How Real Estate Pros Can Rank on AI Models, with David Colgan of Movement Mortgage

0:02 If you're like me, you're fascinated with the changes in technology that the artificial intelligence or AI has brought. And it's amazing some of the things I'm able to bring into my business and some of the leverage it's brought to me. Yet, at the same time, I would say about 90% of the advice I get isn't just a waste of time. A lot of it is just wrong information. And I was real excited to see somebody who's in our space, who comes from our real estate business, and has integrated this into practical steps that his customers and he can use and or you can use to help you with your business. David Colgan, he's with Movement Mortgage, but really is much more than that. He's got a whole bunch of things that he does, one of which is help agents and attorneys and mortgage originators find a way to leverage social media with the new AI changes. David, thank you for joining us today.

0:47 Bill, thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here. You know, it's a fascinating topic. I think we all can go down rabbit holes and waste time. What are one or two of the things that you see that small businesses, attorneys, real estate agents are encouraged to pursue that really just chasing their wheel and not going to actually end up helping them improve service to their customers or ultimately be found by customers.

1:09 Well, let me start here just by kind of defining the challenge that I'm trying to help solve right now. So, AI is changing

1:20 The entire landscape of industry altogether. Specifically, I'm in the mortgage business. I've been in the mortgage business for 25 years. The mortgage business serves the greater real estate community. And within the real estate community, there are all different types of vendors and service providers, many of whom you just alluded to. And everybody's approaching AI in their own way. And I found you really sort of have two distinct challenges whenever it comes to how best to implement AI. One is like, I've got a customer and I want to maximize the experience or the transaction value of that. And so, I'll use AI to help me become more efficient, or I'll use AI to help me deliver a better experiential process to the customer, to the client that we're working with. But, that presumes that somebody has already gotten into your sales funnel. And where I think a lot of people are missing, and this Bill is kind of where you and I got connected some months ago when we were exploring this topic together, is how do I get more leads into that sales funnel? And that second lane is one that I think is probably more important right now. I think a lot of a lot of folks are sort of finding their way in AI. They're finding ways to leverage the tools that are available to help improve or increase their business in some capacity. But, if you're invisible to AI, if your customers are going on to the large language model of their choice, be it Google Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude or many of the others that are out there, and they're asking for who is the best service provider X in this geographic area, and your name is not being surfaced, that's a real challenge.

3:00 And so, where I've spent the last several months working with both Movement Mortgage internally and also many of our business partners that we've long done business with, is really trying to help those that maybe aren't like you don't have to have the technical proficiency or technical expertise or technical background to completely rebuild the architecture of your business, but simply how can I sort of take the low-hanging fruit, the easy stuff that any layperson could apply and could maximize the likelihood that they might be recommended by AI. So, Bill, that's the that's the topic that I think is probably most interesting to many of the folks that I come across right now in the greater real estate community is how do I get recommended? How am I found? And that might be one that we want to unpack a little bit.

3:46 For sure. You know, I did a check on myself, and you know, who are the top probate real estate agents in Los Angeles, and I was shocked. A couple of the answers are people who are very good, have good track records, do good work, have done good work for a long time. Okay, I can see why, you know, I came in the business after them, maybe, or in that niche after them. But then I recommend a couple of people I do a lot more business with. I know a lot more than they do. Couple I've been recognizing their names, I track every probate sale in LA County. And I thought, well, how do they do this? And the answer is, some of these tools, if you're not if you're not in line, they're going to, you know, the system's going to go to the next person in the line. And we've got to at least got ourselves in line in a format that we're discoverable, so when people ask the question, we can be put forward as an answer. So, what are one of the two low-hanging fruit things that you see people need to do in order to prepare themselves or take advantage of the opportunity?

