0488 | Dr. Markku Wilenius

Hi, I'm Marco Villenius, professor of Future Studies in the Business School in Finland. And you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews episode 488 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority effect interview. Expert Authority World. I have a treat for you today with Dr. Marco Wallinius, professor of Future Studies at the University of Turku. I don't know about you, but you might not like the present day, you may not like your past, but how often are you aiming into the future? Do you have a vision for the future? What is the world going to look like? What is business going to look like? There are so many things we can cover and I'd say work. I'm going to do my best to see how many of them I can touch on because I have a literal genius coming onto the show and he's going to downplay it and all these different things. But I'm excited to bring up sir, Dr. Marcou Willinius and Marco, I know you can hear me and I said that just to make you chuckle. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Marco Wilinius. How are you doing Marcou?

I'm doing fine, thank you. It's a bit here in Finland already, but I'm great.

I'm glad to hear that. And I know when we were chatting you said just drop that rubbish with the sir and I want everyone to know you're literally being knighted. But he is such a humble man that he actually told me beforehand to don't do it. So it literally was just a joke. But I love everything you're talking about with the future and innovating in business, the world, food, all these different things, medical. Why do you think it's so important that people look into the future and take future options and not just get stuck in their present everyday lives?

Oh Mario, thanks for asking that question. Look.

Future is always something that we are striving for and.

It can sort of mean different things for us. But I see in this way actually we can use future for different purposes, particularly if we see that there is something that we want to reach. And we as human beings, we have built in such a way that we actually need to have intentions. We need to look forward to something. And if we don't do that, we are just stuck in our everyday life and we are just not doing enough to use our full potential.

Why do you think we need to do something for the future? You said we need to do it. It's not just a nice to do.

It'S just not nice to do. But I mean by need that if we are not doing that, we are not really fulfilling ourself, sort of as a human being. And to me, to be a human being is to be intentional. We have been built that way, and it is not a random thing or a happenstance that only human beings actually have real intentions. So we have been gifted with that. Why don't we use that?

And then the next question comes up, okay, how do you use that? And of course, then we come to these kind of questions of how you can train to become better with how to use the future.

I love that you believe we all have an innate ability to be better and innovate, and we're designed that way. And I agree with you 100%. I'm clearly just having fun here. And I got to have a little back and forth and ask you some challenging things because some people, all joking aside, some people really do say, well, why worry about down the road when there's so many problems today in my position is, well, yeah, maybe we wouldn't have the problems today had we maybe gave it an inkling of thought in the past, which would, you know, today we're not living today. We're living six to 12 months or five years ago. You know, time always catches up, so you should be aiming down the road. Otherwise you get left behind as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, yeah, well, you're exactly pointing the right thing, Mario. And I think it's so important that we recognize that, okay, there is a past from which we have to learn.

And we need to always to keep in mind that, you know, what are those kind of a key learnings that we have learned so that we are not kind of repeating our own all mistakes, which we have a bit of a habit to do as human beings.

Let me ask you this. You had said, look at our past mistakes.

How often do you believe we should go back and analyze what we've done for better insight into the future?

Yeah, I feel that we should not look too much into the past just to start to regret all the follies that we have done. But the point is that we need to recognize those things that. Where we could do better. And you cannot actually do that without, you know, kind of having this contemplation that why did I do this way in the past? What was the kind of my mind? Why was it lured to. Into that direction? Why. What was the trigger behind that? And then you kind of learn more about yourself, your own way of thinking, your behavior, and only if you become aware of that, you can change that.

Where would you advise someone start?

Well, you know, we all have our personalities, which is some more than others.

And some people have.

Not a bit extreme. Well, if I take myself, you know, I've always been a very curious guy, and I think that was probably why I chose this profession and. Or it chose me. You know, I don't know which way it actually happened. But. But the point is that we all are very unique and we need to understand what is our uniqueness. If we are always doing, you know, your papa tells me, you know, you know, you need to be doctor or you need to be a business guy, or you need to be this and that. And then you choose because somebody else gives that idea to you and you're never kind of internalized that, but you think it's good because this guy said to me, happens to be my old man or something like that. So, so then quite often what happens with people at some point of time, they realize that, well, this is not really me.

