From Overwhelmed to Unstoppable Through Systems, AI, and Purpose with Emily Terrell

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m here with Emily Terrell. Emily, thanks so much for joining us today.

[Emily Terrell]
Well, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[Mattias]
Emily, where are you coming out of?

[Emily Terrell]
I’m in San Antonio, Texas. So down South Texas where it’s hot and sticky all the time.

[Mattias]
I actually have clients in town right now from San Antonio who are shopping. They are not sure yet if it’s gonna be a second home or if it’s gonna be a relocation. Their kid is pregnant here and about to have a baby and they wanna have another house at least to come to and help take care of that new grandkid.

So it’s a small world.

[Emily Terrell]
I know, right? And it’ll be a very big culture shock. Whichever option they choose, San Antonio is its own thing.

So it’ll be a definite culture shock for them.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah. So you are, I see Coach Emily. So you’re a coach, a real estate coach.

How long have you been an agent and what kind of got you started in this crazy world, this crazy business?

[Emily Terrell]
Okay, so I’ve been an agent since 2015. I started really because I was a stay-at-home mom and I was really good at that. I was okay at it, right?

But I had this guilt. Even though my husband made enough money and we could afford it, I just had this intense guilt that I wasn’t contributing financially to my marriage. So I was like, okay, cool.

I’ll just go get my real estate license. It’s so easy, right? It’s just the easiest thing ever.

I learned a little differently. So I became an agent, like I said, about a decade ago. And then about four years ago, I decided to hit some major financial goals.

And so I decided to start, because I’d already been in that coaching role. So I decided to become a Tom Ferry coach. So I coached for Tom Ferry.

And then about three years ago, they actually asked me to start speaking. So now I get to do the fun stuff where I coach people. I still have a team that sells real estate and I like to travel around and speak with Tom Ferry or with private brokerages kind of all around the world.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. Do you split your time up now? I mean, like, so you have a team that helps keep the business rolling.

Are you, you know, do you have people kind of actively prospecting for you or following up with your former clients? Are you still going on listing appointments? Or have you kind of moved a lot of that stuff into the team?

[Emily Terrell]
Yes, so I have not been on an active listing appointment in at least two years, at least, a buyer for five years. I run my team a little bit differently. So my job on the team, because I coach, right?

So my specialty in coaching, because every coach kind of has their thing, they specialize in it. I specialize in systems, social media, and AI, right? I’m also a little bit of an asshole, but, you know, some people actually do ask for that, which is funny.

But, so systems, social media, and AI. So my role on the team is, I am definitely behind the scenes. So I, for my partner, which is the person that, you know, my counterpart, my job for her is appointments show up in her calendar.

So I set all of the systems, every way that we prospect. She does not have to do anything other than look at her daily calendar, which she looks a couple days in advance. And then everything from the fact that an appointment shows up till we close and actually pass that, that’s her.

But even then, I set up all the systems to where she doesn’t have to think about what happens. She doesn’t have to think about how to get prepared for the listing appointment. She just simply follows a checklist.

So that’s my part of it. And so because of that, because I set all of that, everything in place is just her running and following the list that I’ve created and following the appointments that I’ve gotten set for her. And she loves it because she just follows the list.

And I love it because I don’t have to talk to people.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s fun to, I mean, obviously you would have, you’ve likely had built a business already. You’d had like kind of a reputation in San Antonio. You’d had like that momentum going as well to kind of build the systems off of and have somebody kind of run for you.

So that’s, yeah, that’s really cool. And everybody has their strengths. I mean, sometimes the systems part definitely does not give you energy.

Some people just want to talk to people all day. And that’s where it’s important to know kind of where you like to be.

[Emily Terrell]
Yep, so as a coach and just talking to, because I go to conferences all the time. So I talk to people all the time, right? The two most common things that I get asked or that people say they need help with is systems.

And then usually social media is a second. But that in general, everybody’s like, I need to systemize their business. And they may say it in different ways.

They may say, I need more time. Sometimes they say that, or I need a time block. Really, they just need to be more organized.

