EP 124: Why AI Should Be Your Business Partner Not Just a Tool

Improve how their business runs. I'm joined by Brendan Speer of Caprika Realty in Annapolis, Maryland, who shares how his engineering mindset and operator approach led him to use AI for everything from content creation. To workflow automation, to custom tools, dashboards, and even building his own CRM vision. We also discuss how agents can use AI as a true thought partner for brainstorming, decision-making, and solving the bottlenecks that slow down.

Growth. Let's dig in with Brandon. Welcome to episode 124 of the Real Estate AI Flash. And today we have Brandon Speer with Caprika Realty from the beautiful town of Annapolis, Maryland. Uh and this is airing the week of Memorial Day. Hopefully everybody had a great Memorial Day weekend. Uh we're recording this a few weeks ahead, but this is when it's gonna air. Brandon, welcome to the podcast.

go take one idea that Brendan's gonna talk about and implement in your business for uh actionable uh takeaway. So uh so Brendan, love for the listening audience. Um I you know Caprico Realty is a little boutique real estate firm. uh in uh Annapolis. And I want to be in Annapolis next week actually, by the way. Love for you to kind of walk the audience through how long you've been in real estate and bring us to today. What got you in?

I basically hated my engineering job. It was super boring. Did some Oracle database training and I actually ended up being an adjunct professor teaching AutoCAD at PG Community College. But they had a budget freeze and at that point I got my master's and I'm living in my parents' basement making about five thousand dollars a semester.

And I'm like, all right, I gotta do something here. Like this this isn't gonna this isn't gonna work. Uh and basically I had a buddy whose dad was teaching real estate, had been in real estate a long time, and um we were just like, Hey, let's go start a team. I didn't know jack about real estate. I didn't care about real estate. I just knew five grand a semester wasn't gonna cut it. So they're like, Hey, let's go do this. I'm like, sure. So when I got in

Uh uh I I approached it wrong a little bit. Actually you you you I know one of the things we talked about is some things you had gived advice for, which I'll go back to. But what I'm gonna say is when when I got into real estate, I didn't want to be a salesperson. I didn't actually wanna sell real estate. Which is kind of a strange thing to get into real estate when you don't wanna sell real estate.

You know, it's like thanks to Captain Obvious, right? But but that's the case, right? So it it took me a minute to kinda wrap my head around all that. But basically got in, we spent one year at exit, um, because the the local branch here um

Larry who was underneath, you know, he was friendly with several of the top people there at that office. And um there for a year and then we branched off, started our own independent company. Basically my my buddy, his dad, my brother is a silent partner, formed our own independent, had that for a few years. And um, you know, then two thousand eight happened and the next two years we like

We stayed afloat but it was it was it was rough. Like we were not doing like you know, like everybody we were we were not doing well. You know, so then finally um I just got to a point where I'm like, we're we're drowning here and I fundamentally disagreed with my partners on how to evolve the company. So um we we basically said, Okay, we're out. Now I say we during that stretch.

my wife had joined I met my wife actually at my company, which is funny'cause just a little side joke. I I joked during that time the only way I was gonna get a n new girlfriend was uh if they like showed up at my parents' basement where I was living. Or at the office. Well, she came to the office, ironically. Yeah, she was selling um she was doing door to door sales for Verizon and came to our office. That's how I met her.

But uh fast forwarding, we you know, we we were sort of the top salespeople at the moment, uh, in our in that company and like I said, and we were just bleeding money. So we broke off and I got my broker's license and haven't looked back.

um do one or both those things in many capacities, right? Most people are just doing the uh real estate side of things, but or selling, buying or selling uh with clients. But there's team leaders that are exactly wearing the same hat you're wearing. And there's small brokerages that are in in many ways wearing the same hat you're wearing. So I'd love to get into um specific use cases on that. But first I wanted to kinda ask you, what was your first like light bulb moment?

