How to Become a Better Futurist with Jeremy Goldman from Futureproof

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Speaker B: Hey, everyone. Dave here with the How We Solve podcast. Today I'm speaking with Jeremy Goldman. Jeremy is a futurist, author of Going Social and Getting to like international keynote speaker, and the, uh, host of the Future Proof podcast. Jeremy, how are you doing today?

Speaker C: Hey, great to be with you.

Speaker B: Thank you. So, uh, great to have you. I'm always talking about the past, right? All the time. I have guests. Come on. It's sort of like what you've done, where you came from, things like that. You were the first futurist, uh, that I've had so far. So tell me just a little bit about that title. What does it mean to be a futurist?

Speaker C: There are people I've spoken to who are far better futurists than me in that they're classically trained in that regard. I look at it and I say that being a futurist is somebody who tries to break down all the different possibilities of what's going to happen in the future and tries to, uh, better predict on an ongoing basis what is going to occur and to do so in a very pragmatic, non dogmatic fashion.

Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. So when it comes to the future, this might seem like a silly question, but why does it matter? Uh, nobody really knows. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. And so does it make sense that we're investing time and energy to try to predict what's going to happen? So make that argument that case for us. Yeah.

Speaker C: No. First off, it absolutely matters. And am I going to get things right all that often? No. But am I going to be wrong less often than most people? The answer to that is probably yes. And that's because I'm trying to break down things into a number of different components. Speaking to a lot of people smarter than me, I like to say that I'm the least intelligent person that I know. Which is another thing that really helps you be a better futurist is speaking to people who tackle things from all different vantage points. So the short answer is that if you don't get the future 100% right, but you're slightly less wrong than other people who you're competing against in business, then that can be very rewarding.

Speaker B: That's a great point. A lot of so much in business, life, sports, I do feel like is trying to be less wrong. It's trying to make less errors than the other person. Because, uh, Nobody is ever 100% right. Nobody is acing their serves every single time. But if you can be a little less with your unforced errors, you're going to be better off predicting the future. Maybe that's not really the right terminology that I should be using, but basically having this opinion or idea of what's going to happen, you've already introduced this idea of maybe talking with experts. So I have a feeling that maybe that's going to be a large part of what it entails. But how does one go about determining what's going to be relevant tomorrow, a year from now, 10 years from now?

Speaker C: Uh, it's interesting because you were talking a little bit about looking backwards and I think that that's actually part of it too because yes, uh, definitely speaking to a lot of different sources, very important. But to look at history. So perfect example is with the pandemic, a lot of people said, oh, this is death of the city. Right. And uh, that there aren't going to be a lot of people in New York or Boston or wherever. And if you study history, then you'd look to see there was a plague 100 years ago. Well then looking to see what happened then is very important. But it's also important to contextualize it and to look to see how are things different now. So for instance, if you live on a farm, but you can get high speed Internet, that's a very different situation. You know, like there will be a little bit of a difference. And frankly, I think this is where studying a lot of different disciplines comes in handy because you talk about history, you talk about science, but how about, uh, psychology? Human beings, it might not make sense that we keep on seeking one another out, considering the fact that we're biological creatures who can get sick from one another physically. And folks like you and I can be looking at one another over a zoom or squadcast or whatever, but that doesn't mean that we're wired to get the most satisfaction out of that. So that's why I'd say consumer psychology and just understanding the human brain is another key component.

Speaker B: Yeah, you often hear the phrase something like history repeats itself. Right. And I guess that has to do with the fact that we are human beings. We were human beings, uh, several hundred years ago. So if something similar happens, we're maybe likely to have a Similar reaction. But like you said, we have to take into whatever are the differences and changes now that make us different from the bubonic plague hundreds of years ago. So I might as well. I mean, I feel like I would be wrong to not at least push that question a little further. What do you feel is going to happen with cities now with the pandemic?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think that, in short, because people do want to be close together and also because this is sometimes to our benefit and sometimes not, we have a good ability to kind of forget, uh, things that have happened to us. So you even see. When are people going to be going back to movie theaters? Well, uh, not as much as they did before. But people who want to go to movie theaters are going to forget about the last year and a half and they're going to think about what good things that they happened in movie theaters before that. Right. And the same thing's true of museums and concerts and everything else that makes cities worthwhile to live in. Right. So for people who just want to squeeze life to its fullest, I'm dialing in today from New York, so I'm a bit biased. That's something that you have to keep in mind, is that you do get a lot out of life by living in close proximity to other people. And by the way, just, uh, not to divert the topic too much, but understanding your own biases and where you're coming from is probably one of the biggest elements of, uh, being able to successfully predict the future. If you are an email marketing vendor and then you are predicting that email marketing is going to be 200% bigger the next year, I would say, well, that might be a little bit suspect because you have an economic incentive to believe that. Right. So talking to people from all different vantage points to see whether or not something's going to grow is also important.

