257: Guy Perelmuter — Technology is Rapidly Evolving

Foreign. I'm Bill Gallagher, your friendly neighborhood scaling up coach. And I'm here talking today with B. Perlmutter about his new book and what we can learn from it, the impact on and the value for everything that we're up to present Future book is the book. We bring these shows every week. We have a getting real conversation on Sunday mornings and a deep dive on Wednesdays. And then of course, when we record them, we do them live stream now and we can get the video and you can see and talk to our folks as well. So you'll find the videos get posted on, they get posted on YouTube and Facebook and then they go out onto LinkedIn and some of the other places as well. So if you have only been listening on audio, go check out the video streams as well. You might find that useful or enjoyable. Right. To see us in our complete silliness. Okay. So Guy, welcome to the show. Guy joins us from Rio. And how are things there now? We hear like, not good news about the COVID and the vaccines and the things.

Yeah, you're right. Thanks for having me, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here. And you're right, we're probably at the very worst moment of this pandemic. I guess we're now where the US Was in May or June last year. There has been a tremendous surge of infections, of people unfortunately dying. We reached yesterday, I think we were at almost 4,000 people dying of COVID and it's been really bad, unfortunately.

I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. Well, our wish is that some interventions work, that you get some vaccinations and arms, that things start to turn the corner on that. And I know we talk about all these great business things, but at the end of the day, like your health, your family, like these things matter a great deal, right?

100%. Absolutely. Thank you for that. And we're hoping, I mean, depopulation over 65, I guess, has already a calendar set up, so that's good news. But it's now really a race against the virus. Right. I mean, if you can't vaccinate more people more efficiently versus the spread of the virus and this, the whole variants thing and all that. So we'll be hopeful for better days in the future.

Yes. So for our listeners, Guy Perlmuter is founder of Grids Capital. So they do venture capital in things like AI, robotics, life science, tech infrastructure. And he's got a background in computer engineering and electrical engineering with a particular focus on computer science and AI and a background in developing innovative products Applying that, like, including the early thing, I note in your bio that you developed a dot matrix printer for braille, which is cool, right? And that impacts and makes a difference for folks. He lives and works in Brazil and like that. So we're really happy to have you on the show and talk about this new book. So he's written a new book about this world, present, future, and we're here to talk a little bit about that before we get into the ideas and the thoughts in the book about trends and technologies and where we're headed and that kind of thing. Talk to us a little bit about your background. Maybe. I mean, I shared some facts, but maybe you could share a little bit of your story. How did you become an entrepreneur? You said the family's from Belgium. Share a little bit of your.

Yeah, sure, sure. Happy to. So, yes, I'm first generation, born in Brazil. I'm the son of immigrants. My parents came to Brazil from Belgium. Both of them were driven to another country because of war. My mom, she actually came to Brazil right after the Second World War started. My dad actually spent the war in Europe and he came to Brazil in the mid-50s. I guess it was supposed to be a temporary thing, but they stayed. The weather is not bad at all, so I guess they kept staying. And I was born here. I'm a middle child. I have two sisters. And I basically was into technology and computers at a very early age, and that's, I guess, very common. I decided to do computer engineering as my major in college a couple of years before even getting to college, did that. And then, as you said, I did a master's in artificial intelligence, which was a field where I had a very strong conviction would at some point overflow from the realms of universities and research centers into the real world, if you will. I built a career in the financial markets for almost two decades doing risk management and asset allocation. So I guess the whole venture capital thing was just a blend of those two skill sets, you know, the technology side building things and thinking and inventing stuff. And of course, the whole discipline that finance will give you in terms of allocating money and managing risk and all that. So I started Grits Capital basically as a blend of those two skills, doing investments in deep technology. And over the course of the last, I guess, two or three years, I felt there was an interesting story to be told about technologies in the world and how that will impact, you know, our lives going forward. And hence that's. That's how the book came about.

So if, if I could, your Parents are a little older than. Yes, yes. Yeah. And. And from the last name and. And the story, they're the Holocaust survivors or.

That's correct. Yes.

Yeah. It's interesting. I think. I'm guessing your name means, like, mother of pearl.

That's exactly right. That's 100% right. Good. Good for you. Fantastic.

Yeah. So that's like the. The beautiful inside, right. Of the.

The oyster.