This is something else. This is. This is something someone else has been imposing on this. And we tend to be kind of regretting those type of the things. So we better start that journey quite early on to look at. Okay, what is it that is for, you know, is my calling here. And that is to go to the kind of a core of yourself, ask yourself tough questions and come up with some answers because they are all sort of buried there in one way or another.

But if you don't bother to. To. To kind of to. To. To go and, you know, excavate that and. And. And find out it's a good analogy, then yeah, then. Then we just kind of go on. We. We might do even very well, but we are not really satisfied. We are only satisfied as human beings if we are really doing what we deep inside ourselves think that we should be doing as, you know, as a person, as an individual.

Do you think we need training and coaches and all of these different things? Read a hundred different books to figure it out. Initially, I'm all about that stuff, clearly. But do you think we need that initially just to go, you know what, maybe what I'm doing isn't the right thing. I want to aim in the future.

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, Maria, I think it's a part of the. We need to do some kind of an investigation. And sometimes it means that, you know, we are reading books, sometimes we are talking to our people, sometimes we are, you know.

Looking at that, some, you know, films, documents, all of that. Reading good books, all that. So, so we need that inspiration that comes from, from, from outside. That's one for sure. But then again, the crucial is what do we do with that? What do we do with that insight that comes. How do we kind of shape it for the best for ourselves? And you know what, there is another thing here which is that if we simply think that this is all about me, my progress, my future, we go dead wrong. Because human beings are not just made to do some good things for yourself or even for your family. I think humans are here to contribute to something, to something bigger than what they immediate surrounding. All them, you know, them as a human being.

Yeah. Like society or the greater good.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we all need to find that kind of a stance where we can be kind of a helpful for other people that might be kind of a wide away. And I don't mean that, you know, we need to become a kind of a big influencer. So all of us. No, no, no, no. We can do small things also. But the important thing is that some.

Of the times, sometimes the smallest things are the biggest. Depends who you're doing them for.

That's true, actually. From the, you know, even if you do big things, you need to start small first and then you kind of build on that.

Yeah. For someone who doesn't have any food or shelter or clothing or whatever. I mean, just giving them old clothes, that changes their life. When someone's like, oh, I just got my 18th car.

Right.

Congratulations, by all means, you clearly did something right that most people don't. But.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who all is it really impacting?

Yeah. I think the way we should look at this is that. And again, this is all about building the future is that.

When we set our goals, we always need to think that, well, the goal is not only to do something good for me or my kind of immediate family, if my goal kind of involves more than that, then that goal might be actually at the end much more inspiring because, you know, I'm a bit of a believer of things that when we kind of, when we sort of prepare to live this life or whatever happens after life. You know, this is the thing that, that we are judged by. You know, what, what did you do for the others? Not just what, how much wealth or what, how much. Whatever.

Yeah. What are you leaving behind? What's, what's the impact you're making?

It's not just about us.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's, that's my kind of a. Deep down, my, My philosophy and, and why we need to really use ourselves as, as, as, as human beings. Sort of a. To. To do our, our foremost kind of a to. To bring something on the table that helps the other people.

I've always thought even from a young age, if everyone subscribed to that, because it feels like it's usually. I don't know if it's one out of ten, one out of fifty, one out of a hundred. But I did hear a statistic one time. A leader can lead up to 500 people before you need another leader just to effectively do it. So maybe it's one out of 500, but there's a lot of people on Earth. So even if we doubled that number or tripled it, like a small. To me, it's a small percentage. 1 out of 500, that's not huge numbers. But maybe if it was 1 out of 50 or 1 out of 100. Imagine, look at what we've accomplished already with all the craziness that's went on and we still somehow advance as a society and civilization. Imagine if we just doubled it or even 1.88. One and a half or something.

Right, Right. Yeah.