4:35 So, the first thing I would I have folks start at is literally doing what you just did, and that is doing a an online audit first and foremost. And so, the decision tree that I'll take you down is really simple. Go to the large language model that you think your clientele is using most. Now, it just by way of, users, this is something you might find interesting, Bill, but Meta, actually, as of this recording, so August 10th, 2026, Meta is actually the most widely used AI model on the planet. Now, little bit of a little bit of a cheat code there, because when you consider WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram all under the Meta ecosystem, every time somebody interacts with the AI model within any of those platforms, that's considered that's considered interaction, right? So, if we sort of segregate that, put it to the side, and say, most people probably aren't searching for answers inside of Meta AI, they're just using it as they're using those three aforementioned platforms. The next one that is most ubiquitous, that most people are using, is ChatGPT. Now, Claude and others are gaining traction. There's certain use cases where those might be more, applicable, but if we're really trying to just start from the very basic premise of like how can I attract the most number of consumers to my business or most number of businesses who are using the AI to my business, I'm going to recommend that you go to ChatGPT and you put in a prompt something similar to what you just described, Bill. It is who are the best X, whatever your service is, whatever your company is, in the geographic area where you're trying to do business, and hit enter. And I think from that will that will give you a really clear picture about whether you have the right recipe or if there's someone else that maybe isn't as good at doing the thing as you are, but maybe that they've kind of reverse engineered this code that we'll go through some of those things that we can we can get into and I'm happy to share. I'm not going to gatekeep anything, but I'll share a couple of things that with very little effort can improve

6:38 The likelihood and chance that you are going to be recommended by those AI engines, okay? So, if that's a good starting point, then Yeah. I'll just kind of start off a little bit from there.

6:48 And so when I did this, I have to say it was it's kind of like getting on the scale after not being on it for a while or It's like confronting it, right?

6:56 And I put probably what do I have to do to rank higher and it's sort of analyzing some of the mistakes I was making. It was brutally honest with me. I was like, "Wow, that's kind of harsh." But you know, at least I have a road map to start with. And I did this I think after watching your presentation that I'd seen you on a few months ago. So, yeah, go ahead. What are the next steps after that?

7:13 Yeah, so it really man, it's really simple from here. You know, there's a broader explanation and for the sake of time I won't get into all of this and this is not designed I'm not trying to you know, encourage people exit ramp off here and on ramp onto a process that I'm going to sell you on. It's just I'm going to cover some ground that would probably be a little bit easier if you wanted to follow up with me later to get more in-depth. I can give you more specific step-by-step instructions, but I'm at least going to kind of cover everything you need to know and you could either self-serve or reach out to me if you get stuck and I can help you along the way. But what you really want to do, there's a couple of like key principles that you want to keep in mind. The first and foremost is you want to make sure that you your NAP or name, address, phone. So, the name of your business, the address of your business, and the phone number of your business, we need to make sure that we've got consistency across all platforms. And this is something that I do in my day job. I support loan officers for Movement Mortgage in the Southeast. And our loan officers are out there trying to attract new clients and new referral partners primarily in the real estate community. And I want to make sure and I do this with little literally all of my loan officers and I have been doing this for the last couple of months just making sure that we are dialed in. But I will do a internet search on a loan officer and I'll just take a look at all the different sites that they show up on. I want to look at their Google Business Profile. I want to look at in our in our business. I want to look at their Zillow profile, their Zillow reviews. I want to look at our Movement Mortgage page. Any additional pages that they show up on, I want to make sure that their marketing imprint is consistent across all of those platforms. If it's not, very first thing we're going to do is we're going to pick one. We're going to pick we're going to pick a marketing profile, we're going to pick a phone, we're going to pick a name, we're going to pick an address, and we're going to make sure that it's consistent across all three. You'll hear that referred to as an acronym bill known as NAP, which is name, address, phone. So, that's the simplest, lowest hanging fruit. Just do a quick online audit of your business, of yourself, and make

9:15 Sure that those three things are consistent all the way across. Any questions about that piece first? Well, no. I just want to say something. We did this, it wasn't. Yeah. It's shocking, right?

