Predict the Future with these Megatrends from Rohit Bhargava
Listen to Rohit Bhargava’s segment on The Small Business Radio Show here
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01:25 BM: Well, this is the time of year that I make my predictions for small business. Having a good run for about five years in a row, I’ve been way off these last few years. My next guest is a person that always knows what the next trend is. Rohit Bhargava is the founder of the Non-Obvious Company and is an entertaining original and non-boring keynoter on innovation trust. He previously spent 15 years in leadership roles at two renowned ad agencies, Leo Burnett and Ogilvy. Rohit is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author of six books and has been invited to deliver keynotes in 32 countries around the world. He’s a popular adjunct professor of storytelling at Georgetown University. His new book out this year is called Non-Obvious Megatrends. Rohit, welcome back to the show.
02:12 Rohit Bhargava: Thank you. It’s always awesome to talk to you.
02:15 BM: It’s been three and a half years. I looked it up.
[chuckle]
02:19 RB: I know. I can’t believe it.
02:20 BM: I missed a lot of trends. So every year, you publish a book. Well, the last nine years, you published a book on non-obvious trends, but this year you say this is non-obvious megatrends and that this is gonna be the last one. Why are you stopping after it’s selling so much?
[chuckle]
02:37 RB: Well, I think one reason is because I wanted to head out on top, Seinfeld style. I think that’s like one of the big reasons. So it was kind of time, you know? It’s been a decade. I’ve been working on this project for 10 years, and every year, I do new trend predictions, and it felt like 2020 was kind of this significant moment in all of our lives, right? And we’re doing things differently. We’re thinking about the world differently. We’re kind of projecting forward. And so it was sort of a perfect time for me to think about how to write this a little bit differently.
03:05 BM: I know. You say 2020. The last thing I turned around, it was like the year 2000. It’s just crazy.
[chuckle]
03:09 RB: You know, I saw this funny meme online that said 2020 was 20 years ago, but 1980 was 20 years ago too, which is weird.
[laughter]
03:17 BM: That’s exactly… Exactly. So, I wanna call out a couple of your megatrends. The one you talk about is ungendering. You say that traditional gender divisions are replaced with more fluid understanding of gender identity, forcing a reevaluation of how we see one another. I think for those who are of my generation, which is really the boomers, we have a hard time with this thing called ungendering. Why is it important in business?
03:41 RB: You know gender used to be this pretty simple sort of answer to a question, right? It was either this or that. It was the second question or the third question we asked on a form, and it was straightforward, and now it’s become kind of a statement for a lot of people. “This is how I wanna be seen in the world.” And so I think we get hung up a lot on this idea of gender and I don’t understand it and it seems kind of strange and everybody is thinking about it, but if we put it in terms of identity as in we all just wanna be understood and addressed in the way that we see ourself, that makes sense to people. Like I get that, you know? And so, I think for small business owners and for any of us, one of the things that we need to think about is are we unintentionally driving people away by just assuming that they fit into the boxes that we put them in?
04:22 BM: So, is it another… For small business, should we think of it as another way to define persona, a buyer’s persona, and now gender becomes a factor, or a non-gendering becomes a factor?
04:34 RB: Yeah. I mean that is one piece of it. It’s customer personas, but the other is just these kind of unintentional things we might do to drive someone away, right? I mean, how important is it really for you to ask that sort of question, for example, in an interaction? Right? I mean depending on what you’re selling, you may not necessarily need to know that. Like if somebody’s interested in what you have to sell and you have a great product or you have a great service and you’re trying to get in front of somebody, don’t lose their attention because you’re unintentionally offending them.
05:06 BM: I thought it was really interesting when, and I think this was either Lyft or Uber, where you go on and you can set your preferred pronouns. So again, that is more personalized service and the driver doesn’t insult someone unintentionally.
05:18 RB: Yeah, and it’s basic sales, right? I mean anybody who’s gone through sales training is like, “Oh, address your customer by name.” Like, “Ask them their name and use their name because everyone loves hearing their name.” And I think this is a reflection of that too, like people want to be addressed with the correct pronoun. And yeah, I’ve been getting emails from people who, in their email signature, it says, “My preferred pronoun is,” and they tell you.
05:37 BM: Right. And I know a lot of people that I know say, “Well, I just don’t get it,” and I’m thinking to myself, “It’s not for you to get, it’s the way they wanna be identified.”
05:45 RB: Yeah, and I think that that is a great point, right? I mean I think we do kind of get hung up on this, “I don’t get it, I don’t understand it.” You don’t have to necessarily understand it. If someone says, “My name is so and so,” you don’t always know how to pronounce it, right? So you ask, you do your best, and you move on.
06:04 BM: Right. Absolutely. Well, megatrend number three, you talk about instant knowledge. As we consume bite-sized knowledge on demand, we benefit from learning more quickly but risk forgetting the value of mastering wisdom. This is an area that I’m really concerned about that people want instant knowledge, but no one’s willing to go deep. How does that really affect us?
