Stop Prompting, Start Onboarding

What if the best AI tip you hear all year comes from someone who'd rather be hiking in the Virginia wilderness than sitting in front of his laptop? So, what made you sign up for ChatGPT as soon as it came out? You're like, "This is what I've been waiting for my whole life." Yeah, I was ready to usher in the end of the world and it seemed like very free way to do it. You got to trust it to something. It's a PhD level brain in marketing and consumer engagement psychology.

It knows more than we do. So, say it a little bit slower for those in the back. Interview me. Interview me. Ask me what you need to know about me to be a better assistant and then help me understand how you can assist me in my business. AI is not replacing you, but the agent who uses it will. This is AI agent advantage. One expert, one tool, one thing you can implement today with your host Jan. Welcome to AI Agent Advantage. I'm Jan and this episode is brought to you by our founding partners, Wise Agent, Subi, and the CE Shop.

These are companies that believe in what we're building here. We're grateful to have them in our corner. All right, let's get into it. What if the best AI tip you hear all year comes from someone who'd rather be hiking in the Virginia wilderness than sitting in front of his laptop? My guest today oversees 300 agents. He trains real estate agents across the country and figured out Claude Co in a way that is genuinely changing how his firm runs. Stay with me. This one is practical and it's fast.

All right, Matthew Wthbun, welcome to AI Agent Advantage. Hey J man, how are you? Thanks for having me. Doing well, thanks. So, for people who don't know you, you are the executive vice president at Coldwell Banker Elite, licensed broker in the DMV, also known as DC, Maryland, and Virginia. You oversee 300 agents, and you've won instructor of the year at the national level multiple times. But the thing that surprised me when I read your intake form is that you'd rather be in the woods than a computer.

Jonathan, say, "What? What?" Tell me, tell me I read that right. No, you absolutely read it right. If um if tomorrow an EMT drop EMP dropped and I had to go find a cabin in the woods for the rest of my life, I'd probably be happy. Um I mean, I love tech. I love the gadgets. I love the resources, but my favorite YouTube channel is to watch the guys who are out in the middle of the woods with a hatchet building a cabin. Like it's I don't know.

It's this primal thing I think of. But I will tell you this last weekend my brother and I went camping and it I mean it rained and rained and rained and rained and rain rained and at one point we didn't have internet access but we were walking into one dry patch going Elon Musk's Wi-Fi solution. How much a month? I need it. I'm camping but I need it. We're getting Sky. But if anybody's interested it's 50 bucks a month. It's it's pennies. So Oh, that's Yeah, that's worth it.

I think I did some research recently too on that. Now you you said also that you've been waiting all your life for AI to take over. Like walk me back. Are you thinking the Terminator Sarah Connor is coming? Like what what's the deal there? So fun story. My uh fun fact about that. My mother's f my mother's favorite movie by the way was the Terminator series and she very much saw herself as Sarah Connor. Um, uh, she, you know, loved the idea of of, you know, robots and and sci-fi and stuff.

She just loved it. And, uh, uh, no, I I got to say, honestly, it probably started with I, Robot, the book I Robot, uh, from Isaac Osmo. Um, good movie, too, with with Will Smith. Yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, it was Will Smith. Um, contrary to Will Smith, it turned out being a good movie, but Yeah. Okay. Yep. He was he was in there. Yeah. He he does one character well and that was his character. But that movie has nothing to do with the book. Like it's vaguely oh totally different.

But I read it as a kid and the idea of kind of thinking functioning robots kind of got my attention. And then uh growing up was just a huge fan of uh of Nightrider and all the other 80s things. Yeah. A matter of fact, my AI is named Kit. That's what I call her. It's a female instead of a male. But um but yeah, and and it is female. And I I've shared this in class before. You know, I I have been married for 33 years.

I have three daughters who are now themselves married and having kids. And if if anything is right all the time and quick to tell me that I'm not right, it's got to be a female. So, I am sticking with AI as a female. You're right, Kit. You're right. Yeah, Kit, whatever you say, Kit. Um, but no, I uh I really did just the all the different, you know, as kids, we had lots in the born in 70s, boys in the 80s kind of thing. uh lots of of just thinking robots and for the most part most of them were very helpful.

Some of them wanted to kill us all, but uh for the most part, you know, howl and and all the rest, but yeah. And so then but then later on like uh I want to say there were some attempts at AI, right? I mean, would you say like some of them missed the boat, Siri and some of the smart home and well, they tried pushing Yeah, they tried pushing machine learning way faster than the chips or the technology or the consumer adoption would really allow. And um you know, Siri is still I I got to say I'm a huge Apple fan, but I'm getting a

little little intolerant of the lack of AI innovation there. Um I mean, they'll sherlock it. They'll come out tomorrow and have the best AI that ever existed and then claim they were the first there. That's that's what they do. But that's that is definitely their thing. Yeah, that's their thing. But um uh no I mean just even like if you and I won't say names but if you remember even seven eight years ago there were these machine learning who we're going to generate leads we're going to predict who's going to be the next person to sell in your community fell in love with the concept

but knew that it was way too early for these things. So uh we're here now we can do it now. And so what made you sign up for ChatGPT as soon as it came out? You're like this is what I've been waiting for my whole life. Yeah, I mean, I was ready to usher in the end of the world and uh this seemed like, you know, a very free way to do it. So, yeah, let's go. That's right. That's right. I'm, you know, jumping off the cliff.

Um, no, I knew it was coming. Um, and I had kind of heard a little bit about the backstory of of these companies and how they emerged and um and was eager to give it a shot. I was not I did not have very high hopes for its practicality in the day-to-day business of real estate agent and was suspect of actually deploying it in a in a business environment. Still am like I I don't upload my clients records. Even a ratified contract wouldn't go in there.

