Jimmy Lewis spent 20 years in title insurance and mortgage, then started TrueFocus Automation, which has put over 800 bots into production. He explains how he decides what is worth automating, and why most of his bots still keep a human in the loop instead of replacing the team.
Before you hire another admin
A three minute scorecard. See how much of that next hire is repetitive work a system could take off your plate.
Take the scorecardJimmy Lewis spent about 20 years in title insurance and mortgage, mostly selling outsourcing to companies that wanted their production work done for them. Eight years ago he and a former colleague started TrueFocus Automation in Texas. Today they have put over 800 bots into production for title, mortgage, and real estate teams.
His test for what to automate is simple. If someone needs more than one monitor to get a task done, flipping between three systems to copy and compare, start there. If a process has 50 possible paths, or every office does it differently, it is not ready.
Most of what TrueFocus builds still keeps a human in the loop, and he says clients have not used it to cut staff. They use it to take on more volume without burning their people out.
In this episode
- How a relationship and sales guy with no automation background ended up starting an automation company
- How to tell if a process is ready to automate
- The fully loaded cost math that decides whether a project is worth it
- Why anyone working across three monitors is the place to start
- What TrueFocus will not automate, like moving money
- Four zones of AI, and why about 90 percent of their work keeps a human in the loop
- What an employee's day looks like after the bots arrive
- Where Jimmy is still the bottleneck in his own company
- How agentic AI cut the time to add a county to Title Hunter from about two weeks to two or three days
- Checking every file with AI instead of sampling 10 percent
- Who is a good fit for automation, and who is not
Timestamps
- 00:00Intro
- 00:57Why he started an automation company
- 02:40How to decide what to automate
- 04:57Is it worth it? The ROI math
- 06:43The same data typed into four or five systems
- 08:11Projects that fail, and what they will not touch
- 09:57Four zones of AI and the human in the loop
- 12:35What changes in an employee's day
- 14:38Where Jimmy is still the bottleneck
- 16:17Before and after agentic AI
- 18:08Using AI to check every file
- 19:09More volume with the same team
- 21:31Building his own website with AI
- 22:23What is next for TrueFocus
- 25:17Who is a fit and who is not
- 27:12Where to find Jimmy
About Jimmy Lewis
Jimmy Lewis started TrueFocus Automation with his business partner eight years ago. The company builds automation and AI bots for title, mortgage, and real estate teams, including Title Hunter, its automated online title search platform. Before TrueFocus he spent about 20 years in title insurance and mortgage, mostly on the sales side of outsourcing.
TrueFocus Automation truefocusautomation.com
Title Hunter truefocusautomation.com/title-hunter
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/jimmylewisdfw