If you're sick of the typical AI conversation, like do this, don't do that, do this, we've got a better one for you. Today, I have James Wong. He is the CEO and founder of Maxa Designs. And we go into some great ideas for marketing and campaigning and just really personalizing your marketing through AI. And this is advice that you probably haven't heard anywhere else. So enjoy the podcast. Hey, James, welcome to The Real Trending Podcast. Hi, Tracy. How are you? Good. I am excited to talk all things AI with you today. So let's get started. Everyone's talking about AI, obviously. And one of the things that you'd mentioned to me is that the real opportunity isn't just using AI, it's becoming an AI-enhanced real estate business. So what does that look like for a real estate team or a top agent? I actually just completed a really neat survey and interview series with some of the top marketing leaders in real estate and mortgage. And it's been really fun working with some of these big brands. And we've been finding some really interesting data around this world we're in, which the world of AI, what's changed. And 95% of them are actually saying that AI is the biggest single force reshaping how teams work right now, especially around, of course, content creation, design production, and workflow approvals. It's been pretty incredible. And I think everyone is swimming around these AI-assisted creative tools, which tools they like, and then they'll start to systematize which AI-assisted creative tools they would like the rest of their team to use. Yeah, definitely. One of the things I absolutely loved in our conversation earlier is conducting an AI audit of every workflow inside your company. So how do you start that? And what do you think would surprise them if they did this audit? And tell me a little bit more about the audit itself. I would say all of the top producing agents, teams, or even owners, if they had a coach, one of the first things that a coach would do is say, hey, let's go through all the things it takes to run your business. And they would start with writing it all down. And then they would start to categorize it into, well, does it give me joy? Do I get energy from this? Do I love it? And then they go into, it doesn't give me joy. I don't like it. So then the question is, can I eliminate doing this? Why am I doing this? And then it goes into, well, if I can't eliminate it? Can I automate it or delegate it? Right. Can we delegate it to a person or automate it with a system or tool? And then the things that you can't automate or delegate and you still have to do it, but ideally it's 10 or 20% of your day-to-day. And the same audit can be used with now AI assisted tools. So, you know, a lot of people, and I've got, I get a chance to work with different, a different range of professionals. And some of them have jumped to AI really quickly and I'm watching them use Claude, Gemini to help make better decisions. Some examples, maybe you run a real estate team and you don't really know the benchmarks for your spending allocations around marketing. Maybe you have an idea, oh, I should spend on digital ads. I should spend on farming. Or if I'm a loan officer, I might spend more on investing in real estate partners and taking them out for lunch. Well, what is the benchmark? If you ask an AI assisted tool like Claude, it will provide percentage allocations for you to do that audit. Essentially, when it comes to AI and your marketing and your branding, you can use those benchmarks to find out where you can execute what you're doing. And then you can ask the AI, what are the best tools to actually use? And so it's this incredible transformation and teams who are into it and they're willing to learn. What ends up happening is these AI tools become kind of like the process of hiring your first assistant, where yes, it takes a while to teach them, train them, get them to manage the system, but these AI agents can do the same thing. And so I highly recommend everyone listening to take that time to actually train your AI set up your system learn it ask AI to teach it to you because once you do you just went from you doing it to it doing it for the long term So it might be a lot of work up front, but for the future, you're now ahead. It's just like a game changer because an employee might cost you 60K a year, but an agency AI is a hundredth of that. Yeah. I love that. I think it also, what it does is it frees them up for the relationship building and the in-person activities that they really get them the business and get them sales. So I love that idea. So a lot of agents are using like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write emails and social posts, but that's pretty basic. What are the more advanced ways that you're seeing kind of elite real estate teams and agents use AI that many agents might not have even considered? One would be an AI assistant, obviously, which is a great idea. What are some other use cases? So a really big one, and it's like unlocking levels, is when you do something, you can do a little recording, screen recording of what you're doing, or you can take screenshots and then you can essentially drop it into your Cloud or ChachetBt and say, hey, save this as a skill. And then when you're using, let's say, Cloud Co-Work or Cloud extension, the Chrome extension, and I'll break that down what the differences are. You can just say, hey, do this action and use this skill that you save. Use the skill that you save to do it the way I do it. And all of a sudden, you're unlocking a real they do it for you type experience, which has been really the jaw dropping moment for the whole world. So it's really important that people understand Cloud. I'm going to use Cloud because I really love that tool. but all of them have this now where it's energetic. You're watching the mouse happen on your computer. GoWork is doing things inside of your computer