LeadingLane Podcast

Steven L Burch (00:00)
Welcome to the Leading Lane podcast. And you know, the topic is always AI, so let's still continue with AI. I hate seeing everything AI, AI, AI, but I love this. And so I want to be able to share it with you. And Ashley, I think that you were a big Chat GPT fan, which I think you still

Ashley Fredrick (00:17)
Hmm.

Steven L Burch (00:18)
use, I still use too.

But I kinda converted you maybe a little bit over to Cloud. Tell me a little. kinda like I'm gonna I'm trying to convert you from your Android phone over to Apple. so tell me like what are the differences that you see? I'm not a very techie person in my opinion. So like this is not gonna be h like well, this is not gonna be something freaking crazy tech stuff. This is like everyday use cases. What do you use chat for? What do you use cloud for? What's the difference?

Ashley Fredrick (00:45)
feel like you're light years ahead of me. but I feel like for chat I still like it for like editing my emails. you know normally I have to put like make this sound nicer. I have to put that a lot. I also like it for my write ups, my reels, those types of things. Like I feel like over the last year it's gotten to know me pretty well on those. So I do like it.

for that aspect. Sometimes when I don't like what Claude says, I'll go back to chat and put in the same thing. Claude, I feel like, is more not like the, at least for me, like not like the personable, you know, but more so like systems things that you can set up for it to do. The one that I like that I set up that I think I saw off of an Instagram was morning triage.

So every morning, which I have to remember to open Cloud, but every morning once I open it, it goes through my email and gives me like the five things that I might not have responded to the night before. And so it's like five most important, like three intermediary, and then three like FYIs. I like that that I'm like, yep, forgot to do that. I haven't used it a ton for problem solving. I have used it more so for

like flyers and stuff. So I've had a lot of issues where I was able to download a flyer but it wasn't working with what I wanted it to. It's connected to my Canva. So I'll put in what I want and then I'll say like it needs to say open house instead of just listed or whatnot. And so instead of me making all of that. I will tell you the one thing I thought I think I texted you this too was I was like my mind was blown was I have a commercial listing that has 10 leases.

And I scanned in all ten leases, put them in Claude, and then told it to make me a rent roll. And it made me a rent roll in thirty seconds, which would have made taken me like at least a half hour, if not more. so I had everyone's name, start date, security deposit, monthly payment, in date, and any special terms.

And then I just went back and like double verified. I think there was just a couple misspellings on names and stuff like that. But that one to me was wild. So

Steven L Burch (03:01)
Mm-hmm. So

do you feel one, do you think that AI is gonna replace the human, specifically in real estate, like the realtor?

Ashley Fredrick (03:10)
I do not. it's still not perfect. I don't know if it will ever be perfect. For example, I do like to use it for summarizing offers too. Like I like the way that it lays it out. but you have to be careful because I did that last week and it missed that there was a home warranty. So

Steven L Burch (03:25)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (03:26)
I caught it and just said, It appears you missed the home warranty on whatever and it was like, yep, we did. So, you know, I I know that another client had the same exact thing and they just

solely relied on chat and then they sent it out to everyone. Well, they ended up having to pay for a home warranty because they missed it. I think that as I said, I use it as an overview, but there's so many like gray areas when you're going over offers too. Like I like to have to give people examples where I don't think chat or Claude's gonna necessarily be able to give them real life examples of when the supplies.

Steven L Burch (04:00)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (04:01)
I've also had it where client, you know,

This buyer asked for repairs and the seller said, Well, chat told me that these repairs don't have to be made. And I was like, Okay, well, that's not like a local doesn't our

Steven L Burch (04:17)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (04:17)
local market. It's still a safety.

Steven L Burch (04:19)
When when was last time chat was in your house?

Ashley Fredrick (04:21)
Right. That's kind of like with Zestimates, right? I was like, when's the last time

Steven L Burch (04:25)
Right.

