EP 107: Building Smarter Brokerages With AI and Systems

So, whether you're just getting started or already experimenting with AI tools, this podcast gives you ideas you can use right now. Now, let's get to this week's. Welcome to another episode of Real Estate AI Flash. I can't believe that we are recording this in uh late November, but this is gonna air in January. I can't believe we're in twenty twenty-six already, Jessica. And our our guest today, by the way, is Jessica Susie.

SUSA, I'm sorry if I butchered your name there, is the broker and co owner of Paradise Exclusive Real Estate, a leading boutique brokerage based in Southwest Florida. She's recognized for her focus on empowering agents and her commitment to innovative mentorship and profession development within the real estate industry. She's often featured at industry events on stage, a contributing writer for Inman, and last but not the least, the author of the book.

Agent Playbook, a guide designed to help agents excel by providing actionable insights and strategies. Jessica, welcome to the podcast.

My husband um was active duty, so we moved a lot, which meant a lot of reinvention for myself. So I actually ended up opening up a portrait studio. I was a portrait photographer for about seven years, so learned a lot about marketing. systems and and branding. I partnered with brands like Pottery Barn and Babies R Us and um had some really, really cool partnerships for that, you know, portion of my life. And then I worked for um a marketing firm.

Um working for brands like Dell and Jeep and Absolute, uh Microsoft and ran some of their programs. the Austin market and in the Boston market. So super fun. When we moved to Florida, I decided you know maybe I was gonna go back to my roots and get back into higher education. As a recruiter for a state college for a year. Um, and while I was very successful, I increased their admission at their Venice location by over 400% in one year.

I was like, uh, I've worked for myself for long enough now that I why did I go back working for somebody else? So pivot into real estate. Um and yeah, kind of worked for two. Bye. grew out of that, you know, worked for a builder, grew out of that, and then kind of became broker and made partner a couple years ago with Paradise. And so definitely found my people, found my, you know, area. We love where we live. Um have about a forty agents right now across three officers.

And it's just kind of the perfect intersection of everything that I've done before kind of led

that it really can do much more. It can it can 10x your workflow if you're really leveraging it and beyond depending on to which ways that you have it kind of integrated into your workspace. I'll give you an example. I was working on a really complicated board communication. I'm the president of our local chamber.

It's overly complicated situation anyway. And I'm like, I just downloaded all my thoughts and threw it in there and was like, make this make sense, you know, at this education level, like keep it simple. Um It would have taken me an hour to really at least an hour to fine tune that and make it deliverable in a way that I think would have been really

By all of the other members of the board. But I had it back in you know 15 seconds and it was beautiful. And I went in and made some finesse. I like it to sound. Um but when I realized like oh my gosh that just saved me easy an hour's worth of work. You start doing that over and over and over throughout your day and you gain so much time back. So then it's helping us, you know, refine our messaging or create marketing copy or

helping us work through our SOPs that nobody wants to create because they're such a time sum. But you know, utilizing AI to watch you work and then tell you what your standard operating procedure is. finesse, you know, building those templates, analyzing data. It's it's just a, it really is a multiplier, I think.

Uh and You know, s share something I'm about to do that I've never done before or want to elevate the thinking and ask it to poke holes in the strategy. Um it it lets you really elevate your thinking to your point. So so you have hundred and forty agents across three offices you mentioned, Jessica. So

You're you're a managing broker, co-owner, so you sort of have multiple hats almost, like you've sort of grew through the real estate space. So how are you what are some specific AI use cases that have helped you and your team? That are like almost like a rinse and repeat. Do this if this is the use case to elevate your output and just kinda dig into that a little bit.

us in our space is we've created our own custom GPTs. Um So we have one that's like a a broker knowledge base. Um

We've made sure to feed it very specific information and don't want it to go stray outside of that knowledge base. Um, but we, you know, use it to help answer like just general questions like what's our broker ID or what's our tax number or Who's um on floor today at this location or how do I reserve the golf cart without them having to call an office admin or a broker to figure out those simple things or I forgot the door code like just little

So it's it's lit up a lot with stuff that's hyper specific to our brokerage, but then it also can help guide them through MLM. and rules, what is the regulation? How long do I have before I have to hit this live in the MLS? Just help guide them and make sure that's the same.

compliance. So we have that side of it, um, which has been fun. And we allow our agents to provide real time feedback of like, hey, I've asked at this. It told me to go back to you because that's what we tell it to do. If it doesn't know.

resort back to the broker. And um it allows us to then say, okay, great. Yes, let's build up some knowledge to feed it. Um so we can make sure it has that access So definitely interesting learning what questions agents have on a day to day that maybe they're just going to Google for traditionally. And now we can really fine-tune it to be specific to kind of what our standards are as a brokerage.

But then the other side of the GPT, which this is probably one of my favorite tools that we have, and it's actually helped surprisingly with recruitment indirectly. We don't really have a recruitment arm, but when we meet with agents, and joining the brokerage when we share that we have this kind of technology. And they're really impressed because they see the value save for themselves. So we have a brand.

um Welland Park. It's one of the fastest growing uh communities in the nation. Um over twenty thousand homes being built. It's just rapid growth. I you know, immense amount of different c subcommunities within with different rules and regulations and amenities and C D D fees and HOA fees, and it's a lot to learn. Um some are under construction, some are resale only at this point, some are condos.

