AI Will Not Replace You... But THIS Might | Real Estate + ChatGPT Tips with Mike Renick

In this episode of Take It and Run, Kristi Jencks and Kelcie Dowd sit down with Mike Renick — a nearly 70-year-old real estate agent, former GM executive, and full‑blown AI innovator — to uncover how he’s using artificial intelligence to completely redefine the way real estate agents manage time, create content, and nurture leads.

Mike shares his journey from corporate tech leader to Florida Realtor, and how embracing AI has given him something every agent wants: more time, more consistency, and more capacity to build real human relationships.

If you’ve ever said, “I’m too old for tech,” “AI feels overwhelming,” or “I don’t even know where to start,” this episode will give you the mindset, tools, and practical steps to begin. From content automation to avatar videos to smarter lead follow‑up, Mike shows exactly how he built a business that truly runs with him — not on him.

Whether you're a new agent curious about AI or a seasoned pro wanting to scale without burnout, you’ll walk away inspired and equipped to take your next step forward.

What We Cover:

• Why AI won’t replace real estate agents — but agents who use AI will win
• How Mike went from 4–5 hours per video to a 10‑second creation process
• How he automates 50+ pieces of content per week while staying fully human
• The truth about avatars (and why “AI Mike” fools most people)
• A time‑saving lead nurture workflow built around client behavior
• Why consistency matters more than perfection in content creation
• How to start using AI when you feel overwhelmed
• Which tools are worth paying for — and which to skip
• The mindset shift that makes AI empowering instead of scary

Top Takeaways:

• AI isn’t here to replace you — it’s here to free your time.
• Consistency becomes effortless when systems do the heavy lifting.
• Lead follow‑up works best when it’s based on client readiness, not pressure.
• Curiosity — not age or experience — is your biggest advantage when adopting AI.
• Start small, stay consistent, and let AI grow with you.

Connect with Mike:

📱 Cell: 941‑400‑8735
 💬 Facebook Group: AI Edge with Michael Renick (free community)

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🎙️ About the Podcast

Take It and Run is the podcast for ambitious professionals—especially real estate agents—who want practical strategies they can implement immediately. Each episode delivers mindset shifts, frameworks, and real-world insights to help you move from thinking about it… to doing it.

Transcript

Kristi Jencks (00:01.88)
Welcome back to Take It and Run. This is the show for professionals who are done waiting and ready to move forward. I'm your host, Kristi Jencks real estate agent, speaker, coach for Tom Ferry, and pretty much just an AI loving woman. I remember over two years ago, I got my first AI certification. That's kind of crazy to think, but I'm here with my brilliant co-host, Kelcie Dowd

Kelcie Dowd (00:26.6)
Hey guys, today's episode is a big game changer because our guest Mike Renick proves that it's never too late to level up with tech.

Kristi Jencks (00:35.372)
Yes, you're going to love this. are talking with Mike Renick today. He's nearly 70, but he's going with 70 already. He's a real estate agent in Florida who's not just dabbling in AI, but he's building systems that are going to absolutely blow your mind.

Kelcie Dowd (00:51.57)
Yeah, he's using AI in like real ways. Yeah, he makes some cute little characters for like social media and everything, but he's using it in real ways to save you time, show up for his people and to stay fully human.

Kristi Jencks (01:05.184)
So if you've ever said, know, I'm too old for this tech stuff or I don't even know where to start. This is the episode for you. Welcome, Mike, to the show. I would love for you to introduce yourself to our audience. Tell them who you are, what you do, and how did you get into all of this real estate and AI?

Mike Renick (01:24.564)
It's great to be here. Thank you. I want to announce in the pre show we didn't talk about this, but I am wearing a sweatshirt. I'm based out of Florida. It was 54 degrees last night. It's in the 60s today. This is my favorite. We don't get this opportunity in Florida. I haven't seen temperatures at night below upper 70s, so I didn't want you to think I underdressed. This is my favorite shirt I can put on, so that's why I'm wearing a sweatshirt this morning. I'm actually remote in Orlando, so I'm honored to be here. My name is Mike Rennick. I

Kristi Jencks (01:49.091)
I love it.

Mike Renick (01:54.592)
Started my career. worked 31 years for General Motors. I was fortunate enough to retire with a full pension at 52. I had my 31 years in, got into real estate. And when I was at General Motors, I was a global information officer. So I was a techie. I ran tech groups. I love that kind of stuff. The problem is as you move up the ranks, you get to do less tech stuff and it's more in an administrative kind of stuff. But I never lost that passion. So now moving into real estate, we're based out of Sarasota, Florida, the West coast, a little bit south of Tampa.

And technology, you know, we're facing a time right now that we will never see again. We haven't seen before. This is bigger than when the internet started in terms of the things that we can do with AI. And the one of the things I want to be clear on what I teach, what I'm very firm about is AI will not replace a real estate agent. It will free up time. Now real estate agents may leave because they're not effectively using AI. And let me share what I mean by that. I have so much free time. Like when this podcast is over, I'm done for the day.

Absolutely done for the day because everything is automated. So I'll get to go out. We're visiting Disney and I'll get to go and have some fun with my friends and stuff. But the point is AI will help us get to a wall. from that wall on, building a relationship, that's up to the agent. This is going to free up the time so I can be on the phone. I can take someone to dinner. I met with a great client last night, dinner here in Orlando. We're going to meet with another one today. Golfing, whatever it is, it's building relationships. This frees up the time.