and you're giving it permission along the way. So it's asking you if it's okay to open this folder and do things for you. And then eventually you can say, I'm always going to allow you to do it. It could be from working on a doc, filling out an offer. It could be organizing folders, doing accounting and separating it in the right folders on your computer, taking receipts, turning it into expenses. That all can be skills. The difference is you have to download Cloud Cowork for your computer and then you have to download Cloud Chrome extension on your actual browser. When you're on the browser and let's say you're using your CRM tool or let's say you're using a design tool like Maxa, you can actually command Cloud the Chrome extension to do things on websites. So let's say you're using QuickBooks or you're using your CRM and you're constantly doing it and you record it. As you continue to do those things, the Cloud Chrome extension will learn it and continue to do it for you. So I have a question. This is a very selfish question. I've always used ChatGPT, but I hear everybody talking about Claude. But the problem is I use it for personal. We have our own LVAC set, a housing wire. But the problem is I have so much in there that I'd have to reteach Claude. Is there a way to download all of that and move it into Claude? Oh, yeah. It takes like 30 seconds. Launch Claude, say, hey, how do I take everything I've taught my ChatGPT and put it in Claude? It'll just give you the instructions. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of agents probably out there who have done the same. They started with ChatGPT and they're hearing of these other ones, but it's very time consuming to go teach another, you know, AI system, everything that you taught the first one. So that's good information for me and for the audience, too. So definitely. You had talked about this idea of aesthetic intelligence, like kind of in a world where everyone has access to the same AI tools. Why is having kind of great taste a competitive advantage? I'm so glad you asked that question. So design is evolving. We're seeing it everywhere. And AI tools have made it so that production times have shrunken. It's easier to produce an idea that you may have, whether it's a video idea or it's a social post carousel campaign. And the question, though, is when you think about aesthetic intelligence or design intelligence, is your brand and the marketing you're producing made with intention or is it just me? Is what I wonder. And then it's like, can others tell that it's meaningful what you're producing? Is it curated with your brand or what I call AI generated slop? It's very, very noticeable. And I think you actually lose brownie points with your brand when people see some type of slop that getting produced You can tell by the writing style you know a lot of AIs especially Claude and ChatGPT like to write the same way for everyone You can see it in the design aesthetic of course I would say the AI tools right now are the furthest behind when it comes to design. I can't really get it to look nice at all. And the marketing leaders and departments I work with are having a really hard time with their agents and MLOs who are going off and doing things real rogue. And there's no design system or branding kit that they're following. and they're missing, you know, disclaimers, disclosures, they're missing a bunch of stuff and what they're doing. And so when it comes to design intelligence, when we think about where AI is shaping us, everyone knows it's a permanent long-term change. Everyone believes that the workflows of how things get done have fundamentally changed, but it's more significant that having taste, you know, having the experience of what looks good and what doesn't look good is vital still. And I'll say, you know, when I break down what aesthetic intelligence really means, I'll break it into three parts, which is being or seeing or an aspiration to be uniquely distinctive. And that takes a lot of experience just to understand that what actually makes you as a brokerage distinct. And then it's, well, how human and relatable are you? I really think about that emotional IQ. How well do you showcase that? And then are you aesthetically obsessed? You know, if you think about some of the biggest brands, whether they were top one agent, or there's 10,000 people in the company, how well do you articulate and visualize the brand through every asset, video, email, print, those big three, I'll say it again, it's like, again, being uniquely distinctive, how human and relatable are you? And then being aesthetically obsessed. Yeah. And it kind of really all leads into the need for designers and writers that are human, because they do kind of, most of them have that already inherent in their DNA and what they do. And so it's kind of like the same thing, chat GPT or AI doesn't make everyone a writer. It doesn't make everyone a designer. Just because you can do it doesn't mean that you're doing it well, or you're doing it to your brand specifications either. And that doesn't mean you don't have taste either. It just means that that's not what you do. 100%. And even the marketing leaders, It's a cultural shift because they have to get their team who's producing the content to believe in the same thing. And it's not just like, oh, yeah, I just got it done on time. It's, hey, did we actually care about what we created? I like to say design intelligence or design thinking is about engaging the communities you serve, really thinking about who you serve. And then how distinctive or how relatable are you to that community? And the better you are doing that by your content, because if you think about content, it's just leverage of who you are. It's showcasing and just demonstrating who you are as a brand and your personality. So as extreme as you can go with your voice, your style, your aesthetic, the more human they