Ask most agents how they use AI and you’ll hear the same answers. It writes their listing descriptions. It cleans up a marketing email. Maybe it knocks out a quick open house flyer. That’s useful, but it misses the bigger opportunity.
I’m not going to tell you exactly how every agent should use AI, because every agent’s week looks different. One agent lives in transaction paperwork. Another spends hours on social media. Another is buried in follow-up. The right question isn’t “What can AI do?” It’s “Where am I spending my time, and how do I get some of it back?”
That’s the whole framework. Find where your hours go, then use AI to shrink them.
Step One: Audit Your Week
Before you open any AI tool, look honestly at your calendar and your to-do list. Where does the time actually go? Not where you think it should go, where it does go. Write down the three or four tasks that eat the most hours every week, especially the ones that are repetitive or that you keep putting off because they take forever.
That list is your AI roadmap. Everything else is noise.
Step Two: Build a Home for Each Task
My AI of choice is Claude, and the feature I lean on most is Claude Projects. Think of Projects as a filing system. Each project is a folder dedicated to one area of your business, loaded with your documents, your examples, and your instructions. Instead of starting from scratch every time, Claude already knows the job and has your materials in hand. I also use Claude Cowork, which lets Claude work across my files and connected apps to handle tasks on its own.
For every time-heavy area of my business, I create a project. Then I ask one question: how do I cut the time this takes?
What That Looks Like for Me
My biggest time investments are social media content and training agents, so that’s where I started.
Content. I create a lot of hyper-local content, and the slowest part was always finding the story. Now Claude searches my preferred news sources daily and brings me the stories most likely to drive engagement on Instagram. I pick the ones I like, feed the articles back in, and use them as the starting point for my scripts. An hour of scrolling became a few minutes.
Training. I uploaded all of my existing training materials into a project. Now when I build a new training, Claude works from everything I’ve already created, so it matches my style and my systems. I can upload a book and ask for a training in my voice based on it. We pay for outside coaching, so I have those sessions transcribed and turn them into additional trainings for my team. When I wanted a program for adding a showing partner to the team, I gathered programs from several coaches and used Claude to build the version that fits how we operate.
Once those were working, I moved down my list.
Agent attraction. Our team has five levels, which means five different offer letters. Now I give Claude an agent’s name, phone number, and email, and it builds the right offer letter and creates a Gmail draft with the letter, contract, and program details attached. I review it and hit send.
Market data. When I was asked to give a market update to the Real Broker agents at our weekly state meeting, I was able to have Cowork pull the market data for the four counties around Sacramento because I had connected it directly to my MLS, Metrolist. It gathered and organized everything quickly, and I used it as the backbone for the rest of the presentation. Done manually, that research would have taken hours and hours. Instead, I spent my time on the part that matters: what the numbers mean for agents and their clients.
Finances. I connected Claude to my QuickBooks account and uploaded my budget. Each month it compares what I planned to spend against what I actually spent. The first time I asked for an updated P&L, it told me my books hadn’t been updated in months. That led to a very quick call with my bookkeeper. Time saved and a problem caught.
Writing. I write an article for Allied and Colibri Real Estate Schools every month, including this one. It used to mean hunting and pecking at my keyboard, and it took forever. Now I talk it out and let Claude transcribe my thoughts and organize them into a draft. Then I edit it until I have an article I’m proud of. Because I can talk instead of type, I spend my time focused on the content itself, not on the keyboard.
None of these are “the right way” to use AI. They’re the right way for my business, because they target where my hours were going.
Your List Will Look Different
If you’re a newer agent, your biggest time sinks might be writing follow-up texts, preparing for buyer consultations, researching neighborhoods, or building your first marketing plan. If you’re a listing agent, maybe it’s CMA prep or seller updates. Whatever it is, the process is the same: build a project for it, load it with your own materials, and keep refining until the task takes a fraction of the time it used to.
The more of you it has to work with, the better it gets. Your scripts, your notes, your past emails, your processes. Generic inputs produce generic outputs.
One caution: check your brokerage’s policies before uploading client personal information or transaction documents into any AI tool, and follow your MLS’s data use rules when pulling market data.
The Bottom Line
AI won’t run your business for you, and copying someone else’s setup won’t get you far. The agents who win with it will be the ones who know exactly where their time goes and use these tools to take it back. Start with one task this week. Get that hour back. Then go find the next one.
Join the Movement
If you’d like to learn more about how I use AI you can connect with me on Instagram at @jimamen for weekly tips, tools, and strategies designed to help agents grow their business and thrive in today’s evolving real estate landscape.
