Happy Agent Co. — Real Estate Podcast for Women hosted by Lindsay Dreyer, Real Estate Coach

You're Using ChatGPT Wrong: 5 Mistakes Real Estate Agents Are Making (and How to Fix Them)

• Lindsay Dreyer • Season 1 • Episode 22

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Let’s be real: most agents are using ChatGPT completely wrong—and then wondering why the results are generic, boring, or straight-up useless. If that’s been you, no shame. But it’s time to fix it because AI isn’t going anywhere and when used correctly, it can literally transform your business (and your life).

In this episode, I’m diving into one of my favorite topics: how to actually use ChatGPT as your marketing BFF, not just a vending machine spitting out meh captions. I’ll walk you through the 5 biggest mistakes I see agents making with AI, and exactly what to do instead so you can save time, sound like you, and actually enjoy creating content again.

In this episode, I cover:

  • Why treating ChatGPT like a vending machine is sabotaging your content
  • The truth about lazy prompts (and how to write a better one)
  • How to train ChatGPT to sound like you and reflect your brand
  • The reason your AI efforts are falling flat (spoiler: no strategy!)
  • What you’re missing out on if you’re only using AI for captions
  • How I use custom GPTs to run my business, manage my life, and keep my sanity as a mom of 3
  • Why every agent should be using AI like a full-blown team member

This isn’t just a tech trend—it’s a total game changer for how you market, communicate, and scale your real estate business. And the best part? You don’t need to be tech-savvy to make it work for you. You just need to know how to train it right.

Want my exact system? Learn how to create your very own custom marketing assistant (that sounds just like you) inside my course: Custom ChatGPT for Real Estate – it’s only $47 and worth every penny.

Learn more: www.happyagent.co/chatgpt-for-real-estate

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Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, I am so excited to be diving in to the topic today. It is really one of my favorites chat GPT and AI. Now I know that some of you might have some feelings about it, specifically why it may not be working for you, what you might be doing wrong, how you could really use AI and chat GPT to its maximum and potentially finally make it your marketing BFF. Because here is what I keep seeing Agents try chat GPT and for the purposes you guys can interchange chat GPT with your AI of choice. But I'm going to use chat GPT as mine today and those agents try chat and they get meh results and they decide that it is just not for them anymore. It's BS. They're over it. They're going back to just doing everything manually. But here's the truth If it is not helping you market better or save time, it's not just the tool. It potentially is because you're not using it right. So no shade, but I am going to break down the mistakes that agents are making with chat GPT and how we can fix them to help you save time, build relationships and just love, creating content, running your business and potentially even improve your work-life balance.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's dive in to mistake number one, which is treating chat GPT like it is a vending machine. You drop in a prompt like you're dropping in a quarter, but let's be real, like you're inserting that like crumpled $1 bill, and you're like rubbing it against the side trying to get it straight, but you drop a prompt like give me a caption, give me 10 post ideas, create a bio, and then you wonder why the results suck, like they're boring or they just sound like they came from a corporate handbook. So here's the truth on this one ChatGPT is not a vending machine. You have to start thinking of it like a team member. It is your assistant, and you wouldn't hire an assistant and give them zero training and expect them to do an incredible job. So why are we doing that with AI?

Speaker 1:

