My guest in this episode is Sarah Bell, co-founder of AIRE, and mother of Rita, the real estate robot.

This is a wide-ranging conversation that covers not just what AI is in real estate, but how we should be using it and how it’s making our lives easier. We also look at how AI builds relationships and shows us how to identify ‘passive’ requests for service, plus a very fun section on how holding onto your data is the equivalent of being a crazy newspaper hoarder.

You’ll hear Sarah and I giggle a bit in this. We shot this episode as a Zoom webinar so we can see each other pull faces and we can both talk the leg off an iron pot! Enjoy the show!

01:19 What is AI and is it the definition that’s important? Or should we really be focusing on what it can do for us?

02:36 How Rita works in the real estate industry and the tasks that she executes.

05:04 Why humans are limited and how our capacity is fixed by time.

07:12 How AI can help agents work on the very unsexy “how” of real estate (rather than the ‘why’)

08:03 Do robots mimic us, or do we mimic robots? Sarah discusses the Google Duplex example.

09:51 How the value in human work is in the messy grey stuff.

10:20 What is the definition of a dirty CRM?

12:49 Why prelabelled customer journeys don’t work with idiosyncratic humans.

16:04 What should AI be and how do we make tech supportive rather than prescriptive?

17:24 What an ideal AI-enabled experience in real estate looks like.

21:34 Rita’s busy year and the quest for the magic bullet of “when people are going to sell”.

23:50 How breaching privacy destroys trust. How the chase for ‘instant leads’ only makes real estate more transactional rather than relationship-driven.

29:07 The gold is in understanding the ‘passive requests for service’ and understanding about how they are requests for a relationship

30:07 Are you a crazy data hoarder? How unused data is the equivalent to stacks of newspapers.

32:30 The power of Rita to help you understand who is in your database (and how they want to connect with you).

35:40 Moving away from the shiny buttons of technology and getting clear on how to build relationships.

38:40 Sarah shares some Rita success stories.

43:12 Is Rita going to disrupt real estate franchising?

44:35 How Rita could disrupt the real estate coaching and training industry