9:25 Well, different phone numbers, different emails, different websites, different names, different descriptions. So, the just the NAP, you know, office moved, didn't update it. I think the other part was that I discovered that while on one hand, I'm the branch manager of the eXp office, eXp Realty in Beverly Hills, because the Google business page that was mine had the name eXp Realty, people going there are searching eXp Realty, people going to search for probate real estate, they're never going to find it cuz it just doesn't emphasize I didn't emphasize that, and we're changing all that process right now. So, it's amazing when you look at it and say, "Well, no wonder I'm not being seen. I don't have I don't have my resume, you know, put together in a way that can even be evaluated by the by these tools, and the tools are only programmed to work a certain way."

10:13 That's right. And you know, it's as I said a few moments ago, we want to make sure if you're great at what you do, we just want to make sure that's coming across, right? And just like a human is sort of designed to look for incongruence in information. Like we are sort of predisposed to trust, but the moment we start to see breaks in that trust through incongruence of information, it starts to create a little bit of nervousness. It's like, is this individual or is this business really careful in curating their business in such a way that it's representative that he or she is somebody that's going to handle such a big transaction for me? So, I want to make sure that consistency shows through just in the same way that the consistency in the transaction we expect to show through. So, let's assume that we have we have done that online audit. We've kind of like said, "Okay, well, we've cleaned this up. We want to make sure that our name, address, phone number is clear across." The next easiest thing to do is really start to define what your niche or what your area of focus is going to be. If you think about the way that like you So Bill, you went to ChatGPT or an LLM of your choice and you said, "Who is the best thing at this in this area?" Right? And that is often how a lot of a lot of consumers are thinking about interacting with their AI model. They're going in and they're basically reverse engineering. They're not saying, "Give me the top 10 probate real estate professionals in the area." They're saying, "Who is the best?" Right? So, they're basically trying to distill this down to a single one or maybe two recommendation. And so, where you really are going to start to fly up those AI recommendations is when you can reverse engineer those questions and answer them on your website. Now, this is a lot easier for individuals who have the ability to control the content on their website. I recognize it can be a little bit more challenging for those that may be at a larger organization that don't have the ability to answer those questions. But, for example, if I were trying to work from a mortgage perspective, which is

12:15 Which is kind of the lane that I live in my day job, I would want to have in some capacity on a website that is recommending me through a consistent name, address, phone. I want to have on there, "David Colgan is a great mortgage loan officer in the Raleigh, North Carolina area because he serves first-time home buyers, move-up home buyers, and investor clients looking to purchase real estate." That specificity basically reverse engineers in what the what the consumer might be searching for. They're coming to an AI model and they're saying, "Who is the best at this in this area?" And I want to clearly lay that question out and I want to answer that in some of those some of those posts or some of that content that I'm creating and curating. I will also tell you, and this is the reason I'm going to give you a recommendation here in not a static way is because what I'm about to say is constantly evolving as AI is evolving. If any of you have jumped on an AI model on a Monday after maybe not touching it since Friday, and like the whole interface looks different and everything's moved around, it's just evolving so quickly. Both the models are getting better, the UI or the user interface is getting different and better. So, one thing that I will often encourage is just, man, keep an eye on like what are the sources that the AI models are recommending.

13:36 If you if you ask for an inquiry like that, you can kind of drill in to the response that's given in the AI model, and you can actually see where is this information being pulled from. What sites is it pulling it out of? What content is it scraping it from? Examples, especially if we're talking about a business-to-business standpoint, Bill. LinkedIn is an it is an often overlooked place that is a highly recommended location for AI models to make recommendations based on some of this content. And the great thing about LinkedIn is we all have the ability to go on there and create our own posts, or even better, create our own articles. And this is something that not a lot of professionals are using. I think most professionals in our real estate world are primarily focused on Instagram or Facebook, but LinkedIn is a place where AI is pulling a lot of those recommendations. Another place that we are often overlooking right now is Reddit. Now, I said a moment ago I don't want to sort of say this as like only the spot because this is not a static conversation. This is ever evolving as the models change and as some of these UI perspectives like get a little bit more elegant over time, but I'm giving you an answer as to what's relevant right now on August 10th, 2026, and I think it's incumbent on all of us as we sort of lean into at least being aware of where are the sources that these AI models are recommending from, making sure that we are then moving to that direction to answer these questions, to put very plainly, here's the service that I provide in this area to make sure that the AI models can very easily find us.

