On this special episode of REAL TIME, live-recorded at the Canadian Real Estate Association’s (CREA) 2023 Leadership Summit, we’re joined by Lital Marom, a globally recognized thought leader, entrepreneur, innovation strategist, and business visionary.
Lital has spoken at industry conferences worldwide, inspiring organizations to “disrupt themselves” and unlock their potential in the new, exponential economy. She’s a trailblazer on topics ranging from digital transformation and emerging technologies to workplace culture and agile leadership.
On this episode, Lital focuses on how organizations can reimagine themselves through mindset shifts, the power of data, exploring new business models, and more.
Transcript
Erin Davis: Hello, and welcome to another and very special episode of REAL TIME, brought to you by CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m your host, Erin Davis. While, yes, I do tend to call all of our episodes special, I assure you, this one’s something else. Our very first live recorded episode. That’s right. I sat down with our guest, Lital Marom, at CREA’s 2023 Leadership Summit in Ottawa. Board and association leaders from all across Canada, the place was packed, and what a conversation we had.
About our guest, Lital is one of today’s top business strategists and visionaries. As the world of business changes, she’s right there with it, helping companies disrupt themselves before it’s simply too late. Live on stage, Lital and I focused on how organizations can reimagine the way they do business. We talked about mindset shifts, data, exploring new business models, all the good stuff. If you’d rather watch our chat, head over to crea.ca/podcast, or visit CREA’s YouTube page and click the REAL TIME Podcast playlist.
Let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Lital Marom. Lital, welcome, and thanks for being part of our very first live podcast. We are so excited to have you now, with all of that. Is there anything we missed in your bio today?
Lital Marom: No, this was pretty impressive. Thank you.
Erin: We might have left out engineer and entrepreneur, though. Engineer as well?
Lital: Yes.
Erin: Wow. Okay.
Lital: Yes. It all started there.
Erin: Wow. You currently run two companies, each with a unique value proposition. With Unfold, you help businesses reimagine themselves for growth and scale, unlocking their business potential. Then, with the Academy of Tomorrow, you help managers gain the skills they need to be successful in the future of work, unlocking the human potential of their business. Is this the magic recipe for an organization to thrive, investing in both the business and the human potential of your company? What’s the relationship here?
Lital: Yes. I think we need both to basically create a holistic approach to innovation. I’d say that the relationship between investing in your business potential, and in human potential, it’s symbiotic. They depend on each other, and we need to invest in both. We need to invest in both if you really want to achieve sustainable transformation, sustainable success. If you look at the business potential, business potential means, basically, what are the goals for the company when it comes to innovation, when it comes to growth?
When it comes to efficiency? Everything that affects your business potential are usually external forces. It can be market trends, it can be customer trends, technology trends, regulatory trends, everything that’s external to the business, that affects the business potential. When we look at the human potential, here, we’re talking about how do we build the capabilities for our employees? How do we build the skills for our employees? How do we give them the right knowledge, equip them with the right skills?
Here, when we’re talking about human potential and employees’ potential, we’re looking at all the internal things that affect them. It’s your leadership, it’s the culture of the organization. Culture of the organization really sets the tone of the organization, right? It really affects whether your employees are inspired or motivated, so all those internal things. What happens when you have a company that has a very strong business potential? It can then invest in its employees, it invests, it builds them up, upskilling them.
Then, when employees feel that someone takes care of them, someone invests in them, they are equipped, they are more inspired, they create more value. When you have more value, the company can realize its potential. You get this virtuous cycle when you invest in both. That’s the point. That’s why I think it’s super important to create this virtuous cycle that creates growth and scale over time. I run these companies separately, but interestingly enough, now, finally– It took a while.
In my keynotes, I talk about both, because people are finally understanding you can’t separate them. Your people are the kernel of your organization. The business potential comes after. If you don’t invest in your people, you won’t be able to realize your business potential.
Erin: What is the number one important skill that leaders need to focus on today, in order to prepare for tomorrow?
