The Chris List™

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Fun fact: it's barely a holiday in Mexico.

Corona and Modelo basically invented it for American consumers, and now the US drinks more on May 5th than on St. Patrick's Day.

$600 million in annual beer sales was manufactured by ad agencies.

If that's not a content marketing lesson, I don't know what is.

Here's The Chris List...

📝 [C]ontent: $81K, a condo, and an AI deepfake of a soap opera star

🛠 [H]ow-To: Pre-load ChatGPT to say good things about you

🔬 [R]esearch: Why people get punched at Costco

🎨 [I]nspiration: 14 billboards + zero celebrities = Canva gold

📝 [S]wipes: 5 words to text every 2+ yr. homeowner in your phone

AI just stole a grandma's house (this is real) 👵🏼

A Southern California woman named Abigail thought she was in a relationship with a soap opera star.

The messages felt personal. The video looked real. The voice matched perfectly.

By the time her daughter figured it out, $81,000 was gone.

And so was the paid-off condo Abigail planned to retire in.

Here's how fast it moved: Facebook message. Then WhatsApp. Then gift cards. Then Zelle. Then Bitcoin.

Then a scammer convinced her to sell her home for $350,000, in a market where it was worth $550,000, so they could "buy a beach house together."

The buyer? A wholesale real estate company that moved fast, asked no questions, and pocketed $200,000 in instant equity while an elderly woman was being psychologically manipulated by an AI deepfake.

She was days away from wiring another $70,000 from the proceeds before her daughter intervened.

The deepfake video that sealed the deal wasn't grainy or glitchy. It used her name. It said "Abigail, my queen."

Her daughter knew immediately it was fake. Her mother refused to believe it.

This is where real estate intersects with one of the fastest-growing crime categories in the country.

Why this matters for agents:

If you work with older clients, this is your new fiduciary moment.

Romance scams combined with AI deepfakes are now sophisticated enough to move real property.

And the wholesale buyers waiting on the other side of these panic sales? They're not the criminals, but they're not exactly heroes either.

Be the person your clients call before they sign anything weird. The "does this seem off to you?" text that saves someone's retirement.

Post about this. Share it. Teach it at your next client event.

Because the agent who protects a client from losing their home to an AI scammer? That relationship lasts forever.

Share that ChatGPT endorses you (takes less than 30 seconds) 💬

Here's something most agents have never thought to do.

You can pre-load a ChatGPT conversation with any prompt you want by adding it to the end of this URL:

​https://chatgpt.com/?prompt=​

Whatever you type after that = the first message in the chat, already queued up and ready to go.

So when someone types "Is [your name] a good Realtor?" into ChatGPT, what do they get back?

If you've got reviews on Zillow, Google, and your website, and your name shows up consistently in your market, the answer might actually surprise you.

Here's proof.

We asked about a Florida agent named Shane Burgman:

ChatGPT came back with a full breakdown:

5.0 stars across 190+ reviews, 500+ total transactions, $160M+ in volume, military relocation specialist, strong marketing reputation on the Space Coast.

It closed with: "He's not just good — he's in the top tier of local agents for his market."

That's not a paid ad. That's AI doing your reputation homework for you.

Your action item right now:

Copy this link: https://chatgpt.com/?prompt=Is+YOUR+NAME+a+good+Realtor​

Replace "YOUR NAME" with your actual name and run it.

What comes back tells you exactly how AI sees you based on your current digital footprint. If the answer is thin, vague, or wrong, that's your gap to close.
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Now you can run a "Don't ask us, ask ChatGPT" campaign!

Your leads and referrals are already doing this.

Before they call you. Before they sign anything. They're asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity if you're legit.

This URL trick just lets you see exactly what they're seeing.

We asked ChatGPT about Beacon seller reports.

It came back with a full breakdown of what Beacon solves, who it's for, and why it's a "leverage tool for perception and retention."

AI is already forming opinions about you and your business.

Might as well know what those opinions are and if they are positive, shout about it from the mountaintops.

78-year-old was punched in the face over a free sample 🧇

A 24-year-old punched a 78-year-old in the face at a Costco in Southern California.

The crime? Hogging too many free Nutella waffle samples.

An arrest was made.

Two senior citizens got into a slap fight at a South Carolina Costco over cheeseburger sample line etiquette.

This sounds insane. But behavioral economists say it makes complete sense.

