Episode 317 - How To Predict The Future As An Entrepreneur
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Patrick explains how to predict the future by studying each generation's level of frustration in any area of their lives. Point 1: What are they most frustrated about? Point 2: How do they solve problems? Point 3: What trends are taking off? Point 4: How can you predict what trend will take off next?
Transcript
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30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start. Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, turn the stars up above. Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.
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I'm Patrick Bedeby, host of ITM, and today I'm going to share with you how to predict the future as an entrepreneur.
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Okay, so let's get right into it. Point number one is studying each generation's level of frustration in any area of their lives.
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Let me explain to you what I mean by this. So, for example, take what Chip Wilson did. Chip Wilson is the founder of Lululemon.
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When I sat down with him, he was telling me how he came out with the idea of Lululemon.
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He would go to yoga classes, and then afterwards, he would go sit outside at the nearest coffee shop next to the girls and women who were leaving the yoga classes and listen to their frustration.
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And he realized everybody was frustrated with their yoga pants. So they would say, you know what, I'd love to go to the mall, but I don't feel comfortable going to the mall with these pants.
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So he went and created pants that made women feel comfortable to wear it at a mall. He takes his business from $0 to $12 billion. He's worth $4 billion today.
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Take, for example, boomers, okay? Boomers are born between 1946 to 1964. So the oldest boomer turns 50 years old in 1996.
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What do you think is the level of frustration that a 50-year-old goes through? Think about it. What does a 50-year-old go through?
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What do you start experiencing in your 40s, right? We hear about it all the time right now, but back then it's kind of private, right?
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Erectile dysfunction, for example. Do you know when Viagra came out? 1996.
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You know how old the oldest boomer was? 50 years old. You know the youngest boomer was only 32 years old.
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How did that happen? What are they frustrated about?
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You can predict the future if you simply take each generation and write down, what are they most frustrated about?
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Go listen to them. Here's what they're most frustrated. Here's what they're most frustrated. Then find a solution for whatever their generation is.
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You can predict what trend is going to take off next.
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Point number two. I can walk into a company or an office or an organization and I can see based on the energy of how the team is together
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and how they solve problems to get in a boardroom, you can pretty much say, these guys are going places.
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They work good together. They flow good together. They're not afraid. There's not fear.
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There's not like somebody that's pushing or bullying and all this other stuff.
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These guys got a good energy. They've got a good team.
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Something's going to happen. You can make a prediction.
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But I can also walk into a room and see somebody that's iron fist.
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No one's opinion matters. Only he speaks. No one can give advice.
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No one can say anything. He never takes anyone's advice.
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You can also figure out who is probably going to leave that environment in no time.
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Because you can't lead like that for a long time.
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Energy of the people can also predict the future of a company or an industry.
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All right, point number three is being able to use data and study and trends to help you make a certain decision about whatever your prediction is.
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I like to look at numbers both internally and externally.
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I want to know what kind of customers like my products.
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You know, what kind of salespeople do well at selling my product.
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What kind of salespeople don't do well at selling the product.
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I want to know what kind of executives do well.
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I want to know seasons, months, hours, seconds, days.
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Let's just say you and I want to buy a sports team together.
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We don't know which sports team, but we want to buy a sports team together.
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Like we're not buying it because we should go buy a basketball team because I love basketball.
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We're buying it purely from an investment standpoint, right?
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Now, if we were to say solve for X, X equals we want the biggest return on our money.
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Which of those five things is going to give the biggest return on our money?
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If we have a sports team, we buy, you know, Raiders.
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I was about to be a minority owner of the Raiders.
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I was buying a 1% of the Raiders and we were going back and forth.
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The guy came up saying, I think it's worth 2.8 billion.
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I give him an offer at 2.3 billion for the 1% of the 2.4 billion, 2.3 billion.
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They're getting Gruden 10 year contract, all this, that stuff.
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I didn't see the trend for me to want to go in and give that kind of a check to them.
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But if you look at the five, soccer may be the one that's going to give you the biggest X factor.
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Soccer is the only sport in America that we are not very good at.
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However, what's the one country that attracts the most immigrants around the world?
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And outside of America, what is the number one sport in the world?
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And immigrants are coming to America and sports is about selling people on that sport.
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Let me tell you what's crazy about this baseball game.
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So imagine all these immigrants are coming and they're selling people how amazing soccer
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One of my investors bought a soccer team just a few years ago for 40 million bucks.
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But you have to study the data and the trends in every possible way to say, I think soccer
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You're buying it because it's the best investment.
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You got to study all the data of all the trends in every possible way for you to say, this
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is my prediction of what's going to happen with this industry.
