"I Ain't Talking to No Bot": How a Skeptical Mortgage Officer Became Bruce User #1

Featuring

Sergio Michel

Mortgage Officer · PMG Home Loans · CA & TX

NMLS #2023203  ·  Co. NMLS #572121

Go-to: 🍵 Tea

Sergio Michel is a mortgage professional at PMG Home Loans, licensed in California and Texas. When Jesse Chor, founder and CEO of Bruce, first pitched him on Bruce — a professional network for the four roles at the center of every real estate transaction, with warm introductions made by an AI — Sergio's exact response was: "I ain't talking to no bot."

He's User #1 today. And one of the most active members in the early cohort.

The story is worth telling because it's the story every future Bruce member will recognize in themselves.

Skeptic to User #1

Sergio went into the first conversation expecting to talk himself out of it. "I went in very skeptical," he says. "Not seeing how it could work without me being able to build a relationship."

He finished the conversation a little less sure of his own skepticism. "I was like, okay, this is kinda cool." Around the same time, he started noticing AI showing up elsewhere — services that could answer phones, handle scheduling. He let himself entertain the idea. "I said, okay, this might be a possibility."

He filled out his profile. He was the first one in. He sat back and watched.

Then the first introduction came in.

"I'm like, oh, this is really cool." Then a second one. "This is getting a little cooler." Each new intro chipped away at what he'd assumed going in. The skepticism didn't break all at once. It eroded one warm conversation at a time.

The Warm Introduction

Sergio is direct about what actually changed. Before Bruce, his business ran on cold calls and networking events. Three hours a day on the phones, every day. He still does some of that — it's still part of the work — but the math shifted when the warm intros started landing.

"It's not like me doing a cold call and calling up Bob, and Bob's like 'what do you want?' and hanging up on me," he says. "This is a warm introduction made by a bot. Yes. But it was still a warm introduction. I didn't have to go out there and get nervous. The introduction was already made."

Both sides had said yes before either of them picked up the phone. That's the part most cold-outreach systems can't replicate: removing the moment where one party is trying to figure out why the other one is calling.

For Sergio, three hours a day stopped being a cost.

From Restaurants to Mortgages

Sergio didn't start in finance. He was a chef — restaurant work, catering, years of it. He was already in the process of getting his real estate license when COVID arrived.

"I don't want people in my car," he says. "I wanna sit back and not deal with sick people." He pivoted from real estate to mortgage and never looked back.

The pivot looked clean on paper, but Sergio doesn't see it as a switch. He sees it as the same business in different clothes.

It's not a cute analogy. It's the through line that explains why warm intros worked so well for him. Sergio was already running his mortgage business the way he ran a kitchen: serve the person in front of you, deliver what you said you'd deliver, follow up cleanly. The platform didn't change his model. It just put him in front of more of the right people.

What He Tells the Next Skeptic

Almost everyone Sergio talks to about Bruce starts where he started. He doesn't try to argue them out of it.

The advice is short because the answer is short. The only thing that turned Sergio around was using it. The first intro did more than any pitch could have.

If your gut reaction to "an AI that makes warm introductions for real estate professionals" is exactly what Sergio's was — that's normal. It's the same reaction the most active member of the early cohort had, the day before he became the most active member of the early cohort.

The fastest way to find out whether it works is the way Sergio found out.