Let me be really candid. It'll take away all your excuses for not making those phone calls. Because you'll have the time to do that.

Kelcie Dowd (03:30.121)
I love that too. So what drew you to AI in the first place?

Kristi Jencks (03:31.522)
I love that.

Mike Renick (03:37.262)
Technology, anytime we can do things more efficiently. In other words, Tom Ferry talks about the $10 an hour real estate work where we do the clerical stuff, you all the things that are important to keep our businesses going forward. This takes all of that and automates it. I've got, so we post eight new pieces of content seven days a week, and I've got them posted out for the next two, three, four weeks, depending whether it's a blog or the videos. I don't even get to star in the videos. It's AI Mike. He's kind of taken over.

And I heard a rumor that he may appear here today. I didn't know he was going to follow me on the podcast. It's rare that they allow me in front of the microphone and camera. So this is a great treat. But what it does, it allows us to take away the things that you still have to do it. You've got to appear on social media. You need the email newsletters. You need to do those kinds of things. But it frees up the time so that I can spend it doing that. And still, know, Gary V teaches on social be everywhere all the time. That's what we are. Eight pieces of content.

Kristi Jencks (04:09.251)
Yes.

Mike Renick (04:34.285)
seven days a week, 30, 31 days a month.

Kristi Jencks (04:37.484)
Now, you've done content for a long time. I was first introduced to Mike in 2020. That's when I first came across you. He didn't even know who I was, but I went to one of his sessions.

Mike Renick (04:50.059)
He's the greatest cook I've ever had. I want to be clear about that. I don't say things that don't mean.

Kristi Jencks (04:55.79)
I went to your session in 2020 at a Tom Perry event and you were talking about automation and AI at that point and it was not even close to where it is now. So I know you've been doing this for a long time and working with a lot of agents, I hear people say, I've been successful without AI, why should I bother? But I wanna hit on something real quick. You were doing video before

and we'll talk about AI Mike later, but you were doing video before, you were doing content, you were testing out emails and all of these different things. So how much time have you truly freed up? Because you said this gives you time to dive into relationships or go to Disney and be with your friends, but just even in the past year, what does that look like for you?

Mike Renick (05:47.138)
So to create a video, I would find interesting things in the local newspapers online. And so I'd learn about the thing. And then I would write the script and I'm not a very good script writer. So that would take a long time. And we would go out and we would film it and we'd do all the editing and stuff like that. Minimum four hours, four to five hours per video.

Now we're doing four videos a day right now. So what we have is through AI, I've developed an automation where I take the web address and I put it into my program and I'll post the video with AI Mike. It's on a bad day, it's a 10 second job. So think of that four to five hours down to 10 seconds. That's just one example of what we automate here. Again, the more content you can put out there that people are watching and we're getting 40 to 60,000 views a month on our videos right now.

JSON just gave us the ability to pull our metrics in. did that. I was surprised. They've gone from 40 up to 60,000. So I was really happy with that. But it's always being there in front of your clients. You know, I sell on a second home market. So my clients aren't here all the time. They want to know what's happening. This is allowing me to do that. But it's a huge time saver. Does it increase the quality? I would say the quality is better.

But it's the time thing that we really focus on here. If we have a question here in the company, has Mike automated that? And if the answer is no, the question is why hasn't he? Because we are taking everything that can be automated. It gives me time to appear here. I I really used to spend hours in front of the camera because nobody else in the company would do that. And it's a big treat now that I'm actually live in front of a camera. I don't get to do that anymore because AI Mike is all over everywhere.

Kristi Jencks (07:29.516)
your mentality for me is just that we're recognizing AI as leverage and not a threat, right? So your mindset truly is this is leverage, it's not a threat.

Mike Renick (07:40.238)
When I look at this, will AI replace us? The answer is no, but the us's that use AI may very well replace us. If we remember for some of the people my age out there, we used to do business with carbon paper. Remember that? The millennials won't understand what that is and that's not a dig at millennials because I used to hire tons of them.

Everything is so automated. I mean, we don't even do paper contracts anymore. Everything is e-signing and stuff. So you look at where technology has come. You have to embrace this. You have to get started. Is it too late? Absolutely not. I'm going to hold a live seminar next week talking about that, where I actually co-host with AI. We're going to be live with AI and we're going to discuss that kind of thing. But it's taking this thing and allowing us to do more with a whole lot less. That's the whole key.

We, we, somebody once said, we'll never use the internet. The internet will replace us. Well, I think we're all employed today. Right. And we're all using the internet. This podcast wouldn't be, you know, I'm in Orlando. You guys are way out on the West coast. we're never in the same city together. So without that technology, the internet technology, see where it's taking us. AI is going to take us much faster, much deeper, much quicker.

Kelcie Dowd (08:37.257)
Mm.

Kelcie Dowd (08:53.553)
I love that. So I think that puts us into a perfect segue of can you tell me what are your top three ways that you're using AI right now? So let's get into the how of it. How are you using AI in your business?

Mike Renick (09:05.645)
So, you I like it when someone says, Mike, what is AI driven in terms of your business? And I can never answer that because AI is thread through my whole business. There's nothing that we do. You take a web address of an article, we put it in the program and out pops AI Mike with the video, my newsletter. We take that, that's all created by AI now.

our blogging we do, Kristi I lied to you the other day. said I was down to four. That didn't last. I'm back to eight blogs a day right now. It's all created by eight. It's, my personality. I got four done so fast. I'm thinking I got time for four more.