I will use a blank contract and no tax records. No. Well, mine I'll put my stuff in there because hell, you know, it it's getting, you know, hacked from within the government every day anyways. But I won't put my client's stuff in there. So, um, but, uh, yeah, no, I was ready to jump on the boat when it first came out. I was excited for what it could be, but I kind of thought I would be getting like a small version of it to put in a Raspberry Pi and do all these controlled experiments.

Within an hour, I was absolutely blown away about what it could do. It was uh, exceeded what I anticipated it being because we've had so many vaporware false promises for so long. And then I think I probably spent six hours that day just pushing it to its limits. Went went down the rabbit hole quickly. Oh yeah. My wife had to come grab me and go, it is bedtime. Yeah, it's Wait. So So for for the non-technical folks, explain quickly. Just Raspberry Pi has nothing to do with an actual Pi.

It has nothing to do with Pi sadly because I am a big Pi fan. But uh Raspberry Pi is basically it's like a little hobbyist starter kit. They give you a little circuit board. It It's super super cheap. And if you're a super nerd, you can program it to do a bunch of stuff. Um, anything. I mean, everything controlling your household to running video games to whatever your imagination is. There's a whole community for it. What were your other real because like you're you're a techie, right?

And so what what were your other real estate colleagues like? They looked to you. Were they skeptical? Were they like, "Ah, this is another thing that's going to pass." Like what what was the friction? I think that would be the good word that you encountered early on. Yeah. I mean, strangely enough, it was the the day that it launched, uh, I thought it was fairly quiet in the real estate industry. And and I was like, is anybody else looking at this? Is this a competitive edge?

Is this just another nerdy thing that I'm going to play with? And I was a little slow to tell everybody that I jumped on the the boat. you know, doing what you and I do, people do ask for recommendations for things all the time. And so, I used to be very early for Vine is the next big thing. You all need to go do many videos on there. And I've just learned over time that that stuff fails. And so, yeah. Um, I clubhouse club. Okay. I was just this weekend, just this weekend cleaning out old presentations and I had a presentation on Clubhouse for real

estate agents. I'm going, man, I hope nobody ever listened to that video and that webinar because um man, did I miss that. But but I I that was a good example of the stuff that I I I jumped on too early. I told people about too early. So I waited about a week, a whole week, which is forever in AI time in AI. Yeah, it's like three years AI time. I was already behind. You know, Craig Grant was out there with a whole eight hour class already.

Um but but no we um uh I started connecting with a couple other instructors uh and saying have you guys seen this? I think even in the instructor Facebook group that we were in together we run together. Uh I was asking is anybody else looking at this or using it? And it was crickets. Like nobody was like what do nobody even knows what a GPT is. I let me just say this because I am similar to you, but I was like I don't know if I'm ready to to say that I am because I don't cuz then Matthew like what about this?

And I'm like I don't know yet. And it was scared. So I was but I wasn't I wasn't sure if I was ready to talk about it publicly yet. It's like we are coming out of therapy. I just I'm not I'm not ready to discuss this yet. I'm not ready. But yeah, the relation more the the relationship's very new. I don't want to I don't want to get anybody worried about it. Um I did spend a lot of time with it. I I did some um like how much do you know about me?

You know, how do I use you the best? Coach me through this process. Uh what's the best way for for a real estate agent to use this? And um uh probably another weekend and and I was like, "Okay, I'm I'm I I'm ready to check with some other peers." And within two weeks, I was using it every day all the time. Um, and when voice mode was introduced, I never stopped. Like I my car rides, it's just AI and I talking together now. The best conversations you have with somebody that's not real, right?

You're like, what a great chat that was just me talking to talking to Kit. Yeah. And just telling me how great I am. Like everybody needs a little sick of in their pocket, you know? It's just Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and so early on when you're when you're having those conversations and you're trying to figure out I like what you said that you kind of kept it open-ended and said, "Hey, how can I use this? How can you help me to do this?" Because I think that's where a lot of agents, I don't know, missed the boat, but they they go in and they

try to prompt something and they don't get what they're looking for rather than just saying help me or ask me how can you, you know, and keeping it open-ended. talk a little bit about that because I think that was a good technique for somebody just getting started. Yeah, I mean I I I know this is really, you know, not kind of what our core topic is, but I I the one thing when everybody asks like where do you start? Yeah. To me, it's simply a conversation.

And again, I do like uh um voice mode the best. But I just said, look, I need you to be the the awakening for me, so to speak, uh was, "Hey, chatbt. Hey, Kit. Uh I really want to make sure I get the most out of you. What I want to do is use you to help me with my marketing as an agent, as a broker, as a leader, and as an instructor. I want you to interview me as if I was onboarding you as an assistant, and ask me all the questions you want.

And we probably spent an hour and 15 minutes. I I have a, you know, about an acre behind me that's just I just walk a path during the day when I'm thinking and working on things. And we just had a conversation. At the end of that conversation, you know, when I started asking for things, it was in a totally different world. It it just like hiring a human assistant, right? There's got to be a learning phase. It's just that AI does it in one hour whereas my assistants have done it in six months.

Um so so rather than typing because we were we're all not the best typists who just have a conversation. Natural language. Yeah. Yeah. The NLP the natural language protocols are fantastic. And I I'm sure you're using it too. Whisper flow now has really solved a lot of these issues. I'm just much more uh thorough and robust when I'm talking than when I'm probably like you. You're typing. You're like crap I missed a comma. You're backspacing instead of just Yeah. just moving forward. Yeah. And it just takes way longer.

