EP 116: How Smart Agents Use AI as a Second Brain

Welcome to Real Estate AI Flash, the weekly podcast that takes AI from a buzzword to a business tool, making it approachable and actionable for all real estate professionals. I'm your host, Rajiv Saja, and each week I interview agents and thought leaders from across the country who are using AI to transform their careers.

Today's guest is Nick Offenkamp from the Pacific Northwest with Real Brokerage. Nick shares how he has transitioned AI to be his second brain while maintaining his creativity and elevating his client consultations. Let's get into it with Nick. Welcome to another episode of Real Estate AI Flash. And today I have Nick Offenkamp with Real Brokerage.

And they say Pacific Northwest, he's coming to us from Vancouver, Washington. And we're recording this in late February where I see a foot of snow outside my my door and Nick is cool because he doesn't get any snow and he lives in the great state of Washington. So I'm jealous, but Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thank you so much. And I'll say what we uh lack in snow, we more than make up for in rain. So it's it trade offs either way. On my trips to Seattle, yes, rain has greeted me every single time. Before we dive in though

Um, give the listening audience your journey. How'd you get into real estate and bring us to today? Yeah. Awesome question. I uh kind of came in through the back door. Um I was in pastoral ministry for uh six years started a church out in Minnesota. So am familiar with some snow, but um while I was doing that, had some friends that were in real estate, real estate investors and started doing a bit of uh real estate investing.

And candidly, um, as I got more and more into it One, I really liked the industry, but two, I was looking at what my buyer agent was making in commissions, and I was like, man, if I'm gonna do this at scale, like I I gotta find a way to save some money on those those agent commissions. And um when covet and all that hit, uh, that really opened up an opportunity for my family and I to

relocate and move back to Vancouver, Washington, which is my hometown. And in the midst of that move, that was also where I decided, hey, I'm I'm gonna career shift and go all in on real estate. thinking that I was gonna still focus mostly on real estate investing and help people here and there. Uh my first

job in real estate was working with a local builder here in Vancouver. So I got to know the home building process and it was kind of interesting because About half of the transactions that I was working on, I was working as the representative of the seller, but with legally unrepresented buyer. And it started to create this plausibility structure for me of, huh.

Every day there are buyers who are closing on homes without real estate agents. I got into this industry because I was having issues with paying buyer agent commissions and that started to really get the wheels turning on okay. How do I build a real estate business that I believe is incredibly consumer aligned?

And so After a few years with the builder, I went out on my own, hanging my license with Real Brokerage, building a team called the Tartan team, where I serve clients locally, trying to build the most consumer aligned real estate model uh in the United States is my my ambitious goal.

And then I'm also building what I call the DIY Home Buyer Academy, where for uh some of the rabble rousers like myself who want to buy a home without a buyer agent, but still would like some guidance, somebody in their corner at strategic. strategic moments. I'm offering education and consulting services to those folks. And that's something that I've been able to do nationwide, which has been a lot

Yeah, no, Nick, we're gonna get into all of that for sure. Um, so you know, since it's an AI podcast, I have to start with this. What was your first like light bulb moment with AI? Yeah, light bulb moments. So I was early adopter. Like as soon as OpenAI released ChatGPT in twenty twenty two, I s started playing around with it. Uh but lightbulb moment for me was really in the last year, 18 months, when instead of just using Chat GPT as like a a sharper version of Google search.

I really started to see that, whoa, this system operates as a second brain for me. Like I'm able to actually converse with it in a way that it's beginning to sharpen my thinking. And uh that was a really, really cool moment of that, oh my gosh, like I it's it's like having another sort of executive level person on my team who I'm able to go back and forth with.

to ultimately come up with I I think the the best ideas for business, for clients. I'm sure we can get into all of that. But uh once I saw the potential for it to be a second brain, I was like, oh man, this is huge. Plus you get it for twenty bucks a month in many cases. Yeah. A whole lot less expensive than having another executive partner to split the business with fifty fifty. For sure, for sure.

Um yeah, so um I you know it's interesting. Yeah uh you know, most people's light bulb moments were early on in Chat GPT, but I I love the fact that you sort of your light bulb moment and it life is a series of light bulb moments, you know, right? In a in no matter what But I'm I love the fact that your light bulb moment really came when you felt like AI is And yeah. And the way the more you can sort of treat it that way versus just asking it

replacement for Google. I think everybody starts somewhere, but the sooner you move to the area where you talk about, I think you'll start to realize the big benefits that people are realizing as we And the purpose of our podcast has always been to make AI approachable and actionable for all real estate.