Yeah. What is that in that kind of upbringing that has you pursue this kind of life? I'm fascinated by my close friends who are very closely related to survivors and are formed by that. What do you think is that that makes you different?

Well, I think. And this is all about my parents, really. I think this gives them a perspective on life, that it's very hard for someone who has not been through that, especially my dad, who actually spent the war in Europe. So my mom, she was a little baby when she. She fled. You know, she was in the second to last boat to leave Europe to South America, and her boat was actually stopped in the middle of the ocean by a Nazi U boat, and people were taken from that ship into the submarine back to Europe. So. And my dad actually spent, you know, his early years as a kid, really as a toddler, and then as a kid during the war. And I think that this instills a sense of. Of perspective. And then when I was brought up, my parents, of course, and my grandparents as well, they never, ever brought this up, which I think it's very common. I don't think a lot of survivors bring that whole ordeal too often, but I think we always had education front and center. I think that's something that they felt that nobody could ever take away from you because they had this experience in their lifetime where they were left with very little to go about. So education was always something that was really important, and everything I always wanted that had any connection to education was granted. No further discussions. And I think the computers fit into this category because I think they felt from the early days, and I was probably 8 or 9 when I started nagging them about a computer. Right. And I think that fell into the category of education and building skills and trying to be as independent and as autonomous as possible. So I guess this is a little bit of the impact that I guess the war had on their upbringing and hands on mine.

That's interesting. So how do you arrive? I mean, it's really fascinating. We were talking before that. My dad had spent some time in Brazil and encountered many interesting people and learned the language deeply. But I also Remember very clearly he, he spent some time traveling and he visited some of the German villages, Right. Who had Nazi past. And he collected memorabilia. And later when my family moved, my family moved to Israel. He donated these artifacts to the Yad Vashem Museum there in Jerusalem.

Yeah, I actually, speaking of Yad Vashem, I was in Israel maybe a couple, well, maybe, maybe two, two or three years ago. Right. And with, with my, my wife, my kids and we visited the Yad Vashem and I actually found the tree of a priest that actually saved my dad's and my uncle's life at the. Which was of course a very emotional moment. Right. That was, that was tremendous. And you know, this is something that will always be, you know, with, with, with us. Right. With me, with my kids, hopefully my grandkids. It's part of our story. It's something that shouldn't have, shouldn't have happened ever. And we absolutely must do everything in our power not to allow it to happen again. And so it's, it's very, it's. I think it's a very strong part of my upbringing.

Well, it's a kind of unintended detour in our conversation, but I'm sure that it feeds and informs your character and, and is infused deeply in your work. So thanks for indulging in the detour. I think getting a picture of people personally and what makes us and what develops us is interesting. So thank you for your openness. Talk about the development of the book. How do you come to this book and talk to us about it, if you would?

Yeah. There's this interesting thing that you keep hearing very often, which is things are changing really fast. Technology has been putting a new spin in our lives and now I think we're entering a new era which is the era of deep technology, which is where we're actually now seeing finally Some fields like 3D printing and robotics and self driving vehicles and of course machine learning, new materials. So all those fields which were basically academic fields up until a few years ago, really, these fields have been around for some time. So for instance, the first autonomous car was tested at Carnegie Mellon University back in the late 80s. Right. So it's not something that just spur overnight and it's here. So this is a process and as I work with this and invest in this, I felt that this knowledge would be critical for people to have so that first they appreciate that this is not a snapshot in history. Right. This is the, this is a process that has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. So there's a lot of history in my book where I try to give a little bit of context on each and every technology that is really going to affect the next decades of humankind like never before. Because. And that's the second thing. There's actually now this convergence of technologies. The building blocks of technologies are now getting better, easier, and cheaper. So you can combine them and you can create new things with them at a pace and at a scope that was never achieved before. So the idea behind the book is basically to give people context on what is really the history behind robotics and biotechnology and nanotechnology, but also to give them a little bit of a fair warning on how the growth of the human population and the climate crisis and the pollution that we're throwing in the oceans and rivers and the air could be a problem that we could not walk away from. So this is a little bit of what I had in mind when I wrote the book.

Well, I think a lot of times we're unconscious. Even if we know some of the parts of things, we are not totally conscious to the coming together of them. I used to sit with my great grandmother when I visited my grandmother's house. And my great grandmother was less mobile, and she made this sort of difficult trek from her bedroom to the living room and to the kitchen every day. And then she would sit there and she would play solitaire card games. And then, because I was interested and curious, I would sit and talk with her for a long time. She spoke more than once to me about how it was so amazing. I remember one case in particular. I had a Texas Instruments calculator that I was very proud of. And it was the old big one where you push the buttons and they clicked in and had the red.