06:23 RB: I think there’s a couple of ways. I mean it’s a great example of a megatrend that isn’t inherently positive or negative. I mean look, if I can go onto YouTube and I can learn how to fix a leak in my toilet myself, that’s awesome. I mean that’s great. That’s good for everybody. What’s bad is if all we have is that type of knowledge and no one ever believes that it’s worth spending that extra time to become a master, to become an expert.
06:46 BM: So how does that affect us in business as we’re trying to attract customers?
06:51 RB: Well, one of the biggest things, one of the biggest tenets of content marketing, which I know you talk about, is we wanna educate our customers because if we’re the ones providing the education, we’re building trust and we’re building credibility, and I think this fits perfectly into that because when people want instant knowledge, like who do they get it from, right? And if you’ve got, for example, a financial advisory firm and you’re trying to educate your clients on what they should do with retirement and they’re going online and watching videos from someone else, educating them, what are they gonna think? Right? They’re gonna start thinking, “Well, why isn’t my financial advisor educating me? Why do I feel dumb when I walk into that meeting with my advisor and I don’t feel dumb after these videos? Maybe I should make a change.”
07:28 BM: Rohit, do you think there’s still a place to help people with mastery and wisdom ’cause there are some people inevitably that always wanna go deeper?
07:37 RB: Of course. Yeah. I mean I think that the nice thing about instant knowledge is it can be a gateway to mastery and wisdom. Look, I can go online and I can watch an acting class with Henry Winkler, you know? Or I can learn how to play the banjo with Steve Martin, and those are great. Like if I’m gonna… But am I gonna be a professional banjo player? Maybe not. But that’s okay because I can start with that and if I do find something that I love, something that I’m passionate about, then I’ll spend the time, because the thing with mastery and wisdom is for a lot of people, we become masters and experts in the things that we love, and that’s not gonna change because that’s a human desire.
08:08 BM: It’s interesting to me because when I used to own a 1963 Ford Falcon, it didn’t have any seat belts in it because they weren’t required at the time. But in order to drive it, I need to have seat belts. So I go online. I’m thinking, “How am I gonna install these seat belts? I wonder if anybody’s ever done it?” And of course there was probably six places where you could watch videos of how to install seat belts in a 1963 Ford Falcon. It’s like, who would have known?
08:28 RB: Yep. Yeah, yeah, because the thing about expertise is, and when we learn about things from people like that, they’ve become an expert because they’re passionate about it and one of the things they wanna do is they wanna share that expertise, and that’s really cool that we have instant access to that.
08:43 BM: I love your megatrend number four. You call it revivalism. Overwhelmed by technology and complexity, people seek out a simpler experience, often nostalgia, and remember of a more trustworthy time. That’s kind of like a complex statement. I think some people are looking for a place that is simpler, but was it really a more trustworthy time or just only a couple sources who were trusted?
09:05 RB: I think maybe a little of both and I think maybe we remember the past a little more romantically than perhaps we should.
09:10 BM: For sure.
09:11 RB: But I think that… Revivalism was a really interesting one, because what it meant to me and the implication for any small business was, sometimes this thing that we consider to be bad, this word that we consider to be bad, which is downgraded, actually might be good. Because a lot of times what we think about, when we think about downgraded, is that it’s less optimal. But a downgraded experience, for example, is something that maybe is more human. I mean there was a great story that I wrote about of a grocery brand in the UK that created a slow checkout line, and it was such an awesome idea.
09:43 BM: Wow.
09:44 RB: This slow checkout line was you would get checked out by a real person. So it wouldn’t be automated, it wouldn’t be a kiosk, it would just be like an actual human, and they launched it in partnership with a dementia association for people who actually really need to interact with a person ’cause it’s overwhelming to deal with the technology. And so we all have the opportunity to do that. Like what is our human version? What is our like… We put that label on our stuff saying, “Made in the USA.” Like what if we put a label that said, “Made with empathy.” Like how do we do that?
10:09 BM: So how would you access this if you were a small business owner where you don’t wanna seem like behind the times or not always improving, but at the same time, you wanna really meet the customer to where they wanna be?
10:20 RB: Well, give them the option. Right? I mean, it’s all about options. You say to the customer, like, “We could do it in this way or we could do it the old way. What do you prefer? Which one do you like? What’s better for you?” Like giving them the option, and that’s an opportunity I think for small businesses because for a lot of corporations, like they’ve got these big IT infrastructure projects where they’re removing that other option, like they don’t want you to have the other option, right? And so that’s an opportunity for us because, and I say this ’cause I’m a small business owner too, right, because that gives us a chance to meet the customer in a way that maybe our bigger competition can’t.
10:56 BM: You know it’s interesting because I think that there were years ago where one of the banks came out and said, “Well, no, if you’re gonna actually make a deposit or withdrawal at a teller, we’re gonna charge you three bucks.” That didn’t last too long.
[laughter]
11:07 RB: Yeah. You know they went even one step further. I was actually booking a hotel the other day on Hotels.com, and they actually said on the site that if you book the hotel via our mobile app, we won’t charge you, but if you book it on our website, we’ll charge you five bucks.
11:22 BM: Wow.
11:23 RB: So I’m like now they’re even pushing you off the website onto the mobile app.
11:25 BM: Wow.
