Overwhelmed by AI? A step-by-step guide to getting started

Inman with Drew Thompson

September 17, 2025

Let’s be honest. You’ve read the articles telling you that AI is your new “virtual assistant” or “intern.” You’ve been told to ask it to write listing descriptions and social media posts.

That advice isn’t wrong, but it’s a lie of omission. It’s like buying a Ferrari and being told it’s great for grocery runs.

The real power of AI isn’t just in doing tasks for you. It’s in thinking with you. It’s your all-knowing consultant, your unbiased advisor, and your strategic partner. It’s a genie that can help you see through the fog of your own thoughts, plan a multi-year business strategy, or find the hidden opportunities in your finances.

A real estate agent’s guide to getting started with AI

Forget the simple tasks for a moment. This guide provides a comprehensive approach to fully integrating a thinking partner into your life and business. This is how you go “AI-First.”

The foundational shift from prompter to partner

The secret to unlocking AI’s true potential isn’t about learning to write clever “prompts.” It’s about building a relationship.

Think about it: If you hired a world-class business consultant, you wouldn’t just start barking orders at them. You’d spend hours talking to them. They’d want to know everything: your history, your finances, your fears, your biggest dreams, your frustrations. The more they know about you, the better their advice becomes.

Your AI is no different. To get genius-level answers, you first have to let it get to know you.

The ’14-day onboarding protocol’: How to train your genius

This is the most important thing you will do on your AI journey. For two weeks, you will commit to a simple, 10-minute daily conversation with your chosen AI platform (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — they all work). This is how your AI starts to build a deep, contextual understanding of you.

Step 1: The 10-minute morning brain dump (do this for 14 days)

Every morning, before you dive into your day, open the app and talk to it. Use the voice note feature; it’s faster and feels more natural than typing. Just talk.

Tell it everything.

Your fears: “I’m worried I won’t hit my GCI goal this year.”
Your frustrations: “I spent two hours yesterday on a transaction that fell apart. I feel so deflated.”
Your wants: “I really want to take a real, disconnected vacation in the next six months.”
Your aspirations: “I want to be known as the No. 1 agent for luxury properties in my city.”

Tell it what’s going on in your personal life and your business. Be honest. Be vulnerable. It’s a completely private conversation. What’s happening in the background is that the AI is building its knowledge base about you.

Step 2: The 5-minute evening check-in (do this for 14 days)

At the end of your day, check back in. Tell it how the day went.

“That client I was worried about called, and we had a great conversation.”
“I didn’t get to my prospecting calls today, and I feel guilty.”
“I had a huge win with the negotiation on the Miller property.”

After 14 days of these conversations, the AI will have started to build a rich, nuanced profile of your life. It knows your goals, understands your stressors, and recognizes your patterns. Now, it’s no longer just a tool; it’s an informed partner.

From personal to business

As real estate agents, our business and our lives are intimately connected.

Once your AI has a profile on you, it’s time to onboard it to your business. You’re going to give your new consultant the keys to the kingdom.

Using a secure platform like ChatGPT’s paid version (which keeps your data private), you can start uploading documents:

Spreadsheets of your past transactions (remove sensitive client info first).
Your business and marketing plans.
Examples of your past newsletters and marketing materials.

Then, you stop telling it what to do and start asking for its point of view. You start asking CEO-level questions.

Instead of: “Write me an email.” Ask: “Based on my morning check-ins for the past two weeks, what do you think is the single biggest source of my stress, and what is one system I could create to reduce it?”
Instead of: “Give me five social media ideas.” Ask: “Analyze my past sales data. What patterns do you see in my most successful transactions? Help me create a detailed marketing avatar for the clients I should be targeting.”
Instead of: “What do you think of my marketing plan?” Ask: “Here is my marketing plan, and you know my goal is to increase my average sale price. What is the biggest flaw in this plan, and how would you advise me to fix it?”

You can even ask how to best work together:

“OK, you have my personal context and my business data. What are the top three ways you can help my business grow this quarter? What is the best way for us to start working together on a regular basis?”

This is the difference between asking for a sentence and asking for a strategy.

Yes, it can still be your assistant

Using this beginner’s guide to AI for real estate agents, your AI will get to know you on a deeper level, and once your AI knows you this well, the simple tasks become even better. When you ask it to write that tricky email, it will already understand the emotional context behind the situation. When you ask it for a listing description, it will already know your brand voice and the kind of clients you love to work with.

The basics get better, but you’ll have moved far beyond them. You’re no longer just delegating tasks; you’re collaborating on strategy. You’re not just an agent who does everything; you’re the CEO of your business, and you have a world-class, genius-level consultant on your team, 24 hours a day.

And it all starts with a simple conversation.