But yeah, it just wasn't as obvious because I was using it in smaller bite-sized things or through other applications. I'll give you a small dumb example. Um for a few years. uh before it was real trendy, before a lot of people were using box brownie and everything else, uh I would do sky replacement stuff for our photos because we're here in Maryland and there's a whole stretch of months here where it's just like gray.

You know, and so uh out you know, Photoshop was a real pain in the butt to do the sky replacement. Lightroom wasn't really much better. Like you can do very cool things, but it was it was difficult. Uh but there are programs like Luminaire. uh who now it's like Neo or something they keep changing their brand so they can resell you to you. But um th they had a sky replacement, you know? And so a lot of that is AI, but just not how we think of AI today.

So there's a ton of AI things that I'd been using for years. So y you could see it coming, you know what I mean? Like you could if if you pay attention, you you knew it was coming. But what I would say is the moment that I I started using AI like Claude or GPT on the daily. That moment uh actually wasn't in real estate at all. Uh it was on the music side. So as a hobby, I'm into electronic music production. I have a studio in my basement. Um and so I have these old vintage samplers.

And basically the old Akai samplers from the late eighties, uh, they store all of the the samples in a proprietary format. And it's and they use like an old floppy disk or you can use like an old SCSI drive. It's a pain in the butt. general gist is I I wanted the ability to I wanted to make an application to convert WAV files and MP3s to this proprietary format.

and m put it on S D card or thumbstick,'cause now they have these SCSI emulators and floppy disk emulators and and move it onto the samplers. And it was one of those things where I was like, Man, I this feels like you should be able to do this. So I I I started talking to GPT. Now obviously uh we were already using GPT for the normal oh, help me write a blog and give me a script for a video. Like all the all the stuff that

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, everybody and their brother was doing, right? Yeah. But the moment where I started saying, Hey, I want to build this application. That's where things changed. Because all of a sudden now I'm having this conversation where uh like late at night it's spitting out uh code.

You know, and at that moment the stuff wasn't interfaced as well. Like you had to take the code from GPT, copy it into something, compile it and go back and forth like Yeah, it was it was more clunky, but but I was doing it. And all of a sudden I started having an actual application. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like I'm I'm talking, like I'm building something that's communicating with this 1986 sample.

And at that moment, that's why I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. And so that then quickly spiraled into real estate because again, knowing my background. I've always wanted my own CRM. And so for like the l literally since the first year I've and I've even sat down over years and like mapped out what would that look like. What would the different pages and the tables and like ER diagrams and all kinds of stuff. I've done it like multiple different pieces of it over the twenty years.

And maybe about a year and a half ago, uh after I was since I was messing with the music app, I was like, you know what? If I can build this music app. I could totally go build some of my own real estate stuff. I was like it's no real different it's not really any different. Uh, you know, you can vibe code it. And so um I I basically I just started having conversations with GPT and To sort of go sideways. But here's one of the biggest things uh that I would say to the audience here is

I think it's a underrated thing in terms of having conversations with AI. And not just like here have a little type a little conversation. Like go get GPT, pay the twenty bucks or twenty five bucks. And click on the little voice thing and have a conversation. You know, give the context of like, hey, I want to design this or I want to talk about this or I want to brainstorm that. You can have full blown conversations and it is crazy good on the the levels that you can get into.

And I think the sooner you make that ki this decision and kind of cross the bridge, I think it unlocks so many possibilities to your point. I feel like people are gonna build apps for just one person. That applies to me, my business, and you don't have to buy a solution that uh you only use ten percent of it because you don't hate the other 90%.

You know what I mean? Like so I think I think we're gonna we're going into that um time of uh where we are in society that people are just gonna build stuff. And it's gonna become easier and easier to build. And uh you demonstrated that with that um inform music translation type of stuff that you built, right? And I think one of the other thing is I think as you listen to uh Brendan talk, if you are if you've not built things

Don't feel like you need to be a coder to build anymore. I mean the most powerful programming language is natural language, conversational language. Just be curious and just ask converse have a conversation. And now with Claude Cower, Or codecs on the GPT side. Both are very powerful beyond measure. So it's just more about your imagination. So uh great takeaways there. And that that I can see how that was a light bulb moment based on your background, Brandon.