Instead of just throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, they need to actually have those plans. And most people, that’s what they struggle with.

[Mattias]
What are some tips you can give us to help structure your time a little bit better to create systems that will free you up and organize you better?

[Emily Terrell]
So one of my favorite things to do right now is, of course, AI, right? So it is one of the absolute most popular things that anybody ever hires me to speak about. So one of the things that you can do to help systemize your business is actually to take each task that you do, every task, even if it’s small, right?

Like, for example, putting out for sale signs, right? And go into ChatGPT. And now there’s some more parts to it, so I’m gonna simplify it.

But it’s to actually ask ChatGPT to help you learn to delegate, learn to run AI with that task, learn to systemize it, and then learn to simplify it if you need to, right? So running that lens, the delegate, systemize, I forgot them all already, simplify and running AI with it, like looking at that lens at every task. And then ChatGPT, believe it or not, will actually give you a step-by-step example or reasoning of exactly what you need to do in order to take that task off your plate.

Because as real estate agents, I mean, if you think about it, let’s just use our example of putting a sign out. You shouldn’t do that. No real estate agent should be doing that on their own.

Yes, they need to go out, but it’s not a high ROI activity, meaning you’re not gonna make a lot of money by physically putting a sign out. I know some people watching this are gonna go, well, no, that one time I got a sign call, yes, that one time you got a sign call, right? Maybe, I think one time I got a sign call and it actually led to something.

So signs need to go out, but it doesn’t have to be you doing it. And the problem is that most people, most agents can’t stop and think, okay, how do I make this happen? They want that control, but they don’t know how to actually give up that control to let other people help them.

So I always like to go back to ChatGPT, and there’s other AI tools that you could use, but ChatGPT is going to be a great example of just having it figure out how to create systems for you.

[Mattias]
Yeah, there are projects you can make in ChatGPT as well. So you could probably somehow create a, I’ve been using projects more recently and I’ve used ChatGPT to actually create a prompt, or not a prompt, but it’s like an outline of the task of that project. And so you could kind of take maybe the principles of buy back your time or who not how, that kind of like those books and kind of take those concepts and create a prompt or instructions for that project so that you could then feed all your tasks into that project and then have it help you think through, this is a $15 an hour activity, you’re at a $250 an hour activity level or whatever it is.

And that makes a lot of sense to how you could really start processing that all.

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah, I mean, the big thing is, is like, I’m sure you’ve heard of the, you don’t know what you don’t know. We’re in an age of, I have no idea my limitations. I mean, actually think about, I do know my limitations.

And I know that AI, whatever tool you use is going to open up and give me more access and it’s gonna be able to do it faster, better, smoother, it’s gonna simplify it, it’s gonna take all of that. So, but if you’re overwhelmed by it, just go into ChatGPT and ask it a question, like, how can you help me? I need to do this, help me.

And it’ll actually teach you how to use it. That’s how I write my prompts. ChatGPT writes my prompts for me.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, who better to teach than itself?

[Emily Terrell]
My prompts are actually really, not to toot my own horn, but my prompts are about four pages long, typically. And they’re so good that when I put them back in and I have ChatGPT run them, it starts with, this is an extremely well-written prompt. So I’m like, thanks, thanks.

[Erica]
Aww, so sweet.

[Emily Terrell]
Thanks, chat, thanks. It likes to compliment me on the work it did itself.

[Erica]
What kinds of concerns do you often hear when you’re speaking on AI, like the Q&A at the end?

[Emily Terrell]
I mean, of course, every once in a while, I get the like, you know, oh my gosh, is it like Big Brother, is it that? Yeah. The answer to always to those types of questions are listen, that ship sailed a long time ago.

As a society, the amount of information we put out there, we are screwed, so just don’t stress, right? Those are more of off the wall, but the biggest concern that people have when it comes to AI is it’s overwhelming, right? Because, and this is why, and I love to talk about AI, but when I talk about AI, you know, there’s always a concept of going really wide.