Lital: We live in a world of constant change, right? Everything is constantly changing. Technology is constantly advancing, and every company today is a technology company. Every company today is a technology company. Now, during the first years of the pandemic, we all talked about resiliency. Resiliency means we want to deal well with a crisis, so we need to bounce back, but now we need much, much more than that. Now, we need to bounce forward.
I think the most important skill is adaptability, and adaptability means that you have this learning agility, to be able to apply, to learn what you need to do and turn it into action when you’re dealing with a crisis, when you’re dealing with pressure. Adaptability is a meta-skill. It’s not just a skill, because it includes many things. It’s including learning agility. It includes emotional flexibility, it includes openness, all the critical things that any leader needs, or any person that wants to be successful in a world that’s constantly changing needs.
When you have adaptability, when you’re under pressure, you can respond in a calm way and then use your curiosity as a driving force for change, and that’s why it’s important.
Erin: Adaptability, agility, are they learnable skills?
Lital: Yes, absolutely. I think any skill is learnable. Some people, obviously, can do better than others, but you can learn anything. We can learn anything. That’s exactly the era that we’re in. You have to be a lifelong learner. Learning is the most important thing today, when everything around you is constantly changing, if you are not keeping up, if you’re not constantly investing, learning, and growing, you’re going to stay behind, or you’re actually going to go backwards. That’s how bad it is right now.
Erin: If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.
Lital: Yes. Pretty much.
Erin: Okay, we’ve talked about the importance of innovating, of finding new ways to exceed your customers’ needs, of looking beyond the boundaries of your business to new markets, but what is it that you see, Lital, that holds traditional companies back? Why aren’t all companies exploring new and more disruptive, for lack of a better word, business models?
Lital: There are many reasons, but really, if you take the layers, go through the layers, at the kernel of it all, is fear. We’re all afraid of technology. Not all afraid of technology, but it can be that you’re afraid of technology because you don’t really understand it, and maybe it’s going to take over your job. Maybe it’s a fear of digital transformation. You don’t know how to digitize a business, and you’ll end up wasting time and money. Maybe you’re just afraid of change.
We’re creatures of habit. We don’t like change, or failure. Nobody really likes to fail. When we’re talking especially about legacy brands, it’s control. Maybe you’re going to lose control, or you’re used to operating in a very predefined environment, very stable environment, when you’re trying things that haven’t been proven yet, you might lose control. There’s a lot of fear going on, but the thing is, we need to understand that fear is a very important tool. Fear helps to keep us safe.
If you’re standing and there’s a lion in front of you, you’re probably going to get really scared and run away, and that’s a good thing, but if we’re confronted with things that aren’t life-threatening and we don’t take any chances to change our situation, then fear is working against us, and not for us. That’s the problem. When it works against us, it can completely deplete us from our energy, from our power, from our life source force. It can get us stuck, and keep us stuck.
The most important thing is, and we all have fear, you can never get rid of fear, is to take all the energy that it holds– It holds a lot of energy. We spend a lot of energy thinking about our fears and thinking about what we’re scared of in life. It can be personal, professional, both. You want to use that energy to push you forward, not push you back, and really ask yourself, “How can I turn this around? How can my life be greater, my business greater? How can I contribute more?”
Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want, and I know it sounds very simple, but still, most people focus all their energy and their time on what they don’t want instead of what they want. When we’re looking at fear, just as we have goals, we set goals, and we have a strategy. How do I achieve these goals? You want to have the same strategy for fears. You have a fear. Decide, “What am I afraid of?” Really write it down, all the things you’re afraid of. What will happen if I’ll take action?
It’s not just that one thing. Let’s say I’m afraid to start my own business and I’m afraid because I’ll lose my house, I’ll lose money, blah, blah, blah, but maybe there’s more things. Write everything down, and then write the list of all the things that you’ll gain by just trying, and you’ll be surprised that, when you just try to confront your fear, there’s usually a lot of benefits beyond just achieving that one-top goal.