Right. Yeah. So um so let's kinda dig in. Um you have you know a three to five agent team and you have a brokerage, you're running operations. So pick the top three to four Wherever you want to start, use cases that you've sort of ingested AI to make more be more productive for you, your operations, etc. Start wherever you want to start.

And at first I'm like, what am I gonna say? And then I started jotting down a few things and I was like, Okay, I I I don't have five hours to talk here. So it it's crazy because Th there's so many things that now we've done that are just part of what we're doing that I don't even necessarily think about it as AI, but it is.

Um and I know that sounds weird, but I'll I'll give you a few examples. Um and this is w what I'm gonna say in terms of like the takeaway for for people listening is it's not just using one application. Um but it's also what I'm gonna say is you gotta empower your team. And by that what I mean is this. So I'll take I'll take Christine, right? So

I hate editing videos. I'm slow at it. I'm not very good at it. I can do it, but I suck at it, right? I don't want to do it. I'm going to pay somebody to do it. So, you know, we we pay for the Adobe Creative Cloud, we pay for, you know, Canva, we pay for all like all these different things. But even within that, like for an example, we recently started paying for um Google Lab Flow.

or Google Labs Flow, which if you don't know it c you can sign up through G Suite or the other stuff, but right now you can do all kinds of crazy weird transitions for real estate video. And it was one of those things where like I saw videos that were doing it. I was like, Oh, that's really cool. I messaged her, I'm like, Hey, w we need some of this And she's like, Oh, like this and she was already playing with it, you know? Um and she's like, But I ran out of free credits, I'm like, Done.

I went into the G Suite thing, it was really weird how you had to find it, but like went into there, hit the little upgrade button, boom. Now she has credits to work with. And so what I'm gonna say is there there's every it feels like every few months there keeps being new things out there. And so what I'm gonna say is if you wanna leverage this stuff and if you're running a small team or a broker

Don't be afraid to put a little money, put a little effort, and give some freedom to your staff that's using the things. Don't be so like you have to use it this way because the the stuff's changing so fast. And so uh I don't think that the tool matters as much as the flexibility and just be willing to try different things. Because again you know, I mean there's other you know, other tools um and this this this is more nerdy but what I'd say is um

You know, we we do uh not not a lot, but we do use Hey Gen, we use Eleven Labs. So like, you know, we'll c we'll create some small video, you know, one little minute like reels and stuff like that. Uh like I'll take keeping current matters, take some of their slides, pick the ones I like. say, okay, hey Christine, make make me ten videos with the we with these slides.

And I I've already done a few templates to build avatars of myself, you know, with like a good mic and everything else, send it to her, and then she just goes and I don't have to do it. She just goes and and takes care of it for me. So again that's part of it where it's like even though I have an engineering background when it comes to like a lot of the the graphics and social media stuff

I don't have to go and learn to do it. I have to have someone who who is willing to go and play with it. I just have to support them. I have to give them that freedom. Hey, yeah, I don't need to watch every minute of what you're doing. Go play. Go have fun. Try some stuff. Can you can you make these things? Yes, cool. Does that work? No? Try something else.

If you're excited about learning, you should you should always be curious. You know, I I think that's the only thing that separates probably like you and me, Brendan, from people that are not further along with AI is I'm just insanely curious.

Like when I I'm I when I see a video and I don't have time to watch it, I bookmark it, watch it, and actually go try it to see w if it's an unlock, right? And idea-wise. So I think if you're insanely curious, that's one. Second, if you're if you learn this stuff. I think even if you don't have the time to do it and you hire a virtual assistant or an assistant, you can ask the right questions, so make sure they're powered up.