Kristi Jencks (09:38.734)
I want you to talk about that real quick, four, because you're doing different segments for your audience.

Mike Renick (09:47.682)
So when I look at a blog, the whole scenario of blog, SEO is going out. It's not gone, but search engine optimization. It's either called AEO or GEO. What it really means is the blogs. People are going to chat GBT and they're not saying, I want a Longboat Key real estate agent. They're saying, I'd like an agent that focuses on waterfront properties that may be island-based around Longboat Key. Who would you recommend? And that's called long tail keywords. Jason Pantana teaches that all the time.

And so we write blogs so that it answers that question. Well, how do we know what blogs to write? Well, we use, I'm using AI. We're taught to go to answer the public. That's not good enough for me. I go to five places with my automation. We look at what people are asking questions on and then we select. So my automation writes a title. I approve them. It writes the content. I approve them.

creates the images, I approve it. And then when the blog actually hits, so it's addressing the question. So when someone's out on AI, whether it's chat GPT, it's on Grok, it's on Claude perplexity, wherever, there's a higher probability that my blog is gonna be used to answer the question. And where we've taken it even further, my blogs now when it's live, if it has the word like Sarasota, it's hyperlinked back to my webpage. If it has market, it's hyperlinked back to my webpage. So it allows the person reading the blog

to click on it learn more about who Team Renick is. And the thing I'm most proud of, of course, that wasn't good enough for us, I now have an automation that takes, have 137, I got a lot more to load, but I have 137 testimonials I've loaded in my automation. It goes through it, reads the blog before it goes to print, and it picks the two most appropriate testimonials and embeds it inside of it. So again, not only are they learning the answer to their question, they're learning more why Mike or Eric or Team Renick might be the right agency for them to call on that kind of stuff.

And to do a blog from start to finish on a bad day might take three minutes. And we do them simultaneously. So it doesn't take six minutes to do two blogs and nine minutes to do three. And we publish this on our blog website, but then we backlink it. So we publish it on Facebook. We publish it on Google. We publish it on LinkedIn and on X. So those now have backlinks, which is good for AEO, backlinks to our blog website.

Kristi Jencks (12:04.268)
And what is AEO for our audience who might not know what that means?

Mike Renick (12:08.339)
It, and you don't have to memorize this stuff. I'm a geek. That's why I can do this. It's answer engine optimization instead of search engine. And the GEO is generative engine optimization. But all it means is people are now going, you know, the first lead I got came from Grock. I got so excited. I'm talking to the prospective buyer. He got so excited. He pulled over to the side of the road so he could send me screenshots of what he asked Grock when they were referred to us. It's, it's, it's geeking out, but it's really, really cool stuff. And this is where we have to be. This is where.

Kelcie Dowd (12:22.483)
Hmm.

Mike Renick (12:37.365)
our clients are going and we need to be where they are. need to be found. The clients set the rules, right? They get to decide where they search, not me. They get to pick that. My job is to make sure we're found when they go there.

Kelcie Dowd (12:46.781)
Okay.

Kristi Jencks (12:50.968)
So you mentioned the blog. You've mentioned several automations and workflows, but Kelcie said, and I interrupted, I apologize. The three, so you shared blogs. Give us two more examples of ways that AI is impacting your business and your quality of life even.

Mike Renick (13:08.223)
I think the, you know, the newsletters, and I'll go back into some of the sub processes because they're all intertwined. You know, when you, when you post something on social media, and I used to use JADBT and it would go out and it would give me verbiage and stuff like that. But my process now is it goes out and it checks what's trending today on TikTok, what's trending on YouTube, what's trending on LinkedIn, all across the channels. And it writes for my one video, it writes the content.

The emojis, the call to actions are different across every platform. So when we post, we're posting with what's hot, because next week that video would have gotten different responses than it does this week. So we go really deep into trying to maximize everything, because when you can automate something, it takes all the manual work out of it, guess is the way to say it. I guess I would argue now that it makes a higher quality output because it's doing the right kind of stuff.

So it

Kristi Jencks (14:05.794)
So I want to break this down because I've been quietly testing this for Mike. I'm sure he'd want me to ramp it up even more, but I am doing it daily.

Kelcie Dowd (14:16.593)
Yeah.

Mike Renick (14:17.197)
You know in this program I can watch what you post and don't post I do that every day

Kelcie Dowd (14:22.185)
I love the ability to stalk people.

Kristi Jencks (14:25.362)
He's my accountability partner with it. So let me break this down. We've been taught that we should be everywhere. So Mike's saying be everywhere. So that means TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, all the places, Instagram, Facebook. And he's written his program that he takes one piece of content and before, and I've done this before, I post

the same piece of content across all of them. Cause I'm like, well, heck, can, if I'm going to get the content on it, might as well put it all there, but it lands different on Facebook than it does on Tik Tok. And so his program that he's written actually changes the, the video stays the same, but it changes the caption. And here's what I've noticed. The program does like it always, I feel like Tik Tok, it's always like POV, LinkedIn.

It's funny because that must be what it wants because you've written the program to go out, find what's trending. So TikTok is almost always like POV. LinkedIn is, what is it? It's always like an unpopular opinion. And I've started to see and the difference, and the funny thing is Mike is you and I haven't even talked about this, but I've had several people say to me since I've been using the program, they're like, I'm seeing you a lot more on, and then like TikTok or even YouTube.

Kelcie Dowd (15:32.318)
Yeah.