11:26 RB: I mean how extreme can we get here?
11:28 BM: Wow. So megatrend number nine is called protective tech. As we rely on predictive technology to keep us and our world safe and convenient, we contend the privacy trade-offs required to make it work. How… We do wanna be protective, but a lot of times people are willing to give up their information. They don’t care about their privacy. Where does that stand do you think in the future?
11:47 RB: I think people are starting to get wiser to it. Look, there’s… I mean not to get too technical, but there’s new legislation that just came out in California around privacy starting January 1st that I think is gonna start to change the way that we see it because what they’re saying… One of the things that they’re saying is we as consumers, companies are required to give us access to all of our data, like we should be able to do it, and a lot of times people don’t know. Like there’s a button right now on Facebook where you can export every photo, every message, everything you’ve ever done on Facebook, you can export all of it and take it back, and a lot of people don’t know that, right?
12:17 RB: And imagine how much stuff there would be. For some of us, it would be volumes of stuff, right? But the idea that now we’re giving up a lot of that privacy because we want the technology to proactively protect us, to predictively protect us, it’s good and bad. I mean the good is, look, I can get a message at any time from my credit card company saying, “Hey, there was a charge for 100 bucks. Did you approve this?” Like that’s great because what it means is like I can tell if there’s fraud happening. The downside is I actually went to CES, or the Consumer Electronic Show, a couple of years ago and there was a vending machine that reads your facial, facially tracks you, connects you with the healthcare data and decides whether your health says you should have that candy bar or not.
13:00 BM: Wow.
13:00 RB: You know maybe that’s a little too far.
13:02 BM: Wow. And how did that product do?
13:08 RB: I think it was… I mean at CES, it’s all concept…
13:09 BM: Exactly.
13:11 RB: Technology. So some of it makes it to market, some of it doesn’t, you know? It’s all kind of… It’s futuristic.
13:17 BM: We’re talking with Rohit Bhargava. He’s got his new book out, the last in a series called Non-Obvious Megatrends. So over the last 10 years, what was your biggest make on a trend where, God, you were right on, you were proud of yourself?
13:29 RB: You know I really do think some of the gendering trends were really spot-on. I think some of the ones around attention were spot-on as well. I think this idea that you can really get a sense of how people’s attention is shifting and you can get an idea of what that means for capturing their attention. A lot of that has been a topic that I’ve written about with multiple trends, and the one from the new Megatrends book is what I called attention wealth, which is the idea that now in an information economy, right, which we all know about and everybody’s talked about, if we are in an information economy, then your attention and my attention is a form of wealth, and how we choose to spend it is gonna be a big, big… It’s gonna have big implications for how we see companies succeed or not succeed.
14:20 BM: I totally agree. Alright, Rohit. So what was one of the biggest misses?
14:23 RB: You know early on in the trend reports, and I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’ve learned some things along the way, but early on I think I outclevered myself a little bit. And so what I would do is I would sometimes come up with a trend name that I thought was amazing and then I’d go and retroactively try and find examples of it.
14:41 BM: Right.
14:42 RB: So there was one that I called pointillist filmmaking which I thought was so clever because it was pointillism like the form of painting where you have all these dots that make up the painting, and people were doing these super-short films like two-second films, three-second films. There was Vine videos with six seconds and like all of this stuff on social media and I was like, “Oh, this is the future of media.” Like there was even a watch company that did like a three-second film festival. So you submit your video of three seconds, and I thought that was gonna be huge. And so I found all these examples and it looked great and then eventually people figured out that watching 20 three-second videos back-to-back is kind of not fun. [laughter] And it didn’t take off.
15:19 BM: So what is the difference, Rohit, between… Then what is the difference between a fad and a trend?
15:23 RB: The biggest difference between a fad and a trend is that a fad typically relates to a product or a single concept or a single company or a single platform, whereas a trend to me describes a behavior. It describes a way of thinking. It describes how our mindsets are shifting.
15:40 BM: So the last question I wanted to ask you, Rohit, is what’s your objective with coming out of all these books about trends? What do you hope the reader actually gets out of it?
15:49 RB: The biggest thing I hope people get out of not only this book but the whole platform is that we live in a world where it’s more important than ever to be a non-obvious thinker, to think for yourself, and really what I try and teach people is take it back. Like don’t just believe the first thing you read. Don’t be narrow-minded. Like open your mind to things that you may not otherwise read. Like read stuff you don’t agree with. Like be that sort of person that we need in this world, which is not that person that has tunnel vision, right, that person who can actually interact with someone who doesn’t think the same way they do without assuming that they must be an idiot. Like we need more people like that.
16:25 BM: And I will tell you that’s a hard challenge in this world to read stuff you don’t agree with. Rohit, thank you so much, and where can people get a copy of your new book about megatrends, Megatrends, Non-Obvious Megatrends?
16:38 RB: It is in bookstores nationwide. It’s in airport bookstores as well. Online, you can go to nonobvious.com and find out more about the book there. So it should be pretty much anywhere books are sold.
16:49 BM: Rohit, I appreciate you coming back on the show. This is AM 820 WCPT in Chicago. We’ll be right back.