So and they're not doing it the legacy way and charging you more than they should. Right. AI should create better outcomes. And the last takeaway is you talked about Hajjan and Eleven Labs. And if you're if you're listening to this, one is a video cloning component and the other one is an audio cloning component. You can connect the two.

And if if you're ever looking for not being on video but doing video, here's your answer. Okay. Uh you just try to create one good one or two good video assets and it'll go to town for you.

And so much so that even though HeyGen has audio cloning stuff in there, they actually have a direct integration to Eleven Labs. So you don't have to do like, oh I have to do one part and then come over here. No, it's like you set up your Eleven Labs, you the API wise you connect them. And it would do it. And it was one of those things where like I tried the cheap route just doing through Hagen first.

And I sounded like this weird, like British robot guy. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't sound like me at all. I put it into eleven labs, I'm like, okay, that's that's scary. That sounds just like me. So it was worth the extra few bucks.

All the boxes are gray. They're like, none of these people have touched AI. And it's like a couple boxes at the end where they're like, oh, like what 13% have tried something that you know in Google Gemini or something, they've asked a question. And then it's like two little boxes have paid for something and then one little box vibecode. And it's easy when you're doing this stuff to be thinking, Oh man, I'm so far behind. Things are moving so fast.

But the reality is the rest of the world is they haven't even touched it, right? So if you're even on this podcast lit listening, you're already ahead of the game, right? But it is moving fast. And so what I'd say is if you want that advantage, embrace some of it. Try some of it, right? And so I think

Most of the real estate world, uh, with all the GPT stuff in particular, and even Claude, everybody got really caught up with just like listing descriptions or write a blog or help me write a video script. And those are all good and yes, and we do that, and that helps. But there's two things that I think are not talked about enough, which one is the idea of being able to brainstorm uh and research. the like when I used to do like a a an a video like about our area

I would have to go into Google, Yelp, and all these things and like get all these different data points. And it was slow and it was painful. And it was one of the things I didn't like doing it because it was a pain in the butt. Now you can you can speed that up like eighty percent by going into Claude, going into GPT, Gemini, whatever you want. Pick pick, doesn't matter. P they're all good.

And ask the ask the questions and say, hey, go look at my competitor. Go look at these these things. F go search the internet. Give me a list of ten things. Give me a list of twenty things. And and then and then start having more of an iterative conversation from that point. But the thing is, that initial just data gathering, AI can do it.

so much faster than I ever could. So that's one piece of let help let AI do some some of the data gathering. And now the fact that cowork and all these things you can they can access the internet. Like just write in your system. You don't have to feed it like some CSV file or this other crap. Like it's just boom, it goes. So one data gathering, don't underestimate that.

Is analyzing. We as the humans still need to have know what we're trying to talk about, right? Like we still have to figure out. Hey, this is what I'm interested in. So for example, if you're making a I don't know, a video about the you know, the the top ten reasons you love uh a city.

when you're doing the research, you want to say things like, Hey, look at the schools, look at like there's certain things as a real estate agent. I know, hey, I need to know about food. I need to know about, you know, what are the jobs, what's the commute, what's the traffic, like there's so say that. Put have that in the conversation. And then let AI help analyze the data. You still get to be the human and make the final decisions on what you want to push.

But it is fascinating if we allow AI to to speed up that anal that like analytical process. It it's crazy good. And so I think that's a a very underrated bit, you know.

If it's repetitive and it only takes you five minutes to do, it may not be worthwhile ingesting AI. But if it takes you thirty minutes to an hour to prepare for something, look at how AI can not just replace that for you or help you, but enhance the output. Right. The quality of the output can be greatly enhanced because you're a professional and it'll enhance you. The other one is energy draining, Brendan.

Tasks, right? There are things that you hate to do because you talked about data collection. That's like you'd love the output, but the process is energy draining. And the last one is data heavy. Like you can feed AI a lot of data and it can make sense for you and you can throw your opinion on it. So, like repetitive, time consuming, energy draining, and data heavy.

are things that fit in there that you as an agent need to do. Pick the mate most important pain point and go learn how you can have AI help you with that so you can make real estate fun again.