Let’s say I’m afraid of starting my own business. If I’ll try, I’ll learn new skills, I’ll expand my network, I’ll learn that I can do some things on my own. I’ll discover things about myself, which I will never discover if I wouldn’t take that chance. Also think, “Okay, when I’m trying to combat my fears, what can I do if something goes wrong?” Be realistic. Have some back-up plans, have some strategies.
The most important thing– I always say you want to integrate fear, not eliminate it. You can’t eliminate fear. Fear is part of life. It’s always going to be there, and it’s there to actually tell you how you can get out of your comfort zone, into the world of opportunities. If you can see it as this linear thing, you’re stuck in your comfort zone, in the small, avoidant. You’re avoidant, and you’re in a small world of your comfort zone.
You’re not trying new things, you’re just stuck there. Here is the land of opportunities. Here is the land of you trying new things, and really unlocking your potential. To get from here, from your comfort zone, to the land of opportunities, you have to go through fear. You have to go, often, through pain. That’s how it works. Really understanding that, I think it’s so important. I think if everyone stops for a minute, and think to himself, or herself, about all your defining moments in life, I bet you they all had fear involved.
You overcame that fear, and then you unlocked something really big in your life. That’s the most important thing. All strategies, everything else comes later, but this is the bottom line of unlocking potential in anything.
Erin: I hear what you’re saying, and there’s so much to unpack in there. One of the things that’s going through my head is– Do you drive?
Lital: Yes.
Erin: Okay. When you’re skidding, you’re supposed to steer into the skid rather than– Always look to where you want to be, and let the skid take care of itself, instead of going, “Oh my God,” and then then it’s all over. Let’s talk about failure. When you’re in the skid, when you’ve gone into the ditch, how can failure fuel you?
Lital: I think failure has also a very important role when we’re talking about unlocking potential and succeeding in life. Failure is basically showing you that you’re one step closer to success. Failure is part of success. Failure is not the opposite of success. Most people think, “Okay, there’s success, and then there’s failure. They’re opposites,” they’re not. Failure is part of success. We need to fail, we need to experience different things, in order to get closer to success.
When it comes to companies, I say that a lot, I think we should– Some companies have, for example, Fail Fridays.
Erin: Fail Fridays.
Erin: Okay, I like that. I’m in.
Lital: Exactly. You just get together, everybody shares their failure, so you can learn. If you think about it, “When is learning happening?” When you reflect on your experiments, when you reflect on your actions, and when you reflect on your failures. Reflection is a very important part of learning. It’s not just learning new skills, it’s also reflecting, “How do I use that? How are things different? How do I apply that? How is this going to make things different?”
Reflection is a very important thing, and reflecting on your failures is a fundamental part of any learning process and growth.
Erin: I’ve heard you say in one of your talks that there are some companies that want to know how many companies you have– If you say, “Oh, I’m starting a company.” Well, how many have you already started? The list of the ones that didn’t work actually works in your favor, because what does that tell that potential investor?
Lital: Yes, yes. I’m originally from Israel, and we have a lot of innovation in Israel. Often, in Israel, if you say that you have a start-up and it’s really successful, then people assume, “Okay, there’s a backstory of how many times you failed until you got to this point.” If you don’t have that story, and you say, “No, this is my first start-up, and it’s going well,” people are really suspicious. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
Like, “Really? That’s your first start-up and you’re already successful? Something must be wrong here.” It’s really expected that you’ll say, “I failed, I tried this, I failed, and now I landed on this, and it’s going really well.”
Erin: Why is it important to actively challenge yourself to think differently, rather than resting on those laurels, those successes? You’ve talked about Failure Friday, to imagine how your business might be operating, rather than looking at all the awards on your walls. Why is that important, Lital?
Lital: Before the pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of companies that were doing really well, but then, when COVID happened, they went bankrupt. Why? Because they focused only on one thing. They only focus on operational excellence, only focusing on the things that are going really well right now in their business. Then when a crisis happened, when something unexpected happens, they go bankrupt, because they’re not prepared.