And actually what’s funny is I was just having this conversation with another speaker today. He likes to go wide. He likes to say, well, this tool is cool, this tool, this tool, this tool, this tool, this tool.

And instead of that, I like to go really deep. So I like to pick one AI tool for one talk and go through one process. So this way at the end, anybody that goes to my talk can say, okay, she said do A, B, and C, and we will, this is exactly how you solve for this one problem.

And what I found is that when I go, you know, when I do that, when I go deep, it actually helps people not be intimidated by the process because they, it gets broken down into smaller, more manageable steps. And so they’re able to understand it. Funnily enough, there you go.

I don’t actually get a ton of questions at the end of my, when I talk, mainly because it’s just really thorough and it’s broken down in a way that most people can really go and do it. Mm-hmm.

[Mattias]
That’s great.

[Erica]
Well, I’m a little bit jealous of that. So in the therapy world, we’re still trying to figure out how to use AI for note-taking. And so that’s like a whole different conversation.

[Emily Terrell]
Have you seen one of these?

[Erica]
Is that a Plaud (https://www.plaud.ai/)?

[Emily Terrell]
Yes, it’s a Plaud.

[Erica]
Yeah.

[Emily Terrell]
And I actually, I was just thinking about it. I’m like, I forgot to pull my Plaud out and record it.

[Erica]
Yeah.

[Mattias]
You think about recording everything. Yeah, when you have one of those.

[Erica]
Man, you know what, Emily? Before we had Plaud, Mattias would take the kids to the doctor’s appointments and I’d be like, how did it go? And he’d be like, it was good.

I was like, well, what did they say? Did they have an ear infection? Do we have to go pick up medication?

[Emily Terrell]
I forgot. I will really quickly tell you a story. So my dad came and he went to a doctor’s appointment and I was like, hey, how did it go?

He goes, well, they say they got to take my bladder out. And I was like, oh my God, that it’s huge. That’s a big thing.

Oh my God, no, no, no. It was his gallbladder. Oh, that’s a little different.

I was like, I asked my stepmom and she goes something with gallbladder. I was like, oh my God, that’s like, that’s a Tuesday afternoon surgery, right? Versus like a totally life-changing not having a bladder.

So yes, yes, absolutely. I love the taking it to doctor’s appointments because that’s a pretty big difference, right? Of like being able to use it.

[Erica]
Yeah, absolutely.

[Emily Terrell]
But I mean, think about it like this. For your therapy sessions, right? I know, of course, you know, you’ve got HIPAA, you’ve got all that that I don’t have to deal with.

So you’d have to figure that out. But, you know, I do for a lot of like all the conferences I go to and the talks that I do, and even my coaching calls, I record it all of the time with Claude. And then in my projects, actually in ChatGPT, all of my coaching clients have their own thread and with all the instructions are put in there.

So every time it goes through, and now what I do with my coaching clients is I go through and I have several different prompts. So one of the prompts that we do is I have them update their three goals that they’re working on, right? So it’s always updating like, hey, this is what we’re working on and what we want to accomplish in the next 90 days.

And then it gives them like, hey, this is the milestone that you should be hitting. And then this is what you should be doing this week. So it always updates based on where we are.

Then another prompt that I put into it is what are the three questions that I should be asking that coaching client in order for us to continue to reach their goals. So it always goes through. And then I do have another prompt that I don’t run every time, but I always, I’ll write down like, hey, give me just three sentences that I can use as a handwritten note for encouragement for them.

So this is one that I was supposed to send to one of my clients, Jason, a while back, where I wrote down a handwritten note for him and I’m gonna actually mail it out to him eventually, right? So I do those types of things where I’m always constantly updating their information so that as a coach, it helps me better. Because even then, I like to ask it too, like what, and there’s a prompt to it, it’s not just this, but it’s what can I do better as a coach to help them?

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s a crazy tool. And I think back to your point earlier about the ship has sailed, I was thinking of it as a slightly different angle of that. Maybe a lot of your data is out there already, but the ship has sailed also is that not using it is just gonna make you antiquated.