Ashley Fredrick (04:25)
Zestimate Azilla was in your house and saw either you did do updates or didn't do updates? So I still I still think that it goes back to relationships and I still think that if people if you have good enough relationships, those relationships will always trump AI because somebody needs someone to talk to. So I think I've given a couple of examples like as of recently, more so like somebody that lost unexpectedly lost their husband, like

they're not gonna re they're not gonna rely on AI to have like that emotional connection with them about that. I just had someone this week that they bought five houses from me. I thought that our journey was over because they were in their like end home, right? Well, they had a change in jobs and they're probably gonna have to move again. And like that was a really hard conversation to have because that was their dream home. Like they're not gonna go back to AI to have that story about how

Their job changed and they need my help to find that next home. So I think that relationships are still key. And I think it would be disastrous if AI took over. And I think that people would get screwed. And I think that people wouldn't know what they were actually agreeing to, because we all know like what somebody interprets in a contract and what reality is are two very different things.

Steven L Burch (05:39)
Right.

Ashley Fredrick (05:40)
and so I think that there still has to be the human balance of

Making sure they understand what they're signing, taking them through the steps. I mean, maybe they'll have a robot that meets you for a home inspection, but same thing, like it's not gonna be the same. Is the robot gonna do the inspection?

Steven L Burch (05:56)
Like I th I think it's wild. Like yes, I I love AI, but it's a tool, it's an enhancement, it's too it's my critical thinking, right? My stre strategic partner. I don't solely rely on it for everything. So still having that human in the loop aspect of everything to verify 'cause it's still learning. I'm still learning about AI, so I can't fully just let go of that control quite yet. Even though I'm

Getting in there, but I I just don't foresee all of all of these transactions and millions, billions of dollars just being flown all over the place just because of artificial intelligence. No way.

Ashley Fredrick (06:37)
Great. You though have used Claude, I think, quite in depth as far as some skill sets. So I know that there's like the coworkslash skills. I haven't really dive dove into the skills. So can you maybe tell us what you're doing a little bit?

Steven L Burch (06:55)
So cloud released, it is called record skill. So in co-work, if you have the app, record a skill. And think of it just as legit you have your administrative admin, day one, sitting next to you, and they're looking over your shoulder and you are talking to them about

first you go to the MLS and you search the property address. Then next you go to the county website for the parcel parcel search. Then you go to the tax site, right? Blah blah blah. You're you are already kind of talking through with your administrative admin of what these steps are and that's how you train them. So record a skill and co-work is just that. So it's going to record your screen.

So it's going to see what you are seeing. It is going to listen to how you are speaking and what you are saying. It is watching your clicks and how you are navigating, going through everything. So it is legit capturing the skill real time. And so what is really cool to me is that if there is a faster way or a different way, I'll give you an example. The

I typically type in the person's last name in the tax search. And then if that doesn't work because ours is so clunky, I will do just the the numbers of the address and the first letter of the address. Well, Claude, after I recorded the skill, it identified that after we already pulled from the parcel search, there's an ID number on that parcel search that we can plug directly into the tax search and go directly to that.

actual property. So there were no last names or anything else. And I had no fruit and clue that was the number that correlated directly to there and it figured it out. So it was able to expedite that skill. Insane. Like even just learning that I thought was a huge benefit. but what I did over this weekend, just because I kind of geeked out a bit is I had I created a skill to do an end-to-end not just a CMA but

getting all the data, getting all my comps out of the MLS, everything from the county website, going to RPR, going to Zillow, and then going to our present to put all the MLS numbers that I pulled for the comps out of the MLS to do the data entry to complete that. Then from there I have it go into our forms and create me a listing packet based off of my templates and all the information that it learned and all of it's done within 30 minutes.

Now it took me probably about two hours to understand like what I was doing to be able to connect everything, but it's just a compound effect. So now all I have to do is tell Claude, hey, need a CMA for da-da-da address.

And it will go and do all the research and prep it up in my inbox and say, here's everything that is ready for you. Am I going to completely just say, yeah, that's 100% accurate? No, I'm still gonna go everything, I'm still gonna review it. But all of that data and getting the file ready for me, the prep work, if it gets at least 70%, 50% done for me, and I just have to make edits or whatever I need to do, like I feel like it's a huge time saver.

