The day before we recorded, an agent at Jorgenson Real Estate got a text from buyers who were about to purchase a house. Somebody had been murdered in the front yard, they said. They wanted out.
The agent passed it to Kasey Jorgenson, who runs the brokerage, and he told me about it on the show. My first reaction was a joke. The phrasing was strange. A murder in the front yard could mean a lot of things. It could be a murder of crows.
Kasey said that was exactly his point. He told everyone to pause, and then he went and tracked down articles. It had not happened on the property. Before anybody acted on a scary claim, somebody checked it against sources that had nothing to do with the person who made it.
Kasey learned that habit as a Navy rescue swimmer. I keep thinking about it because I believe AI is going to have to do the same thing to your business.
The machines will check you too
A few days ago I wrote about what I’m calling Human Trust Signals. Anyone can now build a polished website and publish a month of confident articles in a week, so those things prove less than they used to. What proves more is what other people say about you in places you don’t control: a podcast, a Chamber of Commerce, reviews, the neighbors.
Kasey reached the same place from the other direction. About four or five years ago he watched AI take shape and decided to get ready. His bet is that AI will trust spoken word and testimonials over almost everything else because, as he put it, this is not AI, this is two people talking. He says that when someone asks ChatGPT which agent to hire in Williamson County, his brokerage is typically the one that comes up. I’ve seen his name in those searches myself. He has 15 agents and will be the first to tell you he isn’t the biggest show in town.
Yes, I host a podcast, and yes, my guest just told me podcasts count. Discount that however you like. Then go check his trail: the videos, the company page, the reviews, the Chamber, the Better Business Bureau. That’s the point.
I had recorded a video about the same thing that day. Plenty of companies are racing to build AI models, but Google holds data nobody else does, and for a local business two places matter most: YouTube and your Google Business Profile. I’m also seeing videos with a couple of hundred views, not millions, bring in real business.
The word “agent” just got complicated
Real estate now has a naming problem. “Agent” means two things, and they are about to compete.
Kasey’s brokerage launched its first AI agent about three weeks before we recorded. It works in the background, and he is clear that the human agent is still the expert. I asked where the line falls over the next five years. He expects more buyers to skip the agent entirely, and he thinks those buyers will still want somebody to look everything over and line up an inspector they trust. He says his brokerage is building something for that person, because not everything needs a big percentage commission.
One buyer under contract had just sent an agent a 35-page report on the house, flood plain included. Agents have always earned a living by knowing where to look. I told Kasey these reports will soon read like a Carfax for your house: when the HVAC went in, when it was serviced, when the filters were changed. He thinks that arrives in one to two years, not five. Once the looking is cheap, what’s left is whoever will put a name on the answer.
What a bigger company can’t do
Kasey spent his whole career inside a huge brokerage before going independent, and he talks about it warmly. The economics stopped working for both sides. He told me about a friend at Procter & Gamble who used to call big companies dinosaurs: tall enough to see for miles, painfully slow to turn. Kasey had been on the phone with a major airline that weekend, stuck in a prompt that couldn’t understand him, and he took that as proof.
Independence let him start a pro bono program. He won’t require it, but he expects his top agents to help one seller a year who is in a bad spot and can’t afford a commission. Bigger brokerages, he says, get stuck on insurance, lawsuits, and policy. In my Human Trust Signals piece I asked whether you’ve done anything worth being recognized for, as opposed to recognition you can buy. A free sale for a seller in trouble is about as clean an answer as I know. Nobody fakes that with a prompt.
He also told me his brokerage isn’t the cheapest in town and isn’t right for everyone, so they match people to the agent who fits: a veteran with someone who knows the VA loan, a first-time buyer with someone good at first-timers. Every business says it’s the best. I trust the ones who tell me who they’re not for.
Found, understood, chosen
I’ve spent about 30 years on that sequence. AI is changing how people get found. The last step is still human, and the bigger the decision, the truer that is. I co-own a senior home care agency, A Place At Home North Austin. When you’re deciding who should care for your mother, you probably don’t count blog posts.
Kasey also explains how a rescue swimmer’s training shows up when a client is panicking. You can watch or listen to this week’s Rock Solid: Round Rock Business Leaders below.
So here is where I’d leave it. If somebody checked your trail tomorrow, what would they find that you didn’t publish yourself?
Ready to find where your story breaks down?
One conversation is often enough to spot the gap between where you are and where you could be.
Start the Conversation