Uh and so so let's kinda dig into some of your top three or four use cases that you're Really seeing uh AI really deliver value, whether it's collapsing time, driving more efficiencies, whatever the cases are, start wherever you want to start. Yeah. So I'll be honest, in terms of the tools that I use, it really is. I have the paid subscription to Chat GPT and I have the paid subscription to Claude.

Um, and I use both of those interchangeably. And a lot of times I like to get them essentially talking with each other as me being the the mediator. So I'm not

super like broad in terms of my AI tool usage. I know that there's a million things out there, but those two have been so powerful and I there's there's different things that I like about each one. But um So first and foremost, uh as I've kind of alluded to in my my background and story, um I've really wanted to come up with a new business model, both for my local business and national.

Uh, but to do that, um, it's it's hard within our industry to talk with other people who are uh practicing more of a traditional model and really get genuine feedback.

And so uh I've gone to Chat GPT as a way of really stress testing ideas and it's been the number one place that I've gone to to really help me work through different business model ideas and have it play my adversary or using even the like where you're talking to it while I'm just driving in the car, uh, role playing through, hey, you're a a client who's interviewing me um about buyer agency services, you know.

Let's talk through this, uh role play it, and then give me a whole bunch of feedback on things that I need to sharpen. So uh that's the number one use that I've had just chatting with Chat GPT about building uh business models. The second one has been more client focused, and that is really negotiation strategy. So it's it's very helpful certainly to be able to upload uh with real estate.

every agent knows. Uh you get the two hundred page document of HOA info and financials. Uh you get your big long inspection reports and uh while Yes, it's important for us to go through each of those things. I think any real estate agent who's honest, it's like you get 40 pages into an HOA document and your eyes glaze over and you are about useless when it comes to the rest of the thing.

And so being able to feed that stuff into these platforms and have them really risk assess it so that I can then know what sections I need to revisit, what I need to highlight with my client. And then taking it a step further of being able to run through different scenarios with my client of, hey, here's how we actually can use these.

kind of rough financials in the HOA for potential leverage in negotiations or you know, here's the things that came up on the inspection report that we actually should have a specialist in come and and take a closer look at. Even getting price estimations on some of those things. Every week it seems like Chat GPT is getting better when it comes to just estimating prices or looking for local services that might be able to give us a bid real quickly. So that's been another uh big one. Um

content. I think every agent uses it uh for for content. For me, um the the thing that I uh we all are getting attuned to AI slop when when you read a a listing description or you see a social media post or caption and it's just like, okay, this is clearly uh not written by a a human. I think There is a genuine fatigue that comes from that. So I'm not at all suggesting that people outsource their content creation to these models.

But I do think that in like I was talking about earlier, using AI as your second brain, um AI is really good at being able to prime the pump. And as long as you don't outsource the thinking on content creation and you actually push back and argue with these LLMs. You start to get some really good stuff down the line. And the best part is that the more that you create yourself,

Like I I love writing and podcasting and so I can feed transcripts and things that I've written. And the these Claude especially seems to do a really good job at starting to learn my voice. And so um even if I start with something that I've written, feed it into Chat GPT for initial feedback, make some changes, then run it through Claude, and Claude generally comes up with something where it's like, okay. This is authentically me, it sounds like me, and yet it's also

It's like having an incredible editor on my side. Now everything is is five times sharper than it would have been just doing it by myself. So one of the things I wanna let's double down on a couple of things you mentioned that were key. One is you you've you're leveraging a couple of models, um and sometimes when the stakes are a little high. It's always good to throw it to two models.

And kind of because you might like something that you're never aware of because you only are trying one model. So that's good good pieces there. And the models are different. Like Claude seems to be a really good writer with your tone and style over time. Um, the other one that I you mentioned about the two hundred page HOA document and we get, you know, brain fatigue after like forty forty pages or so. One of the things that I've found really valuable is Google's notebook LM.

Um and what it does is it it doesn't hallucinate at all because what it really first thing it asks you is for you to create a notebook on a transaction, put all the documents there. So it needs sources. Sources can be documents or Uh so think as you're listening to this, Nick talk about digesting an HOA document. Think of putting all of the documents per transaction.

in a notebook and simply asking it questions and it only references sources you provided and it never hallucinates. And you can also have the ability to share that, if you feel appropriate, with your client. Uh so uh so it's some some cool use cases there to show how AI will make you irreplaceable because you're leveraging it tried and true ways. So great takeaways there.