Kind of get it, it's all over the map. And any agent coming in trying to learn that, it's instant over. And it's a lot of information to compile and by the time you get through it, you have to go start all over again because stuff has been changed and updated. So we actually dedicated a staff person to take to build it um where they compiled all this data, fed it into a GPT. So now you can ask it a question and it will guide you. And then now on a monthly basis, she just checks

updates where needed. So that's always up to date over the last, you know, 30 days. So an example would be an agent who maybe has never showed property in that community. They're live 30 minutes away, but their client really wants to go see property there. They don't know which community to bring them to. They could easily ask

I have a client, they have a 40-pound dog, they like pickleball, they don't want any CDD fees, this is you know, this is what they're looking for. New construction under this price. Where should I bring them? And it's gonna say, Oh, these two communities are where you're gonna need to stay.

So it helps them refine and really fine-tune without having to spend hours of research and digging. And so Where when you're able to do that, the power that that gives your agents to just go and do what they're good at versus spending all this time digging and researching has been really beneficial.

Right. It's it it's gotta become part of the training curriculum, right? Because if you are literate, you can ask the right questions, know which tool to use for what. Uh the second one that you bring up is a very interesting so low hanging fruit, just like a knowledge base answering questions.

I was in a uh keynote, Jessica, that a presenter talked about they put the number thirty-two on the board and said, tell me what that number is about. Well nobody's gonna guess that. But the answer was Um it's thirty two days people spend a year at their jobs looking for information. Imagine the productivity, just literally. Uh it is such an easy low hanging fruit problem that has the biggest impact to solve, like finding information. And that's a great one. And so you built a communities GPT.

Right? Large pretty large communities, obviously a few communities under that twenty thousand homes thing. Is that something that is only available for your agents? Obviously you're using it in recruiting and you show how you use it. Um do you also offer it to potential recruits?

Um, and so I think this is something that sets us apart because again, we're doing things that are time saving. We really try to look at it from an agent's perspective and how we can add value to them. We look at our agents. There are clients, um, and the client-you know, the customers, the buyer, the sellers are their clients. If we can serve our agents well, they'll serve the public well.

Um what are so you have uh how many employees do you have? I mean some are use b are there any employee stuff that you're doing specific for employee efficiencies, anything there from an AI perspective?

Um it's a soft sell for sure. Um low and slow, small ways to improve and then they see how it's working and lot of lessons along the way, like don't just copy and paste and make sure you remove the section at the bottom that's like can I make

gonna be they're gonna be rolling out um you know some more AI tools on the back office side to help expedite things for admins so um I would say again really some really dynamic stuff and helps us in our day to day.

la or beginning of last year, I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna put all my thoughts to paper and if I can have it written by my thirty-fifth birthday, that's the goal. So I set a goal. My birthday was February 9th. And I'm like, we're writing the book. So I finished writing it. I actually woke up every single morning between four and four thirty and wrote. Um, every single morning, even on weekends, because I know the second I stop and let my foot off the gas.

it's very easily to get distracted or, you know, lose motivation. So I just pedaled to the metal, had the book written in about three months and then um finished it so finished November, did pre-sales but actually waited to launch until my birthday. So my book launch and my thirty fifth birthday were February ninth of this year, um, twenty twenty five. And

Yeah, that was really it. And so it's it's helped. Um, it definitely helped me in my day-to-day. When we get a new agent, we partnered with a vendor who actually gifts them a book every time that we have a new agent. So they buy the book and Um, but I've partnered with brokers all across the country. are doing orders for their team and we customize that front page with a a letter from their broker because the the tools in here it's it's less about sales.

Um because there's plenty of practical information on that and it's more about how to get started in real estate as a business. Um, because I feel like there's a huge gap there when you come into real estate. you don't really realize like you own your own business now and there's some things that come along with that that you've got to be prepared for. So it's really just trying to help people get set up for success out, you know, out of the gate. Um and I think and I hope that that's exactly

On a day-to-day basis. So I appreciate you taking the time to write that book. I'm sure it'll be very valuable for our listeners. So we'll put a link in the show notes. So um I

Um, and so looking and watching and saying, Okay, I can pay somebody twenty dollars to do this or I can spend five hours doing it, which is a better use of my time and money and and learning how to leverage that. Um Sooner. I think I would have made strides a lot faster if I outsourced and handed off things that like really simple things that other people could be.

Um, so I could go off and do where what I'm really good at. Um, I I think I would have seen growth faster. That being said, doing the grunt work myself, I learned a lot of lessons. Um and so there was some you know definitely some learning, but I think that's That was a big part of it is just not being afraid to ask for help sooner or hand things off sooner, um, reflect and And not be afraid to do that.

I need to connect and I need to serve. I'm gonna come from a place of serving. And so I ended up finding this book. I was got really struggling with, you know, what they were had a were were asking me to do. Not that it was anything unethical. It just didn't feel good. And so I read this book and I'm like, this is what I've been trying to say. So it helped give me the words to have the conversation so I could explain.

Really w a way that feels more authentically me, um, which is you know, really coming to a from a place of service, showing up, um, and everything comes back. So that's how I I live every single day. Um and I think everybody should read that book.

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