Five for Friday

When I was in elementary school back in the late 1970s (yes, I know I’m dating myself), my 6th grade teacher had us write a story about what we would be doing in the year 2000. At that time, the year 2000 seemed fantastical and super far away. We all envisioned ourselves living a life just like the Jetsons. Flying around in our saucers with our robot maid keeping the house clean, we could watch television on a giant screen or fly over to a friend’s house. When you look at science fiction (including my own grade school story of the year 2000, which is long gone now) - it can be funny to see how wrong we often are about what the future really looks like.

Think back to when you started your first job. Whether it was 30 years ago or even five years ago, the changes that have taken place have been dramatic. And things continue to change every day.

I was introduced to the concept of email in my first job many years ago, but spent more time in front of the fax machine back then than I did in front of a computer. At my first teaching job at the local university, some professors were still using overhead projectors, and my classroom came with a chalkboard! And no, it wasn’t that long ago.

More recently, I worked with a company that made screens for movie theaters that hit some troubled times during the pandemic. And another that created oxygen for hospitals, that couldn’t keep up with demand. Neither company could have ever predicted that we would enter a global pandemic - but they both had to learn to pivot pretty fast to stay in business.

Take a minute now and look back five or ten years. What were you doing then? What has changed since then? Have your communication channels changed? Your marketing choices? The capabilities of any technology that assists you when you are developing the products or services that you sell? What will change in the next five years? Ten years? Can you make any predictions? Or be prepared for a major pivot?

Don’t worry, there is no crystal ball and I am not a fortune teller. My background is much more boring than that. I am a market researcher who has worked with start-ups and growing small businesses for years. I have helped small businesses make financial projections before they made their first sale, and I have helped them find new markets when their first markets became saturated.

How does that work? I like to think that I operate at the intersection of fact and possibility. I start with hard data - facts on market size, customer counts, pricing analysis and the like. But then to make forecasts, I have to combine those facts with straight up guessing. The goal is that my guesses are educated guesses, not total SWAGs. Preparing for the future - for you and your business - works similarly.

First, we take what we know now about what’s going on around us. Like here in January of 2023, we are looking at massive rainfalls in California, everyone going gaga for ChatGPT, and a future with EVs that may or may not be driverless.

Then, we combine those facts with some guesses to forecast what the future might look like. It requires a combination of attention to detail and creativity. Plus lots of reading.

Just like businesses hire a market research specialist to help them determine the best strategic decision based on market data, you can ‘hire’ a futurist to determine your company’s potential future path based on current events.

Let me be your professional futurist. Every week, I will share five topics that stood out to me in the news that I think are an indicator of change for small businesses. I will do the homework - the reading of the articles, the compiling of the stories, the assessment of what they mean. You just need to read my newsletter and make the connections that are unique to your business. How might the stories I share impact your business, your competitors, your customers or your suppliers? Do these changes represent an opportunity for your business? Or a threat?

Does that sound like a deal? We’re talking maybe five to ten minutes a week to read some pretty interesting and entertaining (if I do say so myself) news stories that could tip you off to some change that is coming your way.

Curious? Check out this issue from the first week of 2023 as an example of the paid version. And here’s a video of the same issue as an example of the free version.

If you’re interested, then add your name to the subscribe button to gain access to a free weekly video sharing my Five for Friday topics. Ready for a little more detail? Then subscribe to the paid newsletter and you’ll get an amazingly awesome newsletter with some future forecasting for your small business in your In Box every week. If you decide it’s not worth the five to ten minutes of your time and the cost of the newsletter, then unsubscribe anytime. But I’m hoping that you and I will connect via the ‘cloud’ once a week. Please join me and your future-forward peers!