Times have changed
It’s amazing the world we live in right now; I feel like I did the day I got my very first computer, a Macintosh Performa 400 (circa 1992). At that time it was really rare to see a computer in a home and loading a browser and logging on to the internet in those days was a task in and of itself- and where did you go once you were logged on? Email was a neat tool, but who in the world would you email? AOL would soon be all I had and paid out the nose by the minute to wait impatiently for anything to happen- chat back then was the in thing.
These things have changed. Computers are virtually everywhere you look, even in your car, and in your pocket, and forget logging on, even the tiny computer in my pocket is virtually always connected. From my fingertips, I can learn virtually anything I want to, go where I want to go, explore where I want to, and buy what I want to. As a consumer, I am completely wired into anything that I decide is important to me at that moment, even the news- it automatically updates headlines every 20 seconds.
These changes to my life at first weren’t seen as game enders, they were game changers. I do not look at new tools as something to fear, my electronics are not seen as motive driven, they are simply part of my wired life.
Here’s the disconnect:
What is not advancing as fast as my wired life is my un-wired industry and many of our peers. Many are still stuck at the PC and email and this worries me. It worries me because at the root level, many have not accepted advances personally and therefore professionally fear everything that isn’t within their control.
I wrote this article on Google as tongue and cheek to some degree, and some got it, others did not. The post had absolutely nothing to do with the value of agents, yet some sprung to position to once again preach to the choir about their value proposition, but what is missed by most is that this world is no longer focused on talking about a value proposition, it’s about demonstrating it.
The audience is wired, the consumer base is wired, the world is on fire with wires, and this tiny industry of one million or so seems willing to ignore the obvious at their own core level- I used to ask why, but I think I get it now.
This tiny minority known as the real estate profession truly believes that the world will actually stop, slow down, turn around, and come backwards to ask a question or hear a lecture on value proposition, and in the short run they might- in the long run they won’t.
The starting line has changed
As an AG reader who may be stuck and afraid of paradigm shifts on a professional level, you should take a hard look at the personal level in which the world around you is moving, and I think it’s in this moment that you’ll understand what it means that the starting line has changed.
I used the words ‘starting point’ for very good reason in my analysis when I said the starting line has changed; this means ‘Game Changing,’ not ‘Game Ending.’
If anything and everything in your life is to be successful, one must understand when the starting line has moved in order to even run the race. To ignore this fact means you’re left running a race that is no longer being run.
It may feel great to read that Google is offering nothing new, and that data points are weak within other listing portals around the net and I’m sure it helps you to sleep tonight that there’s nothing to really be alarmed about- ‘it’s nothing new,’ you tell yourself. But that is an ignorant enabling of the mentality in which I’m referring to.
The era of ignorance is bliss
This is the era of ignorant bliss that we as an industry have all the time in the world so long as we just refuse to run the race. Does this mentality work for two agents competing in the same neighborhood for the same market share? Does it work for two competing brokerages in the same city? No, it doesn’t. Both run the race as hard as they can from the starting line that is visibly in front of them because it is survival of the fittest- it’s the difference between in and out of business or even a dying industry. It is at its root core a chipping away of market share that inevitably ends with a loss to both competitors because they’re oblivious to the dedication of others who are playing the game from a completely different vantage point for the same market share.
Analogy:
Two guys walk into a bar, there’s only one girl to win over, they flirt and advance but get nowhere because they were arrogantly oblivious that she’s hooking up with the bartender.
My take away for MLSs, boards, and agents is really simple in that it’s time for this industry (with an “it begins with me” vision) to either get in the race or change the game- and we can do that first by acknowledging that there is a race at all. Awareness is bliss.
