¶ Welcome & Episode Focus
Welcome to Real Estate AI Flash, the podcast that helps agents, teams, and leaders understand how AI is changing real estate and the strategies you can use to win. I'm your host. Rajiv Saja. In today's episode, we explore how independent brokerages and agents can use AI to streamline operations. Improve client follow-up and create more times for what matters most. I'm joined by Casey Jorgensen, broker owner of Jorgensen Group Real Estate in Round Rock, Texas.
who shares how his team is leveraging AI powered assistance, automated workflows, and custom built solutions to eliminate busy work and help agents focus on serving clients at a higher level. We also discussed why AI should enhance human connection, not replace it, and how brokers can use AI to create a better experience for both agents and consumers. Let's dive in.
¶ Guest Introduction: Kasey Jorgenson
Welcome to episode 127 of the real estate AI Flash. And our guest today comes from Round Rock, Texas, Casey Jorgen. And as he would say, Round Rock is the best suburb in the northern part of the world. Uh I'm sure others will debate it. But hey, as far as Casey's concern, it's the best suburb and we have him here today to talk about all things AI. Casey, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Yeah, yeah. And so Casey and I connected, for those of you that are listening or watching, we connected at the Mike Delpredi further event. Um that happened May tenth. I believe. Um, and uh we were sort of sharing the same table and it's sorta you know, we we were sitting and kinda uh shooting the breeze and Uh I heard some of the things that he was doing about AI and obviously we're all about AI literacy, uh uh in in terms of brokers and agents that are listening. So
I thought he'd be a great value add. And what I enjoyed about having um looking forward to having Casey on the pod to talk about is he's not just a boutique brokerage, but he's also looking at Streamlining operations for his brokerage, uh leveraging AI wherever possible, but also uh all the things agents do uh day to day. So looking forward to it, Casey.
Yeah, me too. Thank you for having me.
¶ Kasey's Real Estate Journey
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So uh let's just for the listening audience to get to know you a little bit, I'd love for them to kind of know your journey and how you got into real estate and bring us to today.
Sure. Um, so we uh I grew up, I was the uh the child of a home builder. So I was I was deep into real estate and uh had kind of free labor for my for my dad growing up. We were building building homes and building basements in in Ohio. And um got out of that, I joined the military, so I right out of high school, ended up joining the Navy, became a rescue swimmer and a helicopter crewman for six years, and my enlistment was set to expire in two thousand nine.
And two thousand nine the economy and the real estate market was Um real interesting. And my logic was, you know, I I want to build a business that has no ceiling. Yeah. And real estate was just the the the the perfect fit. I had experience with homes and property, uh had the background just growing up in it and and said there this is a limitless opportunity to go and build an actual business
Uh teams were just kind of becoming a a popular concept, especially with Keller Williams and and that's who I ultimately joined. But separated for the military, uh research. different parts of the country that were poised to be uh kind of boom towns as the economy recovered, which pointed me to Central Texas and had never been here and came out, visited once. Bought a house and started my real estate uh business as as soon as possible.
So first of all, thank you for your service.
While you were in the middle of the year.
Um and so y moved to Texas because of real estate. But where did you come from?
Uh I was stationed in Southern California and and I actually started so so I interned with a a husband and wife team, Sandy and and Deirdre Bramberg, uh there. I basically said, show me the road. And Southern California was the epicenter of of terrible for real estate then. And so, um, that's where we were. I remember If you looked at fifty properties on the market, only one of them would have been what we called a traditional sale.
And so um that was that was the the toughest place to be. But that came from Southern California and chose central Texas. I'm one of the original the original migrators that.
There you go. It takes sometimes there's a lesson, there's a couple of lessons for me there. One is like Make a decision and make it quickly. Like you also sort of you sort of went there. I mean it takes a while for people to sort of move. You kind of hitched your wagons to a team to learn the ropes. I think there's a lot of benefit there.
¶ First AI Lightbulb Moment
So um so let's talk a little bit about what was your like your first like light bulb moment?
So when I when I first moved here in in two thousand nine, two thousand ten to start my business, um The average agent in our market at that point was was much older and they didn't know much about SEO and things like that. That's actually what helped me kind of get up and going. The the average agent then was
Um
They were a little bit older and they didn't know SEO and things like that. That helped me kind of start the business. I I made a really good SEO-friendly website and generated a lot of organic traffic. uh that way. My first light bulb moment with AI was Uh realizing that that SEO still important in in certain ways, but several years ago I said AI is gonna be a huge deal when it comes to people asking for recommendations and helping people research professionals. And so this was probably
about four to five years ago. And I said, we need to make some changes to position ourselves to be the one that that all of these, you know, large language models are are recommending. And so that was my first light bulb moment. And we did things for several years to set us up. That's great. And that's and that's given us a great boost ahead.