You have to learn how to use this. It’s gonna be everywhere. It is already everywhere.

I feel like it’s just the beginning. I always say this, but it kind of reminds me of back when Google first came out and the other teachers were impressed with how we knew how to search for something in Google. And it was very basic and simple understanding to me, but you had to learn how to use Google.

But the people that would go to Google, type in google.com, click on google.com and then type in what they wanted to say. You know, just use something regularly so that you can start understanding when to use it. I think if you don’t ever open it up, if you never know what to do with it, I mean, you just have to have some repetition.

You have to start. Try.

[Emily Terrell]
But part of it’s a habit.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Emily Terrell]
Right? Then that’s the biggest thing. If you have like no indication of where you need to start with AI, right?

If you’re like, I don’t even know where to start, just start making it a habit. Instead of going to Google, go to Perplexity, for example, right? Go there.

Or go to ChatGPT. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Just go somewhere else besides Google because it’s going to give you better answers and there’s a lot of complexities.

We won’t go into them because it’s a whole other discussion, but just get into the habit of not asking Google. Going to AI, right? And for example, I have an Instagram channel.

It’s a faceless Instagram channel. Well, kind of faceless. But I literally just cook recipes from AI.

I just go and ask and I’m like, I have this in my fridge. I want a high-protein meal. Like I can add other things, but I have this.

And then it puts out a recipe and then I cook it. And sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t.

[Erica]
Yeah, that has been helpful. I had a friend come visit us the other weekend and she has like six allergies. So I used ChatGPT for that.

And I said, like, here are the allergies. We need to work around these. Can you give me like three breakfasts and two dinners?

And it did and it was great.

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, but just that habit, right? Like I don’t create my own recipes anymore.

I don’t, you know, I mean, well sometimes I do because I just throw random stuff, but there’s not a lot that I do anymore that’s not just supplemented or at least verified with AI.

[Erica]
Yeah, so I have a question. I don’t totally understand this myself, so I want you both maybe to speak on this, but how do you use AI with like a CRM?

[Emily Terrell]
How could that be a tool? Listen, okay. So, well, I’m absolutely gonna shamelessly plug something here, but Tom Ferry, for example, right?

So Tom Ferry just created an AI tool called Revi, R-E-V-I-I, right? So Revi has this really cool feature where you can grab your phone and you can dictate to Revi and you’re like, hey, Revi, you know, I just met Emily Terrell at Home Depot. She’s interested in selling her investment property, but she’s, you know, I just met her doing trim.

Can you please add her to follow up boss? Her phone number is two one zero four zero zero, you know, 9696. Her email address is this, go.

And it will literally add it to follow up boss. And then you could tell like, add the tag this. Let’s say you add the tag investor.

And within follow up boss, if you have automations already set to where everybody that’s tagged investor gets an action plan going, it can automatically take care of adding all of that. Now the other cool thing that I do, I do the same thing, but I created a person in follow up boss and his name is Mark Ketting. You got it right?

His name is marketing. Ah, sorry.

[Erica]
Ah, okay. Yeah, did I say it right?

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah, everybody looks at me and I’m like, his name is marketing. So with Revi, you can add appointments. So what I do is I’m like, okay, I need to do these, like I need to do like these things on these certain days for marketing.

So I just put them all on a list on a notepad, copy them all, throw them into Revi, and then maybe like three seconds later, they’re all on my calendar. And I say my calendar because my assistant, my VA, they look at those and they take care of them. But it’s just a much quicker way of getting it.

Plus then my team can look in follow up boss and they can see, they know to go to Mark Ketting for all marketing stuff. So if it’s like a team run of marketing, I just name it a certain way so they know to take care of those things. But it’s just a really quick and easy way.

Now, if you don’t have Revi, which I think it’s really cool. The reason I like Revi is because it’s a tool for real estate agents built by real estate agents. But other than that, a lot of other common uses for AI with your CRMs is to build all the long term follow up plans using AI.

[Mattias]
Like the drip campaigns, like the emails. Yeah, there’s gonna be some big changes, I’m sure, kind of coming in the pipeline with that. If, for example, you are recording everything that you ever talk with your client, with your plod, right?