Innovation is not just responding to external forces, it’s also being prepared for challenges, unlocking new potential, unlocking new opportunities. I think companies should operate on two verticals, exploiting their existing business that’s going really well, obviously, and then also investing in the future of their business so that they’re prepared when the crisis happens. When something happens, you already have a plan. Aside from that, even putting aside all crises and major things that can disrupt your business–
Think about it, innovation is just running a good business. If you continuously invest in your business, you unlock new opportunities, you unlock new revenue streams, you’re running a successful business. You can strengthen your relationship with your customers when you do that, you can raise the value of your brand, because you’re adapting to your customers’ changing needs, changing behaviors, changing expectations, because you’re innovating, you’re growing, you’re improving your customers’ lives. Super important.
It can only benefit the business. If anybody is not realizing that, after all the crazy failures that we’ve seen with so many big, successful companies, then you’re missing a big point of running a successful business. It’s not just harvesting what’s going well right now. It’s always investing in the future of your business, whether there’s a crisis or not. That’s called building a sustainable business.
Erin: You talked about customers there. Let’s move to the other side of the operation here, and dig deep into consumer journeys. How are companies redesigning their services or tapping into new markets to better serve their customers? If you could share an example of how a company has innovated or expanded based on its understanding of a customer journey.
Lital: Very important to understand, obviously, your customer’s journey, and we’re seeing a lot of things that companies are doing to accommodate that. Anything from providing personalized services, something that, for example, any e-commerce platform is doing. We’re all familiar with Amazon. We buy something, we have this recommendation engine that gives us what we want, other things that can be relevant to us. That’s personalization.
Same with Netflix. I watch something, then it knows my profile. It recommends things that are relevant. Personalization is a big thing. We see a lot of omnichannel experiences, companies that are starting something online, completing it offline, or vice versa. We see also companies that are really adapting when they’re looking at their customers’ journey, they’re looking at gaps. For example, it could be a luxury car manufacturer that’s now providing new offers for more budget-conscious, demographic, or younger people.
Or a beauty company, that now has a line for men, looking for gaps along the customer journey. That’s looking in the big picture. Overall, if you think about it today, you can’t just provide the baseline to your customer. That’s not enough. The reason for it is, we’re all used to all these big tech companies’ level of service. Amazon is doing, obviously, an amazing job. Whatever it is that I’m buying from any other provider, even if they’re the tiniest company, I’m expecting the same kind of service.
Amazon does it, you should do it too. I don’t care how big you are, but that’s how it works. We want it personalized. We want it digitized. We want it instant. We want it to be relevant to us. Don’t just give me these general offers, give me something that’s relevant to my needs, that’s going to improve my life. I think the bar is really high, and the most important thing is always to surprise and delight your customer. That’s how you can see it, not just giving them the baseline.
As far as companies that are doing that, there’s a lot of examples. The example that we’re all familiar is LinkedIn. LinkedIn started, actually, as a social network, just connecting professionals to one another, then they collected a lot of data to monetize and grow the business, and they realized that in the customer journey, their customers are actually looking to advance their development, and their career development.
They added job search options, they added job search premium profile, and they understood that building your brand is another key thing, as part of your career development. They allow people to publish articles, to publish media, to get testimonials, networking, they realized that’s also a very important part of your career development, and let’s create groups. All the things that we now take for granted, these are things that a company that started just as a social network, basically added to adapt to their customer needs.
There are more interesting examples, because this is an example that we’re all familiar, but to make the point. I often talk about companies that come from China, because I think there’s a lot of incredible innovation in China. A company that I often talk about is Pinduoduo, it’s an online retailer, that’s completely changing the rules of online shopping. They’re nothing like Amazon, they’re nothing like Alibaba. What happened is that during the pandemic, we all became these online shoppers, which is great.
Then we were still missing going shopping with our friends, having that experience that you can only have offline, when you go to a shopping mall, or you just walk on the street with your friend. You’re having fun, and you are shopping, which you can’t really do when you’re just clicking and shopping online. With Pinduoduo, you can do both, and online, they introduced the team purchasing model, where you can basically buy things according to their listed price, like we’re used to, or you can team up with friends.