And I think people that understand trends And don't wait for everything to be figured out and experiment, you know, test your way in and test your way out methodology. I think we'll win. We had uh not too long ago, Jill Wenty from Better Homes and Gardens in Houston, Texas. Um and so she talked a little bit about how she was early in the SEO game. She used to get thirty percent of the her business right from her website because of things she did. She's obviously evolved.
That's definitely a good take. trends change. So um so you run a so how big is your brokerage?
Uh we currently have fifteen agents here in central Texas. We have three agents in uh Jacksonville, Florida. So we've expanded there with a a partner there. Um but we have fifteen agents and four staff members. Okay.
So almost a a very solid team under a broker. Typically team, if you're a team leader or a brokerage owner, I think some of the stuff that Casey's gonna share is gonna be very resonate, resonating to operational pain that you may be enduring. So let's t start on the operational side, Casey, first. What are some use cases that you feel people listening to the show should kind of embrace and kind of test their way into it and build a Leveraging a start where
¶ AI for Agent Productivity
So
I think the first like kind of dipping your toes into the water. And and and I had a a coaching call with one of our agents this morning who who he says that, you know, he's the busiest he's ever
And
says, okay, well, how are we managing that? And he said, Well, some things are falling through the cracks and things and and so on. And so, you know, we we opened up Claude and I was kind of going through cowork with him and I said, Listen, you can You can implement scheduled tasks and things. That's the easiest way to get started that just says, hey, Claude, can you review my email and make sure I I'm not missing anything urgent, either business opportunity or anything else?
And have it find those things, draft replies, so you can just tweak. and do that at the end of every day. And and so there's a lot of little things like that that I think operationally can help people stay organized and kind of dip their toes into the water that doesn't take a huge in-depth level.
Yeah, and if you're listening to this, I mean there's several ways you can tackle this, but I think Claude's a Claude's been a little bit of a leader off late at the time of this recording in terms of what you can connect to Claude. So um I use cloud, chat, GPT and G. Cloud's become a little bit of a primary use. So I I recently I mean I I take meeting notes And I've gravitated to a tool called
Mm-hmm.
and very good and it has an MCP connector and think if you if you don't know what MCP is it's just a easy way it's like a USB hub for AI basically you can connect it to any And Claude has A bunch of connectors automatically built in.
Email is one if you're a Gmail user, you're gonna get a Gmail, you get a calendar, uh, to literally ask questions. So I connected the granola MCP at the end of the week. I used to do this, Casey. I don't know if you do this, but I I have like a 30-minute slot on my calendar. That's basically a review uh review my week and preview my next.
Right.
That was a Charron tip by the way. I don't remember review that's a great way to look at it so you don't things don't fall to the cracks. So now what I do is I basically go to that thirty minutes and I literally have as clock. Review my week and preview my next week because all of the connectors are tied in. It just No probably saves me a ton of time because it looks at my email, it looks at all these things.
And it goes there. So if you're um if you're listening to this uh and you're not aware of connectors. And you're a cloud user. Most people I found, Casey, I don't know if you found this to be true. They're using AI as a search engine. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody uses that. That's where everybody begins. But you can't just stay there. You gotta move to the next layer of skills and connectors that you're talking about to take stuff off your plate so you can do more of the important things.
So that's a good takeaway for that.
Yeah, that and that's a the the MCP connector front. So we're we constantly kind of evaluate our systems and things. That's the now the number one question that that we have is hey, what does your MCP look like? Yeah. Um and what what is your MCP look like and how are you going to uh improve that and let me see the documentation so we can ensure that everything connects appropriately.
¶ AI as the New User Interface
Yeah, and I think it supports this whole notion that AI is fast becoming the new user interface or UI. I do the same thing with my email newsletters. I don't go to that. I go there to create it. But to look at the analytics I have a dashboard that Claude built for me that I can look at Seven day week.
You can pull whatever stats you want to pull. So so that's that's definitely a good takeaway. I mean if you're an agent listener to this and you feel like you're juggling a bunch of things and you all have a tech sty. Probably email and calendaring is a foundational element. Maybe you start there and connect those things to Cloud. And you probably do that in plugins on on Open Chat GPT also with Product. I feel like Cortex is flying under the radar and it's really good.