I'm a firm believer in garbage in garbage out. So if you want better content, you need to start inputting better prompts, and if you want it to sound like you, you need to tell it who you are. You need to tell it what your business is all about, and I think that's one of the biggest mistakes real estate agents are making is that they aren't doing a good job prompting. The truth is, you don't get brilliant results from ChatGPT. With vague or what I like to call lazy prompts, you get the filler, you get the generic stuff that you see everyone on the internet copying and pasting and, to be really honest, our audiences, our clients, everyone can tell when something comes from ChatGPT, and that is not a good thing, when something comes from chat GPT, and that is not a good thing.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you want to get into how to write good prompts, this is probably a completely separate episode, but a good prompt typically includes the following elements it has the persona, who we are speaking to or who you are, the context of the situation, what the task is, maybe a example of something that you like or how you'd like to format it, which leads into the formatting, and then the tone of what you want the output to be. So a good prompt is going to be very specific. To be very specific, mistake number two that I see real estate agents making is they have no brand, no voice, which means that there is no vibe. And this is when you know your content is sounding like a robot or you're sounding like every other agent in your market because you haven't trained chat GPT to write like you. So how exactly do you do this? You need to train it. You are the brand. Chatgpt is your copywriter, so you have to give it directions, examples, your personality. So what can you do? Feed it content that you have written, so feed it your old social media posts, give it a style guide. Say here's how I talk, here's what I value, here's who I serve. This is what I cover in depth in my online course Custom Chat GPT for Real Estate. This is where we are going to build your ultimate marketing copywriter assistant. So we are going to get into building out your custom brand profile and your brand voice, profile your client personas. So if you are looking to really hone in on your brand, your voice, and have ChatGPT write like you, I highly recommend checking out my course Custom ChatGPT for Real Estate. It is super affordable for real estate. It is super affordable it's $47 and it will literally save you so much time and energy and your outputs become infinitely better than they were before. So you don't want to sound like every other agent in your feed.

Speaker 1:

Mistake number three that you're making is using ChatGPT without a strategy. This is a big one. Chatgpt is a tool just like everything else, just like Instagram, just like Dotloop, just like DocuSign, it is not a marketing plan. Chatgpt is not going to be the end-all, be-all, it is not going to save the world, but it is just a tool in your toolkit that you should know how to use to its best ability.

Speaker 1:

I like to say that ChatGPT helps you implement, not decide. So you still have to have a marketing strategy behind everything you're doing. You still need to know who your target clients are, what their pain points are, what they are looking for in a real estate agent, what kind of messaging resonates with them. So you're still having to do that marketing strategy work behind the scenes, but ChatGPT can make executing your strategy so much easier. So, for example, the happy agent method is my coaching framework and that's my filter basically. So it really revolves around joy, money, clients, systems and growth. And what's really nice is ChatGPT helps me execute everything in terms of my marketing strategy around the happy agent method, but it's not necessarily going to figure it out for me. So I really think, like for a real estate agent, you just need to know who are your target clients, what are their pain points right now in the market, how are you going to use AI to create content that then resonates with them. So again, mistake number three if you're using ChatGPT without a strategy, you're making a big mistake because you have to have a broader marketing strategy.

Speaker 1:

Mistake number four that I see real estate agents making is that you aren't even using ChatGPT. You are still writing every caption, every email, every listing description from scratch. You have an assistant, an AI assistant, who will work 24-7 for free, or if you're doing custom GPTs for $20 a month as of this recording, so you should use it. Let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting. Have them write the first draft and then you just edit it and you elevate it. That is it. Let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting. Have them write the first draft and then you just edit it and you elevate it. That is it. You can use it to write listing descriptions, draft follow-up emails, draft 30 days of content, ideas, build standard operating procedures, client workflows.

Speaker 1:

It is so versatile and I think that so many agents don't understand what it can do that they're like oh, it's just writing listing descriptions that suck, because I see people just copy and paste them in the MLS and that's dumb. I'm not going to do that, but I really think the biggest thing that it helped me with was. It removes that analysis paralysis, the indecision, inertia, where you don't get going because you're in your own way and I know I am a perfectionist, like straight up, and I have really embraced that done is better than perfect and I think that ChatGPT has really helped me. Just get going and then I'm able to run with it and again, I'm still editing it, I'm still elevating it. It's still me in the end, but it's really removing that getting that being stuck and just not doing things. And I will tell you, ai does not replace your creativity Like it's not going to replace that. I actually really think it enhances it because it gives you a head start and it can help you improve, visualize things in a way, and with such rapid speed that I used to spend hours brainstorming on something and now I am able to brainstorm it with ChatGPT in like 15 minutes. Which leads me into mistake number five, which is you're thinking way too small when it comes to ChatGPT.