I love what you're mentioning here. And I have to ask about the companies. I saw one of them that piqued my interest. You worked with aliens. Not like the spaceship craft people, but alliance, the insurance company.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

How do you say it?

Alliance.

So Alliance. I've seen them all over. I think it's like when I get Delta airline tickets and stuff, they go, do you want the travel insurance? And stuff like that. So they're not the only one. I know you've worked with dozens and dozens of companies. Name a few more and explain what you're doing with them to help them progress as a business.

Yeah, maybe, maybe I, however, I start with the alliance because this was a very interesting case and this was one of the.

Please do.

One of the companies that really did a lot of work over the years, actually.

And it's a company that is one of the biggest in the world, to be honest. And it's A hugely influential company. It's not just the insurance. It's all, all kind of a financial services. And.

Over the years it has sort of expanded in sort of all walks of life. And.

I went there because they were shocked actually about the 911 originally because that sort of made them to realize that well, this world where we now entering is a type of world where almost anything can happen and something really dramatic like what happened in 9 11. So they realized that, well, they need to also expand their horizon. What are the risks? There actually are. And, and because sometimes the risks are also opportunities that, you know, it's kind of a risk plus opportunity space. So, so when I went there, I, I really started to kind of my, my, my work was to open up for them to think about more broadly what might happen in good or bad and, and how to prepare for that. Because future is all about the preparing. It's not about the prediction. We cannot really seriously predict the future. You know, it's, you're telling me all.

This time you don't have a crystal ball.

I have, but it's very dim. You know, I, I can't really, you know, that's good.

It's very dim.

But I see, I see some patterns. You know, that's always my, my way of saying this. Well, you can project the future and I do see patterns. I, I understand trends, I, I understand sort of a dynamics, but it's kind of a single point events. Yeah, you kind of. That you, you think you, you economists actually making the right type of the prediction. What is exactly, you know, the GDP growth, say United States next year, they say something. Well, it's 2.4, it's 3.6, but. And then it's something else.

It's just some educated guess, basically.

Huh? Yeah, they always, it's just guesses. I mean, if you think that you would be like a real. What they used to have in antique, you know, like this Delphi's oracle that really know the future. You know, I don't think that any, any, any.

Would you believe me if I told you I could predict the future up.

There, but not, not here on Earth?

Would you believe me if I told you I can predict the future? I can pin, I can pinpoint a single event.

And what's that?

I can tell you exactly what my birthday will be next year.

Oh, Lord. Don't you tell.

I just came up with that. I'm like.

All right, all right.

I get, I get what you're saying.

I, you can predict the future? Yeah, yeah.

The. I like Looking at, I can predict.

That the sun is rising next morning. Right. That's a good thing, you know, when we're not yet.

So I like looking at businesses. Like, if you look at what businesses are buying up now today.

I remember when the whole live streaming VR thing went out years ago, and it was like, oh, what's this? And you just heard little splotches and things like, oh, you know, all these little random things. I started studying the businesses behind the scenes, and if you looked, it was like, this one's bombing, buying all these companies. This one's buying all these companies, and not 12 to 18 months later, they're making all these big announcements like when Facebook goes, oh, we're getting into VR. Oh, no kidding. Well, you bought Oculus a year, year and a half prior. That was shocking. You know, so. So that's. I mean, that's what I'm hearing. You. You say you find the data from now and look for the trends and patterns to go, oh, you know, this, this, this, and this seem like at some point that's probably going to happen.

Yeah. You see, there are two interesting aspects to that. One is this, that, you know, when something start to develop, there is always kind of a long tail behind. If you think about, you know, how the whole, you know, kind of microcomputers and all this digital world, how it started to develop, you know, you know, there were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and some others, you know, working their father's garage somewhere in the 1970s. And. And it took quite a time actually before it really started to mature. It took basically, you know, 20 years or so. And then suddenly it starts to grow really, really exponentially. Exponentially. The same thing with the social media now, the same thing with the AI. You know, we started to talk about AI first time, you know, 20 years ago, but it was still almost small thing. You know, what is this AI now everybody's talking about that. And now we are moving into this, you know, metaverse and all that kind of a space, which is, again, something that we started to have some sort of a clumsy effort 10 years ago.