And

then step further with that, where I'm really going with this, is imagine trainings. Imagine being able to get new agents or agents that need help with this type of stuff. Imagine me giving you how I do my CMA, and you now have a a cowork, right? an admin that will be able to walk you right through all of it. So

It's freaking insane. It's mind-boggling. Showed one of my agents yesterday and she was like, I need that. We're gonna have to sit

Ashley Fredrick (10:37)
Okay.

Steven L Burch (10:37)
down and figure that that out. So it's super cool. I I love it. It's kind of eerie, but it's a a fun thing to be able to learn into, I think.

Ashley Fredrick (10:47)
So did you have any issues with it like accessing like your MLS or the intranet or anything like that?

Steven L Burch (10:53)
So b I mean I was already on my computer, so already was logged into those things. So I made it to where I have to log in because I don't want it logging in on my behalf and I think that's already a pre set that's in Claude. but yeah, so I press login on two of my systems because there's single sign-on on our internet to be able to go to other tools and resources. But yeah, that pretty freaking easy. Two buttons and

Told it what to do and it's on its way.

Ashley Fredrick (11:19)
Yeah, I mean you think about people that are like hiring VAs or

Steven L Burch (11:24)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (11:25)
you know, virtual or not. I mean, if you could train it to take up some of that time, I think for me it's like a matter of trying to find the time to create the skills. but you know, if you can really try to think about like I started making a list, I think I told you this of everything I don't like doing. gets longer by the day. but

You know what I mean? Like and for me on the property management side, like with leases, those types of things, like I could if I could have the lease in there and tell the address, which I bet I could probably do, which I'm just not doing. but you know, like closing statement letters. I would really be interested to see if it could create the partial in my MLS, because that is super timer consuming for me. so I think just trying to carve out some time. what other things are you?

using it for? Like what are other like any specific daily texts?

Steven L Burch (12:11)
So I actually have an AI receptionist for our office

Ashley Fredrick (12:14)
Really? Mm-hmm.

Steven L Burch (12:16)
and that is connected to Claude on the back end. And it's Vapi is what I use for that. And so we trained

Ashley Fredrick (12:23)
How do you saw that?

Steven L Burch (12:24)
vap vappi V A P I, I believe. Vapi dot AI. And so I trained it to be more so of a a buffer of

you know, how can I help you? How does it need to be routed? so if they ask for an agent, then they will say, hold on and do a warrant transfer over to the agent that they asked for. I already have all of the roster already there, just like an admin would or a receptionist.

if they say that they're looking to buy or sell, they would ask if they've ever worked with an agent in our office. They say no, and then that is routed out as well. if it's inquiring if the person's inquiring about a rental, right? Like so instead of an IVR of press one, press two, I it's a conversation of asking discovery questions. And AI is going to take it as far as it can possibly take it and get as much information and then transfer it.

from there to the correct person if somebody's available. If not available, then they're gonna go ahead and just take a message and then in our phone system, which is Zendesk, it creates a ticket and says, hey, this person needs called back. Here's their message, just as if an admin were writing it and leaving it. I think of like the old tool when I first got in real estate, the little receipt books. You have a phone message and you're gonna write the time and everything. So it does essentially the same exact thing. So now I don't have to have somebody physically sitting there answering the phone.

And it's twenty four seven seven days a week.

Ashley Fredrick (13:49)
Do you remember when we talked about that? was it like Ruby or something?

Steven L Burch (13:55)
Yeah. R Ruby is mm-hmm. But then that's a

Ashley Fredrick (13:55)
Yeah, it's almost like that. But now you're not feeling that.

Steven L Burch (14:00)
the human, right? Like a fraction of the the dollar. And I don't remember how much it was on Ruby, which is a an basically an inbound call center that live answer for you and then routes over to you or takes the message. I think last month when I did my numbers, we had like six hundred and some phone calls in the thirty days.

