TL;DR: Here’s what every agent needs to know – the future isn’t about AI replacing agents or agents replacing other agents with better AI skills. It’s about agents who understand where their humanity makes the most difference and use AI strategically to amplify those uniquely human moments. Ryan J. Coyne, Chief Experience Officer at SERHANT, has been pioneering this approach since 2020, and the results speak for themselves: agents using their psychology-first AI methodology saw 144% growth in gross commission income.
The Tech Mastermind Behind the World’s Most Followed Real Estate Brand
Ryan J. Coyne (aka “Coyne”) didn’t start his career dreaming of revolutionising real estate technology. At 18, he was hanging around electronics stores in New York, approaching confused customers with a simple offer: “Excuse me, I don’t work here, but I know all there is to know about this stuff. Would you like help picking something out from somebody who’s not a salesperson?”
That hustle – built on genuine curiosity and a desire to solve problems – became the foundation of a tech consultancy that would eventually catch the attention of Ryan Serhant. When they first met over a decade ago, Coyne made a decision that would reshape both their futures:
“I could tell there was something special about him and our rapport. I decided if I answer this person within 30 seconds, 24 hours a day, as long as I’m awake, he’s a rocket ship and I wanted to cling to it for dear life.”
What followed was the building of SERHANT into the world’s most followed real estate brand, with Coyne transitioning from Chief Technology Officer to Chief Experience Officer – a role that puts him at the forefront of how AI and human psychology intersect in real estate sales.
The False Narrative About AI Timing
“Your AI journey begins when you say it does, and it is going to constantly evolve every five minutes that goes by.”
One of the most damaging myths in real estate right now is that agents who started using AI early have an insurmountable advantage. Coyne completely debunks this: “The idea that somebody is going to get so far ahead of you that it is too late is a completely false narrative.”
Here’s why timing doesn’t matter as much as everyone thinks: the pace of AI innovation is so rapid that the skills and tools that gave early adopters an edge are already being automated away. “More and more of those features that agents were quickly gaining mastery over were just as quickly being replaced by an automation or another feature being built into the same tools,” Coyne explains.
He uses a highway analogy that every agent should remember:
“Wherever it is that you get onto the highway, you’re on the same highway as everybody else. Even if somebody else started way back there, you’re still driving with the other cars because that’s where AI is moving.”
Why this matters: Stop using timing as an excuse to avoid AI. The opportunity to start meaningfully engaging with AI tools exists today, regardless of when others began their journey.
The Psychology-First Approach That’s Changing Everything
“Where does your humanity make the most difference? Amplify it there.”
While most agents are getting lost in prompt engineering and tool selection, Coyne has discovered something far more powerful: combining AI with personality profiling to create hyper-personalised client experiences. At the heart of this approach is Crystal, a personality analysis tool that maps client communication styles using DISC profiling.
The process is elegantly simple but devastatingly effective. Agents download a client’s LinkedIn profile, run it through Crystal to understand their personality type, then feed that information into AI to craft communications that resonate at a deeper psychological level.
“If your humanity is not making a difference or isn’t the differentiator in the process, then fine, take your humanity a little bit more out of it,” Coyne says. “But amplify your humanity where it makes the most difference.”
This isn’t just theory – it’s producing measurable results. SERHANT tracked their most engaged users who adopted this AI plus emotional intelligence approach, and found they achieved 144% gross commission income increases when comparing identical market conditions.
Why this matters: Technical AI skills are becoming commoditised. The competitive advantage comes from using AI to enhance your humanity, not replace it.
The Human Experience Premium
“We’re starting to see declarations made by companies who are now advertising the premium interaction with real human beings.”
Coyne predicts a fascinating paradox emerging in our AI-saturated future: as automation becomes ubiquitous, genuine human interaction becomes more valuable. He’s already seeing this play out – GoDaddy advertises “24/7 human support, no robots,” and people in dating are demanding face-to-face meetings because they can’t trust that text communications aren’t AI-generated.
This trend has profound implications for real estate agents. “There’s going to be a huge premium placed back on human direct experience and contact,” Coyne explains. The agents who will thrive aren’t those who can prompt AI most effectively, but those who can identify where their human touch creates irreplaceable value.
Consider this scenario: an AI can pull all the market data for a property, but it can’t read the subtle emotional cues when a buyer walks through a home, or sense the unspoken concerns a seller has about timing their move. These moments of human intuition and empathy become more, not less, valuable as AI handles routine tasks.
Why this matters: Start auditing your client interactions now. Identify the moments where your humanity creates the most value, then use AI to free up time for more of these high-impact human connections.
The Technology Paradox: Why Simple Beats Complex
“I don’t think that humanity has a technology problem. I think that technology has a humanity problem.”
Through building SERHANT S.mple – what Coyne describes as “Insta-cart for salespeople” – he’s learned that the best AI implementations aren’t the most sophisticated ones. They’re the ones that remove friction from agents’ lives while preserving human oversight.
“Rather than putting the pressure on real estate agents to have to learn and gain mastery over all these different tools, what if we could optimise that process?”
This philosophy led to creating a system where agents simply speak or type requests, and AI handles the execution with human quality control in the loop.
The key insight is that successful AI adoption isn’t about becoming a prompt engineer – it’s about understanding where AI can amplify your existing strengths while humans handle quality control and strategic decisions.
“Removing humans from the process completely is something that is not part of our charter,” Coyne emphasises.
His advice for agents overwhelmed by AI options? Start with the fundamentals:
“Ask it what you should be asking based on your current situation, or what it would need to know in order to help you best or most accurately, and just start there.”
Why this matters: Stop chasing the latest AI tools and start with simple implementations that actually solve problems in your business. Complexity isn’t a competitive advantage – results are.
The Self-Awareness Imperative
As our conversation wound down, Coyne left us with perhaps the most important advice for agents navigating the AI revolution:
“Spend time becoming more self-aware. The more work that you put into your self-awareness will show up in your ability to be a better human in all aspects of your life, a better salesperson in all aspects of your life.”
This isn’t just feel-good advice – it’s strategically crucial in an AI world. Self-aware agents can better identify where their humanity creates value, receive feedback without defensiveness, and adapt to rapidly changing client expectations.
“If you are easy to tell the truth to, people will. If you are not easy to tell the truth to, people won’t.”
In a world where AI can handle data analysis, market research, and routine communications, the agents who thrive will be those who deeply understand their own strengths, weaknesses, and unique value proposition. They’ll use AI not as a crutch, but as a lever to amplify what makes them irreplaceably human.
The future belongs to agents who ask better questions – of their AI tools, of their clients, and most importantly, of themselves.
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Resources Mentioned
- ChatGPT – AI assistant for content creation and analysis (http://openai.com/chatgpt)
- SERHANT. S.MPLE – AI productivity tool (https://www.simple.serhant.com/)
- Crystal Knows – AI platform providing personality insights to improve communication (https://www.crystalknows.com/)
Connect with Coyne
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