Speaker B: Very well said. So let's talk just a little bit about the. I do want to get into the real future future, but let's just talk about the present for a second. Let's say we were having a conversation 10 years ago, and I said, jeremy, what are some of the trends that we should be looking out for? What do you think you would have said? I mean, what. I guess now in the present is something that 10 years ago somebody would have said, this is going to be a big thing for the future. And how. What were some of the signs that we should have known about?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a, uh, really interesting way that you put that, because I think that a lot of the things that we are talking about being so incredibly big now, for the most part, they existed 10 years ago. What we've just really seen is an acceleration of a lot of the things that we had seen before. So for instance, E commerce was pretty big. It's still pretty big. It's just a lot bigger. And part of the reason why people have been saying, for instance, virtual reality is going to take over things in the next few years, and people have been saying that for two decades now, is because it's much more sexy and exciting to say that something new that is going to pop out of nowhere and just take over the world. And the reality is often a little bit more complex than that. So in terms of the digital transformation of most organizations, that's just gone up dramatically and rapidly. Certainly the amount of time that we spend on smartphones and the amount of time that we spend connected to mobile phones and social media, those are things that have greatly accelerated. But at the same time, these are all things that did exist, uh, in one form or another 10 years ago. So in that sense, I say it's really been much more of an acceleration as opposed to a sea change.

Speaker B: What are some of the forces behind that acceleration?

Speaker C: Oh, I mean, first off, I think that the pandemic very, uh, recently, uh, has just made everything accelerate that much faster. But even going past that point, like if you go further back, you see a number of different things that are happening. I mean, one of the key things that's pretty simple is the fact that really good smartphone technology has just gotten better and better and better and cost effective enough for some. And what's interesting is that doesn't mean that it's become inexpensive. It's just that the value proposition of this thing that even if you're not that rich, this is a thing that's basically going to be the most important thing in your life. That's inanimate object. It's become more important than your car, more important to a lot of people than where they live. So because of that, it's expensive, but its relative value to the average human being has been perceived as such that, sure, I'll go get one with money I don't have. So I'll throw down $1,200. And as a result, a lot of people are enabled to partake in activities that previously they might have only done for a few hours a day while they were in front of a desktop or a laptop. Now they can basically be. I said to my wife last night, Just to be annoying, uh, when she's playing with her phone right before bed. I said, are you logged on right now? And it's just uh, a funny idea because who logs onto the Internet anymore? You are always on the Internet. It's not really possible to be off of it.

Speaker B: Exactly true. Yeah. I don't think I've logged off since 2005. What were some of the things, looking back that you thought by now would be for sure a hit that just happened really taken off yet?

Speaker C: It's interesting. I don't even know if there's something that is. I will say. What I'll say is that I do think that there's probably a little bit more in the way of inroads that augmented reality and virtual reality. Probably I would have expected a little bit more of an inroad not to totally take over the world. We definitely saw more use cases for, uh, those in particular augmented reality as a result of the pandemic. You know, like if you wanted to try makeup on in a store, you couldn't do that in the last year or so as a result. Try before you buy, uh, things like that all of a sudden had a use. You know, I can't touch this, but I can look to see what it is going to look like on. That's something that I'd say probably didn't connect in exactly the same way as not just me, a lot of, uh, people predicted. But not taking away from the fact that I would have expected it to have gotten a little bit farther. That's actually one of the hallmarks of people who are better at predicting where things going is to be able to admit fault and to be able to point out because you can't get better at it if you don't actually point fingers at yourself. And see, these are the things that I've gotten wrong. These are the things I could have gotten better.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Uh, also in the space of gaming, for example, I sort of expected VR to, I don't know, have a bigger hold by now. Maybe that was foolish to think that. But no, it's still to me I get the impression that most people are still on a console or a computer or something like that, but not, not doing so much VR.

