The year is 2025 and I can 100% promise you there are more tools available than you can name. Because of my role, I am often asked to chat with this startup or that startup about a product they have that is going to “revolutionize the real estate market” and while I believe wholeheartedly that each of these companies believe this is the case, it doesn’t always pan out. On the agent side, I see products come and go, tools that promise to change your lives for the better, and it ends up costing them a ton of money with little return. Those same agents end up going back to what works, maybe doing the same things, but make those same things FAR more efficient.

The plot gets lost. At the end of the day, technology tools are not here for their own sake to be neat and shiny. They should serve the overall need to help you connect with more people more often in a more human way. Tech doesn’t do it for you. It is merely leverage.

If you’ve spent at least 10 minutes with me in the last year, I’ve likely tried to shove Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world” down your throat. To say I am passionate about this idea of deep work would be an understatement.

In his book, Cal Newport (a renowned mathematician) outlines his views on tool selection. And while you might not see yourself as a craftsman in your trade, I would encourage you to shift that perspective just a little as he frames it up better than I could.

There are two ways to look at tools, and we’ll use a blacksmith as our analogy:

1)      The Any-Benefit Approach to Tool Selection: You’re justified in using a [tool] if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.

By this standard, you should be on X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Reddit, posting several times a day even if you get less than 100 likes ever. By this standard you should have a ChatGPT account (a pro one, but not the cheaper pro one), a subscription to ElevenLabs, Claude, Pico, Gemini, CoPilot, Dalle-E, Perplexity, and Opus.ai, and using them in every interaction you have. You should also have at least four separate apps running to organize and manage your email, text messages, and phone calls. You should create an Air.ai to reply to all your incoming phone calls and set up a chatbot to speak with your spouse when you are on DND for work.

At some point, however, the human aspect is lost in all the noise. While these might sound great, chances are, most of us don’t possess the scale or knowledge of systems to connect these disparate pieces of technology together into a meaningful “stack”.

Can you imagine a blacksmith of old doing any of this? Yes, his world was far simpler: A forge, a bellows, some crafting materials, a vision, a hammer, and a sign. Not much more. But is it that different? When do the above become more of a distraction to the 20% in your business? Instead, let’s take a different approach.

2)      The Craftsman’s Approach to tool selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.

The blacksmith doesn’t need a hammer that gets updates on the regular, he doesn’t need it randomly changing shape because the new shape is “better”. Yes, the new shape might help some, but he’s an expert. What he needs is not to have to pump the bellows. What he needs is lights around his sign to draw attention to those who pass by. What he needs are some cart rails to bring materials straight to him from the mines. What he needs is the leverage to work the metal as he always has and speak 1:1 with his clients. He makes custom, handmade items to the specific needs of those who seek his services. Can someone else make a cheaper knife or sword? Sure. But his work is that of a master who has put 10,000+ hours of work into their craft. Same goes for you. Masters get paid for their talents.

While there are undoubtedly a million tools out there in the real estate or general marketing space which make use of AI models that provide “some value”, not all of them give you a dramatic net positive result. Just because there is AI doesn’t mean it is better. This is no different from deciding what works when it comes to marketing, where to spend your limited dollars to scale your business. A statement I often hear from agents is: “I paid X for this lead source, and I made that X back, so it was a win.” This statement doesn’t hold up to Cal’s craftsman approach test. Anything that doesn’t create a substantial net positive result when it comes to technology tools is likely a distraction. I am not saying to pull all the plugs, but I am saying, just because it’s new and shiny, doesn’t mean that it is the right tool for you.

Inviting the “any tool” approach to your business and your life is an invitation for distraction. And at the end of the day, distraction is the greatest enemy of all great businesses. 

~ Patrick