So that the average real estate agent types at like five words a minute. Um uh but we talk at 200 words a minute. So that's so bad. Five words. I I don't know. I'm still looking at people. You're probably right. Yeah. It's funny you you mentioned, you know, we agents and staff were, you know, just shy of 300 people. So lots of different personalities and generations. And my older agents are not the best typist, but they they're they're getting, you know, they're right there. Gen X is the perfect generation, so they do everything great.

But our younger agents who are coming in, the sitting in front of like a laptop or a computer, they aren't good typist because they've done it on their phone most of their life and and they're very comfortable there. So yeah, we all speak more quickly and with a lot more um clarity usually than typing. Okay. So, a lot of people sign up for Chad GBT and stopped and and and you know when we talk about relationships and how involved you are. Uh what made you or what made you or how did you or what prompted you to to make the switch or try out Claude

and then bring you to Claude Co because I feel like it's very much a relationship. I didn't leave Chad GBT cuz I was like you know me, right? You know me. You know so much about me. Claude doesn't know anything. like how did you make that switch? Yeah. So, a couple um a couple things to think about here. For me, it was I'm going to explore all the tools because I I want to make sure that I I am truly using and presenting in my my classes or my my online content, email, all the options.

Yeah. Yeah. And um uh I started noticing a lot of people I like and trust on um YouTube and in my newsletters started talking only about Claude and not necessarily about Chachet. And I said, "Yeah, there may. Yeah, right." I said, "Maybe there there's got to be something to this. Let me go download another free version and uh and see what it does." And I started off with asking, "This is so sketchy, but I went to chatbt and go, "Hey, [snorts] so we've been getting along.

We're working okay. There's some stuff about you that's not perfect for me. Can you help me set up my next relationship?" And I I actually asked Chacht, I'm like, "Hey, if I wanted to migrate everything in your memory and everything you've learned about me into Claude, how would I do that?" And she goes, "Oh, let me create a file for you." And so CatchBT literally created a summary file. Yeah. And let me download it. And I went to Claude and said, "Here's what ChatBT knows. Can you use this?" And Chat and Claude said, "Sure." And I it's almost like I didn't miss a beat.

I mean, the brand voice was there, the like what I prefer and don't. and then it just keeps building on it. Um, you know, that persistent memory is incredibly powerful. The transition moment was not only um, uh, that it came across, let me rephrase this. So, it wasn't a transition moment. I still use OpenAI and Chat GPT. I still use Gemini, but they're for different purposes. So, if you're building a team, right, you're going to ha you're never going to have the perfect assistant. There's gonna be one that's better at at the customer service, one that's better at creative, one that's better at doing transaction

management. Um, Claude is much more scientific-minded. It's much more reasoned. Uh, it's less sickopantic. Uh, which I like. And it it just had a better memory built in. Say that last word again. Uh, sickopant. It wasn't a sickopant. Yeah. It wasn't like where OpenAI was like, you're just so beautiful and perfect and everything you say is the best idea. Cloud was not telling me and puffing up my ego. I was just like, "Yeah, let's let's slow your roll here." I see what you're saying. Yeah. Like, no, you're not right there.

Let me push let me push back a little bit on what you're saying. You said that to me a few times. So, Claude is not like creating a graphic ChatGPT blows out of the water, but it was Gemini before, now it's ChatGpt. So, they each have their their their best use cases. The other thing was a little bit more um uh I don't know more highbrow and that is I noticed following a lot of industry news uh I noticed that a lot of the ethicists the attorneys and ethics workers and people had strong feelings about what safe AI looked like were leaving other companies and

going to anthropic over and over again. Just this week they got another huge win for a very big brain in AI and they are and everybody should go read this essay from um Bario Amade called uh machines of beautiful grace and it's about what AI could be to us as a population if we had proper policies and laws in place if we used it in accordance with some type of uh you know intentional safe guidelines. It's just a beautiful article about what all the powerful things it's doing.

And that really won me over like the the concept of the company. I feel they're more trustworthy and they're not, you know, trying to chase every little thing. And the last part was the practical part of Cowork um coding were much stronger for Claude than the other two. Okay. So for anyone who's only used Claude as a chat tool, they went in, they chat, maybe they have the free account. What is Cowork like? like what is it and what is it actually doing that's different from just chat?

So Cowork which is really what wins the day for me and where I spend most of my day as a creator um is a is software you can download right so so all of them have apps uh chatap has an app and Gemini has an app all the frontier models and claude has an app and um they first came out on Mac like most and I know a lot of frustration I see it online all the time people complaining about why does it always come out for Mac for months before well Mac is a solid system it's got better hardware and software that intent match

up. It's got more security. It's easier to debug. Um, and there's less hackers attacking Apple. Not that they don't exist, but there's two of them. Smarter people use Mac, I would say, right? I I'm going to say that. Yes. But if if Apple doesn't get their AI stuff together, I may be going back to the old, you know, Android and Google thing. No, I I can't see myself doing that. But no, it's it Well, it is. And and creative people and a lot of, you know, even your programmers are now using Mac.

Macs much more much more often than they used to. Gamers are using PCs. Your grandma's using PCs. Like that's that's pretty much the two PC. And so I would I if I was Mac Well, they have it for Windows as well now too, right? They do. They released it for Windows now. So I would download Claude Co-work. I downloaded the Claw Desktop app. And Claude Desktop. Okay. And it has Cowork built in. It has chat, Cowork, and code. It does. Yep. Right. Yep. That's my first step.

Yep. So, we're going to download the app and then when you open it up in the top lefthand corner, you'll see chat, which is what everybody's comfortable with. That's what we most of us been using. And then next to it, you'll see Cowork. And when you open up Cowork, it looks very similar. There's a chat dialogue box, but then there's a few other little prompts in there that make it different. Okay. So, Cowork really took um the agent part of AI. So when we talk about agents, we're talking about uh a software can work somewhat autonomously.

