Jimmy Gilmore

Have you worked your ass off so you could get to a place where peo­ple have to come to you? Does you chest well up with pride because you’re an really impor­tant guy or gal?  You’ve got money, pres­tige, things and even a fancy title. Maybe you even belong to a golf club. Hey, Mr. impor­tant, I hate to break it to you but you’re not so impor­tant any more.

There’s this thing called the Inter­net and it means that peo­ple don’t have to go though you any­more. Whether you’re at the bank or the cor­ner office, the land­scape has changed. The walls are com­ing down and power is shift­ing to the givers and away from the road block­ers. Sure, you’ve still got the power to slow things down but peo­ple have started going around you.

Only a few years ago infor­ma­tion scarcity made gate keep­ers very pow­er­ful in our soci­ety. For exam­ple, real estate agents had total con­trol over home sales. They did this buy con­trol­ling the flow of infor­ma­tion between buy­ers and seller. This made it very easy to com­mand a hefty 7% commission.

The Inter­net has opened up access to the infor­ma­tion and now buy­ers can edu­cate them­selves about which houses are for sale and for what price. There are also inter­net banks and even blogs with a lot of infor­ma­tion about how peo­ple get things done in the hous­ing indus­try. Home buy­ers no longer have to do things the old way and pay a 7% commission.

What has this meant for real estate agents? Well, my mother in-law hap­pens to be one and it’s been a hard few years for every­one in the busi­ness–  but peo­ple still require ser­vice and exper­tise. So many of the agents who add value to the equa­tion are get­ting by OK. But just pro­vid­ing access to the mar­ket (using power) is no longer enough. Cus­tomers are demand­ing and get­ting service.

In this new age of open infor­ma­tion a person’s impor­tance is now mea­sured by the value they add to the equa­tion. What they can do to pos­i­tively effect a sit­u­a­tion. Neg­a­tive power, the con­trol of infor­ma­tion and resources is on the wane since peo­ple can go around ass­holes. Sure, rich guys will still have an advan­tage but they don’t hold all the cards.

A lay­man who reads this blog and a few other blogs will get a good idea of what it’s like to work in the mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing indus­try. They may even get a real good idea how my job is done. And I’m OK with that. Why? Because what I strive to do as a pro­fes­sional is to help peo­ple. And hope­fully my writ­ing does that. And in this new world of open infor­ma­tion, the social cap­i­tal I cre­ate with this will even­tu­ally reward me mon­e­tar­ily and it already has intel­lec­tu­ally and emotionally.

In my and any other busi­nesses it all used to be about who you knew. Now who you know is unlim­ited with a cable modem and an inter­net address. The pow­er­ful should take notice and make sure they’re adding value for cus­tomers, employ­ees and the community.