A Message Inspired by Spartan Founder, Joe De Sena: To High-Grit Producers
You feel the world speeding up. AI is moving too fast. Your anxiety is valid, but it’s not new.
In 1910, people said cars were ripping life apart. In the 1800s, Americans feared “nervous collapse” from telegraphs. Plato himself warned that writing would destroy wisdom. Every generation looks at a new tool and says: this is the end of us. Every generation has been wrong.
Humans adapt. That is our superpower.
Acceleration feels terrifying because our wiring is ancient. Our instinct is to panic. You see it now in the AI debate: the fear that jobs will vanish, that agents will lose their edge. It’s the same script with a new cast.
The Truth of the Tool: You Are the Craftsman
Look at running. Critics said “super shoes” would ruin competition. Instead, athletes used the tool, reset the standard, and shattered times. That’s not collapse; that’s evolution.
In your business, AI handles the mechanical, transactional parts of the job. It automates. It doesn’t replace the craftsman, it sharpens them.
As Geoff Colvin argues in his book, Humans Are Under-rated, the market increasingly rewards skills AI cannot replicate. These are the Deep Human Connections:
- Empathy: Can the machine sit across from a nervous client and build trust?
- Negotiation: This is a battle of wills, psychology, and timing—not a math problem.
- Creativity: For every generic algorithm, there must be a human artist bending the tool into a unique, market-cutting angle.
AI is a power tool. It frees your agents from data entry to focus on high-stakes performance and relationship building.
The Hard Way: Outbuilding Comfort with Grit
When cameras appeared, critics said painting was done. They were wrong. Today, the camera is part of the art. AI is the camera for your brokerage.
Fear is part of the human condition, but weakness isn’t inevitable.
Technology can smother you, or it can sharpen you. It depends on whether you let it own you, or you are the boss.
AI can replace your efforts, or it can multiply them. The question is whether you can build grit faster than the world builds comfort.
I’ll take the challenge over comfort everyday and twice on Sunday.