The more friends you team up with, you can unlock more discounts, you can have fun with your friends online, and play different games. I think Pinduoduo is a really cool example, and they see themself like– The business that sits between a supermarket where you buy products, and Disneyland, or Disney World, where you have fun. They see themself in between. Their tagline is together, more saving, more fun. Very interesting.
They had also a soft launch in the US last year, when Amazon was dipping. I don’t know how successful they will be in the US, in North America, but they had a soft launch here, as well.
Erin: Say the name again, of the company.
Lital: Pinduoduo. I think duo is groups, in Chinese. Pinduoduo.
Erin: Pinduoduo. They’re a perfect example, it sounds like. Why is it so important to find new ways to surprise and delight consumers in their lives? Why do you think that is?
Lital: The most important thing, when you’re in business, is to improve your customers’ lives. If you’re a business owner, or if you want to be successful in your business, that’s the only thing that you should always ask yourself, “How do I improve my customers’ lives?” Not, “How do I collect more data to sell more?” Not, “How do I add more features, products, and services, to sell more?” How do I create more value, that will actually improve my customers’ life?
When you improve your customers’ lives, you build a strong relationship with your customers. You build a stronger brand, you build retaining– You retain your customers.
Erin: Loyalty.
Lital: Loyalty. Exactly. It’s the most important thing to do in business. It’s why you are in business.
Erin: Surprise and delight, I like that. Can you explain to me– This is something that you’ve delved into, and I just love the whole idea of what you call platform thinking, the whole concept. How does a business evolve from a product to a platform? What are the big differences?
Lital: A lot of differences. A platform business model is very different than a classic economy business model. A classic business model is a very– You have very linear business flow. You create a product, or a service. If it’s a product, you package it, and then you sell it down the pipe. It’s a very linear flow of business. A platform is almost like a matchmaker. You can think of Amazon, for example, Uber, or Airbnb.
All the big tech companies are platforms. They’re basically matchmakers. They match service providers and users so that they can exchange value. The purpose of a platform is to increase those interactions. For example, let’s just look at Amazon. Amazon opened its infrastructure. Amazon used to be, actually, a classic economy company. It used to sell books directly to customers, and that’s it. Faster and cheaper.
Then they created a platform so that anyone, anywhere, can sell anything on Amazon marketplace, so we’ve got the service providers, and on the other side, we have the users. Amazon sits in between, it’s like a triangle infrastructure. They’re empowering those two sides to connect and to exchange value, and that’s how they grow. When we’re talking about platforms, we’re talking about massive exponential growth. This is why they are all the big tech companies.
You can grow so much more than a classic economy company, because the value that you create has no limits. The service providers can be anyone, not just your employees, it can be anyone in the world. That interaction between service providers and users is what’s called the network effect. The network effect is really the– I’d say the core of a platform. That’s how a platform grows. The network effect means as more users join, the value increases.
It’s not increasing because it’s a numbers game. It increases because of the interactions between the service provider and the consumer. For example, if we look at Airbnb, Airbnb’s KPIs for success is not how many people downloaded the app or used the service. That’s a numbers game. That’s old-school business. Their KPIs for success is how many hosts connected with travelers, how many experienced providers connected. As there are more connections, the value grows.
I’ll give you another example. For example, if we look at the App Store. App Store is also a platform. It empowers software developers to create apps. It empowers them by giving them an SDK, a software development kit. Usually, companies which empower others to create value provide them something that they can use to create that value. Amazon provides them with web services, other things, Airbnb provides them with access to groups, photographers
In the case of the App Store, they provide them an SDK. All these software developers can use the SDK to create apps. As more and more software developers create apps for the App Store, and it can be Android, or Apple, it doesn’t matter, more users want to use those apps, because there are more apps. Because there are more users, more app developers want to create more apps. Users create value for users. That’s the network effect.