Yeah.

And everybody was laughing about that. You know, this doesn't work. You know, it was like a wow.

Why would anyone want that? You know, like when Henry Ford came out with the cars. Oh, you know, they're dirty, they're smelly, this, that, and that. You know, they scare the horses. Well, try driving your horse on the freeway.

Now, the second issue, which is the technology have these long tails. But the other thing is that the way that we adapt to technology is never straightforward. I mean, once the technology has been invented is the one thing, but then when, when the human adaptation gets there, it takes, it takes time. You know, when Graham Bell, you know, invented telephone, he was thinking, thinking that there's a kind of a message from. It was not for the communication. Same with the text messages in the early 80s, you know, it was not supposed to be a communication. It's more like, okay, I, I kind of send signal.

To the box where all my messages are and that's it. And so it always happens in the course of the time. And finally we found the way that we want to use that technology, but it's never exactly what the inventors thought it would be.

Yeah, I mean, you had mentioned on AI, where do you think that's going to be an even. I was going to say, I usually say 5 or 10 years, but I remember reading a stat on AI like AI in, in the first 6 to 12 months grew as much as the Internet did in 10 years, which was already 20 times faster than, what was it, radio or something, which was 50 times faster than no TV, which was 50 times faster than the growth of the radio. Every single iteration is like, it's not just exponential growth, it's exponentially faster on each of those. So I'm going to have to say, where do you think AI is going to be? Even in 12 months, 24 months?

Yeah. So now, now that it really has sort of picked up in every sense, you know, for me, because I come from the kind of the science world, from the academic world. I saw that started to build. Actually Suddenly back in 15 years ago, you started to see much more articles coming.

In the computer science and in the mathematics and applied mathematics. And I thought that this means something and this is what the AI is built on. It's all about this computer science, all about the mathematics and applied mathematics. So, so now it's kind of a gathered the momentum and kind of a strength and the muscles, and now it's growing exponentially because we finally got there and nobody knows where it goes. I mean, it's like. And now we're talking about, almost in every country, we're talking about how to harness that, you know, how to regulate that. We didn't all talk about those things. You know, just a couple of years ago, suddenly it's on our doorstep.

And this is sort of a fascinating of course aspect about the technology is that once they really started to ramp up, it's truly exponential logarithmic growth. And what happens after that is that, well, we start to think that, well, yeah, it's a very nice thing, but let's not go over the top. You know, what if we start to use the AI, we, you know, we are all screening each other or somebody, you know, government start to screen for us. You know, they, they start to give us the social points. Now there's something that they are doing already in China, you know. You know, I saw that.

You look.

At someone the wrong way and your bank account gets shut down and you.

Can'T drive Mario minus five points.

I mean I, I frequently envision my life as a video game and me as the main character, but that's getting a bit much.

Right? Right. Yeah, yeah, but that's the.

And I, I think when people invent stuff, they, you know, there's the people going, let's not go out of hand. And then there's other people going, let's see out of how out of hand we can get.

And then there's other people that are, you know, always three steps behind because they don't want to get out of hand. They sure, they surely don't want to get super out of hand. They wait, you know, 5, 10, like social media, perfect example. Seems non threatening. Probably the bigger. Should I be saying this? Anyway, everyone's like, oh, it's cute, it's fuzzy, it's funny. We can put pictures, share stuff. Oh look, someone's got a food picture. And within a few years, you know, there was people going, oh, it's just this fad. And now.

There, there isn't a business on the planet not trying to do something on it. I don't know how many are getting it right, but everyone knows, okay, it's sticking around. But the first few years it's the early adopters and then the other people wait until you know, it's mainstream going, oh, now it's safe. Yeah, probably less safe now than ever. I said that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we got to the point where.

You know.

