Today’s track: Lithonia — Childish Gambino
Childish Gambino wrote Lithonia as a rock ballad about a guy who did everything right — put in the years, paid the dues — and then looks up and realizes the crowd he was performing for isn’t there. Nobody’s watching. Nobody cares what he did with his life. The chorus says it a lot more bluntly than I’m allowed to at 5 AM.
Most people hear that song as bleak.
I hear it as the truth, and the truth is freeing.
Nobody’s coming to save you. Not the market, not the Fed, not a brokerage, not a boss, not a rich uncle, not a rate cut in November. Nobody. And once you actually sit with that — not as a complaint, as a fact — the whole thing flips. If nobody’s coming, then nobody’s stopping you either. The stage is empty. You can do whatever you want on it.
And here’s the part that gets me fired up on a Friday: there has never, in the history of the world, been a better time to be the one who saves you.
Think about what you already have. The internet alone would have made you a wizard in 1990 — every book, every expert, every how-to, in your pocket. That was the miracle. Then AI showed up on top of it, and now the miracle talks back. You don’t have to know how to code. You don’t have to know how to design, or write a contract, or build a spreadsheet, or set up a system. You have to be able to say what you want. That’s it. That’s the whole skill now. Articulate it clearly, and it gets built.
Golly.
Ten years ago, if I wanted a tool that screened the entire Louisville MLS every morning and ranked the five best deals, I’d have needed a developer, a budget, and about six months. Now it runs at 5 AM before I’m out of bed, and I described it in a conversation. Same with the market data in these emails. Same with half the systems that keep Winner Realty running while I’m in a chemo chair. None of that is because I’m smart. It’s because I said what I wanted, clearly, and kept saying it until it was right.
Some of you have noticed I’ve gotten quieter.
I’m more to myself lately, and it’s not because anything’s wrong. It’s because I’m building stuff with AI all the time now. I’ll get an idea in the hammock or on a walk with the dogs, sit down, describe it, and a few hours later there’s a thing in the world that didn’t exist that morning. Then I send it to three or four friends: hey, what do you think of this? And they poke at it, and I go back and make it better.
That’s the loop. That’s where I’ve been.
And I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect: it feels good in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve done it. Creating something — anything — makes you feel of use. Like you brought something to the table that wasn’t there before. Consuming doesn’t do that. Scrolling doesn’t do that. Complaining about the market definitely doesn’t do that — I’ve tried, it just makes you tired. Once you start making things, you don’t want to stop, because the feeling is the reward.
I wrote a couple weeks ago that the obsessed will inherit the earth — not the credentialed, the obsessed. This is what that looks like in practice. It’s not a personality type. It’s a habit you start on a Friday.
Here’s what I know about you.
You have ideas. I know you do, because you read this thing every morning at 5 AM, and people who do that are curious people, and curious people have ideas. Somewhere in the last month you were at work, or in the car, or halfway through a deal that was annoying you, and you thought: it’d be cool if I could just… do that. Automate that. Build that. Have a thing that did the annoying part for me.
You had at least one clever thought. Maybe you had ten. And then you put it back on the shelf, because building it sounded like a mountain.
Well — you can. You freaking can.
Most of those mountains are molehills now. The thing you thought would take a developer and six months takes an afternoon and a clear paragraph. And if it is a mountain — if it’s truly big — we can climb it. We can mine it. We can take it apart one piece at a time and figure it out. That’s how the world works. It has always worked that way.
It just doesn’t work if you don’t try.
The best proof I have is my own agents.
When somebody joins Winner Realty, they sit down with me for a few hours. We don’t talk scripts. We talk about what they actually enjoy doing — and then we line that up with a business model that pays them for doing it. That’s the whole meeting. What do you like, what are you good at, here’s how to build a business around it, here are the tools.
And then they run.
I mean it — they stop calling me. I used to think that was a bad sign. A quiet agent meant a stuck agent. It’s the opposite. Not because they’re gone, because they’re going. They’re off working on their thing, and they’re excited, and they’re enthusiastic, and they’re empowered, and when they hit a wall they don’t need me anymore. They know how to ask the question now. Half of them tell me they just think, “what would Rob do?” — and then they go do it. That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten in this business, and it’s better than any commission check.
That’s what empowerment actually looks like. Not a poster. Not a pep talk. A person who used to wait for permission, who now just builds.
I wrote last week that happy and healthy is a business model. This is the other half of it. Happy and healthy comes from feeling capable. Capable comes from making things. Making things has never been easier.
So if you woke up this Friday and you don’t feel empowered — if you feel resigned, like this is the life you’ve got and the circumstances you’ve got and that’s that — I want you to hear this from a friend:
Nobody’s coming to save you.
You can save yourself.
And land isn’t as far away as it looks. It’s not across an ocean. It’s around the corner. The distance between the life you’ve got and the one you’ve been thinking about is usually one clearly-described idea and the effort to see it through. That’s it. That’s the whole gap. Effort, plus the ability to articulate what you want — combine those two things and you can be a wrecking ball in this world. You really can. I watch people do it every week.
Nobody’s coming. Good. The stage is yours.
Go into this weekend with that. And then next Wednesday, come sit in on my webinar — Steal My AI Stack — and ask me anything. I’ll show you exactly what I’ve built, how I talk to it, and what it did for my business, and I’ll answer every question in the room. No pitch. I’m here to help. Empowering people is legitimately my favorite thing to do.
📊 Yesterday’s poll: Half of you (9/18) picked the backyard — birds, gardens, a mower with glow-in-the-dark eyeballs — as your little joy. Football was right on its heels at 7. Fresh sheets and a good book tied for dead last with 1 vote each — nobody’s staying inside for either when there’s a mower staring back at them. Sheila said it best: “Football — that’s a whole package. It’s the starting pistol for all things fall.”
What's the "it'd be cool if I could just…" thing you're sitting on?
Rob’s Top Five is ready as always — the five best deals on the Louisville MLS this morning, plus the five most ripe for a lowball and the number I’d offer on each. I can’t blast other agents’ listings to a list, but I can send them to you personally. Reply “FIVE” and they’re yours.
Bonus track: Blue Chicago Moon- Jason Molina
But if the blues are your hunter
You will come face to face
That darkness and desolation
And the endless, endless, endless, endless
Endless, endless depression
But you are not helpless
You are not helpless
Try to beat it
Try to beat it
And live through space's loneliness
And live through space's loneliness
You are not helpless
You are not helpless
I'll help you to try, try to beat it
I'll help you try, try, try to beat it
I'll help you try, try to beat it
I'll help you try, try to beat it
Gently, ,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
PS: Double Double Bonus Song! I just felt the last one needed to be followed up with something empowering. And you are on your way, I know you are!
PSS: Every point rates climb, seller financing gets more interesting. Core PPI — the number the Fed actually watches — just hit 4.6%, the highest since June. July got revised higher too. That's not a blip, that's a trend, and the odds of another hike went up because of it. Rates are creeping back toward 7% — once a bank rate crosses that line, terms start beating rate. Land contracts, seller carries, assumable loans — Andrew Schlag's whole playbook — start looking a lot better than a fresh note at 7%. Sellers get motivated faster too, when financing tightens up. There's more than one way to get a deal done.
PSSS: Steal My AI Stack: What I Actually Built with Claude. Wednesday, September 16, 11 AM ET, 45 minutes, Google Meet. Free, no pitch.
Register here: https://forms.gle/veN4hxejizVo7Hg99
PSSSS: Four new killer listings. Novation, buy and hold, STR rental, and end buyer deal in Mellwood! Check them out here!