And you take all those transcripts and you have them in your CRM under their contact card. Just in theory, if that can all magically go together through an API or whatever. And then your drip campaigns, your follow up, automatic follow up takes that context and AI generates a response specific to that person, specific to those scenarios.

It’s like crazy how that future could be. I mean, maybe more of that exists than I’m aware of, but already, but it’s gonna be pretty powerful.

[Emily Terrell]
For example, Revi is actually working on, because follow up boss can record phone calls. Now, it doesn’t only go to follow up boss, it’s just what I use. So follow up boss can record phone calls and it’s actually working to push the phone calls from follow up boss to Revi to help you with scripting and to help you with some of these like automatic email replies and stuff like that.

So all of that is, I mean, all of that’s already in the works. It’s more of just learning to use it and getting in the habit of using AI for everything.

[Mattias]
Yeah, one of the things that, from me now having used ChatGPT mainly to just thinking of new ways to use it all the time and just from looking at my office and trying to make it, how do I make this office feel a little bit better, a little more inviting and using like the video feature as you talk to it to kind of scan around, it gives you some feedback, that could be a staging idea as well. Two, just recently I listed a luxury property in kind of a rural area, but it’s perfect for fly fishing. And the target buyer is likely not in that area.

They’re likely in bigger cities. And I’ve never had to target fly fisher people before in a Facebook ad. So I asked ChatGPT and it like gave me like the most genius like things to put into a Facebook ad.

I think it was like Patagonia fly fishing, like that’s one of the interests or something. It was just like a bunch of things that I wouldn’t have known right away or it would have taken me a lot longer to figure out. It’s just, yeah, it’s so incredibly useful.

[Emily Terrell]
Yep, I mean, and realistically, like I always tell people the limitation for AI is not AI. It’s you, right? You just have to think outside the box of like, what do I need help with?

Okay, great. Like I have an RV and so I got new countertops and new backsplash in my RV. And I was like, okay, now these cabinets don’t match.

So I just took a picture and I was like, hey, give me some cabinet color suggestions. So it gave me three. And by the way, it gave me like name brand paint and the color and everything.

And then I was like, oh, go ahead and render the photos. So now in my ChatGPT, I have three photos with those specific colors, which by the way, I’m going with a dark green cabinet. It’s actually called like a black green by Sherwin-Williams, but because of the render photos.

And it looks amazing. But that’s how quick it was. And it took like three minutes to figure out which one I was gonna do and take care of it.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s a game changer for sure.

[Erica]
Yep. Emily, I wanna go back a bit to, you were talking about how you started off as a stay at home mom. And I want to hear you talk a little bit more about what that was like for you.

And then also the process of figuring out how to transition into something different than that.

[Emily Terrell]
Oh, so I had a corporate job, right? You know, when you get the phone call that’s like, hey, let’s talk about your car’s extended auto warranty. I made you call in to us, right?

So I made when you called to talk to us about your car’s extended auto warranty. So I worked for a company and I ran a marketing department. My budget was actually larger than payroll for the company.

So I spent, you know, I was very good at actually creating the systems of doing all this. And then when I had my first child, I probably would, I went back to work at six weeks, but I went like, I should have waited three months, right? I should have, I probably would have done a little more.

And so I decided, you know what, I don’t wanna be in this world, I wanna spend time with my son. So I did. And I was home with him for probably about six months.

And, you know, I kind of, I looked back at just like how every day I was just, like, I was afraid to spend money because I felt bad about spending it because I wasn’t contributing. I’m a very, I’m a high DI, you can figure that out, right? So I’m a very high driver.

So for me to like pull back and let somebody else take the reins, you know, it was just hard for me. And it had nothing to do with my husband. He’s extremely supportive, you know, he’s great.

He’s an amazing man. But for me, it was just what I needed to do. So I, you know, from there, we had sold our house.

We’d lived in the Dallas area and we had sold our house. And I thought it was a fun process. So, you know, again, I thought it’d be easy.