LED display.

LED display there. And. And it was so amazing. And all the functions that were on it and had memory and that kind of thing, and it was really cool. And I was really. It was very kind of a unique thing. And she's like, you know, when I was a little girl, she lived well, and they had help who did stuff that our clothes were washed on a board, you know, outside by hand across one of those wavy boards, and they would use that to get the soap going, that kind of thing. She said, and now there's a. We put a man on the moon, and you've got this little computer calculator in your hand. And, you know, like, that's just amazing, like, what the things we'll do. And I think about, like, it all just kind of evolves and you know, I've got my little iPad here that I read all my books, books on. And it's got a library bigger than the one behind me on it. And I can carry everything with me where I go on that. And then a little watch on my wrist not only does tell the time, which thankfully it does, but it also like taps me when I have a reminder for something and I need to turn left or right and I can actually talk on it and it can send me messages and I can look things up. And it's got lasers in it and battery technology and semiconductors and then of course those are into very tiny microchips and it's got accelerometers and it's got a GPS signal like it's reading satellite stuff and it's talking to. So let's see, it's got a Bluetooth radio, it's got a WI FI signal, it's got a GPS receiver that's at least three distinct radios in it.

Right? Right.

Like the amount of technology just in the wristwatch is boom. It just boggles the mind if you take time to add it up and then when it doesn't work, you're like, oh my God, what the hell is so stupid? She doesn't understand me.

Yeah, exactly. We've grown, you know, spoiled by technology. And you're 100% right. If you look at even our lives as we were kids versus our kids lives now in terms of the amount of technology they're surrounded with and how natural and second nature for them it is that if they don't know something, they just go online and find out about that something. I remember when I had to do some schoolwork, I had to look it up on actual book, on an encyclopedia. And when the teacher needed pictures, it was like the hunt for the Treasure of Sierra Madre. Because you had to find somewhere where you could get a picture and either photocopy it or cut it and glue it. And now you have those amazing tools and kids are incredibly proficient at it. So it changes the way how you approach information and, and information retrieval, how, how you build up your problem solving skills. So all that. And again, we talk about that, we talk about education in the book, we talk about finance, we talk about areas where there is this whole new world that we are going to live in that is already here and that is not going to wait for institutions and governments and corporations to catch up. It's just going to move, right? It's just going to go as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible. So I guess this also kind of contributed for the idea of trying to create some sort of go to reference where you don't need to be a PhD or an engineer or a mathematician to really understand. I made it a point to write a book for everybody who had a passing interest on things from blockchain to cryptocurrencies to robotics to machine learning to Internet of things to biotechnology. So it's really all about how those amazing technologies that you just mentioned came to fruition and how they now are at a point where, if we think things evolved quickly over the past four or five decades, wait until we are three or four decades in the future, because things are going to get even wilder and faster. That's just the nature of technology.

So that's a. So when I talk about how amazing some of these things are, you know, I think I'm practicing gratitude and appreciation. I'm taking stock of something. I think it's useful for me as a human being, but it also makes me sound like an old dude, right? And my kids are in their 20s and they're both involved in their careers already, and what do they care? They're like, it just is. It's here, it's working, there's more coming. Why do I care about that stuff, dad? You know, like, yeah, I don't care what it was like.