15:16 So, going on to LinkedIn, going on to Reddit, both putting out content and learning what questions are being asked.

15:24 Yep. To me that sounds like just doing research on your customer, right? I mean if I want to know what's my customer thinking, I want to go where my customer interacts and they say out loud, "Hey, I'm thinking about this question. Where do I find a good real estate agent? Or what's involved in selling property? Or what are the mistakes people make in selling property? Or this mistake was made, how do we fix it?" So you're really talking about doing intelligence work on our customers to learn how to do it better and then providing that information so our customers can find it.

15:50 Yeah, and I will tell you too, man, there is a you know, we can't we can't altogether manipulate this in an inauthentic way. So for example, if we're not good at the job and we just simply post on LinkedIn 7 days a week that we're good at the job, it's going to get rooted out. And there are there are ways that this is going to come about. One thing that I want to touch on here is part of the reason why Reddit is a source is because it is it is human generated and it is human curated. So I don't know if you're familiar with Reddit, but effectively if a if a question or a conversation is posed and individuals chime in, other users have the ability to up or down vote a particular statement, right? So more up votes recommend like basically indicates that the community is saying, "This is more truth than not, right? This is this is a more factual statement than not." Also, reviews from customers on sites like Zillow, like Google, your Google business profile, these external validations are also part of what AI is looking for. And so being able to have conversations with our clients after we've done an excellent job in the transaction and helping sort of coach them through, listen, like if you really feel like I did a good job, would you mind just sort of saying, "As a first-time home buyer, I thought Bill did a really great job representing me on this transaction." Something along those lines will just hypercharge the likelihood that if somebody goes on and says, "Who's a great first-time home buyer in this geographic area?" That review is going to be more advantageous for you than just simply a review that says, "Bill did a good job." Right? So, being a little bit more specific and a little bit more hyper-local in a geographic perspective, those validations, those external reviews are incredibly valuable.

17:39 And that's what you see people now almost prompting with words to use in their the systems out that will prompt users. I know in the medical field, cuz I'm older, I have a little more maintenance going on than most people, but every one of them is so hyper-focused on reviews, get a review. They You do one on Google, then they want you to do one on Facebook, and they prompt you with the words and what they want, because it's searching for a certain experience that customers want. And if customers get that experience, they come back to that service. I ChatGPT. And if they get fooled, they're not going to come back to ChatGPT because those reviews aren't good. So, that's why these things are getting more and more relevant. You know, one of the things I've You know, I work out my office quite a bit, and I like to kind of listen to podcasts. Being a podcast myself, also, and one of the topics of is been prominent, obviously, is AI. One of the things I find interesting is and that you're different is that almost every other person on this topic puts like all the eggs in the basket of your Google Business Profile.

18:38 It's amazing to me how and then they of course they sell a service to improve your Google Business Profile. Yeah. Yeah. So, it seems to me like what they're selling is easy to sell, but it may not be effective. Talk a bit about how important is that versus how important is your website? Do they work together? What How do you see those tools as the repositories of your information? You mentioning external tools, putting it in the Reddit, putting it in the LinkedIn. How does the Google Business Profile fit into that from a percentage of importance point of view?