Like it's not self it's still directed by you, but it can go do things that you've directed to do on your behalf at a deeper level than you know just asking questions and giving you directions. Um, it also will work with files on your computer and it'll even if you're so brave, take over the browser in your computer and do things like fix that thing on your website you didn't like, go book flights for you, you know, and it has can it'll go create things in in Canva that look absolutely amazing and better than most of us would recreate without its assistance as first drafts.

Um, and I'm very clear to tell everybody the AI is here to augment you, not replace you. You shouldn't everything it creates is a draft, right? you still need your creativity, your humanity, your wisdom and knowledge, but it really did uh kickstart a lot of of um uh drafts for me in such a way that I wouldn't have to spend as many hours doing it. So, let's go back for a second now. So, with chat, it basically just replies, right? You ask something and it replies where what you're saying is with Cowork you say I want you to do this and they can go off

and go do it with your permission right and then depending on on on your permissions either it can come back and go hey I need to access your browser is that okay yeah so if you remember when Windows first came out Windows like every update it needed to not first came out but one of the one of the iterations of Windows everything it did you had to go yes you want to upgrade yes do you want to upgrade this yes do you want to upgrade again yes you want and it mind-numbing to answer 15 questions.

Um, Claude is not like that. But there are critical moments where it'll say, "Are you sure you're going to give me permission to do this thing?" And it lays out what the permission is and you have to say yes to it. It can't just go and do all the crazy stuff, right? And that falls back to like it having that framework to be more protective so that it just doesn't run wild on your computer because I think some people might be scared of that, right? Yes.

And you have to remember that like and and Apple's the same way. Like a big part of their reputation hinges on security. Like if if Apple, you know, if if Apple just started getting hacked all the time, you might as well just go get an Android, right? And so so Apple, that's their big distinguishing feature. And I think I I think Claude and and Anthropic are taking it more seriously than the other competitors right now to keep security as a feature uh a primary feature. Okay.

And now why do I need an app? cuz I get this. I don't want another app. I Why do I need to do the app? And why can't I just do it on the browser? Why can't I just go to cloud.ai and and use Cowork in there? What? I have to have the app. Yep. You have to have the app downloaded. Um to to use the Cowork or or coding feature. Um so the the regular browser um there's permission issues, there's browser security problems, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

So they in my opinion wisely said here's a separate app where if you're going to give it access it won't be to the open web you control what parts of the web if any it could use. I see. So it's separated and in that way there's a little bit of protection. That's right. Okay. All right. So what's our step two then? Are we how do we set it up? Does it have the like you did you know the brand voice and all that and the memory?

Will that still be there or do I have to add that in there? Is it separate? What what's our next step? Yeah. Not only does it so so Cowork is best to describe as a a AI on your computer, right? It's on the hard drive on the computer. So I can't unless I intentionally say go copy this file and go make duplicates of this and that. I can't just go to another computer, log in, and have the same uh features. Um I can package it and transfer it later, but it's not automatic.

There's no cloud-based connection. And um for claude Cowork set up a very specific folder on your computer and say you only have access to things in this folder. You don't have complete access to my computer. Um and so I did that for and I did it for me I did it through uh Google Drive. So I have a folder in Google Drive that says whenever I need something here's the folder. So like all my okay presentations for teaching may be on there uh in that folder.

um my working documents, the project I'm working, a policy manual I'm working on is in that folder. Um I'm used and actually just switched to Obsidian for my second brain system. If you all are familiar with Thiago Forte's book, Second Brain, for especially for us as agents, because we don't we're never going to remember all the stuff we need and we need references. And so Apple Notes and Evernote, all those are great services you're familiar with. Obsidian's a little bit nerdier. But the thing about Obsidian is it has a local file folder and each note becomes an actual file.

So Claude can use those files. So I have somewhere around 500 files. Yeah. Everything, my medical records, uh my brand voice, my marketing brand kit, colors, and everything are all in there. And so I can tell Cowork to go grab something and say, "Hey, apply my brand voice." And it'll look through my Obsidian files or whatever I programmed it. and knows exactly what colors, what font, what logo, what headshot I prefer for each piece that I'm I'm uh creating. And if I don't want to have access, I can just delete the access.

I can delete the folder or move it elsewhere. And so, just to overly simplify it, [clears throat] Cowork is like an assistant. Like if you hired a real life assistant, it's sitting at a desk called your Mac, right? and then you give it access to say, "Okay, this is the only filing cabinet that you can pull information from." Let me tell you about one of our founding partners, Subi. If you ever felt like the transaction side of real estate is where your time just disappears, Subi was built for you.

It's your AI transaction genie. From contract to close, it keeps everything organized. Your timelines on track and all the details accounted for. Their tagline says it all. Your work is my command. Check them out at okubie.com. link in the show notes and be sure to tell them J squ sent you. If somebody because I feel like Obsidian's a little bit more advanced, but it could be just, hey, this is the this desktop folder called Claude. And if you're and if you're confused, you can just say Claude Cowork like help me to set up a folder on my desktop that only you could access.

Could you do that? Yeah. Well, yes, you can. It'll tell you the steps at that point unless you say go do the thing and then it's going to say, "Are you sure? you told me to go take control of your computer and create a folder. Is that okay? And you go, "Yeah, you can do that." Um, and some people do get more adventurous than I do. And you can just say, "It's always yes. Whatever I tell you to do, it's always yes." I'm I'm not there.

I'm still trusting it in smaller stuff. For some things I I do that. I Yeah. I mean, so let me give you like another example. So, if you're thinking about what to put in a folder, think about every listing presentation you've ever done. like every PowerPoint you've ever done. Buyer broker. Buyer broker. That's right. Your c your counseling session materials. You put them all in a folder and go, "This is my voice. This is how I create things. This is the design elements that I like.