No, no, I understand what you're saying. And I think we probably were the same when we flipped on, you know, the, the lights in our room or when we turn on, you know, an oven or when we turn on the dishwashing machine. You know, your, your great grandmother, she had to wash stuff by hand. And now there's this magical box where you throw your dirty laundry in and. And then it comes out clean. So we really don't realize that. But. And here's an interesting thing. There are so many technologies that we feel that are new and just happened, but that have been around for a long time. And technology, like so many things in life, is also about timing, right? So if you think about it, in the late 19th century, a third of the cars in US roads were electric. That's in the late 19th century. If you think about the early 20th century, in the 20s, right? So literally 100 years ago, you already had this first streaming music service in the US Working streaming service. You were built in your electrical bill for listening to music over the electrical wires. And you just needed a small gizmo that you attach to a power outlet. And music came out of that through streaming. And we feel that this is this brand new thing. So that's a little bit of what the book tries to convey in terms of, you know, why does that matter? I think it matters because it gives you a, an appreciation for technology. Because we are, as the famous saying goes, we're standing in the shoulders of giants, right? We have to appreciate who came before us that allowed us to be where we are now, right? You click a button, you have this cool TV studio at the tip of your hands where you can zoom in, zoom out. I have this virtual background behind me. We have very high quality sound. Now that you fixed it, it's perfect. So there's a lot to like and to enjoy. So I think it's important. And again, you hit it perfectly. It's, it's about appreciation and understanding because the more stuff we take for granted, the more spoiled we'll become and the less inclined to act on changes. And changes are incredibly urgent for us because we're heading head on to a triple crisis, right? We're heading into a food crisis, we're heading into a climate crisis, and we're heading into an energy crisis. And this is tied to, ties neatly into the whole technology arc that we have been experiencing as a civilization. And I guess if we understand where we came from and how these technologies came to fruition, I think it gives us better tools to handle those crises in an effective manner.

So the technology develops, it actually takes a long time. There are precursors to things, ideas of things that have been developing for some time. At some point they find acceptance because of a shift in thinking, application, some underlying technology, right? And sometimes there's a cost to them. You're talking about environmental and food and things like that, right? There's concerns then about the security, about how things are working there, 100%.

If you look at the history of civilization, pretty much since we decided that we are not, you know, hunter gatherers anymore, that we're going to start clustering in cities and becoming, you know, more rooted in one place. What happened was that we had a world where the gdp, the global GDP was pretty much a flat line at a very, very low level for centuries and centuries and centuries. And then came along the steam engine, right? And this is in my mind at least, and I go about that in the book, very early in the book, I go about how the steam engine is actually the turning point. Because if you take a chart of the global GDP over time and you'll see this inflection, it's almost like a 90 degree inflection, right? Where it's stable and then it explodes. That was because of the first industrial revolution. That was because we could now do. We could mass produce stuff. We could have factories and people producing goods at the speed and at a rate that was never seen before. And then not to dwell too much on that because then there's a long arc of history to talk about how the economies globally changed. It became something where if you look at the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from the mid 18th century, right, when the first industrial revolution started, to today, you can see this shift in the pattern of the greenhouse effect happening and kicking in. If you look at how many people lived on the planet up until the 1800s and how, how many are going to be living here in another 30 years? We're going to be at 10 billion people in 2050, right. And there's no sign that the areas that we're using to grow food are going to expand dramatically. There's absolutely an issue with the amount of energy that we as a civilization need for our gizmos and our. To recharge our watches and to recharge our phones and to use our computers and to recharge our cars, which is inevitable. Over the next decade or so, we're going to be fully electric, or at least, you know, the majority of the cars are going to be electrical. So all that has a toll. And I guess that the book is very clear on the benefits of technology, but we also try to give the right framing for, for those problems which will have to be sorted out. It's not like the COVID crisis, which, as dramatic and as horrible as it is, from day one, we knew if we get the vaccine, we have a way out of this. Right? We can dig ourselves out of this hole. And unfortunately, we can argue about the human cost and the time it took and the inefficiencies that we saw in governments throughout the planet in. And so there's a lot to be said about that. But it's a crisis where people know where the exit ramp is, right? Vaccine, you take a left on the vaccine ramp, you should be good. But when it comes to the climate crisis, right, if we get to a point where this is irreversible, there will be no exit ramps, Right. It's not like we're going to be. We can wait it out. We cannot wait it out. So as much as we talk about all the benefits that technology is bringing to us, I think it's important to at least be mindful that there are some side effects that we should be very mindful about so that we can hopefully deal with in an intelligent manner.

Well, it seems the biggest one really is the carbon fuel cycle and then the impact on the environment and, and global temperatures. Right. The overall.

Yeah, you have this, this big debate where you're right. I mean, there's, there's a ton of emissions, but you also have now the strong current of researchers that are saying, listen, there's a very clear problem that we have to deal with, which is cattle in general, because cattle generates tremendous amounts of methane. That's, that's going to be a problem as well. So there's no two ways about it. You cannot say, okay, I'll fix this, but I'll leave that alone. And the good part, right, the positive part is that the technologies that we have been building over time, they are absolutely going to be the ones that are going to rescue us from this mess we put ourselves in. Right? There will be, you know, tools that are going to be able to clean our oceans and to cleaner air and to make food in a more efficient and in a more equitable manner. So all those tools, the kit for us to use and the toolbox is there. And the book is all about, okay, let's use those tools. And there is absolutely no time to waste because we are on the clock now. Right. We are absolutely running out of time and we want to make sure that technology is applied to the right causes.