Kristi Jencks (15:47.714)
And they're like, did you change something? I was like, actually I did. But I don't know, you've made that so nuanced and subtle. I just wanted to point out the fact that he's writing, his program's writing unique content for each of the platforms with the click of a button. And of course you've already talked about, maybe this is a good time for AI Mike to make an appearance, you said, tell us, I'm gonna pull it up. I'm gonna pull up AI Mike so that if you're watching this on YouTube or,

somewhere you can see it, but tell us about this whole evolution of AI mic while I pull it up.

Mike Renick (16:24.151)
So when we started, I didn't realize it was gonna become this big, but AI Mike is my avatar, created through Hey Gen with a voice being brought in through 11 Labs. That's more geeky kind of stuff. But AI Mike goes out there and he now shares, you we load the scripts, so he now shares what's going on in the area instead of myself actually appearing on camera. And AI Mike is becoming kind of famous. There's one.

Kristi Jencks (16:48.728)
many AI mics are there?

Mike Renick (16:51.745)
Well, we have two. There's one with me. Now that's the shirt you see me wearing is my real estate shirt. The other one has a blazer on which I've never worn in real estate my whole life in Florida. We don't practice real estate. So people kind of tease me when they see the AI mic with a jacket on.

Kelcie Dowd (17:07.113)
So that's not even really you.

Mike Renick (17:07.925)
I have never taken a client out, even a $5 million client wearing that blazer or a jacket because they're generally in shorts down here. Now we dress up with nice slacks and stuff, but real estate, you know, the dress code is a little bit different down here in Florida. But that video was created by, you know, that video was just created by putting a web address into my program and that's what pops out.

Kristi Jencks (17:24.558)
I know you have questions about this.

Mike Renick (17:32.813)
That's it. It reads the program. It summarizes it. creates a script. allows me to approve the script. Then it goes through and it creates that video. All done.

Kristi Jencks (17:42.808)
So how do you keep your voice in that? Like, you know, I've heard listeners tell me, I just, can't use it because it just doesn't sound like me. The output is, know, it's, Kelcie, we've dealt with this early on when we were working with ChatGPT. like, yeah, that does not sound like Kristi. That does not sound like us. So how do you keep your voice coming through?

And if you want to even get to the technical part, I encourage you to share literally how your voice is being used and your image and likeness. how do you make sure it still sounds very much like you when it's AIs going out researching, finding what's trending, coming back, writing it? I know you approve it, but tell us about that.

Mike Renick (18:27.245)
So we use two programs. HeyGen is a big one. You can create the AI mic, the avatar. You can also create the voice clone, but it's not known for a strong voice clone. So it has the ability, you move over to 11 Labs, which is another piece of software. And the way I created the voice clone, 11 Labs is world-class. Instead of standing in front of a microphone for minutes or 30 minutes or an hour or whatever, verbalizing things, just talking.

It allows you to upload. every 30 days I do a market update. So I kept loading. I think we loaded 18 months worth of videos and it cloned my voice from there. And folks that know me say it's very realistic. So my program says, Hey Gen, give me the avatar. It says, Hey Gen, then go to 11 labs and bring in the voice for Mike. And we load the script and that's not really a true statement because the program loads the script. Now we no longer do that.

But it's all automated, so what pops out is something that folks at Nomi anyway say that does sound like me.

Kristi Jencks (19:25.462)
Now, I'm super curious, because I've tested some different avatars. I'm a little on the fence for myself if I am going to create a whole series with an avatar or if I'm always going to show up as real Kristi and not robot Kristi. I'm on the fence about, I'm almost thinking about creating an alter ego that's robot Kristi. Like if I wasn't afraid to hurt your feelings, this is what I would say type of thing. that way, it's a robot Kristi can say the things that.

Amy Abel Kristi is not comfortable saying, but surely people know this is a robot. Surely people know this is not you.

Mike Renick (20:01.613)
Not always. was probably about six weeks ago, I was at a checkup with my physician and he says, Mike, I'm watching all your videos. And I was teasing. said, you know, that's, that's not me. That's AI Mike. He said it was me. He knew it was me. He made me take my phone out of my pocket and play a video. So

If you're looking for AI, you're going to tell it's AI. I get that. But most folks don't. So here's the thing that I totally disagree with with my peers. Everything's got to be perfect. My hair's got to be done right. My glasses got to be on straight. My face has to be... People don't see us that way. When we're out showing real estate, my hair is blown in the wind and all kinds of stuff, right? So I'm not looking for perfection out of AI Mike because when I create a video, it's not perfect anyway.

Right? Like right now there's no editing. You see me as I am right now. And so with AI Mike, I'm not looking for perfection. I mean, does he stumble a little bit sometimes? Now the secret with the avatar is in the big coaches are teaching this as you notice AI Mike is down the lower part of the screen. I don't show a full face avatar kind of a deal.

So that helps some of the synchroses of the software. But the cool thing, there's one of the gentlemen out there that's really big in AI, and he uses the, just clones the static picture. You can now upload a picture and it'll do some mannerisms of your face. Your body stays constant, but over across the face, if I can get the hands of the camera, there's verbiage right here. So you're not paying attention to that part, you're looking at the face.

And so we're looking to move into that because I've got AI mic setting in a desk. I've got them out by the beach. I've got AI mic in a garden, walking downtown. It's not just the two static things that you see. This technology is changing so fast. Again, so if you think it's too late, it's not too late because we're all going in six weeks. It's going to be different than it is today. We all can get there. You don't have to go through everything we're going through right now.