Make it better. Summarize, you know, create another PowerPoint for me using these materials. Uh we probably have some instructors who are here. Um I had to update, as is our way in Virginia, every three years I have to update all my CE classes. So I put them in the bucket. and I put them in a folder and said, "Apply my my brand kit, my color, my formatting, my design preferences. Here's 382 other PowerPoints or keynotes I've I've created in the past." So, use those as a reference.

Go out to the internet, search for anything that's updated that's a regulatory reference in any presentation, put in the new stuff, create a new PowerPoint, a new syllabus, a new didactic, a new submission for de for the real estate commission. Here's the form it needs. And in five minutes, I've it's all done. The draft is all done. I have to check the work. That would have taken me weeks of work to do in the past. So, why not have a bigger sample size of presentations for it cuz 400 isn't enough.

Oh, that's it. That's all you got there? Yeah. But that So, it could from I mean that's a really great sample size to know your style of presentation because everybody has a different style of how they they create their presentations. And some would be more TED talk style where it's like less words on the screen, more image based. So it can learn your style that way because many of us don't know how to describe our style in creating presentations or the marketing that we create and those things.

So it could just say, hey, based on what you've given me, this is what I feel like your your brand of presentation generation is or however you want to word that. Yeah. And I I mean I'll I'll give you like just to to wrap up that example for our instructors and then give you one for agents. The other thing that I did was I took the uh transcripts of about a hundred different classes that I've taught. Some of them have been this like I've recorded or taught by Zoom these C classes.

I gave the transcripts and said now go install instructor notes because I have other instructors in my school and I want them to know what I meant when I created created the slide. And it it added instructor speaker notes to every slide. additional context add additional contact that's right from an agent standpoint you can also in Cowork and you can do this in in all the Frontier models but um uh I gave it access to my Gmail account and I said look uh a Gmail account and also a folder and I went and collected all the addendums I've written over the past 10 years or

so and I said I want you to go learn my voice from my email account to go back and look at the past 17 years that I've had you know this Google account Go look at that to learn my voice. And then I want you to go look at this folder where I here is an example of how I write addendums. And oh, by the way, because I teach a class on writing contracts, here's the my my notes, my transcript from teaching this class because we always teach better than we actually do, right?

Um, and I said, I want you to use that as influence. So now if I want you to rewrite this home inspection addendum, I have in Cowork created a version of my brain that's going to clean up the language and make sure that it's in in um enforceable in our regional contracts and it doesn't have any conflicts and it's written in my my voice. And now I still have to tell it what the client wants. I still have to edit it when it comes out. But man, I save so much time and I don't forget things that may be important in that addendum.

So, what I'm hearing you say as an agent, like more is better, right? Additional context, things that you've written, email, and and when you say emails, let's say emails before you started using AI to write your emails because you may not, right? It's important because it could be like, oh man, November 2022, you sounded like a Harvard professor from then on, but before that, you were like a crow magnum man. like I send you a denda like yeah every one of my emails said did you even read the contract?

That's how I ended every conversation with every other agent. Um no I I mean that's a good point too about you know the best version of me I think is what my prompt actually says. Um but I I a couple years ago I put a post-it note on my desktop here and then I had one in the steering wheel my Tesla and the post-it note says how can AI help me with this? And so m I kept finding myself doing a task going man if I had just used AI for this it would have been done in a quarter of the time and I wouldn't

have worried about so many other things and I could have you know moved forward. I have a listing presentation this afternoon this evening actually. And um I went through and said okay here's my CMA check my work. Here's all the comps. Here's all the stuff. Here's all the things. Check my work. Um here are the here's what I know about the four people I'm meeting uh who are co-owners in this property. Um, keep me on track here. Remind me how to get through this seriously. Justify my position and opinions in these things.

Yeah. And oh, by the way, update my listing presentation. Um, here's here's a copy of my PowerPoint listing presentation. Update it with stuff based on the RPR report that I just published that I just pulled from RPR. Here's a copy of that report. Now, make sure that the presentation matches today market standards. It's it's done in minutes. Yeah. I mean, you could almost customize it to their learning style and and personality type, right? If you do research and you talk to them, you're like, "Man, this guy's a high D.

I got to really get to the point with this one and just speak to them, speak to their, you know, to how they would listen." Yeah. I mean, and we I even talk about this in um like when I teach R& the negotiations class, one of the techniques that I'm talking now is like if you've got a particularly challenging client, and we all have them. Um instead of just assuming, you know, that they're a jerk and that you don't want to work with them, start to say, look at the emails back and forth and help me to identify what his underlying concern is.

I I don't feel like we're communicating well. What am I doing wrong here? Check your emails or check my iMessage with this particular person. Yeah, that's smart. So let's let's go to step three. Skills and projects. We set up a folder. We're we added some additional context in there. What is skills and projects? Yeah. So um uh projects are a lot like uh custom GPTs if you're if you're chatg users. So project is for me to say um I want to create a an new client onboarding project.

So this is my brand voice. This is the steps that I do. Here's the checklist that I use when I have a new buyer, new seller. Um, and the project is a duplicatable process. So, I can go in and go, I have a new buyer. I want you, and you can give it references like here are my talking points. Here's my commission, you know, uh, discussion points. I have a new buyer. They've signed the buyer agency agreement. We're post we're past the counseling session. um help me formulate uh the welcome email, the next steps, you know, what part of the checklist can you do for

me? Can you uh you know, check and see if there's any and we're this is going to be very cynical and I know this is somewhat political. We're in the hide the listing phase of real estate now. And so, you know, not all listings may be in MLS. I may have to Yeah, it's exactly right. So, I I actually have in a project to go look for any coming soon listings that are on Redfin, Realtor, Zillow, and Homes.com that match this buyer's criteria. And every morning at Monday, every morning at 5:00 a.m., send me anything new you find in the aggregators.