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So point number four is a little bit different.
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I can look at a company, go to a company and find a product and say, what a boring idea.
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But you can predict an organization's going places because they have an incredible leader
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who is serious, believes in the product, believes in the cause, believes in the mission statement.
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It's not just saying it because it's what you're supposed to write.
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It's 100% convinced that what they're doing is going to make an impact in people's lives
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But the risk is lower if you have an incredible leader that knows how to develop leaders.
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Because it's so hard to find great leaders nowadays.
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There are many investors in the marketplace, VCs, private equity firms, that don't invest
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They invest into an entrepreneur because that person believes in leadership development.
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That person believes in education and that mindset bleeds into other people.
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This is why people banked on the way Andy Grove built leaders.
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This is why people banked on a certain group of leaders that knew how to develop leaders
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So sometimes you can simply predict where an organization is going based on one great leader.
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Okay, point number five is something you're hearing a lot of people talk about with AIs
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You can predict based on where an industry or somebody is going to take a big hit.
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If any skill sets start becoming automated, you can make a prediction on what's going to
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So if you and I used to go to the airport and we would check in and we would get our ticket
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and now it's not, you can kind of make a prediction what's going to be happening within
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If you used to go to a bank and you would talk to a teller you no longer do because everything's
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on your phone, you can kind of predict what's going to be happening with, you know, brick
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and mortar type of, you know, structures that we would go to.
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If you and I used to go to Barnes and Noble and Borders to buy a book and all of a sudden
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we're buying e-books and it's 24% of readers now reading e-books.
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You can kind of predict the future of what's going to happen with Borders and Barnes and
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Every time I go to the Barnes and Noble and Frisco, I ask the guys, I say, listen, how
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The other day, the lady's like, would you like to buy the membership of $25?
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And you're really not going to get a savings on this magazine you buy because it's only
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I just want to make sure you guys stay in business because I want to keep these bookstores
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But the reality is, how much longer do you think Barnes and Noble is going to stay in
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Maybe three years, maybe five years, maybe 10 years.
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Would you really put a million dollars of your investment into Barnes and Noble today?
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Because you can predict the future on what direction that industry is going to simply because things
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are being automated and it's being replaced by a robot.
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Point number six is kind of like point number four, but a complete opposite.
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You know, sometimes you look at a company, you look at an organization, you look at a
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Because they just brought in a team member or they just brought in a CEO or somebody at
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the top that only solves every problem or solution to give themselves the credit and
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And you say, they're about to lose their best talented people.
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And if they're about to lose their best talented people, that company may be going in a
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direction that is not going to be favorable to the investors and the people involved in
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So sometimes you can make a prediction for a company that's going in a bad direction simply
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by recruiting the wrong leader to that company in an executive position.
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So point number seven is really directed to the entrepreneur, to the CEO, the executive.
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Sometimes you've got to leave your corner office and you've got to kind of go and hear what
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Let me explain what I mean by what people are saying.
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Going on Twitter and really hearing conversation and studying one keyword and just going and
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say, wow, a lot of people are talking about this.
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Why did these three companies pivot as big as they did?
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Okay, like I remember in the insurance industry, this was two weeks before the election was
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The insurance industry, everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the president
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And I went and looked at these industry articles that they had on these couple different websites.
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And these guys said internally, such and such person from this company, from Prudential,
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from Trans, from this company, they believe Hillary's going to be president.
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And because of that, they're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing this.
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If I didn't go on those forums, I wouldn't know why the industry is getting tighter.
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Then I kind of got a little bit of a clue of what's taking place.
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Sometimes you got to leave your executive office, your corner office, and just kind of
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go listen and see what's going on really in the real world.
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What are the consumers, what are the industries pivoting about?
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Getting the motivation behind it, and then that'll help you have a little bit more ammunition
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and info about the next prediction you can make.
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I know most people don't like to touch politics, but here's the reality of it.
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You have to know which president, which congressman, which senator is supporting which bill, what
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do they promise they're going to regulate or deregulate if they get elected, and how does
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For instance, you know when certain candidates get up and they say, if I become president, we're
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going to regulate this industry, and we're going to regulate that industry, and we're
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What that really means is, they're going to help the bigger companies out.
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Because overregulation helps the bigger companies.
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Doesn't overregulation hurt the bigger companies?
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It's the smaller company that can't afford it to survive.
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So overregulation actually puts out the smaller companies out of business.
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The bigger companies weather the storm because they got a lot of cash, they end up winning.
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Versus deregulation, when you hear a president say, I'm going to deregulate this.
