For the purposes of this article I’m going to consider a traditional 4 branch business. In my opinion multi branch businesses have the biggest challenge and opportunity. Challenge, because of the difficulty of changing the structure and opportunity because they have brand recognition, market share and data. All the ingredients needed to succeed in the the AI and Self Employment revolution.

So as you can see, I’m not a gifted artist, but I hope the diagram is easy to follow. The costs will clearly vary, business to business. It’s possible that a business of this size would have a call centre for inbound and outbound. The activities in gold are the tasks that AI can do today. Products aren’t available for all of them. Many of us will think that they can be done better by humans. However within a period of time, not a long one, all of this capability will be commercially available through products like Greenhouse OS. It’s fun to be building them, but the bit that my mind keeps getting drawn back to is what does it mean for the models that will and won’t make sense in the future.

Why do Self Employed Networks have an Advantage with AI?

The hardest thing about being a self-employed agent is the breadth of the role. Everything from lead handling, to prospecting, viewing feedback and sales progression. You really are all things to everyone.

I believe there is a second huge challenge, that a good friend of mine from Swindon was educating me about today. That is the isolation and lack of camaraderie that the best amongst us provide as part of our culture but more on that later.

So the first example to consider is how this will empower agencies like The Agency UK, Exp, IAD and Avacado to name just a few.

The self-employed agents will have the option to have a huge amount of work taken off them. Clearly many of them will want to deliver some of the items in the gold box personally, but my point is that when they get busy they can turn those items on and their business will still run really well. This will give them time to three things

1. Recruit more agents to join their teams and generate a passive income
2. Spend more time face to face with their clients
3. Spend more time promoting themselves and their personal brand, to build their hyper local business

From an operational point of view, this will negate some of the advantage that traditional businesses have in terms of the firepower from having bigger teams. You may choose to have a big team, but you probably won’t need one.

What might an AI adapted model look like for a traditional business?

The key for a business wanting to operate at scale in the world of AI is to I would think about a few key things

1. Use AI to leverage your data
2. High Quality marketing will become more important
3. Hybrid Employed / Self Employed Models can co-exist together

Key Considerations for a business leader

1. What is the premises strategy? With AI and SE you don’t have the same operational needs for a place of work. Do you need as many as your currently have? What is the purpose of them? Who will staff them in the world of a digital negotiator?
2. Could you have a Self-Employed model (with a roughly even commission split) to allow self-employed agents to benefit from your brand, data, systems and teamship? They add about £50k of profit per agent to your business if done well
3. In a world of AI produced marketing content at volumes we can’t imagine. Marketing is going to get harder and harder to cut through. How will you make it distinctive and shareable?
4. How will you use your data? If you get AI to mine it for you, self-employed agents who compete against you will not be able to get established as you will be contacting the tens of thousands of homeowners you know at the right time with the right message.

Final Thoughts

This change won’t happen overnight. But it is going to happen and quicker than the other ‘false dawns’ we’ve had predicted. The technology is so cheap and so good, it’s not hard to be excited by it. But like all good things, it will deliver the most serious change to the competitive environment in my lifetime. As I tell my kids, I know which side of AI I want to be on. We can be in control of our own future if we adapt now, rather than wait for the landscape to change to something we can’t compete with.

If you want to talk through any of the ideas in this article, feel free to drop me a whatsapp.