Are you familiar with this book Drawdown?

I'm not, no.

It's interesting. It's talking about a comprehensive plan to reverse global warming. And I just wondered if you were.

Yeah, I'm going to put it on.

My outlines and then ranks a whole variety of things that could make a difference in doing it. And it includes things like beef. Right. Because it's easy to think that it's really about carbon fuels. And if we just stop using petrochemicals, then we dramatically improve the environment. If we could then also figure out things like carbon sequestration at some amount of scale, we've got something going on. But until you also deal with methane from beef cattle and like that kind.

Of thing, you've got an issue which, which again, and this brings us full circle. This is why working as a, as a, as an investor, as a venture capitalist in the deep tech world is, is. Is so exciting to me because you can actually see and interact with the folks that are working on those types of technologies, among many, many others, and be really close to the action and, and try to do your bit in terms of, you know, guidance or Investing or, or spreading the word or, or whatever it is that that can be positive and generate a positive effect.

So I, I speak to you today from the San Francisco Bay area, the, you know, very close to the heart of Silicon Valley and, and many of our clients and that kind of thing are in Silicon Valley. Some of our success stories are very much related to US based, California based technology companies. What is it to be an investor and follower and writer in this area of technology outside of this area?

Right, so that's a great question. We actually 90 plus percent of our investments are US based, right? So we're by far and large, for all practical purposes a US Investor because, and we did that by design in the sense that we were looking at what makes a potential investment successful. Right. We want to make sure that we are allocating our investors money in the proper manner. So we wanted that this, in the deep tech world, we wanted that investments are deployed in a manner where there was already substantial research made on that technology. So you're not paying for research. That's the role of governments and universities. So the US checks those boxes handsomely. You want those environments where you're going to invest in to be, you know, as, as frictionless as possible, right? You want legislation that helps the entrepreneur, that helps investor. You want a patent office that can speed up the process so that technology can move right along. There's also a lot of that in the U.S. and oddly enough, you want an environment where government is an early adopter of technologies and in particular the military are historically been an incredible early adopter of some of the most important technologies in the world. Right? So the Internet and GPS and drones and computers and even space exploration, right. This has a lot of, of, of public funding that goes into the research and the development. And one of the early adopters is usually the government or the military, and then it overflows to society. So really the countries that check those boxes in spades are Israel and the States. Right? So these are the two hotspots for deep technology. Doesn't mean that there are not fantastic companies in Australia or Germany or the United Kingdom or Brazil. I mean, that absolutely happens. But if you are an investor, you're looking for the most efficient process you can come up with to be able to deploy capital. So pre Covid, I usually went every 40 to 45 days I was on a plane spending time in the, in the Bay Area, spending area time in the, in Southern California, Boston, New York, I mean all those hubs where, where a lot of technology is being developed yeah, that's a.

And that's not a short flight, right?

It's not. You get used to it though. I mean, it's like, okay, that's, that's the grub. Let's, let's do it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, hopefully again soon our borders will be open. I do think though that some of the problems that you're talking about are in your backyard. Right. So massive rainforest, not just in Brazil, but across up into the other neighboring countries in Ecuador. And so touching a lot. And a lot of that being threatened in particular by oil production and also farming and the clearing of that arable area. You've got farming, you've got huge cattle production across in the region, especially in Argentina. Right. So there's certainly need to solve some of these other problems there as well beyond that.

Absolutely. And the thing is that we have the technology or we are well on our way to having the technology and institutions and governments are lagging. Right. There needs to be, I think, the same sense of urgency and efficiency that drives the entrepreneurs at the Valley or New York or in Boston. I mean, those guys and gals, they are really sprinting from one problem to the other and just crushing every challenge that faces them. But if you look at the institutions that govern our civilization, governments in particular, and I understand that it's challenging because of the size and the complexity and the scope, but we cannot use, you know, 18th century institutions to run a 21st century planet. It's not working and I think everybody can see it's not working. And this, again, this is a little bit of why the book is called Present Future Business Science and the Deep Tech Revolution. Because all these things go hand in hand and all of these things are going to affect our lives and are affecting our lives quite dramatically.