Mike Renick (21:55.296)
So we keep moving forward, we leverage what's out there. It's getting better and better. New features are happening and being, I would say part geek, but that's not true. Being a full geek like I am, and I mean that very positively. This is fun. This is not work. This is not hard. I'm on vacation this week, but I've spent up until now working with all of my programs and that's what I like to do.

Kelcie Dowd (22:19.293)
This is so great. And something that I'm like thinking about as you're sharing this. So I'm not good at doing math in public, but eight pieces of content, seven days a week, that's 56 pieces of content, right? A week. multiply that by 30 for, know, or not 30 before, but the, the, consistency, right? Which is one of the reasons why we have this podcast is to help agents with consistency, because that's one of the reasons people fall off.

Mike Renick (22:32.535)
Mm-hmm.

Kelcie Dowd (22:49.011)
their goal wagon. So how has this process helped you be consistent?

Mike Renick (22:55.021)
It's all automated. so, eight times a day, and actually we're now up to 12 pieces of content a day, but eight was kind of the base when I talked to Kristi last week is I tell people, I set my alarm for every 90 minutes and when the alarm goes up, quiet.

This is a lot of pressure. There's a lot of stress. I push one button on my telephone and one video gets populated on eight different platforms. It takes five seconds to hit a button on the phone. That's how you keep it consistent. You make it easy. Right? One video gets created. The software loads it to the right places. The right approvals happen kind of a deal. And you get into a rhythm like people, agents that spend eight hours a day doing stuff today. What this is, is doing different stuff much faster.

It just you you fall into the rhythm and it's just point and click really is what it really comes down to

Kristi Jencks (23:48.066)
there's going to be a sound bite right there about consistency that I, that's one that I know that I'm going to want to use in a short form video because it was so good. But let's talk about time management and scaling with AI. So you've already mentioned, you know, a four hour video process down to, you know, two minutes. But let's talk about what you've done for lead follow up and for, mean, you, you barely touched on the newsletter.

Right? Like there's all these different ways, but in terms of time management of running your business from a lead follow-up standpoint, how has AI influenced your process and even like who works for you? Maybe go into a little bit of that because from a time management, I know that it's changed the structure of your business.

Mike Renick (24:38.603)
All right, you asked for it, you're gonna get it now. this is take the gloves off, no holds bars. I have never subscribed to what we're taught in terms of lead follow-up. You get a new lead, you badger the living daylights out of them a multi-times a day until they answer the phone. We actually call it 10 days of pain.

All that kind of stuff. I've never bought into that theory. Just think about this. How many times if you fill out a website on something you're going to buy six, eight, 10 months down the road, a year and a half down the road, do you want phone calls today? So I've never done that kind of stuff. What this does, the technology now with the marketing company I belong to, lets me know when folks are active. And I take it back to what I call a retail store. So I've opened a new store and someone walks into the store and I introduce myself and ask if I can help. If they say no,

Do I two seconds later follow them in the store and say, can I help you now? And two minutes later, can I help you now? That's what we're taught, right? That's that stuff that we're taught that doesn't work. In fact, the best agents in the world say they convert internet leads less than 2%. Well, I suggest it's the fact that we tick them off. That's probably part of the reason for that.

Kelcie Dowd (25:29.779)
Yeah.

Mike Renick (25:44.952)
But so anyway, I watch when people are active in my store, when they're in shopping. And so here's the key. When they're in my store and I reach out to them and they're not ready right now, they say they're just looking. When they need me, they can find me. That's the key. When someone engages and does something and wants me, I actually answer phone calls. My phone's going off right now. This phone's gonna be taken over to Eric. He'll pick up the call.

We answer calls, we return calls, we answer emails, we return texts. It's about being engaged when the customer wants us. So we use that technology in terms of watching what the clients do inside of our website, not from a spooky...

threatening kind of a deal, but we're watching to see when they need us. And that's when we engage in AI, all of this technology allows us to better reach out to the customer on their turn. Like we're taught, so we badger the living daylights out of everyone with emails, right? We just email after email after email.

I bet you there's nobody watching this that can answer all their emails in a day. I know I can't, so we ferret out the spam. So what I do when someone comes into my website, it's an internet lead, they know I sell real estate, they filled out my form, and they're starting to get listings automatically. do I send them all these emails, hire me, hire me, hire me? Well, no. The average lead that comes in from the internet is about 18 months away from purchase or sale.

So I started a process that chat GPT helped me write two years ago, actually, probably time to update it where I asked chat GPT to define 75 pinch points why clients don't like working with real estate agents. And then for each one of those, we have an email crafted that talks about how that won't happen with team Renick, what we put in place to make sure it doesn't happen. And then goes out every six days. So that's the only calendar based email that I send out. that trying to keep them warmed up so that they, you know, even if they read just

Mike Renick (27:34.012)
some of them, they see that Mike doesn't behave the way some of these others and I love it when I get a phone call that says, Mike, I hate working with realtors. And my response is, I get it. Think of my day I work with them all day long. So it's showing them that we want to be different. I like the fact we own our own brokerage. I'm not under national rules based out of some part of the country I don't live in. And we can do what's right on the spot. I'm gonna deviate for a second. When you put a microphone in front of me years ago, Jason Pantanis has never-

it back and I learned that really well. So when you're interacting with clients, you interact on their terms, not your terms. On an organizational chart, we report to them, I'm here to service them, not the other way around. And too often, I think we forget that kind of stuff. And I think we built this company in this team successfully based on those business premises. And then AI just lets us take the clerical stuff out of here. With AI, could I badger people faster more often? Could I do them a hundred times a

I could but it doesn't make any sense. So it's the whole balance kind of thing.