It doesn't matter what you use, but if you're a cloud user you should definitely look into that.
Right.
Yeah, we we uh that is that's the exact conversation we're having with the agents. Most most agents what what I've learned is this is all kind of overwhelming for them. And so that's part of of our br value proposition at our brokerage is hey, we're going to eliminate this thought of implementation for you and we're gonna do a lot of these kind of
basic things on the back end that's all plugged into your systems. And then we're going to teach kind of some of those basics that can just solve their personal unique. You know, no agent is identical to another agent.
Hundred percent. And I think if you're a team leader or a brokerage listening to this or a solo agent. Um get some help. Don't don't be stuck in the sand saying I can't do it because it's just too overwhelming. And if you're to to Casey's point, if you're a team leader or a broker, maybe that's a you take that on to take that stuff off your agent's plate so you help them implement some of this stuff because once you set it up. It's just conversational language.
Yeah, agents don't want like we we did a big uh kind of mid year planning day we do every year uh just to check up on everybody's goals and and get get aligned and on track. And W what I find like you and I talk about this and it's exciting. It's it's I'm the biggest nerd when it comes to being able to sit down and and and knock out some kind of a solution for a problem when it comes to AI. But agents don't they don't want to spend all this time doing this. They want to spend time making sales.
And building their relationships and and giving good experiences. And so I love being able to take a lot of that off of their back. And I think more brokers and tools need to need to kind of adopt.
¶ Claire: AI Lead Engagement Assistant
So what else are you doing supporting your agents to leverage AI?
Um so From a support standpoint At the brokerage level, so uh we recently made our first kind of uh agenc AI here. Uh we named her Claire. I don't I don't know if we're a lot of people. I don't know what's ethically appropriate if we are supposed to give them pronouns or whatever now, but we we made something called Claire and Claire's role is to essentially go through and
uh ch completely replace the concept of drip emails yeah and and conversion when it comes to engaging with our leads. Uh in Texas it is It is much more difficult with recent legislature to to cold call and things like that. That's kind of dead here. Uh and so email is is And before drip emails, you schedule them to go out at a certain time, maybe a certain day and things. Now with AI and our Claire, she can go and review a lead.
website activity and that can flag her to reach out. Hey, I noticed you looked at this property. Uh here's some more information. Here's two more properties like it. Would you like to s set up an appointment? And so it's really taken the concept of like a drip email and email conversion and created an entire physical thing with her own Gmail account, her own CRM account. to be able to go in and and engage at this level. And so um being able to roll things like that out.
That that has saved an inside sales role. Yeah. Um it has it has eliminated the need to like go and tweak with drip emails and drip campaigns and and those things that haven't really been effective and kind of taking it to the next.
Yeah, I think I think one of the things I think AI is unlocking as we're seeing is personalization. To the to like one to one email. the more personalization and the reason m most marketing, email marketing hasn't worked is because the message only resonates And the fact that you're sort of layering Claire and I'd love to get into a little bit about how Claire was built. Kind of do that.
Uh but personalization is key, and the more more you can personalize The more open rates you get, more engagement you get, more conversion. So talk to me about your your agent. If I'm an agent at at Jorgensen Real Estate, I have access to Clay. Uh where's my database? How does how is Claire build? Just Talk through that.
So um What's really interesting, so we're w we were with follow up boss for many years. They changed their terms of use last year with the Zillow acquisition and and things like that. And so we've parted ways. And so we have a few different CRMs. And what I found was really interesting to to kind of answer the question. Before last year
¶ The Evolving Role of CRMs
The CRM was the kind of the cornerstone of everything. And people needed to make sure that all of these other tools and systems would integrate with their CRM. And and that was for as long as I've been in the business, that was kind of the the mindset around. Now the concept of of having a CRM that integrates with everything is is gone away because the agents that are here and and the experience that we're building out.
is that I don't want them going into a CRM. I don't want them having to to to access all these different tools to to to do their job. What I want for them is the ability for them to get either an email or a single place to log in that says Here are the ten things that you should do today to move your business forward. By the way.
Of those ten things, eight of them are people that you haven't talked to in several months. And here's some here's some emails based off of what we've seen in their LinkedIn and their past communication. And I've drafted you a suggested script or email to send them. to where they just have to log in and do that. Uh the the systems that we that we have right now, there's a newer system called SureSend that's a CRM that that has some great capabilities.
Um, there's also uh close, so C-L-O-Z-E, uh that we're looking into and and trying to figure out which one's gonna move us forward. We're we're also big fans of luxury presents. But yeah, even me just saying all of that, we have all of these systems. I don't want agents having to to concern themselves with that. I I want them to know where.