Yeah, and that's awesome because that is the biggest concern, right? Whenever you're uploading those legal documents is that there is some hallucination that you as the agent don't catch and that now you're liable for. And so that's an awesome call out of a of a tool that's gonna just keep it specific to the transaction and mitigate some of that risk. The other thing I love about it is you can also put your tried and true best practices in that notebook.

So it can kind of overlay that, but it doesn't go off the rails at all because it just knows the sources you provided, and that's the that's the scope. That's a great way to Power AI into Notebook. I don't know if you know this, but Zillow, uh in your backyard, uh recently launched a Google um notebook L M. that to answer buyers and sellers frequently asked questions.

Um I didn't I haven't played around with that yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's uh but but you know, I tell agents, look, it's a good idea for the time. But it has generic questions, but what if you take a take it one step further and create a notebook for your market area for your client?

And then it becomes personal to them. And I think there's an opportunity here if you're listening to this. We'll put a link to that notebook in uh Zu Zulah's notebook in the show notes so you can play around with it, but think of how you can create one For each client on your next buyer and seller consult, you give them all the resources that you provide, your expertise, because those are the sources that notebook goes off of. You know? So गुटस्टफने

Thanks, man. Yeah, I I I love that idea. I mean that's uh that's one of the biggest concerns that everybody seems to have with AI, right? Is like uh AI is it gonna replace real estate agents.

And uh I think that what you're talking about there as far as agents creating their own uh notebook that really captures their best judgment, their personality, um, that really does keep the the best of the human interaction in the transaction while supercharging that with AI tools, which I I think is really where we're headed.

Hundred percent, hundred percent, yeah. So some key takeaways uh from what you just shared. Anything else that you that comes to mind? Talk to him a little bit about your buyer academy, dig into that a little bit. Yeah, so that's uh I mean that's been great. Like uh

Maybe these go hand in hand. But last takeaway that I was gonna have is uh It it's kind of funny and I don't know how many folks will will talk about it, but uh even to some degree using uh Chat GPT uh for like uh emotional calibration and regulation throughout a a transaction. Uh I think that we all know just as we were talking about like how human the real estate transactions are. It's one of the most unique features about them and how every listing agent

Uh seller, like everybody that you're dealing with brings a whole nother personality. No real estate transactions the same. And so being able to lean on Chat GPT to just say, Hey Here's where I'm feeling the emotional charges. You know, just help me sanity check where I'm at, become recentered. Uh it's a funny thing to lean on machines for some of that, but they're actually getting uh quite quite good. Um I think that that transitions into the the DIY Home Buyer Academy because

At its at its core, right? Like a AI is making uh information more available to to consumers at a crazy rate, like just in terms of being for for them to be able to run their own comparative market analysis, look up data on neighborhoods, like um the the consumer is becoming so much more informed. And can do so much more themselves. So information is cheap.

And also, uh, there there's the running joke about like how, you know, what what does a buyer agent get paid for to open doors and turn on lights? And of course everybody listening to this knows that a buyer agent does so much more than that. But um W it caused us to ask the question like, well well what is then the most valuable part of having a buyer agent if it's not opening doors and turning on lights? And if it's not providing information. And the reality is that it's it's judgment.

expertise, it's it's knowledge of the market that comes through uh years of learning, local nuances, learning what to watch out for. Um LLMs are only as powerful as the input That you give them. And if you don't know what questions to ask, if you don't know how to prompt, you're going to get crap out. And that's the kind of thing that I think.

Most consumers, most home buyers, they don't go through this transaction all the time like agents do. And so while they have these powerful, powerful tools available to them. They don't know the questions to ask. They don't know what's what's in the range of normal or what falls outside of that scope. So with DIY Home Buyer Academy, It's really acknowledging that uh There are a growing number of folks that, especially in light of the lawsuit and now having to have buyer agency agreements.