believe you are and relatable. Yeah, absolutely. And you've talked about using AI before a listing appointment to kind of research homeowners, understand their interests, and even personalize gifts. So what other ways or practical ways can agents and teams create an even more memorable client experience using AI? The first thing is for everyone to lay out all the things that's in their playbooks currently. Turn it into a PDF or copy and paste and drop it into their AI tool and see what suggestions AI will have. I'm sure all of us have used our AI tools, whether it's Cloud or ChatGPT, for a lot of things, a lot of advice. You know, sometimes I ask advice for my relationship and it's like the responses are really, really incredible. And I would start with, hey, drop in your playbook, your workflows, and just say, what would you suggest I do? I would even get more specific and go, hey, I did 50 million in volume last year, the last 12 months. What would it take based on my current activities for new business, lead gen activities, prospecting to get to 100 million? Literally tell it that, ask it that. If you wanted to take it further, you know, a lot of people have learned prompting is really important. And usually everyone says telling the AI to act as if they are doing 200 million in volume a year as a real estate professional in the United States, catering to, let's say, church communities. From there you would give them the next prompt which is like what you want from it Read my current playbook and give me suggestions on what to do That acting part I don know if you heard that Tracy I haven't. Yes. So pretty much before every prompt, you want to tell it to act as if it's Gary Geller. You know, keep acting as if it's this person or the best producer in the world. And it'll give you a better response. I love that. And, you know, I love doing these podcasts because I learned so much too from myself personally. So thank you. So you've worked with many of the industry's highest performing teams, brokerages. You don't need to name names, but what's one AI or branding strategy that you've seen that made you stop and think, wow, that's like incredibly smart? There's a few really, really good brokerages. The marketing teams are doing a lot. I think what we found as we're seeing a lot of recruiting growth, expansion, is the marketing teams that have figured out how to scale real customizations for their top producers and their top teams are winning. So I'm seeing Brogages interview a top producing team over like maybe one hour, help develop, let's say three to four pillars of that top producer or team's brand. And then produce a three month marketing campaign for print, farming, community engagement. That's all around the printing. And then it's like social and email. And then video content with scripts written just for that team. And then produce landing pages for funnels, display marketing and co-marketing. And so what happens is if you're a marketing team and you know the basics of running a campaign, imagine going to every top producing team, building a program for, let's say, the top 10% or future top producers and say, we're going to do all of this for you within just two meetings that we need with you. And it's all professionally produced and prepared for them because of these AI-assisted tools. The AI-assisted creative tools can do 80% of the script writing, the social posts, content creation, the email blast, but it's all catered around, let's say, three or four pillars and co-branded with that top producer's personal brand or the team brand. And then they've built a system of just knocking it out for like 58 top producing teams a month. And that has been insane. And I highly recommend building a system to curate custom campaigns for your top producers because they're really impressed because the content, especially writing right now, like video scripting, I can take questions I ask about that agent or producer's brand or team's brand and convert it into 20 clips for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts. All of it can be recreated using these AI-assisted creative tools. Yeah, I love that. It's such a value add as well. So my last question is just, you've kind of had a front row seat to working with some of the industry's best marketers and highest producing teams. What's one secret you've learned from your clients that more real estate leaders should be copying today? All right. This is a good one. Good one. So I am finding with these bigger brokerages, the marketing leaders are building their own personal brand, which I'm like, wow, that's really impressive. On the mortgage side, I can think of a few and on the real estate side, where it's not just the founder of the brokerage or the CEO. It's actually the marketing leaders are branding the president and themselves as the CMO, or maybe their senior creative directors. That I've never seen. I've been doing this since 2012. And now it's like, whoa, the marketing leaders are branding themselves, showcasing what they can do as a company for their agents and LOs. People are excited to meet the CMO and get support from them. You know, I've said this before on different, let's say, stages. And I'm still finding the second biggest reason sales professionals join a brokerage is because of what that brokerage can do for their marketing. So the better you brand your leader yourself as a marketer, the more interested they are. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing advice, James. And congratulations on such a successful business with Maxa. I'm really impressed with everything that you guys do. So thanks so much for joining Real Trending. You're welcome. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you for listening to Real Trending. If you haven't already, we'd love it if you'd take a minute to rate the show or leave a comment. And we will see you next week with more news and insights.