Just one place that they go where they know that they can win their day and and that's it. And so Claire is kind of the one that's put putting all of those together to where if if somebody on the team gets an email from Claire that says, Hey This this contact is ready for their appointment. Here's their availability. That's all they
So Claire is basically an AI driven solution that plugs into an agent's database, email, recipient, whatever it is, and kind of gives them actionable insights.
Basically that that's a that's a function. Yep. And and of course we're the cool thing about this is what's available now and how it works today is going to be improved in two months. And so
By the time this episode is released, it will be improved, folks. You know, as that's the speed of
Exactly.
¶ Building AI Solutions Without Code
And and and you did did you build Claire internally?
I did. So we uh it was me. It was my first little project and um we used Claude. and Claude Code to go and do that. And I I know enough to be dangerous when it comes to tech, okay? I I'm not a developer uh by any means, but I understand the And what was amazing about that experience and building that out is is Claude walks you through and then it's it and and it will say like, hey, you need server space.
You know, here Cloudflare is a great option for what you're trying to do. And and now that it's it's hooked up to Chrome, it even went through and made my account on on Cloudflare for me. And so it does the bulk of the heavy lifting with minimal supervision. And next thing you know, they mean four hours are gone. And your limits are are used up in Claude, but it's doing the heavy lifting. So everything was done via via Claude and Claude's suggestions for that and connected with MCP connected.
And I think I was I was gonna ask you your technical background, you sort of alluded to it. We recently had Jamie Pecka from the Real Broker. And she how she built stuff with no technology. And I think we're entering that age where if you have an idea Just converse with AI and it will give you the roadmap and build it along the way if you find the right tools and Cloud Code, Cowar, Codex. Now Good Gemini recently released at their IO class.
They're all sort of headed to this super app where you just talk to it. So I think we're we're in that age where everybody's a builder.
And five five years ago, we would have needed tens of thousands of dollars and a developer. Even then, you would need tens of thousands of dollars in in development costs and then you were still kind of stuck to their servers and and they had to maintain it and then you were kind of trapped into this situation. Now we get to take full ownership and control of all of With very little.
And I think it's important if you're listening to this, it's good to kind of build an app Something a pain point. But if you're gonna build it and deploy it like Casey's done Claire and it is touching multiple people, you know the the quote that resonates with me from further was you can build the first eighty percent of anything in the first four hours, the last twenty. Especially if you're gonna put it into production.
where others are depending on the their livelihood depends on you keeping the app up and running. That's a whole nother ballgame. We're not gonna get into it. But I think the the builder concept is like you can build anything, proof anything Or if you build something and take it to your broker and say, Hey, I'd love to have something like this, can you put some muscle behind actually building something? You know, I I say to people like we're in an age where demos over map
Right. So like you actually just bu build something and show a demo of it. And over the weekend I built it like a stock tracking Because I didn't like the Apple stocks one and there was something I wanted to tweak. I thought let me just go build it with Google AI Studio and w voila, it it just built.
So I think it's important to know that you could do those things, but then to put it into production and depend on it, there's a layer that What else are you uh doing uh from an operational standpoint, Casey, or supporting your agency?
¶ AI for Brokerage Operations
On the operational side, so you know, the A lot of this and I was talking with an a an attorney that we've worked with. We've we've had a lot of help with just analyzing agreements and helping create like like internal documents to kind of protect us and things like that. It's it's helped a lot on that front. I know it doesn't replace an attorney, but it's it's it's It has helped immensely on that front. The other things that we're working for now.
are solutions for things like compliance to be able to review our contracts with a certain level of accuracy. Some bigger brokers are rolling that out. So the concept is there um to kind of alleviate some things. um tons of marketing help behind the scenes wi with these where we've we've traditionally had a full time um marketing person in our support team, which we still do, um, but this has allowed the productivity just to to to
be extremely multiplied with things and and turnaround times are are amazing. And so um I I am not of the opinion that people should be eliminating people's roles to be taken over by AI. So that is not what we're doing. What we are doing though is figuring out how we can multiply their productivity and giving them some some some time back. Like
And more with less. More with less. Yeah. You can do better quality of output. than what you were used to. And to your point, I mean we live in an instant economy. And I think AI helps you provide that level of service for agents that you support. So I think those are all good takeaways there. So um in terms of your AI tech stack, sort of shot the breeze on, but I'd love to hear what your agents are subscribed to AI wise. And what you use AI wise.