Dan Ariely, professor at Duke and author of Predictably Irrational, calls it the zero price effect: people wildly overvalue things that are free and make irrational decisions when "free" is involved.

His most famous experiment: participants chose between a free Hershey's Kiss and a $0.13 Lindt truffle (objectively the better chocolate by every measure).

More than 2x as many people chose the free Hershey's Kiss.

When he put a $0.01 price tag on the Kiss and dropped the Lindt by a penny? People overwhelmingly chose the Lindt.

Same chocolates. One penny difference. Completely opposite behavior.

The numbers behind free samples specifically are wild:

• 68% of Costco samplers bought a product after trying it
• Ziploc ran one sampling event and saw a 156% sales increase
• Products in categories like beer, wine, and frozen pizza have seen lifts of 71% to 600% from sampling events
• Companies spend roughly $2 billion a year on free samples because the ROI almost always justifies it

Part of it is familiarity. Part of it is reciprocity.

Ariely says when someone gives you something free, you feel obligated to give something back. Even if you didn't ask for it.

Why this matters for agents:

You are already sitting on one of the most powerful free offers in any industry: a no-obligation CMA.

The problem is you're framing it wrong. "Free CMA" sounds like a sales pitch.

"Here's what your home is worth right now, no strings" hits the zero price effect directly.

A few moves worth testing:

Lead every door knock and cold outreach with something genuinely free and immediately useful, a printed list of homes that sold for their specific street, not a generic farm piece.

Ziploc didn't hand out coupons. They handed out the actual product.

And if you want the Costco effect at your next open house?

Put out actual free stuff worth fighting over.

People remember the agent who fed them, not the one who handed them a flyer.

Canva made the product the ad. You can too.💡

Canva just took over all 14 billboards at London's Waterloo station and instead of running ads about Canva, they ran ads that ARE Canva.

Each billboard demonstrated a real product feature, exaggerated to the point of absurdity:

Someone asked them to "make the logo bigger."

So they made a logo so big it breaks out of the billboard frame.

Magic Resize?

A landscape ad squeezed into a portrait space, visually glitching in real life.

Drag and drop?

A full-size 3D replica of a bicycle physically bolted onto the billboard like someone dragged it there from their desktop.

Background remover?

A special build that appears to erase the billboard itself, revealing the structure underneath.

Nobody needed a voiceover. Nobody needed a celebrity. The product explained itself by doing the thing it does, just turned up to 11.

The result: selfie backdrops, shareable moments, and press coverage that money can't buy.

The Realtor steal:

Most agents describe what they do. Canva showed it.

There's a version of this for every agent with a listing, an open house, or a farm area.

Instead of a flyer that says "I use professional photography," show a side-by-side of your photos vs. a phone snapshot.

The contrast IS the ad.

Instead of "I know this neighborhood," post a video where you walk the street, name every neighbor, and call out the coffee shop by the owner's first name.

The knowledge IS the ad.

Canva's entire campaign was built on one insight: the best way to sell a product is to let people experience what it feels like to use it.

You have the same opportunity.

Stop describing the value. Demonstrate it.

The 5-word text that will blow up your phone📱

Here's a 5-word opener you can send to your past clients that starts conversations:

"Has the neighborhood changed much?"

That's it.

No preamble. No "hope you're well." No branded graphic. Just that question.

Why it works:
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It's genuinely curious and not salesy. It invites them to talk about their experience, which usually leads to "Actually, a lot. The new development on [street] is..."

And from there, you're one question away from a real conversation about home values and whether they've thought about moving.

Who to send this to right now:

Anyone who has owned their home for 2+ years. Pull that list today.

These are people sitting on serious equity in most markets, and most of them haven't heard from their agent in months.

You showing up curious and human before you show up with a CMA is the entire play.

The follow-up if they respond positively:

"It really has. I've been watching the values on your street and honestly, you might be surprised what it's worth right now. Want me to pull a quick number for you? No pressure, just good to know."

The follow-up if they say "not really":

"Ha, fair enough. For what it's worth, the values have still moved a lot even when it doesn't feel like it. Happy to shoot you a quick update if you're ever curious what it would sell for today."

The agents who own their market long-term aren't the ones with the biggest ad spend.

They're the ones whose past clients hear from them so consistently, so naturally, that using anyone else would feel like betrayal.

Five words. Start there.