The Wisdom Economy: The Real Competitive Advantage

At the beginning of my career, I believed my value as a real estate professional came from what I knew. Then I lost my first listing.  I walked into that house confident with Days on Market, Price to Sell, and facts to back it up. As I began to speak, their eyes glazed over and it was: thanks so much … next!    

That was my very first lesson in two things: That relationships matter more than the facts and that clients hire us because they trust us.  I had not built trust.  

Today that lesson matters more than ever. We have entered a different economy where information has become abundant. Every human being you meet has more information in the palm of their hand than NASA scientists had a decade ago. Artificial intelligence can summarize contracts, and answer legal questions in seconds.  Clients often arrive having already done their research. Information is no longer our competitive advantage.   

The Industrial Economy traded labor.  The Information Economy traded knowledge.  Now we are in the Wisdom Economy, and that trades judgment. 

 Judgment requires wisdom, wisdom cannot be received without trust.  But how do we build trust and what is wisdom?

Trust comes from relationship and authority.  Authority is earned by the recognition of wisdom in another. Wisdom is not the accumulation of facts, or the ability to calculate.  Wisdom is judgment and perspective earned through experience—the ability to guide another human being through uncertainty, without being driven by your own personal agenda or gain.

Looking back over my career, I can trace five lessons that transformed the way I served clients and led agents.  Those experiences taught me what it means to become authentic, to earn trust, and to recognize wisdom when it appears.  None of these lessons were sought out and all of them could easily have been ignored.  Thanks to some wise adults in my childhood I learned to pay attention to what the Universe (or God) put in front of me.   

Time

The first lesson was to understand the value and brevity of the time we have. My father died when I was fourteen.  Watching him leave this world with unfulfilled dreams permanently altered the way I looked at life. That shock has continued to inform how I live life. As a boy I made up my bucket list and vowed to do it all before I turned 30, and that taught me the value of time. Teaching me that Death is an opportunity for the living.   

Are you using your time in the best way? 

Heart

Next, I needed to learn to speak from the heart. Clients rarely remember presentations. They remember authenticity. Clients want to know why we care, before they care about what we know.  This realization came from a very simple exercise a wise woman gave me. She asked me to tell her what I did for a living and of course, I said I sold houses. She laughed, and then she put me in my heart by asking me why I did what I did. What I learned was that if I spoke from the heart, people listen.  

Speaking from the heart is the shortest distance between two people.  Trust is what grows in that space.

Commitment

The third lesson might be called 'Write it in the Calendar.' The last item on my bucket list was to travel to India. I traveled overland through Europe and Asia in the late 70s all the way to central India … it was an arduous but amazing experience. At the end of that trip, a wise man told me  to come back in six months. I balked, but he just looked at me and smiled and said “Write it in the calendar. Come back in October.”  I did, and through single-minded intent I was able to return that October.  Writing a date and a goal is not magical thinking; it is commitment. Once a meaningful goal has a place in time, our decisions begin to align with it.   

Commitment is the path to the unfolding of wisdom.

Compassion

My next lesson was learning to listen with compassion. One of the most important jobs brokers have is to listen to people who have a grievance.  Every upset revolves around a story, every story has an arc…usually built around an expectation turned to disappointment. When you delve into the details of the story with the other party, the upset is exacerbated, not resolved.  Upset is rarely about the thing identified in the story, but rather the feeling the thing brings out.   Every conflict begins with a story. Every story hides a feeling. Until we understand the feeling, solving the story rarely solves the problem. Example? A buyer and a seller got sideways with each other on the completion of a sale … their threats?  Lawsuits. The whole dispute was over a piece of personal property worth pennies, that, after a million dollar sale. The real feelings centered around the fear that each had cheated the other. Once they realized they both felt cheated they laughed, forgot the lawsuits and instead donated money to charity.  

Understanding inner feelings builds trust.

Truth

The fifth lesson is communicating the hard truth. Professionals tell people what they need to hear, but only succeed after earning the right to be heard. Truth without compassion feels like criticism. Truth grounded in compassion becomes guidance.  For myself, I had an agent come to me saying that they were fed up with the business and we're angry with their clients because no client wanted to work with them.  They were going broke and needed to have a “real job”.  My first reaction was to tell this person I wouldn't work with them either given their current state. That comment totally without compassion fell very flat and the person stomped out of the room. Later that week I pulled up next to them at a stoplight, where I tooted the horn, waved and smiled. They gave me the finger and pealed out, once the light turned green,  They did not see who had honked, nor that I had waved and smiled. When next I saw them, I began with an apology and the conversation changed immediately.  I mentioned I had been the one at the light…the apology disarmed them, the realization I had been the one insulted at the light opened the door. Then we could get to the hard truth of why their business was failing.   

Compassionate authority builds trust which allows wisdom to be accepted. 

These are not five separate ideas. They are one journey. Time gives us clarity. Clarity allows authenticity. Authenticity creates commitment. Commitment opens the door for listening. Listening earns us the authority to speak difficult truths and allows them to be heard.

Technology will continue to deliver information faster than any of us. It will not and cannot replace judgment, empathy, integrity or wisdom.

The real value of a REALTOR® has never been the information we possess. It has always been the wisdom and discernment we can lend to our clients in one of life's biggest decisions.   

The Wisdom Economy isn't an economy in which information has disappeared. It's an economy in which judgment has become the rarest commodity. 

Every one of us has the opportunity to become that kind of guide. 

What kind of guide will you become? 

Author: John Mijac

John Mijac is a managing broker at 1912 Realty in Tucson with a diverse background as an entrepreneur, business owner, and creative professional. Having held roles from salesperson to designated broker, he brings a well-rounded perspective to real estate, combining technical, leadership, and people-focused skills. Passionate about service, John is dedicated to helping both clients and agents achieve their goals and succeed in their real estate journeys. View All Posts