What if your next hire wasn’t a human at all — but an AI-powered agent capable of generating over $100 million in sales?
That’s exactly what Porta da Frente Christie’s did, leveraging eSelf AI’s cutting-edge technology to capture and convert leads at scale. It’s a story that’s not just about one brokerage’s success — it’s a preview of where the industry is heading and what top agents need to do to keep up.
On last week’s Knowledge Brokers Podcast, co-hosts Byron Lazine, Lisa Chinatti, and Tom Toole broke down the impact of AI on real estate sales — and why agents who embrace it now are setting themselves up to thrive.
Tune in to enjoy the full conversation:
The 4 Types of Salespeople — And Why AI Outperforms Them All
Before diving into the AI-powered future, Tom Toole set the stage with a reference to Sharran Srivatsaa’s Instagram post, where he outlined the four types of salespeople. Every agent falls into one of these buckets:
- The Freestyler — Wings it, avoids scripts, has inconsistent months.
- The Dabbler — Tries everything once, never sticks with anything.
- The Know-It-All — Hits early success, gets cocky, stops learning.
- The Titan — Trains relentlessly, learns constantly, and levels up daily.
Most agents, Byron pointed out, become Know-It-Alls around the 22-26 month mark, riding an early wave of success before getting complacent.
But AI? AI skips all the mistakes and goes straight to Titan status.
What they’ve done is they’ve just created a Titan that doesn’t think they know it all, that doesn’t dabble, that doesn’t freestyle, and it just demonstrates all the stuff we talk about on the podcast here—and that other proven practitioners in the marketplace are doing. It works. So, I think this validates a lot of the strategies that are being taught across the world. But this AI is implementing it better than anybody else.
What does the AI agent actually do?
This isn’t just some chatbot firing off canned responses. Porta da Frente Christie’s AI agent is a next-level, video-based virtual agent capable of interacting directly with consumers.
In seconds, this AI agent can:
- Screen share and pull up photos and videos
- Share detailed property information
- Answer buyer questions in real time—at any time of day or night
It’s like a hybrid between a high-performing ISA and an interactive home search experience, all powered by AI.
According to eSelf AI cofounder and CEO Alan Bekker, the technology “turns large language models (LLMs) into a visual experience”, essentially doing for real estate search what movies did for books — turning static data into an engaging, interactive experience.
Lisa summed up exactly how this works for the agent:
What they’re basically saying is that this is taking the search process and really condensing it down. So, I think that AI video person interacts and then hands it over as a warm, juicy appointment to a human to go show the property, write the contract, etcetera.
AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job — It’s Here to Make You Faster
Agents who fear AI are looking at it all wrong. This isn’t about replacing human agents — it’s about arming them with tools that make them faster, smarter, and more efficient.
A recent Tweet from Silicon Valley angel investor Jason Kalkanis, co-host of the All-In Podcast and early Uber investor shares this sentiment:
“Hiring a new person is more work than using AI to make the existing team faster.”
Hiring a new person is more work than using AI to make the existing team faster.
— @jason (@Jason) February 24, 2025
Byron laid out the bottom line:
Agents who are using AI, they’re going to work faster, they’re going to do more deals, they’re going to be better advisors to their clients, teams, and brokerages….If your employee, whether it be a virtual assistant or in-person W-2, whatever the case may be—if the people working around you are not getting proficient using AI tools, they’re not going to last more than 12 to 24 months… Everybody in your organization, everybody around you that works, better be using and becoming great at these tools or you’re just going to be way behind.
Feeding the AI (and Why It Matters)
If you want to leverage tools like ChatGPT (or any AI tool) effectively, you can’t just turn it on and hope for the best. Like any other tool, you have to feed it — continuously.
Byron gave a behind-the-scenes look at how BAM does this:
One of the things Vanessa, who’s our senior editor at BAM, figured out very early was if you want to be relevant on ChatGPT, somebody in your organization needs to be feeding it every day. So, we do that from the BAM perspective. And then you want to do the same thing from your real estate agent business or from your team brokerage perspective. You want to continuously be communicating with ChatGPT and feeding it information about your organization, so that when those search opportunities come up… you have a chance there.
In other words — the agents who train their AI systems today will own the search results of tomorrow.
Brand + AI = The Winning Formula
The two pillars of future-proofing your business are simple:
- Build your brand
- Master AI
Brand and AI—those are the two things that are going to protect your business in the future.
This isn’t a luxury — it’s table stakes. The agents who aren’t integrating AI into their daily workflows will get left behind. The ones who are? They’ll close more deals, serve clients faster, and build businesses that scale.
As Byron put it, “I do think that gap is going to continue to widen as we’ve seen. And to me…the group that is separating themselves are really integrating all these tools to make their business easier [and] to have that peace of mind. And the ones that are finding this business to be cumbersome are not letting go of what got them here.”
Sometimes, you have to let go of what got you here to get to that next level. And some of the systems and processes that you’ve built do need to be torn down and reimagined and rebuilt.
The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s already here. Whether you’re a solo agent, team leader, or running a brokerage, the question isn’t if you’ll use AI — it’s how quickly you’ll master it.
