Hummingbirds Are Bad At Market Research

And of course, because I'm in real estate, I started thinking about houses.

But before we get to the real estate part, think about what those hummingbirds are doing.

We like to talk about survival of the fittest, competition, the idea that the strongest rise to the top 'cause they work harder, fight harder, or simply want it more, or in this case, fly harder.

There's some truth in that.

Competition can make us sharper.

It can encourage innovation.

It can push us to do things we might never attempt if nobody were challenging us or maybe even watching us.

But watching those little hummingbirds made me wonder, is the strongest bird really the one that controls both feeders, or is it the one that drinks what it needs and saves enough energy for the journey? Because sometimes we become so focused on keeping somebody else away from the feeder that we forget to feed ourselves.

We can become so determined to win the immediate battle that we lose sight of the much longer journey ahead.

Isn't that something we do as human beings? We compete for jobs, attention, influence, money, and status.

We compare our lives with other people's lives.

What do they say? Don't compare your outsides with other people's insides or your insides with other people's outsides.

We guard our territory.

We can become so invested in holding the top position that we unintentionally prevent other people from rising, even where their success wouldn't diminish our own.

Sometimes we even try and control an opportunity we aren't using simply 'cause we don't want somebody else to have it.

That's the hummingbird sitting beside the feeder without drinking.

I see versions of this among real estate agents.

Agents compete for the same listing, the same buyer, the same neighborhood, and the same position in the marketplace, the same certificate every month.

Brokerages compete for agents.

Teams compete with other teams.

Some of that's healthy.

It should make us better at what we do and maybe give a lot of other people more opportunities.

But sometimes we spend more energy watching that other feeder than tending to our own.

We become more concerned about who got the listing than how well we're serving the clients we already have.

We've become so concerned about posting it all over social media, "Another one sold." We worry about what another agent is posting, selling, or saying instead of improving the experience we provide.