When I got my real estate license 30 years ago, the state-of-the-art technology was the thermal fax machine. You know, the one with a big roll of paper you see in "old" movies? That one.
When the faxes arrived, the machine would continue to roll. The output would fall to the floor, and you had to pick it up and photocopy it quickly before the ink would fade. As I look back on all of that, I realize how much technology has changed the business of real estate.
See, back then, real estate agents had a monopoly on the information. If you were buying a home, the only way you could get market data was by talking to a real estate agent. And every two weeks, they'd publish these hard-copy catalogs with all of the properties on the market, which were like a sacred book to us. It was the bible as far as the real estate information went.
But now, fast-forward 30 years, every piece of information about every property is available to you the moment it comes on the market. Sometimes, even before it comes on the market. And it's not just real estate that that's changed. Every single part of our life has changed dramatically due to technology.
Take golf. Back in 1990, the leading driving distance on the PGA tour was 289 yards. Thirty years later, the longest drive is 337. All thanks to technology. The golf ball, drivers, aerodynamics, and digital imaging all contributed to achieving the most efficient transfer of power.
But here there's the thing:
When you look at the fundamental thing golf is about? The scoring? That changed by less than one-quarter of one stroke in the same 30-year period. Here we are, driving the ball so much further, and yet the scores have only come down by less than a quarter of one shot.
Same thing with real estate. With all this amazing technology, exposing properties to millions of people in a matter of seconds, the fundamental things haven't changed one bit. The number of days on the market, the percentage of the asking price, and the money - none of that has changed at all. The reality is that, no matter how much technology advances, certain aspects of any industry that can't be digitized.
You can't digitize the last 100 feet of a real estate transaction because it's a negotiation between two completely irrational people who are negotiating the market value of the only property like this one in the world right now. And that requires skill.
Similarly, all the technology in the world can't help your golf game if you don't put in the time and practice, because getting a good score requires skill. And the same can be said for your business. If you want to make your business future-proof, focus on the one thing that technology won't change. Not now, and not in the next 30 years.
Now, I don't know what that is for you specifically, but I can tell you this:
- First, determine which part of your business will be disrupted or enhanced by technology.
- And then, think about what parts of technology WON'T change.
- What parts require actual skill?
- And then, make sure you get good at that because that's where your future-proof advantage will be.