They're looking at how much a buyer agent gets paid when they're buying a eight hundred, nine hundred thousand dollar home. And they're wondering, is it really worth it? Can't I do a lot of this myself? I think the honest answer to that is that, well, for many people, especially that have transacted real estate before, they can do a lot of it themselves. So

Where are the places that they need the most support? And that's what the DIY Home Buyer Academy is really all about, is it's just saying, hey, if if you want to be an unrepresented buyer, That's that's your right to do so. Nobody should stand in your way. But it is such a big transaction. You don't necessarily know all the right questions to ask. You don't know how to leverage all the tools that are available to you.

You want some human judgment. And uh so that that's that's what I offer uh through the the Academy. Um it's really consultation uh services and then in the near future here uh eventually a a course that's uh got some AI uh tools um to to help but Put somebody in your your corner. I I I liken it to uh

It's instead of calling an Uber uh to drive you uh where you want to go, it's it's really just having the GPS navigation. So you're getting the turn by turn directions, but you don't have an agent who's taking you out of the driver.

Yeah, no, uh that's great takeaway and we'll put a link to the Bayer Academy links in the show notes from for next. for you to learn more about it. But it's interesting. I mean I think one of the things you talked about was earlier was the second brain. But I want you to if you're a listener to this podcast, I want you to think about if you have an upcoming buyer consult or a listing of

Have a voice conversation with Chat GPT, Claude, doesn't matter which ones. Uh it seems to at the time of this recording, I always have to say this, at the time of this recording. Um Chat GPT's voice seems to be very back and forth is very naturalish at this point, but they'll all have it eventually. Have a conversation um with it saying I'm going into a meeting with the buyer, ask me tough questions.

so they can perceive me as an expert. Start so have a dialogue with it. The the other thing I've told agents too, Nick, is upload your current buyer consultation materials to Chat GPT or whatever order listing presentation. And and say, you know, act as a uh a top real estate agent that gets results, give it a role, and have it grade your buyer consult on a scale of one to ten. Um and sometimes I've done this too with my keynotes, like posting all my p uh PowerPoints for keynotes.

And it said I said, give it a grade and it gave me like seven point two or something last time I did this out of a ten. And I said, okay, now coach me how I can make that number go to a ten. What's missing? What's critically missing? You could do that for anything, but imagine doing that for buyer consultations because the value of what consumers think of buyer agencies evolving.

And you want to be ahead of the path and not just be buyerage and mariocrity. I think that's really what the essence of what you're talking about. Absolutely. And it's not a new concept to us. Like real estate agents have been paying for professional coaching for decades now. Like it's a huge part of our our industry. Um and so now I mean the way to think about that second brain, right, is that you have a infinitely patient

real estate coach that you're paying twenty dollars a month to that will help you grow. And another thing that I'll just add, because I think what you said about preparing for whether you're listing or buyer agent consultations. You can even get really specific there. Uh you you can say uh if you know the other agents that your client might be interviewing, or if you just know the top agents in your area, you can tell the system that, hey, part of the context is is I'm going up again.

this agent. And it's able to search their track record, look at everything online. I mean it it helps you even position yourself against a particular person, which is just wild to me as far as the kind of leverage that that could potentially be. Yeah. You know, you trate call out because you triggered a thought in my I had Olivia Salier from uh Williamsburg, Virginia with BHHS RW Town Realty early on in my podcast uh episode. What she does, she's very big on social media.

What she does is she does a deep research project on all her competitors on social media and say, give me my strengths, compare them to their weaknesses, and she goes into a listing appointment with that information. Yeah. So again, exactly to your point, Nick. Our creativity is the only limitation we have. And I think what you just said is

You gotta win the win the appointment and you know what you're going up against. So great takeaway there. So cool. Uh anything else, Nick, you wanna add before I get to my final two questions? Man, I I I mean this is such an awesome conversation, but I uh I I think that that that really does hit like those those kind of core buckets of how I'm using it. I'm using it all the time. Like I constantly have it running in the background in another tab. And I think that uh it's just again it's

basically a conversation with another version of my myself to just sharpen thinking and judgment, uh hopefully so that I'm bringing my best self to everything that I'm doing. Uh clients business, even podcasts like this. Yeah, no. It's interesting, right? So we've we've we are sorta in this world of it's an app on our phone, as of today, like it's an app on our phone, or on the on the computer, bro browser, web based or apps on on my Mac.

But as we start to evolve this, I think it'll become our operating system on our phone and our computers, where AI is going to be that intelligence layer. And this is an early mover advantage for most real estate agents that lean into this. I still think there's a tremendous opportunity ahead of all of us in 2026 and beyond, just because although AI has been around for three plus years.