Speaker C: By the way, you bring up, uh, whenever you're wrong about something like that, sometimes you're right about a bunch of elements of it and then you're wrong about one element. And it's important to notice which element that you're wrong about. So for instance, people who've Tried the technology. Generally speaking, like the technology, VR has a hardware component to it, right. There's also a bit of a network effect depending on its usage. So if other people don't have it, you're not incentivized to get it right. And if it's still too expensive and if you subsidized it basically and gave everybody a VR headset, they'd be happy with it. But that's, uh, not the world we live in.

Speaker B: Is the fact that people really like it. Is that enough to say that this will be a thing at one point or another? That the other things, the barriers, the cost entry and the network effect, that eventually those things tend to solve themselves, but as long as the core underlying fan base is there, it will eventually be a thing.

Speaker C: I think then having people like something is a major component of it. But then like you just hinted at, there are so many different parameters, right? There's the cost, there's regulation. Let's not, uh, forget about the fact that autonomous self driving cars, the technology is further ahead of the regulation. So really government is the thing that's technically more in the way than the technology. So I would say there are a number of different components, but ultimately if it speaks to people, that is, uh, a major hurdle. That just because the technology's there and ready for primetime won't be enough if it doesn't really speak to people and their needs.

Speaker B: For sure. Let's really get into the future now. I'm sure you've got your eye on a few trends going on that you expect will be impactful for businesses in the next, say, 5, 10, 15 years or so. And if I'm speaking, um, at the wrong timelines, let me know what are kind of the top ones out there that you say if you're not paying attention to this, you are likely to be, I guess, at a disadvantage in the future to a competitor relative to a competitor.

Speaker C: Well, I'll tell you one thing about that. Just to backtrack for a second. I like to think of myself a little bit. If I am a futurist at all, I would say more of a short term one. Short term futurism is essentially thinking about how far ahead, uh, can you be relatively accurate to some extent and to still be helpful to people. And I say the average chief marketing officer, they're only in their job for a few years if they're lucky. So if I can predict something with a ton of accuracy happening 15 years from now, it doesn't do any good to anybody. I mean, short of me investing and that's stock on holding it. So that being said, I think that one thing that I am following, which I think is going to be a trend in the future, no pun intended at all, but the idea that we are all going to be interested in giving away possibly more and more of our privacy and that privacy will be an old fashioned notion and that we might even, you might remember and some of your listeners might remember clout with a kid where people just tried to take all of your influential in, uh, influencer marketing. Or at one point they said I was influential in Miley Cyrus for some reason, I don't know why, that was way ahead of its time. But the very fact that we will be able to be scored based off of how good or impactful we are in different areas, based off of a lot of different information that we give up knowingly about ourselves and that people get more and more greater personalized experiences based off of the amount of data that they're willing to give up, Uh, I think that we've already kind of started crossing that chasm and people are going to get just used to it. So that is something that I think that is going to not just continue, but really accelerate the amount of information that we give up and companies willing to reward us for giving all of that up. And it's not unreasonable to think that government will get in on it, which, uh, China has already done. But just because it's big in China doesn't mean it won't ever be big here.

Speaker B: Very true. I do remember clout. Yeah, I do remember clout because I used to have an influencer marketing software. So right around the time, and I'm thinking, thinking I'm like 2014, 2015, 2016, right around that time you could have a clout score and it was based on your audience size maybe on different platforms and things of that nature. And I haven't followed up with it recently. I guess maybe it didn't, maybe it hasn't taken off yet. But I do agree with what you're saying about people just becoming more and more lax with their privacy. On the one hand, I do sometimes sense a little bit of a pullback on those types of things. For example, I've had a friend message me and say, I'm no longer going to be on WhatsApp. Can you message me on a signal or something like that? They said, well, because of the way the data privacy is monitoring and there's a number of documentaries and things like Netflix that have tried to kind of put that out there to the general public to make them aware of what's going on with their privacy and their data and the way in which it's being used and it's sometimes abused by companies. Do you feel those types of things are enough? Or it's just kind of like there's a large boulder that has a lot of momentum and even if there's a few conscientious objectors along the way, it's going to kind of steamroll them.