19:06 Yeah, so number one, you are not the only nor are you going to be the last person to tell me that I'm different, Bill, so

19:14 That is a common refrain. The more people get to know me, they're like, "Yeah, well, this dude's a little different." I didn't mean it as a negative at all. In fact, the opposite. I think some of these people feel like they've been in the business for like 5 minutes and they went on and saw some YouTube videos, put together a presentation, you know, selling you some service, and I'm wondering, does that really work or make a difference or not? And the claims the claims of how many listings you get by fixing your Google profile, I'm thinking, well, but if you're a lousy real estate agent, you got the world's best profile, it's just going to demonstrate that you're a lousy agent, I think, at some point.

19:42 I look, I don't disagree at all, and I know it's completely in jest. I just I find it funny that you that the more you get to know me, the more you will assert, yes, you're a different dude.

19:52 So, but to the topic, so the a couple of things I'll touch on. So, number one, you're right. I don't have a coaching platform. I don't have any sort of service sell. My day job, my income, the source of revenue that allows me to take care of my family, and I've got I'm sending my youngest daughter off to college here in a couple of days, and like my wife and I are like in that empty early empty nest phase. But the thing that has allowed my family to have the things we have and do what we've done has been entirely derived from being a mortgage professional, be being someone who works with potential home buyers or home owners and helping them purchase or refinance, and then moving into a position like I'm in now over the last 10 years or so leading other mortgage professionals to do the same thing. I think that gives me an interesting and unique perspective on a topic like this because I'm not coming at this you know, I think I mentioned this, but I've done this 25 years. I'm not coming at this from a standpoint of I came across an AI idea and I'm selling it to a real estate community of which I know nothing about. My entire working career has been predicated on being good and being a good partner with real estate professionals. And so, you know, trying to solve these problems or trying to like leverage these tools for me has been just another step among many steps in my career of simply reading the landscape and trying to make sure that I'm doing the very best that I can do to be a good mortgage professional, to be a good teammate, and to be a good business partner for the people in the real estate community that I support. So, I have these conversations, I share these observations, I dig in and I learn these things partly because I'm inquisitive, but partly because I believe it's a responsibility if I'm going to be in this business and I'm going to be all the things that I hope and aspire to be, I need to actually show up with something of value. So, you know, that is a long preamble just to say, I think there is value in some of these businesses that are out there selling the ability to like

21:56 Pay me money and I'll do all this for you. I also think there's a ton of value in understanding how some of these things work, depending on what your what your marketing or what your discretionary budget might be. Maybe it's a better trade to say, I'm going to keep my time and I'm going to pay this external company to solve some of these problems. It's my assertion, however, and I can prove this based on a lot of working with real estate professionals and mortgage professionals that all of the things or the vast majority of things that an external company can do, you yourself can do by way of some of these some of these this ground that we're covering, some of these ideas that we're unpacking. You as an individual business owner just have to decide what's the best use of your time. Do you want the knowledge and then deploy the knowledge, or do you want to like offload that to an external company? I think there's value in understanding this, especially at this early phase where AI is just starting to really gain strong roots. This is not going away and I think the sooner you at least understand some principles, the better position and the better insulated you'll be to be that professional in the future. This is an old adage at this point. It's a trope that I hate to regurgitate, but it's one just to kind of hammer a point home. You've heard it said, I'm sure, that AI won't replace this business, but it will they the individuals in that business will be replaced by folks using AI. In other words, like if you're a real estate agent, AI is not going to replace real estate agents, but real estate agents using AI will replace those who are not using AI, right? So, like

23:30 Yeah. That I think I think there's some truth in that. I think it's been overused a little bit, but my point in having the conversation like this is like, "Look, gang, you can go do all these things on your own. You can go update, improve, change, and actually have a meaningful impact on your Google Business Profile. I do think, Bill, that there is a weight, especially depending on like which AI model we're talking about. If a consumer is using Gemini to search, Google Business Profile is probably going to be more valuable. However, if you're using ChatGPT, which is not a Google product, I don't know that the value of that Google Business Profile is going to supersede some of these other arenas that you have the ability to play in. So, if I had to say like, "Is the Google Business Profile the only thing?" It's not. It's just absolutely not, partly because most consumers are still not only using Google Gemini to support their searches. It's getting there, but it's certainly not as ubiquitous or widely used as ChatGPT is today.