I want to get to takeaways in just a minute. The implications for our listeners who tend to be very practical here now, but also love a deep conversation like this. But I am reminded that in both our countries and in many others, the politics aren't in the regulatory environments, not particularly helpful. They're definitely like old world thinking ones like let's be for business and then the others all just let's be for labor. And neither of them is thinking too well about technological advances in infrastructure except to like stop certain things that are concerning from information standpoint, which is getting abused or twisted and that kind of thing. But we have this in both countries today. People who are like and all the others around that are promoting things that aren't that helpful. And some of the more technologically innovative in either their approach to the core technologies as well as the policies that feed them, they don't get very far as political candidates in the environment.

You're right. And there's. I mean, this is a phenomenon that is happening not only in Brazil and, and happened in the US and, and in some parts of Europe as well. I think there's an underlying theme there which, which, again, we. We also talk about extensively in the book, which is the rise of social media. Right. And how easy it has become for any fool to propagate his or her ideas, and how all of a sudden, you and I will live in a world where your opinion is more important than my fact. And this is a huge problem. Right. If you have a million followers on Twitter and you think that something is true, and I have 54 people that follow me, and I know that something is true because I can prove it scientifically. That doesn't matter anymore. And we lost this along the way. And there's like a ton of psychological theories that go about why social media is so addictive and why people believe what they see and how it became a tool of disinformation and.

Yeah, but can you do any TikTok dances right now for me?

Yes, exactly. Right. So. So, so things crazy. We have now, you know, the most fantastic tool ever devised by, by, by, by the civilization. Right. We have information. We have real time data. We have so many amazing things. And, you know, we are using that. And this is being time and time again handled poorly. And to. To your point, this is how we. We look at, you know, governments failing us and letting the. The population slide into a very, very dangerous path.

Yeah.

So.

What are the imperatives or the advice that you have for the CEOs and entrepreneurs that we're dealing with? What do you think they need to know? Do? What actions do they take? What are your takeaways for our listeners?

So I would say first and foremost that. That we live in a world where you cannot fall in love with a solution. Right. You have to fall in love with the problem. Right. So you have to look.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to look at the world and say, okay, so there's a problem, and I have the right tools or team or vision to sort it out. So that's. That's one key takeaway.

The second one, let me underscore that for a minute, because I think it's bigger. It's big, big, big, big, big, big. So sometimes you become an entrepreneur because you have an idea for a better mousetrap and then you go around and you run around the world looking for mice. That's one way of doing it. It's really common that we have an idea for something and you're like, I just can't find enough mice. And you struggle to scale your business because of that. Then we have the other approach. It's very popular in places like Singularity University where, where they say, let's find really, really what are the biggest problems in the world. And now let's imagine and iterate on different solutions to these big problems. And that's a very different approach to building and scaling a business.

That's right. That's 100% right. And I think that's one important takeaway. The second thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that we're looking at the world where the pace of change is only going to increase, right. So we have to be thoughtful about how we're going to be looking at as a society in another five or 10 years. There's a quote by Licklider who wrote this phenomenal book back in the 60s called Libraries of the Future, which is truly unbelievable. And he says that we usually overestimate what we can achieve in one year, but we certainly underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Right. And as an entrepreneur, as a builder, I think this is also a common mistake. I think people always feel that, yeah, I can do all that in 12 months and they fail to imagine what can go wrong and the roadblocks and the changes and all that. But they lose sight of the big picture, which is, okay, what is going to be the effect of all those actions I'm taking now if I compound them over 10 years? So that's, I think also quite important as a second takeaway.

So be ambitious. Create bhags big hairy, audacious goals that address problems that you're very passionate about, that you're willing to spend give 10 years of your life or better too. So thinking about that and then being more modest with your initial things, I know we do it again and again. I obviously should know better. This quarter I put way too many things on. I've had to completely rethink what I was getting done this quarter, the last quarter, just because of that. It's very easy to think I'm just going to knock that out. But we're busy with a lot of, of the things. If you get just a couple things done on that long term thing and keep that long term thing forefront, you'll advance it, right?