And so it's one of those things where this is for my wife and it's something that she wanted to go build. And basically same thing. I just went into GPT, had conversations. I didn't know which schematic like tools were out there. It says, Oh, try this, try this. Okay, I go, try a few, pick one I like, and I just go back and forth and literally build a whole s schematic, then get the PCB board. And one thing that I don't know people might not r think about or realize.

And I drag the screenshots into Cloud or GPT and it's like, oh no, you messed that up. Move this thing over here. Oh, okay. Take another screenshot. So like a little bit slow, but the thing is. I I was just able to to design a whole PCB board. That's crazy.

And again you could do this in screenshots with GPT, Claude, et cetera, but I believe at the time of this recording I have to say that all the time, Brendan, because it could change tomorrow, as you know. Yep. So Gemini has a Gemini has a video mode where you can sw switch it and actually show something that you're working on and it will walk you through what to do. And it's like a conversation.

And it may help you save the screenshots, but to your point, you can learn anything you want to learn. Okay. That's the beauty of almost everything you want to learn. And uh and and build stuff. So somebody mentioned to me the other day that they were never did an oil change in that in their car.

And they had the Gemini app turned around video and they it actually walked them through doing an all change. And the car didn't fall apart. Um, you know, so in so many ways. So I think that's that's the key takeaway. Be curious. Uh dig in. Um you're not falling behind. Hardly anybody is just beyond the chat experience. And look at areas that you can uh streamline to uh apply AI to it. So before I get to my final two questions, Brendan, anything else you want to add to that conversation?

You're probably thinking in your head, okay, what do I have to do? What are the steps I need to do? You know, what am I trying to achieve? How much is it going to cost? How am I going to do it? Well here's the thing Uh there's a good chance that someone else has already figured this out. Okay. And so the the one of the the superpowers of all this AI stuff is that it has access to so much things, right?

So here's this is what I was talking about in terms of brainstorming. Like I I for for this I prefer GPT just because I like the voice conversations the best. uh for me personally. So like I'll go on my phone, I'll be in the car, driving to an appointment, driving to my parents' house, whatever, it doesn't matter. And I open up GPT and I go to click the little voice button.

And I'll say, hey, uh, I want to brainstorm. I like I really want to add this thing in my business, whatever it is. Doesn't matter. And, you know, and I'll just say, Hey, can you take some notes and let's talk this out? And it's like, Yeah, okay, let's go. And I just start talking. I literally and the thing is sometimes when you're just talking out loud, you you start having little light bulb moments that come on and then GPT, which is very positive, is like, Oh yeah, that's a great idea. But

But uh h here's the thing, but you have to ask questions. You have to say, Is there something I missed? or what do you think? And all of a sudden and you might even say, uh I don't know, maybe it's uh scripts or something. M say something like, Hey, uh think like you're a Tom Ferry coach or pick whatever you like, Bri Brian Eisenhower. I don't care. Pick whoever you like. You just say, Hey.

Imagine you're giving advice like this, in this style, with that in mind. What do you think? Am I missing something here? What would be the next steps you think? And all of a sudden GPD's like blah da da and you're like, oh. That's pretty cool. And then you get to the end of this and then you say, Hey, can you uh can you go ahead and give me uh you know, a plan or markdown file or a summary, wh whatever it is, depending on what what you're trying to do here.

on how what my next best steps should be. Or can you give me a summary of this conversation? And it'll say something like, Oh I can't do that in like it'll talk but like I can't put this file in the common thing. You'll be like, that's fine. I'm gonna as soon as I end this voice thing Can you you just generate in the canvas for now and and as soon as I in the voice thing, uh generate uh a downloadable link for me. And it's like okay, you hit end and then it

And you and you just download that PDF or that markdown file, save it to your documents, and then you have it you have a plan. And here's the thing. Now that you have that physical plan, right? Not physical, that that you have that digital file.