Kelcie Dowd (28:39.571)
Do you know, and it's okay if you don't, but do you know, you mentioned the metric, like the best agents in the world convert 2 % of online leads. Do you know your conversion rate for online leads with this new process you have?

Mike Renick (28:49.943)
So thank you for asking that, because that's another thing the gloves are coming off. How do you measure conversion rate? I bought a lead three years ago that is going to close next week. And the lead that came in today is going to close in two years. But 10 leads that came in yesterday will never close. So when someone's talking about a conversion rate or ROI, here's the message I'm hearing. Mike, I have no clue how to measure those things, because we don't. I did a close a million dollar deal tomorrow.

Kelcie Dowd (28:59.913)
Mm-hmm.

Kelcie Dowd (29:04.553)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Renick (29:19.009)
But I bought the lead four years ago. So I don't believe in any of that kind of stuff. I look at revenue coming into the company. I look at paying all the bills. We have two co-owners. I look at paying the salaries, paying income taxes, paying all that. And then I have a target chunk of money I want to put in the bank as profit at the end of the year. That's how I measure. We did a program where we sent out brownies at Christmas time.

And someone asked me, what's your ROI? What you mean what's my ROI on brownies? If you want to take the time, I want you to be my competitor. You take the time to figure that out and I'm going to go sell real estate. It's the whole package, right? It's the whole package that comes together. I learned this by being a business executive, General Motors. You've got to measure your team on the right things. If you're measuring them on the wrong things, you're going to get behavior you don't like. And I've saw that far too many times inside of General Motors. Remember, they almost went bankrupt in the 80s.

Kelcie Dowd (29:53.373)
Yeah.

Mike Renick (30:09.557)
So you've got to be doing the right kind of things. And we brought that mentality to real estate. Coming back to AI, it allows me to strengthen and focus even stronger on the right business principles.

Kristi Jencks (30:19.95)
So what's a good, for our listeners, what's a good practical first step? What's a habit that they could steal from you based on this topic was time management and scaling with AI? What's a habit they could steal from you this week?

Mike Renick (30:37.185)
Don't do anything without talking to Chatch GPT. And here's what I mean by that. Let's say you haven't started with AI. You're totally overwhelmed. You're not sure where to turn. Pick up the phone. You can talk to Chatch GPT on your phone verbally or go on your laptop. You could talk or you could type in and say, I am clueless. Help me. I need your help. You'll be amazed at the steps they'll start giving you on what you can do, what to focus on. It's about a journey. Every day, take a little bit further.

Move a little bit further on that journey and ultimately you're going to start encompassing thing You're you're not going to come in. You're not going to create an ai avatar that produces a video in three seconds on your first day If you are I got a job for you. Give me a call I can put you to work really fast if you can go from zero to that in a minute, but go slow And start to learn encompass

You know, think about what you use the internet for today and how you're traveling along that. It's the same thing for AI. Go slowly, but don't be afraid to say, I don't understand and ask the AI for help. And if they give you something you don't understand and say, I still don't get it. you know, the everything AI has taught me, everything I do, I watch a lot of stuff on YouTube and I watch AI perform on YouTube. And then I ask, you know, my best friends are chat, GBT, Claude, Grok, perplexity, things like that.

shows I truly am a geek and don't have a real life, but we still sell a lot of real estate, so something's going right here.

Kelcie Dowd (32:02.323)
That's great.

Kristi Jencks (32:02.552)
Well, and I'll just say this for him, Kelcie, real quick is one thing that he's doing even inside of his community is he's actually teaching his neighbors how to use AI in really practical ways. So he's giving back to the community and teaching them what they can do at his place of residence.

Kelcie Dowd (32:16.105)
That's cool.

Kelcie Dowd (32:23.155)
That's great. I love that.

Mike Renick (32:23.437)
The interesting thing is I got a call and they'll say, Mike, you did a video on that new restaurant opening up on Longboat Key. Can you tell me about it? I had a look at Eric because he runs this whole process and say, what restaurants today have Mike talk about last week? Because I'm not even involved in the process. I live in a complex association called Sea Place and I didn't realize that Mike was going out there and summarizing the activities for the weeks before. I had no idea that he was doing that kind of stuff.

Kelcie Dowd (32:35.581)
Yeah.

Kelcie Dowd (32:38.995)
Yeah.

Kelcie Dowd (32:49.587)
That's so funny.

Mike Renick (32:51.181)
You know, that's my farm area. You know, we're taught to farm an area. I do 95 % of the business here. So it's working things Tom Ferry taught us over the past 12 years. It works. But that's just another thing. AI Mike is communicating to our folks that don't live here in the summertime, right? Second home market. it's more technology continuing to evolve, continuing to do what our clients want us to do. I mean, during the hurricane, we had two hurricanes struck hit last year in two weeks, two hurricanes devastated.

We did all kinds of videos. I was a board president, so was leading the efforts to put C-Place back together. And we did videos at least once a day and sometimes twice a day. I'd have the insurance broker, I'd have the contractor, I'd have the general manager, I'd have board members. And we kept communicating back to the owners what the heck's going on, because our property, we took a direct hit and we're a Gulffront community. So there was significant damage.

we spend in the first two weeks over a million dollars just starting to put CPLAYS back together. AI helped us because we could get those videos out a lot faster. We could process them faster. We could send them out through our channels. it took us as very strong real estate agents and it solidified our business all the way to the top because of what we did.