And then I'll compare it against what's in MLS. Once they're ready for the showing, the project I can go say they're going to see these five houses today and it'll map out the quickest way to get there and you know remind me to go a checklist for just that showing date and all the stuff. So that's a project. So, a project could be buyer representation and then within that project, you could work on first-time home buyers, you could work on second home resort buyers, you could work out with investors, but it's it has all of your buyer representation related stuff.

And then to your point as well, search for offmarket opportunities for for these buyers that may not be listed in the MLS. That's right. And so, the the the project is a very specific task and I don't want to have to put in the six paragraph prompt every single time for every single client. So, I can also add a lot of documents and say, "These are your reference documents." So, past marketing campaigns, but first- time home buyer is a great example. That's what I have here.

It's always been my target. And, and in the first-time home buyers, um, uh, target, I actually have like my whole theory about working with them. I have five or six PDFs of special loan and grant programs in Virginia for that buyer. And so, I can say, "Here's my buyer. Here's my problem. here's where they're working. Help me create a solution uh uh e for them. Give me the email to introduce them to the solution. Create the PDFs with their step by step of what they need to know.

I I have field guides in that project again because it's very specific. It's going to only use the work I've given a sample to. I'm a big uh Donald Miller fan from um story brand and so I like to create assets in a story brand methodology. So, I have some of his free downloadables in there and a prompt to say whenever you're creating something, create it in my voice using the story brand methodology. And so now I can say I want a six-month uh email sequence for first-time home buyers in Virginia and I want to you to infuse what are their villains, what are my

solutions for them, how am I the guide, uh what are the the different marketing uh what are the different uh resources out there and now give me a 30-day email sequence and I can go to brandwise brand wise. So in thinking about projects I I want to again like I'm like okay in real life if we were working on a project that could be all of us sitting around a table and saying okay all 12 of us are working on this buyer project and we have a pile of stuff that we can pull from as far as resources are concerned.

I almost I I always think to like um like a show where everybody's sitting around a table pitching ideas and they have all the different resources to choose from. So [snorts] you could have projects for everything. And could you then if like I have projects in GPT that I've been working on for a couple years similarly have projects just kind of bring them over and add some stuff to it. Yeah. So u in if I go to a GPT I can say I'll give you a great example of of this.

I in GPT I have like a board of directors and so if I go and have this brand new great idea um that board of directors there's a finance person to challenge me on whether this is a fiscally responsible move I have a marketing specialist who's programmed to say this is beyond your scope you're not good at short form videos you shouldn't do this I I suck at short form videos man you give me a good 20 minutes I'll learn you but you give me a short form video I'll be like I don't know what Um so anyways So I I can go do all

that and and because I've also told them my my services I can say okay so I use notion I use chat GBT I use wise agent for CRM I this is the stuff that I have how coach me about how to best execute on this idea and the board of directors will tell you that and then they'll say okay now I'll go ahead and export these so I already have that set up in GPT and now I can go and say dear ChatGPT I want to recreate this in claude give me all the directions and assets I need to do in the steps I need

to do do it in Claude. The only thing it doesn't do is transfer like PDFs and resources. Like I have the um again wise wise agent CRM. I've got the guide books as part of that project. So it knows how to tell me to go do things in there so I don't have to poke around and figure it out. And I it's already intuitive but I don't have to. And it also knows what the capabilities of that system are. So, it'll create a spreadsheet that I can go and add as a a new uh nurture sequence if if I wanted to from that.

So, I was able to just transfer that over. It's a couple extra steps, but it's pretty easy to do. Okay, now let's talk [clears throat] about skills. You have projects and you have skills. Look at look at how excited. For those who aren't watching, he got he perked right up. He brained right up. Let's talk about skills. Yeah. So skills are amazing because this has been an ever never ending challenge for all of us. So what the best way to describe a a skill is it's a short code to a prompt.

So uh a short code if you're if you're website builder instead of have to remember a ton of HTML you can just put a word in there with brackets and it'll say go do that thing. Um in this case one of the most reoccurring questions I do get from agents is um there's tons of prompt book. I have prompt book. I know you have prompt books. we give our our learners. We're like inundated at this point with That's right. And and there's a ton of them and I want to customize them and then where do I [snorts] store them and I wish it was an

easier way to get them. So what skills are is a way for me to create a one or twoword uh title and when I put forward slash and the title I've created, it automatically pulls the prompt that I've I've I've used. So, if I go to um uh um yeah, if I go to Cowork and I go to customize, one of the options is skills. When I click on skills, I need to add anthropics skill called skill creator. Yeah. Once I've added that skill, I can now go in and just again have a conversation.

Dear Claude slskillcreator, uh, I'd like for you to create a skill to help me build my listing marketing kit or my buyer cons consultation session presentation in the future. And here's what that looks like. So, the one that I use most often is my listing kit builder. And so, for a prompt, I mean, it's really lengthy. What I actually took was seven prompts that I used. One to do a market analysis, one to do the marketing content, one for marketing plan, one for consumer persona, one for the market uh one for the um uh uh this pricing strategy for me to discuss with the client

like all these things. And I said, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to create it and not vate their fair violate fair housing. I want you to not use m dashes. I hate the word um dream home, you know." Yeah. So fired up. Yeah. Fired up. I don't want you to sound anything outside of my voice that you have learned from my emails and from my content and recording and us talking. I want you to create a CMA. I want you to use my brand colors.