And I also, you know, I was a server for a really long time and I got along really well with people. So for me, I was like, yeah, this seems like a natural fit. So I went, you know, stereotypical, let’s become a real estate agent.

And so, you know, and I came in at a very different market, actually not that different from where we are now. And for me, it was a very natural fit. So when I would tell people that I was a real estate agent, they’re like, oh yeah, we get it.

That’s you, that’s your first assignment.

[Erica]
Wasn’t a surprise to anybody.

[Emily Terrell]
Not at all, in any way, shape or form, in any way.

[Erica]
What was that like for you to, so let me make sure I’m on the right timeline here. So your son would have been around six months or so when you started real estate?

[Emily Terrell]
I think actually it was like nine, because I did, I worked for a little bit. And then he was like, yeah, nine to 12 months, somewhere in there. He was, you know, it wasn’t very old, but I was definitely like, yeah, he’s around nine to 12 months.

[Erica]
Okay, can you walk me through what the days were like for you, just schedule-wise and rhythm with work, building a business, family? I don’t know how he slept at night, but our kids didn’t sleep great at that age. And just, yeah, just what that was like for you.

[Emily Terrell]
That’s really fun, because it’s very different now than it was then, right? Actually, you know what, that was pretty easy. I ended up putting him in daycare.

There was a lady, her name is Kathy, she was in the area. I had actually grown up with her daughters. So she actually, when I started getting busier, because I was really successful my first year, he actually went to daycare.

So that helped out quite a bit. The difference, though, was when I had my second son. So in 2018, I had my second son.

And I was doing really well. Like, I think in 2017, I had him in December of 2017, and that year I sold 76 transactions by myself. It was by myself at the time.

So I was really selling a lot. But I decided for my second son that I wanted to keep him home with me for a while. So that was actually, that was difficult, because I had a newborn, right?

I had my four-year-olds, and I had a newborn, and I wanted to keep him home with me. Actually, I couldn’t get him with Kathy until he was nine months old. So that was harder.

What I ended up having to do, I relied significantly more on texting, because nobody wants to call you or you to call them and have a baby crying in the background. Not that he cried all the time, but just in case. And then the second thing I did was, is I actually just hired in part-time help.

So, like, three days a week, I would have somebody come in for two hours. And she would come in, and not that I would go anywhere, but I would do work. And she was available if I needed help.

So, which was really, I mean, that was extremely helpful for me, because if I needed help, which I did, but also it allowed me to not have to constantly have eyes on him, she could do that. And so I was able to really get a lot done during those times. And then once he got to nine months old, then he went into daycare as well.

My oldest then was in pre-K, and my youngest was in daycare. But I will say, the greatest piece of advice I got during that time was when my son, it was, you know, I was still selling, and my son, my second, was about to go into daycare. And I remember I went to a Tom Ferry conference, and, you know, we, the whole day, we got all the days there, it was the last day, and I got a chance to ask Tom, I was like, hey, how do you get over the mom guilt?

Well, not you, because how would you suggest I get over the mom guilt, right? And I remember thinking, like, because I knew how to lead generate, and I told him, I was like, look, I know how to lead generate, I know how to do all this stuff, that’s not my problem, I want, how do I get over that guilt of, like, now putting, which, because I only wanted two kids, putting my son into daycare, you know, putting myself first, and he was like, oh, he’s like, well, include your kids. Like, you gotta take them, you know, if you wanna spend time with them, you spend time with them.

Put them as part of your goals, right? Make sure, like, spending time with your kid is a goal. If you need to prioritize them, prioritize them.

And just be unapologetic about it. If that’s what you want, do it. And that kind of shaped everything that I do.

So now, I live my life of, if my kids are the most important thing, then they are put first, and then everybody else can, really, they can love it if they have a problem.

[Erica]
Yeah, that’s great. What does that look like now? I’m trying to do the math.

You have, probably, our daughter was born around the time your son was, and she’s eight, so he’s probably eight and a 12.