That's Absolutely correct. And lastly, I would say that we have come to live in a world where the attention span has decreased tremendously. We're getting bombarded with information from every other source. I mean, the average person will check a screen during their day in the hundreds of times, right between your phone, your tablet, your computer, your watch. Exactly. I mean, we're surrounded by screens and screens deliver information. But here's the thing. Without some silence, you cannot think. Right. If you don't have clarity and lack of input, visual, auditory or any other sort of input, it's very hard to think. And this is what I'm always baffled with. If you look at people waiting, right, In a bus stop, in a subway station, in a restaurant, you don't see people waiting and thinking. People are waiting with their phones, they're gobbling up information, they're writing emails. They're just trying to make sure they're up to date. They're all caught up because we're now accessible all the time. 247 people assume you're accessible. You have a phone, you have your email, you have your watch. Pretty soon you have your glasses where you project your emails. So I think that we have to take time to think and you have to be deliberate. You have to be old school, you have to lock yourself, you have to shut down all sensory inputs where information is coming to you and you have to think about it. So if you can take all that, which is very ironic because it's the opposite of technology, right. It's basically going back to square one. And this is the ingenuity. This is where the aha moment will come. This is when you're going to figure it out. Okay? That's what I got to do now. There's no noise, no clutter. I have a clear line of sight into what I have to do. So these would be for entrepreneurs, CEOs and people that have responsibilities on their hands. These would be kind of my takeaways from this conversation.

That's awesome. Let me underscore them again. So we've got find big problems that you're willing to spend your time on and be less attached to your particular solutions that might not be the right solution or the right time for that solution. Focus instead on the big problem that you, that you love and then give yourself some time to do it. You can accomplish a great deal in a 10 year or longer period of time, but your accomplishments in the one year time horizon will be far, far more modest. Right. We see again and again Elon Musk making this mistake right over promising when this full self driving is going to eventually arrive. And then the attention span is dropping, like the bombardment of information and the focus on people is dropping, necessitating the need to pause and reflect. When I think about that, I think about it both from a mindfulness and a presence, but also synthesizing of things. The two times that I have the best ideas and insights, where they really crystallize and something comes together is one, when I first wake up early in the morning as I've been sleeping on things and things have been working in my subconscious, sometimes the ideas come together and then the other time is shortly after that when I'm taking a shower and as I'm taking a shower and something will kind of click together. There's no screens, there's nothing else. And I'm forced to. I'm doing routine things, I don't think a lot, wash my hair, that kind of thing. In that moment I'll be like, oh my goodness. And for that I actually, I have like this little thing called aqua notes that I keep in the shower. I can write down my ideas as they come in the shower, but other people have them at similar times. Like I used to get when I did more running. I would get them while I was running also. Some people get them while they're driving because it's another thing that often forces you. Although unfortunately some people are still looking at their screens while they're driving. Many of us cannot do that. Right. And so there are some of these times. I also think though that there's a moment of satisfaction, appreciation. So we had a bunch of family over, we were all very busy and people were looking at screens and they were doing all that kind of thing for a holiday this last weekend. And then as we're going through this lengthy dinner together, there were a couple times when I didn't just rush on to the next part of the dinner ceremony and I just stopped and I looked around at my family who were gathered together for the first time last year. Our gathering was on Zoom for our holiday and was like, wow, this is really good. And I just had this breath in this moment of satisfaction. It felt like time slowed down a little bit and I was aware of a squirrel or a bird or this or that. And there's the family and there's my brothers and my wife and daughter.

Absolutely. There's one thing that I have quoted again and again and I don't remember where I read it. I. I sure wish I had come up with it. I don't think I did. So maybe someone out there knows exactly who's the author of this quote. But something that really stuck with me that says that technology really brings people who are far away closer to you, but it also pushes people that are very close to you further away from you.

Yes. Yes. If you've ever noticed that you wanted somebody's attention and they were buried. Texting somebody who's far away. I remember years ago, in the early days of texting and that kind of thing, being at a cafe in Tel Aviv and seeing a table across from me. There were like seven women there and they were all texting everyone else who wasn't there. And I'm like, you're with each other. Like, have a beer. Like, relax.

Exactly.

Oh, thanks so much. If you want more information, you want to read the book presentfuturebook.com or you can go on Amazon, find Present Future, the Business Science Revolution book on Amazon. So we'll put it there in the crawl, we'll put it in the show notes, all of that kind of thing. Guy Perlmuter is our guest, has been our guest. And I thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thank you for having me, Bill.

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