It’s a very different way of growing a business, compared to a linear business, that you take one thing and you sell it directly to the customer, as opposed to a platform, where you enable the creation of value by others. Those others can be unlimited. It’s unlimited merchants on Amazon platform. Unlimited users, unlimited drivers on Uber, unlimited riders. It’s unlimited. That’s why they’re growing massively, and they are dominating our economy. It’s very different.
Erin: Where is a good place to start when it comes to all of this? We’ve talked about so much, so much to take in, especially for legacy established organizations, or companies. How can you start to integrate an innovative, disruptive mindset into your current approach to business?
Lital: The most important thing is to start with your people. This is why I mentioned this human potential. You got to create a culture where people feel free to be themselves, feel free to give their feedback, feel free to participate, and share their creative ideas. If you don’t have that, you’ve got nothing. That’s called psychological safety in the company. That’s actually grounded in very deep research conducted by Google.
They spent two years with 37,000 people, 180 teams, and looked at what is the number one indicator to create high-performing teams. The answer was psychological safety. When people feel free that they can just be themselves.
Erin: Okay. Let’s talk about psychological safety before we go on any more. How do we integrate that? How would REALTORS®, for example– If you have any ideas about how– Besides companies like Google, where does it fit in with company growth on the ground?
Lital: This is basically the baseline of your culture. It’s building a culture of innovation and creativity. Really, it’s industry agnostic. It’s making sure that people feel free in the company, to participate and be themselves. When they feel free to participate and be themselves, then you tab into their creative thinking. There are different ways to do that. You can, for example, build courage into meetings.
Something that I often do– When you are a leader, when you have a big team, often, you’re really excited about something. You’ll start the meeting by saying, “Okay, I have the strategy. We’re going to do this, and this. I’m really– This is going to be great. Anybody has any feedback?” When you start the meeting this way, no one’s going to step up and say, “This is a terrible idea. Definitely not. What are you talking about?”
No one’s going to do that, because you’re so excited about it. What I do to really get feedback, and honest feedback, which is so important when you’re driving innovation, is say, “Okay, I’m thinking of going towards this direction, but now, what we’re going to do is, we’re going to break the team.” It can be 10 people, it can be 20 people, but break them into small teams of three. Three is usually the magic number.
Erin: Why?
Lital: It’s a long story. It’s accountability. It’s psychological accountability. It’s a good number, because when you have three, then it’s not just one dominating the conversation, as when you have two. When you have three, there’s accountability.
Erin: We’ve broken into small groups of three.
Lital: Whether in person, or you can use Zoom breakout rooms, whatever, and then you tell them, “Okay, for the next 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever, your job is to criticize what I’ve just said and write everything that I’m not seeing.” You can even give them access to a Google Doc so you can have everything written at the end. Then, very important, is to do a round table so that every group shares their feedback.
When you’re doing this round table, which is very important, no one’s going to water down their thoughts. Everybody has to say something, so everybody wants to say something clever. Everyone’s really going to think about how they can criticize and give you constructive feedback. This is how you build in courage, build in critical thinking into your everyday meetings, or strategic meetings, that are important for innovation.
Then you gather the feedback, and then you make the decision, but otherwise, just having big meetings with 10 people in the room and asking them to be critical about your ideas, it’s probably not going to happen.
Erin: It stomps on your wings.
Lital: Exactly. That’s an example of building psychological safety, which is so important, because otherwise, you can’t tap into creative thinking. I think there are many other things, cultivating a learning culture, which we talked about at the beginning, is also fundamental if you want to grow, and be disruptive. When I’m talking about a learning culture, you want to see learning as a process, not just an end goal.
A lot of the times, we think, “Oh, if I just get that degree, if I just get that job,” that’s not learning culture. Basically, learning never ends. Even if you’re a data scientist today, you need to learn about new developments next week, next month, next year. Learning never ends. Often, when I talk to leaders about the importance of putting learning at the heart of the organization, I hear, “Yes, we’re sending our employees to different master classes, workshops, to learn new skills,” which is great.