Kelcie Dowd (33:49.075)
Mm.

Kelcie Dowd (34:04.179)
So, and you did kind of touch on it a little bit, but I want you to talk to the people who are actually really scared of AI. You know, they're scared it will break their brand or they'll look dumb trying. What would you say to them besides, don't be scared?

Mike Renick (34:20.553)
It's like the agent is afraid to get in front of a camera to form a video, right? You've just got to do it. I used to cheat. I was part of a national brokerage at one point. Ultimately, I needed to be back on my own, but I had my own satellite office under that brokerage. And some of the young agents would come out and they'd want to spend a day learning from myself and from Eric. And the word got out, so it stopped very quickly. But when an agent came out, they were not allowed to leave until they created their first video.

I made them create their first video. so that lasted until everyone knew what was going to happen. So no one wanted to come on anymore, but you've just got to do it. You go out to chat GPT and say, I'm a newbie. I don't understand.

Are you here to help? And we're going to talk about this. I've got a series coming up. No cost. It's all free. We're not selling anything, but it's going to walk us through from the beginning from folks that are afraid to how do we get so we can leverage this is, know, we're going to, we're going to talk about this AI our friend. Are they out to get it? So they're to replace me. That's not the intention of this technology. Not at all. But we will be, like I said before, we will be replaced by people who leverage AI if we don't leverage it. Cause we won't be able to keep up. We just, can't.

Kristi Jencks (35:29.838)
Yeah, I love what you're saying. You don't necessarily have to be perfect, right? You're putting in the practice. You just need to be brave. And I appreciate that you're showing. This is one thing that, so we just celebrated 10 years, Kelcie and I, together, working together, which is incredible. And one of the things that we were talking about, and you do this so well, is just being curious, right? I feel, Mike, like your advantage is that you're showing

that it's just curiosity. It's not age, it's not experience, you know, it's just you are remaining curious and that's giving you the real edge.

Kelcie Dowd (36:06.749)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Renick (36:07.169)
Here's something I haven't shared. know, we talked about how my programs go out and they find out what's trending and they write the captions and emojis and all that. I'm gonna write a workflow that goes out of audit set workflow. How do I know it's going to the right places? GBT said this is where you go to find out when it's trending, but I'm gonna write another workflow transparent from that one to audit that one. know, SERP AI is what I use. It's a Google derivative. Is that really the right thing? Is there a better thing? Can I go to two places and find out what's trending and put them together through a technology kind of a deal?

So it's always about, you know, when you hit a button and you can, let's say, do C kind of work, A, D, but if you can hit a button and for no extra effort do A work or A plus work, that's where I want to take all this kind of stuff. And I'm never happy because someone says this works today, maybe in six weeks it won't. So we audit what we do, we change things, we make improvements to everything.

Kelcie Dowd (36:57.917)
So let's talk about an AI experiment, I know you do them. I'm sure you're thinking about them. I'm sure you dream about them, and you have a dream journal about your AI ideas. But what's an AI experiment that didn't go perfectly? And what did you learn from something that didn't work out?

Mike Renick (37:14.477)
I'm not sure any of them went perfectly. In fact, when I'm writing code and Eric is the business partner and I'm having some very pointed conversations, because I have Claude and ChatGPT up and they both have to agree on stuff. And so we come to a consensus that this is the next step. And I put it into my program. I use N8n and it blows up. doesn't work.

And so we have some very colorful conversations with the AIs in terms of what do we got to do to get this right? But we have some fun back and forth. And sometimes we use some four letter words and they use it back with me. And I like that. It's kind of cool, the conversations. I wouldn't print this stuff publicly, but we've got a...

a pretty interesting relationship, but to directly answer your question, nothing in the beginning will go smooth. When I teach someone when they do their avatar, I promise you, you won't like the first one. Nobody has liked the first one, Kristi. You shared that with me before in a coaching session. I didn't like my first one. That's okay. Look at what you don't like and then perfect it by doing your second one. So when I teach someone, I tell them you're going to do too. I promise you, you won't like the first one.

So it's about taking and learning, but don't expect perfection. If you're looking for perfection, those are the real estate agents today that won't create a video. You know, I was taught in 2016 to create a video and we never stopped. And this is 2025, right? Nine years, it's going to be 10 years pretty soon. So it's just get started. Understand it's, you're going to make mistakes. There's going to be frustrating days. Walk away from something when it doesn't work and come back an hour later or a day later, but don't give up.

and reach out for help. There's all kinds of folks willing to help for free and will help with your journey as you start to slowly embrace this technology that you will have to embrace at some point.

Kristi Jencks (39:00.718)
Yeah. So OK, I want to ask you, what should people pay for? So let's like, we're going to kind of wrapping this up. There's so much out there. There's so many shiny objects. New AI tools are popping up every single day. I'd love for you to synthesize, like in your tool belt, what are your most important tools? What should you pay for? And how do you evaluate that if this is something you're going to bring into your toolbox or that's a distraction?

Mike Renick (39:30.925)
I don't pay for anything in the beginning until it proves itself. know, a long time ago, Chad's GBT came out with something that was like $200 a month. Don't even remember the name of it, but that's a big nut to crack. I'm not willing to pay that until it proves its worth. It kind of petered out and it didn't prove its worth. But yet today for Claude, I am paying the $200 because it's bringing value. But to start out, I would recommend for the $20 for a month for Chad's GBT, because it'll allow you to do some things that the bass won't allow you to do.

