Right.Clay Lehman (20:37)
Lots of back and forth. Yep.No, no, yeah, it’s not to mention the cost. you know,
what I did yesterday with Manus, it’s a credit based app, but I use 200 credits. You get 300 free credits a day, even on the free account. So it basically built that thing for me effectively for free. So it’s a great tool.
Micah Johnson (21:15)
Yeah, it is. if you’re out there listening to this, dig a few layers deeper. there, you recommend how to search for better products? That’s something I always like to try to figure out because I’m not that good at searching for things. I’m like, okay, how do I go find this? What would I type here? So if someone wanted to dig deeper, what would you recommend?Clay Lehman (21:31)
Yeah.Well, I would say there’s some great Facebook communities out there. I’m a member of one called AI prompts for entrepreneurs. That was one of the early areas that I started my.
journey. I have my own Facebook group called Unstuck AI where we talk a lot about tools. But the thing I’d encourage people to do is don’t get shiny object syndrome and go chasing everything. Master wherever you’re at first. So if you’re just starting in chat, GPT or Gemini, spend more time there. Keep your ears and eyes open to what people might be talking about. But at the same time, don’t chase every shiny object. And as much as I’m pointing a finger at others, I’m
pointing a finger at myself and just as a reminder, because it’s so tempting, especially these days as things evolve so quickly and everybody’s, I do this with AI and I do that with AI. It’s like, just master where you’re at. But exactly, but if you’re curious, there are some great groups on Facebook where you can learn more about AI.
Micah Johnson (22:26)
I wanna do that.And you do some other education, don’t you? Where, tell us a little bit about that, where, you know, if they want to move back, so you’ve got a Facebook group, well, what’s another way for people to be able to reach out to you and find you to learn more about this?
Clay Lehman (22:37)
Yes, sir.So I have a school community called the Real Estate AI Playbook where we introduce, we’ve got a library of custom AI tools. For example, we have one that helps people value properties.
I’ve used I use it myself. I’m a real estate investor. I own some rental properties I own a commercial rental property and that was the one the other day where I didn’t have a clue really how to price my Rental my spate my office space and so I dropped it into this custom tool We’ve built and it helped me walk through that process We also have a group library of ⁓ one to five minute quick win AI videos and they are designed to help people go from just getting started to learning a little bit more to
understanding to meet, you know, moderate mastery to hopefully eventually feeling like their AI masters. All of this is structured around helping people take control of whatever the chaos is in their business. So whether that’s real estate investor, we have great resources on how to manage your properties, manage information about your properties. There’s some tools that I use for that that we talked about in there. We have a lot of great tools in there and it’s it’s an evolving living community of like
people trying to grow their businesses.
Micah Johnson (23:59)
Love that, and what’s the name of it?Clay Lehman (24:01)
It’s the Real Estate AI Playbook on school.Micah Johnson (24:04)
Realisticplaybook. I thought I heard you say it, but I wanted to make sure I heard it right way. Absolutely. it’s one thing I really appreciate that you’re talking about, especially with that community is, is education. And this is a part where entrepreneurs, love to skip this part. There’s a, an acronym we use in a group that I’m in where you call it case, where it’s collect data, analyze your data, strategize, and then execute. And entrepreneurs, the love, me included.
Clay Lehman (24:08)
Yeah, I appreciate that.Micah Johnson (24:32)
strategy and execution. We love that part. That’s our favorite part. But the main part is the collecting and analyzing because it tells you what to strategize and execute. And it’s something I’ve had to really pay attention to in my business and my own heck, my own personal life is just, Hey, don’t, don’t choose so fast. You’re not collecting enough data. You’re not analyzing it enough. And one thing I’ve learned about it is it’ll eventually become obvious.Clay Lehman (24:35)
Right, right. That other part, meh.Agreed.
Micah Johnson (24:59)
part I got to strategize and execute on if I take long enough to keep educating myself. And that’s what I would encourage if you’re listening, educate yourself on these things. Don’t feel like you have to know it all today, because I know we’re all in a hurry. The best time to have something done is yesterday. I get it. Take the time because real estate specifically, this is long term thinking. This is you are thinking long game. You get rich slow in this world. So take the time to learn the tools.Clay Lehman (25:16)
Right.Micah Johnson (25:29)
and use them to your advantage. Clay, man, I really appreciate your time, man. You’re storing your perspective today. I love the way you’re approaching it. Absolutely, man, absolutely. So if you’re listening today, please make sure you check the show notes. We’ll have Clay’s Facebook group there, his school community link there, so you can reach out to him, touch base, and start putting the fundamentals together in your business that lead to these other tools being able to now scale in the proper way. So thanks for watching. Please like today’s episode.Clay Lehman (25:34)
this has been great. I appreciate you.Micah Johnson (25:58)
share it with someone else that you think would get value out of it. And don’t forget to subscribe. We got more conversations coming up with operators just like Clay who are out there making a difference, building a real business for themselves and helping others do it too. So again, Clay, thanks for joining us. We’ll see you all in the next episode.Clay Lehman (26:15)
Thank you, sir.
