[T]echnology: Phone Wars
[E]ducation: Referrals?
[C]oaching: Outdated Coaching
[H]ow To: Stand Out
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[T]echnology: Phone Wars
This one is different because it's not about a chatbot you go visit in a browser. This is about the phone in your pocket getting a LOT smarter.
Samsung just dropped the Galaxy S26 this week. One thing that stood out to me… they're adding Perplexity directly into Galaxy AI. You can literally say "Hey Plex" and an AI agent wakes up on your phone that works across your notes, calendar, reminders, and gallery. 🤯
You don't open an app. You don't go to a website. You just… talk to your phone and an AI does the thing.
Now look… I'm not an Android guy. You know this. But I'm telling you about this because of what it signals.
The phone is becoming the AI. 🤖
Not a device you use to ACCESS AI. The phone itself IS the AI assistant. Samsung is letting you pick which AI brain runs your phone. That's like choosing which engine goes in your car.
And here's where it gets interesting for the Apple crew…
Apple and Google announced a multi-year deal where the next generation of Siri will be powered by Google's Gemini models. If you've used Gemini on a Pixel phone, you know how good it is. Now imagine that brain… inside Siri… on your iPhone.
Apple has a big event on March 4th. They're planning to turn Siri into a full chatbot with sustained, back-and-forth conversations built right into your iPhone. No app required.📱
Imagine you're driving to a showing and you say "Hey Siri, what did my client say about their budget in that email last week?" And it actually knows.
That is the phone we've been waiting for.
Samsung is already there with the S26. Apple is about to show us its hand on March 4th and I will absolutely be watching.
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[E]ducation: Referrals?
So we've spent the last two years watching the industry get turned upside down over commission transparency. Buyer agreements. Compensation disclosures. All of it.
A new report is making the argument that companies like Zillow and Realtor.com are helping keep commissions high by charging agents 30% to 40% referral fees when a deal closes. The logic is pretty simple… if an agent is giving up a third of their commission to a referral company and then splitting what's left with their broker, they have zero incentive to negotiate their fee down. ⏬
There's already a class action lawsuit against Zillow claiming these referral payments keep commissions high and aren't disclosed to consumers. And NAR actually had a chance to require more transparency around referral fees at NAR NXT last November.
The Delegate Body voted it down. 👎
Meanwhile some brokerages aren't waiting… they've already rolled out their own referral fee disclosure forms.
Look… whether you pay for Zillow leads, get referrals from your sphere, or grow your business some other way… this conversation is coming. The same legal pressure that reshaped buyer agreements is now pointed at referral fees.
Don't wait for a mandate. Be the agent who was already doing it right.
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[C]oaching: Outdated Coaching
I just got back from R4 and if you've ever been to a conference you know the feeling. You sit through session after session, your brain is on fire, you're scribbling notes everywhere… and then you get home and maybe implement one or two things. If you're lucky. 🍀
That's always been my advice honestly. Don't try to do everything. Pick one or two takeaways and actually put them into practice.
But this year I realized something…
That advice might be outdated. 😏
If you're taking notes on your phone or laptop during sessions… you now have the ability to dump ALL of those notes into an AI and say "here are my notes from 12 sessions at a conference. Based on my business, give me the top 5 things I should implement and help me build an action plan for each one."
And it will actually do it. 🫡
It will organize the mess. It will prioritize for you. It will build out step by step plans you can follow. It will even help you write the emails, create the scripts, or set up the systems to make it happen.
You went from "pick one or two things and hope you follow through" to "capture everything and let AI help you execute all of it."
So if you were at R4 this year and you have a notebook full of ideas collecting dust… open up Claude or ChatGPT, type those notes in, and ask it to help you put them to work. 🧠
The conference isn't over when you get on the plane home. It's over when you stop implementing.
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[H]ow To: Stand Out
In a sea of constant AI content and other Realtors doing exactly what you’re doing, how do you stand out? ✨
First, I think you need to do some self-reflection and figure out what makes you stand out as a Realtor in your day-to-day life. How do you get listings? What do you say or do during your presentations that usually wins clients over? 🏆
Marketing online really isn’t any different. You have to think about what clients actually want to see. Do they want to see a flood of “just listed” posts or a reminder that today is, in fact, President’s Day? Probably not. ❌
Buyers and sellers don’t care about that stuff; they care about safety, stability, and a better life for their families. Once you start understanding what content people really want to see, the next step is niching down.
I’ve talked about niches before, but they’re incredibly important for farming locations and segmenting your audience. 🚜 Think about who you want to attract from a location standpoint. Is it new, young families trying to live in the suburbs outside of Dayton? Or empty nesters trying to downsize? These clients care about vastly different things, and that’s something you need to consider when creating content.
And I’m sorry to tell you this again, but you have to be filming videos. I do have some good news, though: you don’t always have to be in them. I actually have agents go to local eateries and simply film B-roll footage—that’s it. A few clips of the outside of a coffee shop, the aesthetic inside, their food and drinks—and I’ll turn it into a short, 15-second TikTok for them. And guess what? They got tens of thousands of views, and all it took was a trip to a cute local coffee shop to make it happen. ☕ (Don’t forget to tag the place, they sometimes share it and boost your views even more)
At the end of the day, standing out isn’t about doing more — it’s about doing it differently. It’s about being intentional with your message, clear about who you’re speaking to, and consistent with the value you provide.
When you stop posting just to post and start creating content that actually connects, that’s when people begin to see you as the obvious choice. 🫵
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-Ty Morton + Abby G