Every morning, Samantha McLean gets an email from ChatGPT. It tells her what’s in her calendar that day, what other jobs she has on, and where it could take work off her hands.
“ChatGPT has been in my calendar. It acts as my assistant. It knows what I’ve got going on,” she says.
It’s her example of where AI has moved to, and it’s why she opened the kickoff session of Transform XIV, Elite Agent’s 30-day AI program, on 1 October with five words.
“Lets rip the band aid off – the ‘chatbot’ era is dead.”
In part one of the session highlights, Sam explains what replaces it. AI agents (not the real estate kind) that you delegate to, working from the desktop apps instead of a browser tab.
“It’s less typing things into a box and more handing things off,” she says.
In the video
- 0:20 The chatbot era is dead, and what’s replacing it
- 2:38 AI and real work – the three things
- 3:04 How it responds
- 5:11 Context – tell AI who you are
- 9:14 Put it on repeat
- 9:58 Tribble mode – one agent, a whole team
Three things that make AI useful
Sam says an AI assistant needs three things from you. You train it on how to respond, you make it yours, and you put things on repeat.
How it responds comes first, because everyone has seen the alternative. Sam reads out a few favourites, including the siren emoji “manufacturing urgency” and the phrase “what keeps me up at night” from an AI that doesn’t sleep. Then there’s a real LinkedIn post about how the value of a rent roll “can shift overnight”.
“You wouldn’t say that out loud to someone’s face, right?”
Her fix is a scale. “If one is a text message to your mate and ten is a contract, where you want to live is at about a six.”
Tell it who you are
The second thing is context, which Sam calls “just a fancy word for background”. One of the first Transform exercises is a fill-in-the-blanks prompt that tells AI who you are in and out of work, including your three biggest skills and your weaknesses.
She shares her own. “I’m a magazine editor turned AI product builder who likes to chase a big idea until it’s real.” Her weaknesses are “taking on too much at once and letting the fine print slip”.
Sam is upfront that this takes time. She has been building what people call a business brain for about six months “and I’m not finished”. For anyone nervous about connecting AI to their tools, she suggests small chunks, starting with something like Canva.
Three years ago, she says, she would never have hooked ChatGPT up to her email. Now she shows it connected to tools including Canva and Descript.
“Context is the fingerprints of your thinking,” she says.
Put it on repeat (and meet the tribbles)
Once AI can do a job for you, Sam’s third step is to have it happen daily or weekly without being asked. Her own routine scans the AI news every morning and sends her ideas for social posts, videos, a lesson for Elite Agent Insiders, and her Substack.
“It comes to me.”
The video finishes with what Sam has named tribble mode, after the Star Trek creatures that multiply when you touch them. One AI agent brings in helpers, each takes part of the job, and they report back up the line. She chose tribbles because “they’re less scary than gremlins”.
Key takeaways:
- Hand off, don’t type. Sam’s shift is from asking a chatbot questions to delegating jobs to an AI assistant that knows her calendar.
- Aim for a six. One is a text to your mate, ten is a contract. Sam sets AI at about a six so it still sounds human.
- Tell AI who you are. Skills, weaknesses, how you like to work. Sam says it makes a huge difference to what comes back.
- Connect in small chunks. One tool at a time is fine. Sam is six months into her business brain and still going.
- Put the good stuff on repeat. Anything AI does well for you once can turn up daily or weekly.
Want to do this with Sam? Waitlist for the next Transform at transform.eliteagent.com.
Transform XIV is supported by major sponsor PropertyMe and supporting sponsor BuySecure.