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Every day I'm going to change a regulation, two regulations, five regulations, I'm going to
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They're helping the small business owner out to be able to compete with the bigger guys.
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So you have to pay attention to politics and regulation, because regulation can tell you
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which big company is going to win, which smaller company is going to win, based on
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whatever regulations your politicians will be making.
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You know, point number nine is kind of tough to explain, but I'm going to do my best to
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Sometimes there are companies that are so good, or individuals or leaders are so good
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at serving people and their customers, where the customer experience is so incredible,
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that the customer wants to make sure that company stays in business.
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Sometimes you can look at a company and say, these guys are going to be around for a while.
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As long as they keep offering customer service and experience like that, people are not going
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When I'm in Dallas, I go to this restaurant twice a week.
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Because they are so good at the way they treat me.
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And every time I'm there, this place is packed.
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You can predict that with great executives, with their people, CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs.
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If somebody treats their group of people well, they're typically going to be winning long-term.
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Okay, so the best way to explain point number 10 is this way.
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I want you to think about your biggest insecurity.
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This is the one that your mom doesn't know about, your dad doesn't know about, your husband,
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No one in the world knows about this insecurity.
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Imagine if right now, in the next five minutes, thousands of people on Twitter are going to
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See, that same insecurity for us as individuals, everybody has, is the same as in a business.
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Sometimes, we keep talking about how to predict the future, about, oh, make the best investment
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Sometimes, some decisions are not about what gives you the biggest return.
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It's about what is a good decision to make so you stay in business.
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So, if you don't ever ask questions about your biggest insecurity as a company.
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For example, there's one thing that was happening with our company back in 2011, 2012.
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If anybody ever figured this out, this one move in 2011, 2012, we're shutting down.
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So many businesses don't think about their insecurities, their weaknesses, and all of
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a sudden, somebody figures it out, and next thing you know, they're shut down.
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You've got to ask the question, what is the one thing that can put your business, put your
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company out of business, and keep figuring out ways to protect that and eliminate that
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You know, point number 11 is something you know about, but I'm going to explain it maybe
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You can call it traditional way of thinking, you can call it stubborn way of thinking, or
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So, a company creates a vision, and they say, this is where we're going, and this is what
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Sometimes, executives confuse a very crystal clear vision to the point where, you know,
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Sometimes on a way to a dream, you get lost and find a bigger, faster way to get there.
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So, you can't necessarily say, here's the only way to get there.
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You've got to be willing to innovate and adapt and be open to certain ideas.
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When companies, organizations don't get open to it anymore, and they're not willing to be
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receptive to it, you already know where that's going.
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Flatline with one of those leaders that's the most creative in that organization to go
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leave and do it better, become a competitor, and take a part of their, you know, market away,
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and all of a sudden, this one goes on, somebody else comes up.
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It just happened so many years, and you can always predict this with major, major companies.
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Point number 12 is by far the toughest one to do because it has the highest upside and
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by far the biggest downside when I explain this to you.
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Point number 12 is not about predicting the future.
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It's not about this data, this trend, this, this makes me predict that I believe this is
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And here's why very few people do it, because you're either a hero or an absolute, full,
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crazy human being for thinking this was even possible.
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Do you want to know why Phil Knight all of a sudden built an empire of Nike being what
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Back in the days, Phil Knight, every year when the NBA had a draft, they would put $25,000
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So here's $25,000, here's $25,000, here's $25,000, here's $25,000, here's $25,000.
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In 1984, one of his advisors said, don't put $25,000 into 20 players.
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If Michael Jordan was a flop, there is no Nike.
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LeVar Ball came out and said, our son is not signing a contract with Nike or Adidas.
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He's just not going to be doing it because we're going to come out with our brand called
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Hey, you don't have to go buy the Louis Vuitton purse if you don't want to.
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Now today, everyone's saying, look, you know, what a crazy guy.
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Lonzo Ball didn't really end up becoming a player that everybody thought he was going
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He should have probably been drafted number seven or eight.
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What if Lonzo Ball replaced him with LeBron James?
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And LeBron came up and became this big of a hit.
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Big Baller Brand, maybe today, a $5 billion company.
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And all these other players are chasing the $20, $30, $40 million contract.
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LeVar Ball just got his son, a $5 billion company.
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And now people say, what a brilliant, genius LeVar Ball is.
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That is how close you are to being a founder of Nike versus being a founder of Big Baller
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That's what happens when you predict the future.
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You're about to create a new trend and people push back and you try to push.
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But if you make it through, you're a rock star.
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If you don't make it through, you're an absolute crazy human being.
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Oh my gosh, this LeVar Ball guy is out of his mind.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
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And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
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