That’s what you need to do, to learn new skills, but then they go back to work and they don’t apply any of these skills. Also, when I talk about the learning culture, I’m talking about learning by doing in the workplace, not just in the workshop, so really, through experiments, through trying things, through failure as well, through discovering what fails, so you get closer to success. Understanding that the innovation process is a very, very messy process.
It’s not a linear process. A lot of people expect it to be linear, and it’s not linear. It’s never going to be linear. It’s a very messy process. You try things, you go back, you change your plan, you try again. It’s an iterative process. You invest, you weed out the bad ideas, you invest in the good ideas. It’s an iterative process. You want to have a big vision, you want to know where you’re going, but you don’t want to have a rigid plan.
So many times, we work with companies that have such a rigid plan, so many strict hypotheses that they want to prove, that they focus so much on proving those hypotheses than focusing on the big vision where they want to go. It’s important to have this flexibility. That’s what I meant with the adaptability, have this flexibility, agility, when you’re growing, when you’re trying things. Know where you’re going, but adapt your plan constantly to fit the market, to fit your experiments, to fit whatever you’re discovering along the way.
One more thing to add is, when we’re talking about disruptive innovation, you want to see innovation as not just making something better, not just making something more cost-effective, more cost-efficient, or just adding a little feature. That’s not disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is creating something completely transformative, maybe you’re even going to access a new market, maybe you’re accessing a new demographic of customers, starting completely new products and services.
You want to think 10x growth, not just 10%. If you’re thinking 10% growth, you’re probably on the obvious path, that everyone else is on. You want to think really big, because when you think really big, you tap into opportunities, you tap into this creative thinking, that has no limits. Obviously, you’ll try things and you’ll get to where you need to, but you want to think very big. Today, we have technology, we have AI, we have the tools, we have data, we have everything that can help us to create very big, imaginative things.
The problem is, most of the time, we don’t think big, we don’t ask big, disruptive questions. When you want to innovate, ask yourself– What do you need to know so that the answer that you’ll get will completely transform your business? Not just improve it, completely transform your business. You can get those answers today. That’s the difference. We have everything we need to step up. We need to ask these big, bold questions.
Erin: Yes. If I understand you correctly, the future, the tech, the present, and everything that is there, if we just step past our humanity, not drop our humanity, but step through the things that hold us back.
Lital: Exactly. Use those innate, human capabilities, like imagination, creativity, curiosity, empathy. That’s our power to unlock new value.
Erin: Thank you. On behalf of CREA and the members who are here today, or who are watching, who are listening. I want to thank you so much, Lital Marom, for sharing your insight, your experience, and your openness, and opening our eyes today, to change, to the future, to how to reimagine ourselves and see past our own limitations, to the boundaries of our business. It’s been such a pleasure having you on REAL TIME.
Lital: Thank you.
Erin: What’s next for you? I have to ask. There’s a whole bunch of think tank-y stuff going on in Ottawa right now, and you are sparking like crazy about it.
Lital: What’s next? Yes, I’m working on a few projects I haven’t released yet. I can’t share right now, but I’m just super busy and loving what I do.
Erin: Okay, and pushing through the fear. Don’t be afraid. Right?
Lital: Yes.
Erin: You’re going to be great. You have been great. Ladies and gentlemen, Lital Marom.
Lital: Thank you.
Erin: Well, there you have it. Our first live recorded episode of REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® in Canada. We hope this episode added a little surprise and delight to your day, and more importantly, a little inspiration to reimagine what’s possible for your own business. Need more inspiration? Our catalog of REAL TIME episodes has you covered, from marketing tips to cultural trends, and more. We’ve got your insights and resources right here, on REAL TIME.
REAL TIME is produced by Alphabet® Creative, Rob Whitehead, of Real Family Productions, and I’m your host, Erin Davis. Thanks again for listening. We cannot wait to talk to you, or maybe even see you again in person, next time on REAL TIME.