[Emily Terrell]
He’s seven, he’ll be, yeah, seven and 11. They’ll be, but they’ll be eight and 12 this year, because they’re working towards the end of the year. Oh, okay, yep.

Yeah, so now it’s a little different, because I do travel quite a bit. I travel, roughly, on average, every week and a half to two weeks. Then I do, so I still have my team.

I coach throughout the Monday through Thursday. I do a ton of webinars, either for people that hire me directly, or I do public webinars. And then I travel, and I do a lot, I do public events, and I do a lot of private events.

So, you know, I travel quite a bit, and then my husband and I do like to actually spend time together and travel sometimes, too. But now, I mean, so I don’t start coaching, and I don’t start my day until 9.30. I also delegate for my team quite a bit. Now, I do make less money, but it also frees up my time significantly.

And then, depending on where I’m going, sometime, if my kids are off, I will bring my kids to conferences sometimes. They’re old enough to like handle themselves for a couple of hours. Now, never private ones, but when they’re public ones, I will bring them.

And they think it’s the best. I get them little, I get them lanyards, and they’ll say like, they’ll say their names, and it’ll say VIP attendee on there. And they, you know, my youngest, he’s, you know, he’s seven now, and he got to go with me for something, and he’s like, Mom, am I VIP?

And I’m like, yes, you are. And everybody loves it. You know, when you bring your seven-year-old, and then the 11-year-old, that was his birthday trip, was he got to go to, he got to go to Denver with me to a conference.

And he was just beyond ecstatic, because he was VIP. So they love it, and they love being included, and they think it is the absolute most amazing thing that their mom talks about AI. They think that’s so cool.

[Erica]
You get to be a cool mom, yeah.

[Emily Terrell]
I am, because they talk about it. I cannot work their iPads. I don’t just, but it’s like a, I don’t want to work their iPads thing.

I don’t want to deal with it, so I don’t. But then they’re like, but Mom, you do AI. And I’m like, it’s totally different, guys.

It’s a different thing.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it’s a good, exactly. I mean, you use it all the time, right? So I mean, you get good at what you exercise.

You get strong with what you exercise. Absolutely. Yeah, I’m curious if you have any golden nuggets you’d like to share with the listeners here, like if they’re maybe getting started with real estate, or maybe struggling to get the systems together, or struggling to have fine time for their family.

I mean, is there anything that you would want to pass on to them?

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah, so we’ll do an AI tip, because why not, right? So my biggest thing when it comes to AI, if you’re wanting to get better responses, the answer always is to get better questions, right? And how do we ask better questions?

Well, let’s just use ChatGPT. So my recommendation is when you create a project, create one called Prompt Writer, and go in there and ask, and you could just use that thread over and over again, but ask ChatGPT to help you write all of your prompts. So now moving forward, you’re gonna have better, longer, more well-thought-out prompts that will build on each other over time.

So if you want to create some of these award-winning four-page prompts that I write that give you amazing results, just go to ChatGPT, ask it to write the prompts for you, tell it what you need, ask it to write the prompt for you, and then use that prompt to help get better responses.

[Mattias]
I love it. That’s awesome. I’m gonna go do that.

[Erica]
Right now, right now.

[Mattias]
Hold on.

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah. I’m just doing this. Yes, yeah.

[Mattias]
Emily, what about any books that you’d recommend, ones that you think would either be fundamental for people that everybody should read, it could be real estate specific, it could be mindset, business, whatever, or just one that you’re currently really enjoying?

[Emily Terrell]
So I like, personally, Chris Voss. I had to think about it. It’s, oh my gosh, now I’m blanking on the name of it.

[Mattias]
Never Split the Difference, that one.

[Emily Terrell]
Yes, Never Split the Difference, that one. That honestly is one of my favorite.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Emily Terrell]
And one of the big reasons, there’s a lot to it, but my favorite part of it is, and I use this as a philosophy for how I, well, I train my agents to do it now, for my team, when I would go on listing appointments, is you tell people what you’re gonna do, and then you do it. So even if you’re giving them an email that says I have no update, you still send them an email that says I have no update for you. But that’s my biggest takeaway from that book.