Speaker C: Okay, I'm really glad that you asked that question because I think that as human beings, one thing that we like to do is we like to tell stories. We basically shorthand things. So when I say this is what it's going to be like, we're going to have a lot of trade offs in the future tied towards personalization, it almost sounds like that's what 100% of the world is going to like. Right. Think about how many people don't like streaming services. Right. There are probably more people alive right now who dislike streaming services than there were who were alive in the world, uh, at that years ago, or forget about that 200 years ago. So there's a fragmentation of experience. Uh, and there are more and more people who want to pick more and more different paths. Right. So when it comes time to using Signal versus WhatsApp, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say the trade off is not worth it and there's going to be an experience available for those people. Just like there are going to be people who feel like they're getting enough from a WhatsApp. Ah, where I don't love some of the privacy issues associated with Facebook, but I'm kind of okay with it because there's a network effect and I have just so many more people who I can connect with on this platform. Right. So it's not to say that everybody will be okay with it, but there definitely will be a little bit of a fragmentation in different people who feel different ways about these things.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I also want to backtrack a quick second too, because I feel like I need to highlight the fact that you mentioned privacy because me maybe not being a futurist and having a simplistic way of thinking about things. If I think about trends, maybe I would say something like, oh, organic foods, like the growth in organic food. But I think the way in which you're kind of phrasing the trend is organic food is not necessarily the trend. It's like the byproduct of the trend. The Trend is people wanting to know the source of their nutrition. It's wanting to live healthier. It's things like that. And I think that's relevant because that trend is going to affect multiple industries. Whereas if I'm just focusing on something like organic foods, and I'm kind of just, um, dialed in on that, but I'm not seeing the bigger picture. So, I mean, when you think about futurism and trends, it sounds like we should be thinking about on a larger, what is the real at the top of the pyramid here? Privacy. And that is going to trickle down to various industries. Am I right?

Speaker C: Basically, the way I think about it is kind of being a macro thinker, right? So best way to describe it is micro would be saying, my four and a half year old gets very, very close to the street. Uh, but he doesn't enter it. Okay. And that's observing something that's happen right in front of me. The macro way would be, what is that telling me? What does that mean? Let's extrapolate from that and let's try to observe something about my four and a half year old as a result of that. So in that case, it's like he cares a lot about his safety, but he also wants to show his independence. And when you think about a thing like organic, uh, food, for instance, that perfect example perceived as being a little bit safer. And that's ultimately, it's not necessarily people wanting to be closer to nature. It's people seeing that they're going to get something out of it. So to tap into the broader why behind something. And what's interesting is you can peel back a bunch of different layers, right? There's a why behind the why behind the why. And doing that helps you understand the human behavior. So there might be a technology where the technology is ready for primetime, but the human mind isn't and never will be because we can't rewire our ourselves in a generation.

Speaker B: Awesome. I have one last question. I wanted to save it to the end because I didn't want it to dominate the episode. Um, but I feel like if we're having a discussion about futurism, M, there has to be some question about crypto in this conversation. And feel free to stop me if that's not a specialty or you haven't spoken with an expert. But that has obviously been a major trend or whatever interest. A lot of enthusiasm behind it certainly reflected in the price of the coins. And what is your interpretation of what's going on now and just sort of the implications for the future of that space.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I was, I don't want to say skeptical, but, uh, just a little bit less enthusiastic about it compared to some people. Until I spoke to Tim Draper. He's a noted investor who really started explaining why people were so, uh, excited about the space. And if you look at the overall trajectory of how we went from trading things as a society to then we started using different things that were like early forms of currency to then modern currency to then credit cards. Right. There is a natural evolution there where we're constantly trying to figure out how we can have better systems from a fiscal, uh, standpoint. And yeah, I think that while you see that the technology part of it is people have to get more used to it, there has to be a little bit better explanation to the. I say there are always going to be the early adopters, but then there are the people who come right afterwards. And for any technology to really take off, you've got to do a better job, uh, at explaining what the technology is to that second group, because the first group is going to put in all of the effort that they need in order to really understand what its value is. But if you don't do a better job as a society explaining to that second group what the value is and why they should care, then it just takes longer for things to take off. So, in short, crypto big believer based off of. Studying trends and patterns based off of, like I was saying. But in terms of when that actually breaks and to what extent, that's another question. Another thing I'll say is that it's not going to be a straight line. There will be some bumps along the way because sometimes there's a little bit of irrational exuberance where people get a little bit ahead of the curve. In order for this to really permeate society, we've got to do a better job at explaining the value to the layperson.

Speaker B: Awesome, Jeremy. Very scintillating conversation. Not my usual, but I enjoyed it a lot. For people who want to learn more about you and your work, where should they go?

Speaker C: Yeah, I definitely recommend they go to futureproofshow.com where they can check out my podcast. Uh, I think they'll enjoy. Like I said, I guarantee everybody that is on the show is approximately 123% more intelligent than I am. So, uh, yeah, it's definitely worth checking out.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks so much, Jeremy.

Speaker C: This is great. Thank you.

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