24:34 Yeah. That's a good point. Well, that said, that you do have an amazing tool. First off, I'm kind of kept you as long as I had scheduled, so I really appreciate the generosity. I saw you in a presentation, you offered to be available anywhere you want, so thanks for sharing what you have. But, more than that, I just want to kind of share you have First off, just your website is davidcolgan.com. If more information, you can if you're appropriate the kind of person to book him to speak, he's a phenomenal speaker, does webinars on his own. I'm privileged to ask him questions. But he has another page, /aeo, with the AEO grader. And all I have to do is put in your website and it literally within seconds gives you an answer. I'm embarrassed to admit that I put mine in and got an F. Now I just changed the vendors. The vendor's now up and running, but we have like their default. We haven't started the customization. So basically you've given me you the report you gave me was a kind of a list of things to work on

25:25 Yeah. And to go back to my vendor and say, "Hey, these are the things we need to work on in an order." So you really kind of give me a blueprint to walk through. And so I thought it was, you know, a phenomenal tool, definitely worth taking a look at and spending time on. Talk a bit about So you're involved with originators in at Movement Mortgage in the Southeast. How else can people who want to work with you? Is it Is it originators who want to also get involved with Movement Mortgage talk to you? Or what are the kind of people you're looking for to do business with?

25:53 Yeah, man. So great question. I appreciate the opportunity to share on this ever so briefly. So I'm looking for individuals who are in the state of North or South Carolina or Ohio. Those are the states where we're currently where I currently have a focus on trying to grow our team presence. And really the thing that I think that warrants a conversation is if you're at a company right now or you're working with leadership that isn't having conversations like this, that is not helping you become more visible and become more present so that when your consumers are searching for loan officers in your area in AI or they're using AI to take apart your cost estimate or the things that you're presenting to them as far as like here's what the terms of the loan that you should consider. If you don't have leadership that's helping you navigate that in the way that I'm helping our teammates navigate, at the very minimum I think it warrants a conversation. Honestly, if Movement's not the place for you, if this isn't the place or I'm not the guy that would be a good teammate for you, I'm still happy to share with you. Clearly I don't gatekeep on these things. I try to share what I've learned cuz I've I'm so blessed and grateful for the for the run that I've had in this industry over the last 25 years. And at minimum, it would be just be another good personal connection and professional connection for us to add to our Rolodex. And you know, we that's that's always a good thing that I'm always interested in doing. So, that's the only sales pitch I'll hit you with, Bill.

27:18 Well, look, it's not sales pitch. I've I when I realized my business leaving management of real estate and start out my own, I also do some coaching. I was privileged to have a client who was coaching agents at Movement Mortgage. And I got a chance to know your company real well. Your executive committee executives and here on the West Coast regional people. Phenomenal company. They walk the they walk the talk. They talk the walk. They walk the talk. And actually, you know, bring those values in. And so, like I said, it's one thing companies Every company has an AI strategy. A lot of them are just bringing some consultants who's going to pitch them some product that doesn't work. And I think David really brings some real-world experience to what's working and what people need. And I would also add, if you don't have the content that is what people looking for, then at least have a blueprint of what to start creating so that you will be that person that people look for. So, David, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for offering this today. I really appreciate that. And thank you for giving me personally a blueprint to work on to help improve my business. And I continue success at Movement Mortgage.

28:16 My pleasure, Bill. I appreciate you, sir. Thank you so much. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week. Hopefully giving you some tools to help you better as a real estate agent or attorney or vendor working with families and or law firms. I think today we got some real good information on how we can stand out, get those referrals, and be more effective. I If I can help any way, I love your feedback. Comments, questions, reach out to me. If I can help any way, reach out at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.