And I think I spent less than fifty dollars for the I receptionists.

Ashley Fredrick (14:25)
I always think too, like it would be nice. I I hate when people say, like, you know, agents post all the time, like, answer your damn phone. And my caveat

Steven L Burch (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (14:35)
to that is just you can't always answer your phone. So, like, right,

Steven L Burch (14:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (14:40)
like I'm on a podcast right now and I see a call came through. Like, I'm not gonna stop the podcast, take a call, or if I'm meeting with buyers writing an offer, I'm not gonna answer the phone. I think that that's rude.

So it would be nice if something were in place to just catch them instead of them going through their rollodeck of agents.

Steven L Burch (14:56)
Yeah. And

that legit is I mean, forward your calls. Forward your calls and like set it and forget it type of thing. Obviously where I would suck at that is remembering to unford my calls. but nonetheless

Ashley Fredrick (15:09)
On phone.

Steven L Burch (15:11)
it at least now is forwarded. And I'm sure we can you can even figure out a way to be able to on an iPhone put do not disturb.

And like a shortcut to be able to say forward these calls over. So I'm sure that there's shortcuts. I've never looked into it, but imagine like your phone 24-7 is always going to be answered. And you know, I was talking to our agents about this couple of weeks ago, and some of the agents piped up really quickly and they were like, Well, I don't like it. Cool. Somebody's like, Well, I'm gonna I'll I hang up on anything that's AI, right?

Because the thing here is if they were calling you, they should be calling your cell phone. They're calling the office. we have other companies, we have other things that we do. You know, we're just not a receptionist for you as an agent. You're an independent contractor. So we as a company made the determination to be able to invest in this. Do we have people that, you know, say that they don't like it callers that are clients and customers? Yeah, they do. But then when we actually get on the phone and they tell us that, we're like, Okay, so

We're on the phone now and y if you were to leave a voicemail, which we don't have on our phone system, like how would you we know to be able to call you back? This actually expedited us getting on the phone. They're like, well, I never really thought of it quite like that.

Yeah. So I think that when you explain it to people of like what is it and honestly, where in this world, in this in like not just in this industry, where in the world, like you're calling a service provider, you're going to have some sort of automation of an IVR phone tree or AI receptionist, something.

Ashley Fredrick (16:42)
On hold for thirty minutes.

Steven L Burch (16:44)
Right. Like

I would much rather leave a message and have somebody give me a call back and know exactly what I'm already I mean, because that's the other thing. She Eiley is her name. Eiley asks like what is this in reference to? What is the address or whatever else it is and tries to get that information so we now have time to be able to do the research before we're calling them back. We're prepared. It it's

Ashley Fredrick (17:04)
Right.

Steven L Burch (17:05)
so much easier to be able to do everything. It took a little bit to adjust to totally get it. but now I can't

Ever imagine going back to just a regular admin receptionist that's just sitting there at the the desk and answering the phone? No.

Ashley Fredrick (17:18)
Well,

I also think about like we talk about it like when we're going on vacation. Like it'd be nice if you were on the beach for if you want to just enjoy yourself for two hours and you could forward it or you know, something like that. one thought I had, and I don't know, I'm sure you've already tried this, but like the stuff that we have in Tango or that you created in Tango, have you moved that over to Claude?

Steven L Burch (17:39)
so Claud has access to be able to pull that over and we're actually in the works right now to revamp our SOPs, if you will, and inserting those in. And so think of just like what you do with Tango. If you Tango what is it, app dot Tango or something like that. it does the screen Yeah.

Ashley Fredrick (17:54)
Tingo dot I or something. Mm-hmm.

Steven L Burch (17:57)
it does the screenshots and same concept. That's exactly the same thing as the record skill, plus add the voice.

aspect of it training plus the knowledge of it learning the system and trying to improve it as well.

Ashley Fredrick (18:13)
Yeah, I mean I just think it'd be

Steven L Burch (18:13)
It's fucking cool.

Ashley Fredrick (18:14)
great if there's something that you already have too that you can just pull those in to amplify it even more.