I pay for HayGen, which is kind of expensive, but that creates the avatar. And 11 Labs, which is pretty inexpensive, creates the audio part of the avatar.

Those are your basis to start. If you're going to do some video editing, there's some free video editors out there. We actually use CapCut. I know we pay for that. Most of these are annual payments, so I don't know off the top of my head what I'm paying. I do know what the bogey is at the bottom line at the end of the year for the net income for the company. That's a target that we measure ourselves very strongly on. And these things all play, but don't just start spending a whole lot of money like things I used to do all the time that we would use their stuff. I'm not doing anymore. I'm going through every month and I'm slashing them.

AI is allowing me to do something for free or do something much less expensive and do it much better actually. So don't get enamored in all the latest things out there that you have to pay.

Get involved in YouTube, watch some of the YouTube videos, watch what people are using out there and follow some of the channels that you like. And we all have different levels of experience. So you're going to find the channel that's right for you and just move forward and start watching and experimenting with what they do. I like to see something on YouTube where they're writing a program for N8N. I actually am sitting at my laptop watching it and I'll duplicate what they do. And if I can't get it right, I back up the YouTube video and I come back at it again.

Kelcie Dowd (41:18.803)
So most people are writing emails to their database. What, your opinion, in the lens that we just looked through, what's next for them? What should they do for the next 30 days to level up?

Mike Renick (41:34.091)
They should, in terms of the, you broke up a little bit Kelcie, in terms of emails.

Kelcie Dowd (41:38.537)
I'm sorry. Yeah, so I'm saying that like most people right now who aren't using AI or maybe they are a little bit but just for like idea creation, they're just writing emails. What's next for them? What's the next what would you suggest their next 30 days look like to level up?

Mike Renick (41:54.53)
Go out to Chad GBT and ask what should I do? Say, here's what you're currently doing. Seriously, and ask Chad GBT. I do nothing. I teach my team now, no original thinking, none whatsoever. It's go to the AI first and then original thinking comes in. But start from, let's say you've got to travel a half a mile to get to where you want to go in a process. AI can take you a quarter of the mile before you start. And then your last quarter is much more effective. So.

Like this podcast that's coming out where we're going to do some different things. I'm actually going to interview AI every week live.

And nobody's doing that kind of thing. You know where that got that born? was the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep. I grabbed my phone. I started talking to chat. GBT told you I have a boring life and I asked it, what can we do that? No one else is doing. said, I want to make you famous. Like when I buy my lottery tickets at the drug store, I try to tell them I want to make them famous. They're not cooperating because I haven't hit yet. But with chat, GBT, we came up with this podcast where I'm going to co-host with chat GBT once a week, maybe twice a week down the road. And we're going to talk about.

Things like, for example, our first podcast, which will be next Thursday night live all across social is, it too late? Because a lot of people are worried about that right now. And Chad GBT is gonna share their opinion. I'm gonna share mine, because we're amusing Chad GBT, because we can verbalize together. So we will be talking with Chad GBT and it, I don't know if it's a he or she, my voice is a he on it, so I always refer to it, but it will be sharing its thoughts. I'll be sharing my thoughts.

And the whole thing is we're going to be maybe confrontational. We might be provocative, but most importantly, we're going to be educational in terms of what we do here. And we're going to help folks answer the questions. And the biggest thing is it's not too late. Folks that are watching this right now, don't worry about where I am or where Kelcie is or where Kristi is in our journey with AI. Let's begin your journey. And you don't have to pay a number I made up years ago when I taught school, a cabillion dollars to do that. You can do it very inexpensively.

Kelcie Dowd (43:48.009)
That was very powerful, Mike. Thank you. And you were living proof that experience plus curiosity conquers fear every time. You're never too late to just start it. Where can people connect with you?

Mike Renick (44:01.719)
So I do something that everyone says I shouldn't do, but I love doing it. I'm going to leave my cell phone number here. It's 941-400-8735. And I promise you, AI Mike will not answer that call. It'll be me or voicemail and I'll call you back. But I have a YouTube channel, a Facebook group actually, and it's free. And you can go out and search for it. It's just, I don't have it upright. It's AI Edge, innovating with Michael Renick.

So it's AI Edge with Michael.

And that, um, Yeah, go ahead and get connected on that kind of stuff. And, um, if I could be of any help call me, I'll I'm happy to give direction. I'm happy to give advice. And I'm not going to tell you that it costs $300 an hour to get that information.

Kristi Jencks (44:34.382)
We'll make sure to put it in the show notes.

Kristi Jencks (44:50.392)
I love it, I love it. All right agents, here's your take it and run challenge. You've heard a lot today. I want you to pick one thing in your business. Mike said, use ChatGPT for the next 30 days. Don't do anything without asking, But pick something in your business this week. Use AI to make it faster, smarter, or even simpler, right? And don't just think about it, go out and do something about it.

Kelcie Dowd (45:14.695)
Yes. And if this episode lit a fire under you, share it with your friend who's been AI curious, but hesitant and tag us on Instagram, tag Kristi on Instagram, and we want to see your progress.

Kristi Jencks (45:28.206)
Mike, thank you so much for showing us what's possible. Until next time, everybody, we've shown you what to do, and now you get to take it and run.

Mike Renick (45:37.665)
Thanks guys, enjoyed this opportunity. Thank you. You're amazing, both of you.

Kelcie Dowd (45:41.801)
thanks Mike.

Kristi Jencks (45:42.2)
Thanks, Mike.