I want you to use my font, my logo, my uh color choices. Um, don't include open houses because I personally don't believe that they're a profitable use of my time. So, I don't do them. Um, and you know, all the other things that I don't I don't want to have to remember to tell her every single time or AI every time. And I can say, "Learn from me now. Ask me any other questions you need to know and minimize what you need for me to get to the end result." And so when I go, "Hey, Claude, I'm building I have a new listing.

Use forward slashlisting kit." She now says, "Okay, I need to know the property address. I want to copy the tax records, the RPR seller report, all of your comps, and a list of things that are unique selling features of the home." And that's all I have to give her. Yeah. and I hit that button and I get a 40page or whatever you want. Mine's 20 pages, 20 page listing presentation. I get a new PowerPoint and all of it is specific to that property and it takes four minutes instead of four hours.

Um, so yeah, so skills are just a a a quick hack to to be able to add your more in-depth prompts instead of retyping them every time you use them. Okay, I want to back up just to recap for them. We downloaded Cowork. Once we have that, then we go to customize on the left left side tool toolbar. Toolbar. Yeah. On the left sidebar. Yeah. Uh go to customize and then you're going to see create new skills. There you're going to want to create the skill called skill creator already exists.

You're just going to add it the plus sign and it'll be there and then you add it. Okay. I just wanted to do that slowly so they have it because then from there if you have anything that you've created in the past like you said like if if it's a listing package that you know hey every single seller that I work with I'm going to create this let's make a skill or you could piece it out like you all the different parts of what you just mentioned the marketing strategy the CMA those could also be separate skills as well is that correct yes and there's

two more things about skills one is if you go to browse skills there are a ton of skills that already created for Yeah, tons of examples. That That's what I did initially. I just went, "Yes, yes." And I just plus them all. That's right. You know, heck with it. Have all my stuff. Here's my social security number. All the skills. Yeah. Um I mean like the Canva design skill I use all the time. And Claude doesn't do as good as as well as good as well as well as well designing things as other products, but it does do better at using Canva to do it

if I connect my account. Um, and the cool thing, so the, so that's the first thing I wanted to mention was, yeah, there's tons of skills. Go look for ones that in attune with you and then use them. The other one is, um, you can package your skills. So like for my company, the other day I created a skill with our color, company colors, and brand logos, and I just added the entire brand kit that says here's what you're allowed to do, how you can use realtor, how you can't, whatever.

I gr created one. I exported it. I emailed it to everybody and said, "Double click it. Add it as a skill." And now they've got uniform brand kits throughout the program that also have all of our state rules and regs and association rules and franchise rules. So when they're creating things, they don't have to think about any of that anymore. Now where we used to go, oh, what what are the prompts? What are the prompts you got, Matthew? Come on. H. And you're like, now it's like, what are the skills?

Do you have skills that you can share? because you can share those skills with other people too, right? You can say go here and Yeah, we are. And now the thing about skills um the thing about skills is they can also change over time. So if you're like working on a skill and you go, you know what I'd really like in the future is I'd like a one-page infograph about, you know, what's going on with the target consumer in this area and I can say remember this for your skills in the future.

So the persistent memory, yeah, from Claude is better than the other ones. So when you say remember this in the future, it references that. It'll add and edit the skill in real time. It's like training your assistant without having to repeat it to him or her over and over again. Yeah. For example, with this podcast, when we're all done, I'm going to give Matthew a ton of assets. He'll have clips. He'll have all these all these things from. And so I created I did it one time.

I said, "Here's all the things that I want for my guests to have. They're going to have an email. They're going to have a press release. They're going to have all these." And then once it's done, now I just have to do slash guest promo kit. I think I called it. And not only would I would it have taken me probably six to eight hours to do before, I probably wouldn't have done it because of the time constraint. Right. Like it's it's not just that it saves you the time, it also kind of helps you to to do so much more because you wouldn't have

done it because of the time that it took. That's right. And and I like at this point you probably have half your listeners going that that's just so much. So first of all rest assured we have tutorials and assets between Jam and I'm sure we have tons of stuff we can we started nerd now guys. Sorry here pushing our glasses back. The um uh you know refocusing my contacts now. Um the uh the the reality is that the time you invest in learning this will save you hours of time later on.

And every once in a while, you know, I hear especially an agents will be like, I'm just too old to learn something new. Well, then this is the wrong industry to be in if you're not learning something new because they're hiring us for us knowing the current new things. But also, it's going to be very hard to keep up with agents who are investing an hour or two to listening to a podcast like this and then going and playing with it and setting it up for themselves where they can automate these things at a higher quality and deploy them more easily.

So, it's definitely in your own best interest to to sit down and figure out how to learn how to do this. spend a couple minutes getting it right. And to that point, what are people doing wrong at step zero? Um, I think a lot of people are treating it like Google and Google search instead of an assistant. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see it all the time. It's like, yes. Yeah. I mean, the So, the first step is it's not it's just not organic Google. You're not gurgle.

It's not organic gurgle. Organic Google. Gurgle, I'm sure, is a page out there somewhere. I wouldn't Google it. Don't look it up. Don't do it. Don't do it. But um but instead of googling what just gave you everybody else's answers, AI is customizing answers for you. And so if you don't know how to do something um go to any of these tools and I would say probably Gemini does this one the best. They have an option called study and learn and go I want to understand how to use Claude um Cowork better and and don't be like some of you are like I I heard

this in the studio one time. She goes, "Well, doesn't that hurt their feelings if I ask them about another product?" No, they're soulless. They don't care. They don't. Yeah. They don't have feelings. They're here to help. And so if I go to study and learn in Google Gemini and go help me with a uh learn called code, Google Gemini is going to say, okay, cool. Based on what I know of you, I think your learning style is your visual learner. So videos are a better option than a how-to app.