¶ Top AI Tools for Agents
Stuff that's tried and then.
Yeah. So ChatGPT was kind of the the front runner for a long time. And so the where they have an edge is Chat GPT, if you've done things the right way to update the memory, it knows you very well and it has learned a a ton. So I think Chat GPT has been a good source for the most basic like, hey, help me draft some some emails and newsletters, things like that. Um, I've recently directed people to Claude because of their connectors and the ability to plug into everything to be kind of that
Iron Man level Jarvis for them if they are ready for that. Um so recently we've been pushing that. And then we do have Google Workspace that that powers our brokerage, which comes with with Gemini. And And so similar to you, those three are kind of our top three. And they we use them for different things. Gemini has been.
coming out with really amazing things for for marketing and things like that too. So if they want to make a fun, quirky little y video or or image or something, Gemini is sometimes Productivity now is kind of clawed. ChatGPT is kind of a safe content creator all around thing. And so that's mostly where the agents are are spending their time enough.
As you talked about Chat GPT knowing you Um I think all of them have done a pretty good job now to you can take the memory from one And if you're if you are in the chat GPT mode and say I'd love to do that for Claude, I built a little guide, I'm gonna put that in the show notes that basically walks you. You're not starting at ground zero with And they're all giving you processes to do that. So so let me kind of jump into the final two questions. Anything else you want to add on the AI side?
No, I mean we're w we're trying not to overwhelm. I mean there are so many options, but w those are the those are the front runners and so that's where we're gonna spend our time.
¶ Influential Books and Lasting Advice
So are you like a book or a podcast person, Kate?
Um I'm more of a book person.
And you can throw article in that too, like a digital book. Yeah. You tend to go back to more often than the others that have been has been deeply influential in shape.
Yeah, I think the biggest one, we were a real estate team for many years and so I've been I've been in some form of leadership for my own business for a while, but we went independent at the end of twenty twenty five to be our own independent brokerage. Uh the book that was kind of most impactful for me, I think kind of that
Yeah.
high performers ADHD thing that everyone kinda has a uh either a curse or a gift depending on your perspective. Um getting that simplified, the book, uh Trey Taylor's uh CEO only does three things was probably the most personally impactful for me that I go back to, just to remind myself like Hey, don't forget your role is still just culture, people, numbers before all this stuff. Even with AI, it's it's is this supporting the culture, the people side, and the numbers?
So that that's been the most impactful for me. I think
For us.
in and my agents and the and the team, you know, Central Texas had massive increases, and we've also been hit the hardest with this shift. And there are a lot of people that are business owners here and a lot of people that were very successful that had a major gut check in reality check when the market shifted. Um, myself included. And so, um, the second mountain by David Brooks was was a pretty impactful one for us as well. Um
for a lot of people to to kind of say, hey, we went through and we had that and the market supported that. And now we've gone down into a valley and we're having to rebuild and things like that. That's been a pretty impactful one for for me and for the people that I've coached.
Yeah, that's awesome. So you got two books folks that you should add to your So final question. So you've been in the industry how long now? Two decades.
It'll be almost seventeen years.
Seventeen years. Okay. So if you were to give one piece of advice to agents listening that are just starting out in business or an advice that is held uh is really has been very valuable for you looking back to your younger self. Doesn't matter, AI, business, What would that piece of advice?
The the relationships have to come first. So that we have a lot of the there's a lot of noise with tech, economy, AI, everything. The the relationships, that that I I have no idea what the future holds. But that's something that I don't think we'll ever be able to be taken away. That FaceTime with somebody, that time on the golf course, that that actual phone call to say like, hey, how are you doing after so-and-so passed away and your fam? Like those types of things that we can't lose that.
And and we can make things efficient with technology and everything, but just that that that caring on a human level, that being in touch with people, that has to maintain the be a priority for people in life no matter what.
Like period.
Yeah, I think people that are gonna win, I call it the last mile, the relationship. People that are gonna win are gonna master that and leverage technologies like AI to do more of that. Um so that you know you take stuff off your plate, automate the ordinary so you can
Oh, it's fine.
So, Casey, this has been fun. So, if you're a listener to this and you want to reach out to Casey, we'll put all the links in the show notes. And if you're looking for a rock star agent, In the Austin or suburbs of Austin, Round Rock, Texas. Please reach out to Casey, I'm sure they'll take care of your client. Basically this has been fun. Thank you for uh hopping on and I hope to see you in real life again real soon.
Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much again for having me and uh if if you need anything, let me know.
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