Steven L Burch (18:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I I think I mean every day something is being dropped. and you know, I I can't lie, I'm a I don't want to say I'm the shiny object person, but I do like things of like, ooh, can that make my life better? I try extremely hard not to just jump. I want to test it out and see, and yes, we get a little bit better. And I I mean each time, but we have moved a lot of systems.

But I have noticed with AI is that the system that works for you, whatever it is, like that's what you, in my opinion, should stick with. And then you can add different things versus completely shifting and changing and jumping out of it. So it's a tool stack versus you have to be exclusive to one solution.

Ashley Fredrick (19:05)
also think like what we talk about too is like it's what are you gonna actually use. So you can buy all these things, but what are you gonna actually implement?

Steven L Burch (19:14)
Right. Right.

Ashley Fredrick (19:15)
I think that there's so many options and I think that there's so many, you know, ads on TikTok and Instagram about this Claude course and that Claude course. And I think I've downloaded a couple and then I don't think ever actually watched the courses, which is what they do, right? Like they get their money by people signing up. But I

Steven L Burch (19:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fredrick (19:32)
think

the fast pace of it changing all the time too is, you know, part of it. But I think if you are really direct with Claude or Chat and what you're wanting, I think that they can walk you through it. One thing I will say is that I do think people need to work on like customizing their AI because I hate when I get emails from people that you know were fully chat response. Like, do I have it help me with stuff? Yes. Do I go back and still edit some of it? But

When it doesn't sound like the person that you know, that you talk to on a regular basis when you've been emailing them for years and then it doesn't sound anything like that. Like I think you just have to be cautious of making sure that it still sounds like you.

Steven L Burch (20:15)
Yeah, I think the customization has to be there. And you know, what I actually have learned that has really benefited me and I i it's almost kind of asked backwards of what chat is when I first started, is one, AI knows AI better than you. So making

Ashley Fredrick (20:32)
And

Steven L Burch (20:33)
sure that you don't think that you have to be the one to tell it every single little step, because AI has the resources.

To do it and probably knows different routes or better routes to be able to get it there quicker, faster, more efficient. So AI knows AI better. Two is in results and outcomes. Like I try very hard not to have more of a prompt that's like a sentence or two when I first start with Claude. So I basically just tell it like what I'm after is this. And I try to be as I don't want to say.

broad, but I'm not being super sp specific either. Like I'm struggling with being on the phone twenty-four seven and I really want to find a solution so that I'm not bog down to my desk. Like then that would be able to pr produce me into what about an AI receptionist? What about this? Blah blah blah blah blah. So I use that as a brain or like a strategic partner

But not as in me directing it, as in enhancing the ideas and bringing it back and then telling it to do everything for me versus me telling

Ashley Fredrick (21:36)
Well then it normally ask

like it asks follow up questions, right? Or it might say something

Steven L Burch (21:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ashley Fredrick (21:41)
or is this or is it something different than these questions. So I think really trying to go back and forth with it.

Steven L Burch (21:47)
Yeah. and the last thing I'll leave you with is always ending your prompt, like just even when you think that you have it, it's giving you the the end result that you're after, is how can you improve upon this? And just seeing what it says, if there's anything else that you're missing, that question is broad enough that you don't have to say gaps, what am I missing? You know, all these different things. how can you, and it's not we, but

Not a we thing. This is a you Claude thing. How can you improve upon this? And I think the results that you get out of that are tremendous. So still learning. I'm no expert. Like still fumble my way through all of this, but I will tell you, it's been fun, it's been frustrating. but I see that there's so much opportunity and I you already know that I love systems, I love streamlining things, I love the process. So this is really

R right up my alley. Like, love it.

Ashley Fredrick (22:38)
Yeah.

Super grateful for these tips. I think that anyone that's listening, like definitely give some of these skills a try and tell us if one works well for you or if you found a skill that you think would be great to share, we'd love to hear about it.

Steven L Burch (22:49)
Thanks for tuning in. See you next time.