Speaker 1:

So many real estate agents think, oh, it's just going to write Instagram captions or listing descriptions or email subject lines, but that's literally like buying your iPhone and then using it only as a calculator. The real power of ChatGPT is in the systems, the structure and the scale. The possibilities are really endless. You can use it to build your custom workflows. You can create automated client follow-ups. You can draft entire listing presentations, buyer guides, onboarding guides for clients or team members, checklists galore. Map out your newsletters, your blogs, your content plans and when you have it programmed with your actual voice, it's going to sound like you and be like 90% of the way there, maybe even 99.9% of the way there. So it really can save you so much time. If you're only using it for Instagram, you're missing out on 80% of its potential.

Speaker 1:

Honestly, this is not just a caption machine. It's your content department, it's your operations manager and it's your assistant. If you know how to train it and going above and beyond, just using it in your real estate business, this can support your entire life, and this is the thing that I think a lot of people aren't talking about. But it is a total game changer. I am a mom, a busy mom, of three little kids under 10 years old, and they don't even know. But Chad GPT helps me in my daily life. So, for example, I have a custom GPT that plans my weekly meals, which not only tells me what to eat. It tells me what my grocery list is, what the estimated cost is. It also is programmed with all my family's food allergies and our preferences on like cuisines. It's incredible. The other thing is it can create a packing list for you for your next business trip or for your toddler's overnight bag. It can write out a quick birthday message that doesn't sound like chat GPT when it's your programmed voice in there. It can help you plan an anniversary date.

Speaker 1:

I am not kidding, I have a custom GPT that plans all of my RVing camping adventures. It also can be your time block assistant. You can put in hey, I need to do all of the stuff this week. Here's my personal commitments. Here's my work commitments. How can I fit in my listings, my showings, my workouts, my preschool pickup? It can literally do so many things. It's incredible in terms of helping you with the mental load that so many women are carrying by managing their businesses and also managing their home life. This has been a game changer for me.

Speaker 1:

The harsh reality is that we didn't start our real estate businesses to miss bedtimes or dinners every night. We did it because we wanted freedom. We wanted to be able to spend time with our families and our friends, and I am such an evangelist on this because ChachiPT has helped me reclaim hours a week and it's not just for work stuff, but it was for life stuff too. And I think any hack that we can find on how we can make our business fit our life and not the other way around, we should absolutely be taking advantage of. So, like I said, the premium version of ChatGPT that allows you to program custom GPTs.

Speaker 1:

So why custom Lindsay? Why are you so obsessed with this? So custom GPTs are essentially like little brains that you program. They remember everything you tell it and you can segment them into different portions of your life. So, for example, I have a custom GPT that's a meal planner, I have one that's a copywriter, I have one that's my RV travel assistant, I have one that's my time calendar manager. So you can then program them with all of the things that are specific to that little section of your life or business. And it is just so mind-blowing on how easy it is but how impactful it can be to your efficiency and how you work and also just feeling so clear-headed and not overwhelmed. So if you are super interested, which obviously I hope after this episode you are, because I'm like crazy passionate about it.

Speaker 1:

I, in custom chat GPT for real estate, teach you how to train your marketing assistant, which is going to understand your tone of voice, your audience and your real estate business. We're going to name your assistant, we're going to train it and then we turn it into your content creating machine. From there you're going to get a familiarity on how custom GPTs work and I promise you, even if you're not tech savvy, it really isn't complicated. It's so easy. You don't even need to know how to program anything. You just have to know how to speak English, and it is stupid simple. So I think, just dip your toe in the water. It is $47 to take this class. It is totally worth it.

Speaker 1:

Check the show notes for the link. But to close it out, you are probably using ChatGPT wrong and it is probably costing you clients might even just be costing you a lot of wasting your time, and I think that you can be making more money, being more efficient and also having a lot more fun, because it actually is so fun to see how it can save you time and energy in your life. If you go to happyagentco, slash chatgpt-for-real-estate Also, it's in the show notes if you don't want to go there, but you will be able to learn about what you'll get with the course. But I am telling you that you do not need more time. You need a team and AI, spacious and also kind of fun. So I hope you check it out. Please share this episode with anyone that you feel like could benefit from a almost free assistant and, until next time, stay happy.

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Lindsay Dreyer

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