Lauren Lucas runs a high performing real estate in Columbus that closed over 100 deals last year. She also automated 75% of her business thanks to AI.

One thing is clear: AI is everywhere right now.

Lauren would know. She started her deep dive into the world of AI during a difficult time in her business when her team was shrinking and she needed to find ways to both survive and operate more efficiently.

She began by experimenting with AI around automation, workflows, and systems to help keep her business running. What started as a solution to a business challenge eventually became a skillset that now helps agents all over the country.

But as she’s gotten better and better at incorporating AI into her business at a high level, she’s seen others not using it to the same level. And in fact, there’s rising pushback over AI use. Why? 

Data shows that people feel like they can tell when AI is being used. They can feel when something sounds robotic or generic and they recognize buzzwords that AI tends to incorporate in its writing, And when people see what they believe is AI, it turns them off from using that company.   

Like Lauren shares, if we want to use AI, it should be in a way that allows our own voice to shine through. We don’t want it to turn people off, we want it to support our business.

In other words, avoid the mistakes Lauren sees when people use AI incorrectly and instead, use it in ways that actually help move your business forward.

The Top Mistakes Lauren Sees:

1. Being too basic. These days, agents use AI to do everything from writing emails and social media posts to building their presentations and writing listing descriptions. The problem is that when you don’t give AI context behind what it’s writing, it sounds like a machine is writing it. And that’s where the term “AI Slop” comes into play. Avoid the buzzwords, the overuse of emojis, and (unfortunately for some of us) the beloved em-dash. These are clear signs that AI has written your content and using too much of any of these things will cause you to lose trust among your consumers. You’ll need to use some brainpower to tell the AI what you are looking for. Train it to understand your tone, who our audience is, what your experience is, and about your perspective. The better your inputs, the better AI’s outputs.
2. Forgetting to humanize your AI. Don’t forget to humanize your AI. Give it a personality, a style that is unique to you, and be honest about “who” it is in your organization. For example, Lauren’s chatbot is called Maggie and she introduces herself to clients. Maggie knows the team and the details she can help clients with. And if someone asks to speak to a human, she transfers them immediately to the right place.  
3. Don’t over-automate Lauren reminds us that it is possible to overuse AI. Sure, it can be fun to have AI create a caricature of your likeness at a gala, as a cartoon, or based on what it knows about you. But these types of AI prompts tend to get repetitive and over saturate our social media feeds. Don’t waste your productive hours on using AI in ways that don’t help you to lead generate or be more efficient.
4. Don’t automate the wrong places. There are times when showing up as a human being are simply necessary and attempting to use AI in these instances would be a huge disservice to your clients and your business. For example, while you can automate what happens before these moments in the transaction, Lauren says to never automate negotiations or listing appointments.

The Ways to Use AI to Support You

Right now, there are far too many people who use AI to become lazier. Lauren, however, suggests using it as leverage to learn more and at a faster rate. Using it to become more credible and helpful will separate you from the pack. After all, people still want a human touch in the companies they do business with. Those who use AI to do more in less time leave more opportunity to develop real human connections and relationships. 

1. Use AI’s pattern recognition to your benefit. Upload your old spreadsheets and playbooks and ask your AI to rate them from 1-100 and to make them better. Remember, it’s not just about having AI create things for you, it’s about getting your AI to understand your style, tone, and how you, as the human, create things. When you provide it with materials you’ve already created, it can work better as your co-creator in the future.
2. Use AI to help you organize your various responsibilities. As an agent, you wear many different hats. Work in tandem with your AI to help you to create the systems that can help your business run smarter. This includes those mundane and tedious organizational tasks that need to get done, but would require days of your focus or someone you pay to get it done for you.
3. Use AI to organize and enrich your database. We all know that our database is our business. So let your AI help you optimize it. If you have missing names, numbers, or emails within it, AI can help you to fill in these blanks with information available on public platforms. It can also help you to organize.

At the end of the day, AI can help you to move faster and save time. However, it’s important not to let it strip away your personality in the process. Train your AI with your life story, share with it how you structure and write things so that when you do utilize it, the AI sounds like you. The more you teach it, the more it will learn. After all, the goal is to still be the agent that people know, like, and trust, just with better systems supporting you behind the scenes.