Pantana says the biggest difference between agents who succeed with AI and those who don’t is immersion.
“No one alive today has experienced a more innovative breakthrough in technology,” he says, citing Seth Godin’s description of AI as “the greatest change since electricity.”
Agents who spend 15 to 20 minutes a day learning what’s new, what’s possible, and what’s to come tend to unlock practical use cases organically.
“If you just immerse yourself in ‘I want to know what’s happening’ and align that with your goals, you’ll start putting AI to work in a powerful way,” says Pantana.
That also means that you understand what AI is not. Pantana warned that AI can hallucinate – making up information in an attempt to be helpful – especially when data is not available.
“It’s designed to be helpful,” he said. “You have to put guardrails on it, because people just blindly believe what it says.”
Shift from shiny objects to outcomes
Pantana sees a common pitfall: agents chasing AI tools the same way they chase viral messages.
“I think AI [adoption in real estate] You can also think of it this way,” he says. “This new tool does this one little thing and you set yourself on the path of finding the next solution.”
The change in mindset, he says, is about starting with the end in mind.
“What is the goal I have for my business, and what are the tools I consider supporting actions to help me achieve that goal?” says Pantana. “AI must be placed in the box of a tool or set of tools used to achieve specific results.”
Fear-based adoption is a dangerous motivator. “It doesn’t help you build,” he says. “It’s reactive in nature.”
While AI saves real-time time in content creation, Pantana ensures that AI is not seen as a shortcut that replaces effort or authenticity. Instead, he focuses on friction. An example is making videos.
“Many officers’ CCTV footage shows about 19 attempts of the same selfie-style video,” he says. AI tools that provide scripts, teleprompters, and eye contact correction can streamline that process. “You can reduce the number of takes to get the video where you want it.”
Email design is another activity that takes up valuable time. Agents who struggle with designing and formatting an email often spend hours struggling with templates. AI tools can generate HTML emails tailored to brand fonts, colors, and mobile optimization in minutes.
Pantana also uses AI as a collaborator, not a replacement, for writing. “It’s a research partner – a collaborator who helps me write words when I get stuck,” he says.
Authenticity requires instruction
Agents often complain that AI ‘sounds like AI’. Pantana says this is almost always a problem. “If you don’t give it any clues, it becomes standard and it starts to sound like AI,” he says.
He encourages the use of specificity, context, and style guidance, including custom instructions and reusable workflows. “Life punishes the vague request and rewards the specific request,” he says. “Weak clues in, crap out. Genius gets in, genius gets out.”
AI search is the real shift in lead generation
Pantana believes that the biggest opportunity for lead generation today isn’t ads or captions, but AI search. “’Searching’ becomes ‘asking,’” he says. “It’s so much more convenient to ask AI and let it do the grueling searching for you.”
This has major consequences for brokers, especially on the listing side. “Sellers are much more likely to look for an agent,” says Pantana. “They look for the agent whose job it is to get them to the buyer.”
AI can’t see reviews unless they’re visible on the web, which means agents need to intentionally include Google reviews on their own sites and make their bios discoverable.
Pantana is mainly focused on ‘bottom-of-funnel’ questions. These are the specific, decision-blocking questions buyers and sellers ask before taking action.
“If you answer bottom-of-funnel questions, you’re 10x to 23x more likely to get them to click on your quote,” he says, citing research from online marketing guru Neil Patel.
AI doesn’t erase your lead, it multiplies it
High-performing agents often fear that AI adoption will cash in on their advantage. Pantana disagrees.
“AI is a force multiplier of you,” he says. “It helps you do more, faster and better, as long as it is trained and used properly.” But if used poorly, it’s no different than hiring the wrong person.
The real risk, Pantana adds, is not substitution. It lags behind agents who use AI strategically. “They leave you in the dust,” he says.
His advice to agents getting started is simple: use an AI tool regularly and surround yourself with a learning community. Then choose an area of marketing that is too time-consuming or previously out of reach. “Push yourself into a new camp that you’ve been avoiding because of learning curves,” says Pantana.
Because AI is not the shiny object, he says. “It’s the system.”
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