That's that's the first step. Well now maybe when you get home or something, you could always take that, throw it back in you could even throw it into a d different one. You want Gemini, Claude, whatever. You can say, Hey, I was working on this thing. Here take a look. Did we miss anything? Or you know, is there some pain points I I should be watching out for here? Or what would be my next best step? Like ha like talk to AI and then have AI be iterative

have them work against each other. Um I can tell you like the amount a and again it doesn't matter. This could be how should I hire an assistant? It could be how do I set up a Facebook ad? Help me make a campaign. Literally anything. Yeah. Have the conversation. You will be amazed on how rich of the material that it gives you. And then again, even if that's just like the high level, let's say it was a Facebook campaign.

Okay, you get the campaign and then you go back and say, okay, hey, can you make me you know ten versions of this, you know, the the the headlines or whatever and can you give me this? Yep, okay and then you can say okay can you give me I don't know how to do a Facebook ad, can you give me step by step instructions on how to set it up?

And it's like it you know, again whether you use the Gemini video, whatever, it doesn't matter. It like it would tell you literally the step-by-step instructions. It is bonkers good on

any AI you use, download the file, put it in a folder, point the folder to your solution, and it can read all those things so you don't have to rein recreate what you're gonna do over and over again. So great takeaway, Brandon. I could talk to you forever.

Because you're doing this stuff and uh you're adding so much value. So let me get to the final two questions. I'd love to ask all my listeners a couple of questions. Are you like a book or a podcast person?

it's kinda like I because I've gone down enough different rabbit holes on those different systems, they're all showing me content that I want to get, right? And then it's also leveraging things like AI and so on and so forth to then go ask more questions So I I I go and seek out stuff, but I c I I'm I'm really bad at like getting listening to like a whole book. I my my I you know. But

like being the expert. And like you might be good at talking to the people or, Oh, I know about houses, whatever. Okay, great. But if you don't know what's going on in the market or if you don't know about certain housing construction, uh like I I feel like we're doing a a disservice to the industry and to the clients.

And what I like about keeping current matters is that they're taking so many different sources and they're they're summarizing it. And yeah, look, you could say yeah, but they're a little optimist. Okay, sure. We have to be to be drinking the Kool-Aid and be in the business. So like I accept that going in, but they're still providing so many different data points that would be way harder for me to go and get every month.

And now that's not a replacement for some of your local data, you stuff to go and get your hyperlocal, yes, like look up those housing stats, et cetera. But at least at the national level, if you're following with keeping current matters, uh you know, the amount of stuff that they talk about from foreclosure stuff to what the interest rates are doing to, you know, new construction stuff.

It allows you to have more informed conversations when people ask you, you don't have to like look at them like a deer in the headlights, like, I don't know what you're talking about. If you just listen to their deep dive and their their like um monthly report, it comes out on the tenth. Just listen to that every month. Whether even if you don't make any extra videos or stuff with it, if you just listen to that, you'll be so much more informed. So yeah, not quite a podcast, but that would be my

AI or not A, it could be life, business, whatever that I think would help you more. Or people that are listening should apply.

You know, and so I'm this isn't some big picture like, oh come join my company. This is I don't care what state, who you're with, whatever. In the beginning, there's too many things in this industry to learn and master. And I think if you join a good team not all teams are good, but if you join a good team they have systems already in place. Or they should. You know? And like they they can they can speed up that learning curve exponentially.

Um, you know, it's one of those things where it's like drink the Kool-Aid, do what they're doing, then figure out how you want to tweak it, make it your own, if you want to branch off, whatever. I don't care. Hey, have at it. But like th there's no reason for a new person to come in and have to figure out every single thing that we're doing. It's just too much. So join somebody who's already figured it out. All right. So that's that's the the the biggest thing I would tell anybody.

To join the team. So uh great advice, Brendan. Um great takeaways in the pod. And I hope to see you in real life sometime again, real soon. Yeah, thanks for coming on, Brendan.