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Two key speakers at our July RMX event delivered very different takes on AI.
Both were talented, thought-provoking speakers.
Gus Balbontin came first on Wednesday afternoon.
For those who don’t know, Balbontin was born and bred in wild Patagonia but never allowed humble beginnings get in the way of his big dreams. He landed in Australia at 17, and by 22 had dropped out of university. He hitchhiked South America, set up his first business, and landed his dream job at Lonely Planet. Fast forward and he was leading the company globally, working with big corporations on the latest technology and creative cultures.
Balbontin loves sharing a story, his energy is infectious, and he has a counterintuitive way of looking at the world that is incredibly motivating.
He doesn’t mind touching a nerve, as he did with when he delivered his line about AI replacing agents in the industry!
Shock value aside, what he was really saying was that AI poses no danger, but inaction does; and that the passage of AI is a logical continuation of the tech path we’ve been on for decades.
He says that always, somewhere, someone is working on making something better. AI has been silently augmenting our lives in incredibly helpful ways for some time now, even replacing jobs, but it is as though we seem to have finally noticed!
His advice is to expose ourselves to discomfort, reel in the future, and make changes that are simple, small and now RATHER THAN complex, big and later.
Josh Cobb spoke on Thursday.
The digital marketing guru and founder of Stepps is often accredited for revolutionising the real estate industry through his expertise, including in the integration of AI into our businesses.
His statement that “AI won’t replace agents, but the agents using AI will” should similarly have hit a nerve, but he had warmed the room to the notion, through the concept that AI in real estate should be viewed in terms of how it can speed up processes and give a competitive advantage.
We all share the same amount of time, Cobb said, but it is how we use that time that sets us apart.
AI is the ultimate speed advantage, at a time when we care more about time than ever before.
AI is about allowing more time for human interactions
He suggested that nobody is an expert or a guru when it comes to AI. No one knows where it’s going, but we must be its students who surely need to be on the bus to wherever it is that it’s going
Like Balbontin, Cobb hinted there might be a bit of pain involved, when he cautioned us to be curious, experiment with our eyes open, and be prepared for discomfort.
So, Balbontin put it out there that AI will swamp the industry while Cobb spoke of the tool that can make you a better agent.
They were both accurate in suggesting we must be ambitious in our thinking. Those of us who want to remain successful in the business of real estate need to adopt big blue sky innovative thinking as part of our regular strategic planning.
If embracing AI can enhance the agent’s capabilities to work smarter, not harder; to improve personal connections and interactions, to facilitate data-driven insights, to automate routine tasks, then it cannot possibly be the undoing.
Josh Davoren is the operations director at RE/MAX Australia.