However, there’s so much to it, right? But I really recommend Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It is probably one of the biggest impactful books that I had when I was working with buyers and sellers in real estate.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s a really good one. There was one that I think he co-wrote or had a little bit of a part of, too. I think it’s called The Full Fee Agent, maybe.

It had some interesting things in it, and the biggest takeaway that I got from that one, as well, was talking about, if you go into a listing appointment, not giving them recommendations on what to do to their house, and not giving them analysis until they agree to work with you, if they’re interviewing multiple people. And the comparison, and I’ve been beta testing this in the background and thinking through it because I’m not sure I really want to do that. I experimented with it on one and didn’t get the listing.

But that was mainly because the other agent was willing to list it for $100,000 more than it would sell for, and it sold for less than I told them it would.

[Emily Terrell]
Cheers! I haven’t read the book, but this is the only thing I’m gonna challenge on this. What is the largest group of people that are buying and selling, that are doing any real estate transactions?

What generation is the largest group?

[Mattias]
Is it, it’s not millennials anymore, is it?

[Emily Terrell]
It is millennials. It is millennials, it’s an overwhelming amount. It’s like, oh, I think like 65%, it’s something crazy, right?

It’s a lot, almost everybody is millennial that are buying and selling houses, right? So in saying that, do you know what characterizes, like the characteristics of a millennial as far as when it comes to information and deciding to work with somebody or deciding to buy with somebody or something? It’s the idea that we want the information and we want to be able to digest it and come back to you.

Like, I don’t need your fluff, I just need, just give me the information and let me go and do my thing and then I’ll come back.

[Mattias]
No, and I think the bigger point here was that if they are interviewing multiple people, they typically have like the one they’re probably gonna work with already in their heads and you can kind of try to tease through like, are you that person or are you just kind of them thinking they need to do a little bit more due diligence and then they’ll maybe use your information to work with the person they want to anyway.

And so their whole point was like, don’t spin your wheels on things that were probably not gonna work out. So again, I’m in the background beta testing this a little bit, but I think you’re right. I mean, like ultimately, like giving people the information they want, if you could have it fully prepared to meet with them, it’s gonna increase the chances of working with you.

And I do mostly referral based business. So like 99% of the time, I’m not in a, three different agents fighting for the same listings.

[Emily Terrell]
You know what’s crazy? Can you guess the percentage of people that actually interview more than one agents?

[Mattias]
I have no idea.

[Emily Terrell]
It’s only 20%.

[Mattias]
Okay.

[Emily Terrell]
80% of people actually just go with the one only agent that they talk to.

[Mattias]
That’s, yeah. I mean, that’s definitely feels true for me and or probably even maybe slightly higher just because I don’t do much cold stuff. But yeah, so that’s just another one.

I might have to, I don’t think I actually finished that book so I should read it again since Chris Moss is so good.

[Emily Terrell]
I know. I might have to, it’s sitting right over here on my shelf of all my books. I might have to read it myself again.

Or I have to read Never Split the Difference again just because I always loved a good brush up on it.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Yeah. Then what about if anybody wanted to reach out to you about coaching, follow you on social media, where would they go?

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to one of two places. You can go to my website, it’s just coachemilyterrell.com or you can also go to Instagram. Instagram is actually the easiest way to reach out to me, just @coachemilyterrell.

[Mattias]
Sure.

[Emily Terrell]
She’s got my smiling face, not this smiling face, a different one. But it’s just coachemilyterrell. It’s the easiest place to find me.

Plus they can answer all the questions. I put a lot of tips and tricks about, you know, systemizing and AI and a lot of content there. Plus anytime I’m doing webinars or podcast drop or anything like that, it all goes there so people have a great way to see what’s going on.

[Mattias]
Sure. Well, cool. Well, thanks so much, Emily.

[Emily Terrell]
Yeah.

[Erica]
Thank you, Emily, for the conversation. That was great to have you on.

[Emily Terrell]
You’re welcome.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.