There's still very few agents that are using it like Nick's talked about about second brain and things of that nature. So lean in, make this your year of being an AI powered agent. And I believe that'll separate you from

Cool. Good stuff, Nick. This is going to be very valuable. Let me get to the final two questions I ask all my guests. So are you so you've been in real estate how long? Yeah, uh coming up on five years. Five, okay. So if you were to give an it one piece of advice to your younger self. It doesn't have to be AI, it could be just business life advice, whatever that would have fastened your trajectory to where you are today if you had to start all over again. What would that advice be?

Yeah. You know, I I think that I was so worried about rocking the boat um when it comes to building different models and uh and so worried that I would be labeled a black sheep in my local market. um for especially on the buyer side, um uh trying to offer full service, limited service and DIY uh options to buyers and um

And so I really uh I was shy about it um for the first couple of years. Um and I Especially for the DIY home buy like I tried to build that as a just totally separate thing to what I'm doing locally and felt the past uh year and a half up until very recently very fragmented.

And what I've really found is that um, yes, while there will always be if you're doing something new and novel that's getting attention, there will always be some detractors. That's actually a I think a good s sign and signal. Uh I've been really surprised by the amount of support in the industry and the number of uh really top agents and leaders who have looked at what it is that I'm doing and have said, Wow, that's

That's really interesting and uh and they've been quite supportive. And so I think if I were to go back to my younger self and just say, hey, Um, if you really have a a conviction and you believe it's aligned with who you are and you believe it's aligned with what's best for your clients, for consumers, for your business. Uh go go all in and and be bold in it and trust that uh

there's going to be really cool opportunities that that come about as a result of that. I I wish I wouldn't have been uh scared and shy uh as as I was early on.

No, that's great great advice. So jump in with both feet if your instincts say it's a good thing to do because it's you'll fail forward and fail forward faster. Yeah. Great piece of advice. So last question, are you a book or a podcast person? Ooh, both. Uh both. All right. I'll give you both then. Give me one book and one podcast that has been very impactful in your career. Yeah. Tailoring this especially to uh real estate agents. I I mean I think it applies to everybody, but uh

The almanac of Naval Ravakant has been like a a book that I just come back to, I think, every year. Uh Which is I think it's essentially like his uh his tweets and writings that have all been curated by the author Eric Jorgensen there. Um but the way that he talks about leverage of your time and uh talent, uh and the the way that he talks as well about uh

being and finding all the things that make you uniquely you and leveraging that. I I find that that maps on so well to this conversation about AI. To and it goes back to that whole thing of like don't outsource your thinking to AI and just post the first thing that it gives you. It's it's that back and forth where it's

It's constantly sharpening you and making you more truly yourself and then leveraging the best of your personality. So uh I I just could not more highly recommend that everybody read the almanac of Naval Ravakhan. I think it's been around a long time. So a lot of your listeners probably have. But if you if you have, read it again. There you go. We'll we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Um how about a podcast?

Yeah. I so again I I love your podcast and I actually have been an avid listener now ever since you were on the uh Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, which is the other podcast that I'd shout out. So I've gone back through it. I've probably listened to seventy percent, I feel like, of the the podcasts you've done. Um and and then uh and then yeah, Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered. I just think that

that Keith and uh and James Dwiggins, I think that they're two of the the sharpest minds in the industry. And I love who it is that they have on their show and uh whether I uh love'em, whether I disagree with the guy, they always get me thinking and uh thinking about new angles on this industry. So that would be the other one that it's like always in my rotation. As soon as a new episode drops, I'm I'm hooked.

Hundred percent man. They James and Keith uh are good people for the industry. And um I can talk a lot about them. I I'm I'm doing a keynote for them uh in a few weeks here. So they are amazing folks and uh we I can't wait to meet. But uh great suggestion, Nick. This has been fun.

And I appreciate you taking the time to jump on. I'm I'm I'm glad that uh the world put us together. Uh we got connected in LinkedIn. And if you are looking for a great agent in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver, Washington. Um, reach out to Nick. We'll put his all his contact in the show notes and uh I hope I meet you in real life real soon.

I hope so too. This has been a blast. Thank you so much. And thanks for doing this podcast. It's super helpful to me. And I know it's uh helpful to agents all over the United States. So keep keep it up, man. This is awesome. I appreciate it and thank you for thank you for being on.

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