Happy New Year! Yes, this is the last week we can say it.

As I sit here planning 2026 courses, I've been reflecting on an incredible year. I launched Agent Intelligence. I taught four classes to 300+ real estate agents. They conducted thousands of AI experiments and we there were more "aha moments" than I can count.

2025 was the year AI stopped being a novelty and became core to the business. I watched agents go from "I talk to ChatGPT sometimes" to building systems that genuinely transformed their businesses.

Here are the 10 lessons from the trenches that actually worked and surprised everyone (including me).

1. Custom Instructions Were the Unlock No Agent Saw Coming

Gene set one rule in her ChatGPT project: "give a concise summary up top." The output "changed dramatically" and was suddenly "so much easier to digest."

Most students came in wanting to learn prompting. What moved the needle was 10 minutes on Instructions. Tell AI how you want information delivered—bullets, summaries, concise—and all of a sudden every aspect of your workflow improves.

2. "Start With What You Have" Beat "Get Everything Perfect First"

Mark created a detailed brand breakdown using just “pictures, a resume and some motivational snippets." No elaborate CRM exports. No hours of preparation.

The agents who stalled were waiting for perfectly organized data. The ones who accelerated uploaded what they had and built over time. Imperfect data in motion beats perfect data never uploaded.

3. AI Asks Better Questions Than We Do

Paul discovered something "killer": setting instructions to have AI suggest follow-up questions at the end of each response. "It knows the better questions than we do."

Instead of figuring out what to ask next, students let AI guide them deeper. The best work came from conversations where AI's questions led somewhere unexpected.

4. A Lost Client Became the Best AI Advertisement

Lorraine used AI to analyze her CRM and check on past clients. One property came up—already pending sale. She'd lost a past client because she hadn't followed up.

"That's a painful lesson to learn," she said. She now runs AI CRM analysis weekly. One lost deal was worth more as a teaching moment than any demo I could give.

5. "I Feel Like I Just Went to Accenture"

Paul uploaded his business data and ran the brand strategy worksheet. His reaction: "It's mind-blowing. I feel like I just went to Accenture and had a weekend deep dive into brand building."

In 2 minutes. For $20/month. Work that agencies charge five figures for.

6. Your Zoom Transcripts Are a Hidden CRM

I challenged students: How many of you have had over 100 Zoom conversations this year? Those transcripts contain client details, priorities, concerns—all sitting unused.

I uploaded my own class recording to Gemini. It listened to a 2-hour video in 90 seconds, paired it with my slides, and created a step-by-step guide. Students realized they could do the same with client calls.

If your CRM is thin but your Zoom history is rich, you have a backup CRM nobody told you about.

7. The "Fluency" Mindset Outperformed the "Prompting" Mindset

Students obsessing over "the right prompt" stayed stuck. The ones who got fluent—comfortable toggling between tools, knowing when to use which—started solving problems without asking me.

Fluency means you stop thinking about AI and start thinking about the business problem. The tools become invisible.

8. Gemini Won on Images. ChatGPT Won on Projects. Claude Won on Reasoning.

Across all classes, the same pattern emerged: Gemini's image generation was better, ChatGPT's projects made iteration easier. Claude handled long documents better.

Agents who picked one tool got mediocre results. The ones who leveraged a stack—knowing when to move work between tools—got dramatically better output.

9. 61.6% of Agents Wanted the Exact Same Thing

Throughout the year, I surveyed over 300 agents. I asked all of them "If you could get one instant result from AI, what would you choose?"

The winner by a landslide: a 12-month email sequence for past clients.

Not image generation. Not voice cloning. Just consistent follow-up—the thing every agent knows they should do and never has time for. This is smart. Great agents know that most of the growth in their business comes from not losing the easy deals in their Sphere.

10. If You Don't Know What to Do, Just Ask AI

This became mantra for each session. Stuck on what to ask? Ask AI to create a prompt for you. Confused by a feature? Ask AI how it works. Unclear on next steps? Ask AI to suggest them. The meta-skill of 2025 was using AI to teach yourself AI. Students who treated it like a team member became daily users within the two weeks.

The tools will keep changing. The patterns won't:

My first 2026 cohort kicks off March 23. I’ll take all the learnings from 2025 and the latest tech updates in Q1 to create the best course yet. I can’t wait.

What was your biggest AI lesson from 2025? Hit reply—I read every one.

-Matt