And if it is, it'll give you five or six videos to watch the sequence in which to watch them, and it's going to customize the learning experience for you to help you through the process. Um, and again, watching videos that a ton of us as as nerd instructors uh are putting out there or downloadables or resources, taking classes helps you get to know these things better. How do you coach agents through that intimidation barrier? Like, what do you actually say to them if if they're they're watching this?

We had them. We had them at Download Co-work and then they're like looking at it now and they're like, um, first of all, it it's free to a point, so you're not going to break it. Um, you're you're not going to waste money on it. And even if you do, like Claude, the introductory uh uh account is only 17 bucks a month or something. It's cheaper than literally cheaper than the coffee I buy in the morning. Um, literally. Literally. Yeah. And and it's not going to be it's there to help you learn.

And having a conversation is just like hiring an assistant only much cheaper and less stress and drama. And saying, "I don't know what your best use is for me. Help me coach help coach me through a process to figure out how to implement you into my business." And then trust the AI. And I do hear people uh from time to time going, "It gave me really bad information the other day. It told me I shouldn't be doing open houses in my marketplace." It's anal conversation. I'm like, "Well, open houses nationwide about a 1.3 conversion rate." And an agent will go, "Yes, but I got last

year I did six open houses and one of them turned into a deal." Yes, that may have happened. Six out of the last 20 years. But last year you did six open houses, an average of five hours a piece. That's 30 hours. Imagine how much business you would have if you spent 30 hours doing handwritten notes, social media targeted advertising, fine-tuning your website, client appreciation parties, Popeyes. Imagine what it would be. that that's why AI is not telling you to do something that is low profitability.

It's focused on things that are high profitability. So you got to trust it to some. It's a PhD level brain in marketing and consumer engagement and psychology. It knows more than we do. So would that be the fastest win? Like when you get started just say help me with my business. Yeah. Like what do you need to know about me? Interview me to be a good assistant and then coach me through the best use for you uh to apply in my my business to augment me, not replace me.

I think that's a very important sentence because AI will sometimes like, do you want me to do that for you? No, I'm going to make my own phone calls. I'm going to do my own handwritten notes. Uh, but I appreciate you giving me a plan to do this better. So, say it a little bit slower again for those in the back. Interview me. Interview me. Yep. Interview me. Ask me what you need to know about me to be a better assistant. and then help me understand how you uh can assist me in my business to be you know the best performance that I can and

and again don't worry about and so many people are like did I ask the right thing that we all have our our way of getting the best prompt u mine starts off with ask it to behave as the person you would be paying to do the same job so hey you're going to be hired as my personal assistant so I want you and I to have a good relationship ship. What does that look like? Just talk to like a person. You don't have to have a super sophisticated prompt.

You can just have a conversation. It's very intuitive. What's your favorite thing to do with AI that has nothing to do with real estate? Plan trips. Yeah. Plan trips. Uh my wife and I were just recently, and this is this just happened two nights ago. We're going to London this year. That's our our big trip. And then we have like a little micro vacation between. And uh my wife's looking at the pricing. And she goes, "Based on your points, you know, you and I doing what we do.

we have tons of points and I saved them up for her to travel with me. Um, here's the price I got. And it was like for the upgraded version, we wanted to go to London. I think it was like 2500 bucks plus all of our points. So, I said, "Okay." We went to Claude and I said, "I want you to go to delta.com and I want you to find a better option." And it wound up being like 400 bucks. It it saved us 1,500 bucks by going and looking for the best time, the best flights, the best plan.

Uh, it knows, you know, where we're living and what I prefer in my travel because I use it to plan all the It's amazing. Okay. Hunting, camping, or fishing? If you had to pick one for the rest of your life, what would you do? Oh, I could only do hunting. Hunting is not my favoriteest thing in the world to do. I do believe you only should kill for for survival what you're going to eat. So, you know, or once every two or three years, my brother and I will go and that usually carries us through the freezer.

Um, fishing is okay, but it's very frustrating. to camping in general, like trying out new gear and techniques and all that kind of stuff is is is great. Yeah, I think camping would be the thing I would end with. My Side of the Mountain, baby. That's the best book ever written. All right. All right. Now, every episode ends the same way. What is your single best tip for someone who's just getting started with AI? Um, yeah, I think I'm going to go back to what I I I I alluded to earlier.

One is you can't be afraid of it. It's not you're not going to hurt anybody. It's not going to let you. Um uh my best tip is to have conversations with it to talk to it like a person and see where it goes. And if she gets stuck, if it get if AI gets stuck, it'll say, "I don't understand. Can you clarify?" And then it'll get it. You'll be surprised at how well and understand you and how quickly it picks up on the nuances of how you speak um and to come up with answers.

So yeah, just talk to it. Awesome. And where should people go to learn more about what you're doing with AI and real estate? Yeah. Uh, my website is where kind of the hub of everything is. So, matthewrathbund.com and if you're specifically interested in AI, it's very simple. Matthewrathbund.comai. My latest tutorials and downloadables are all there. Matthew 2T's two T's. Yep. All right. Matthew Wrathbun, EVP at Codewell Banker Elite, national instructor, and the man who proved that the best AI users are not the people glued to their screens.

Thank you for being on AI agent advantage. Uh, everybody hit subscribe. Share this with one agent in your network. Just one. who [snorts] needs to hear it, who wants to learn one thing in greater detail. We'll see you next Friday. Uh but before we let you go, we want to say thank you to our founding partners, Wise Agent, Subi, and the CE Shop. They make this show possible, and they're building tools that actually help people in the in the industry. Check them out. All the links are in the show notes.

And thank you, Matthew, for spending your time with us. And thank you to everyone for listening and watching. That is not something we take lightly. Now, go make it an AI day.