When these technologies, when they really get so kind of immersive in the way that they do now. So immersive meaning that you know, they start to be sort of everywhere. Now AI is all is kind of begin to be in all the technologies, wherever you have a kind of a digital component there. So that's something quite extraordinary how rapidly it has expanded. Now we as human beings and particularly as collectives, we need to be thinking this way. We need to think about those consequences. We need to think about the consequences of our action because if you look at the troubles for the world that we currently have, whether it's about the climate change, whether it's about.

You know, deforestation or inequality rising, I think it's mostly because we have not been really thinking about the consequences of our own action. We have been just focused on the immediate kind of result, which we always think should be positive for us, sometimes positive for others as well. But this is where we are as a humanity. We need to grow to be more kind of reflective. What are the real consequences? And this goes, of course, with the AI as well. So AI can be kind of a good thing for us human beings as long as we are not letting it start to guide us instead of we guiding.

The AI. And that's the critical thing.

That's a great expert authority effect insight there. Because so many people, I think, are using it as a reliance.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's. And it's really. Ask us. It's a really, you know, Mario, it's a really ethical question. You know, how do we, how do we deal with this in the right way now that we have so extraordinary, powerful tool? What do we do with that in such a way that we really see that it's working for the best of the people and that's the challenge we have ahead of us.

It can be super advantageous. You know, it was interesting because I have my new book on book publishing and there's a line in there that, honestly, I can't wait for the next edition because I say, you know, you know, use tools using AI for the process. Because I was referring to spell check, Grammarly, things like that, for just simple. They're AI and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm like, oh crap, I got to redefine this whole thing now. And it's like, I believe there's the, the intrinsic good and bad in everything because it's in everyone. So I want to bring it back to not Aliens alliance, because when you're talking about the time period of 911 and that tragedy, there was no real. I think we had spell check, but.

For sake of argument, that wasn't AI in the context we're talking about it. How do you bridge that gap and how is the conversation different in that time frame to if you were to be talking with them present day for a similar situation?

Well, you know, the way that I look at this is this. So in those days of the 9 11th and, and what happened after that in the, in the first, basically the first decade of the 2000, I think. I think, you know.

Today we are just living so much more complex world. I mean, complexity is the one thing that has really changed because we have just so much more interconnections. You look at any single person in this planet today, and you can bet that he or she has at least 20 more connections near and far. And even if those connections have usually quite weak, there are still connections. And more than that, you know, all of us can today reach out so easily over the continents that it was not imaginable only 20 years ago, the way we do it today. So all this connectivity, the more there is connectivity, more there is interaction, more there is a complexity, and more there are surprises. Just think about what's happened in the last four years. First we got the pandemic. Now we have this crazy war in Ukraine caused by a Russian attack, and that has metal that has confused the whole global economy.

Just like that.

And it's quite amazing what these shocks are actually doing to us because they are so pervasive. So we are talking not only talking about the pervasive technologies, we are also talking about the pervasive shocks. And if you think that this is the last one, no, unfortunately, it's not going to be the last one. So this growing complexity actually produces these surprises. And that means that actually we need to be starting.

To see the world in a very different way. We need to actually to build. This is my. One of my visions. We need to start to build in a really, truly world governance system, which we don't have. I mean, United nations doesn't really work that way. It has been great, but it's based on the Second World War and what happened after that. And now we're living in a totally different world, which means actually very different things. So that, you know, just an example.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I just finished.

Please.

You know.

What, Putin, for instance, how was able to actually do this without, you know, United nations being able to do anything? You know, this guy just simply rushed to the other independent country in the euro does that. And this whole organization which is here to keep the global order just cannot do anything. Would you say that it's a little bit like, lagging behind its task? Yes, indeed. And that's because it belongs to the old world. And now we are in the new world.

How deep do you want to go with this? Because I'm sure you have very unique perspectives, and I personally would love to hear them.

Do you want to go deeper? I have zero issue with it.

All right. Okay.

So elaborate. Feel free. To elaborate. I.

Don'T know if the live stream will get pulled down or not, but I've got three recorders on, so I don't care. We'll see, please. And I'm sure our audience will love it too.

So what I mean, what I mean by this, that. Well.

I don't think that we kind of need sort of a global police or anything like that. But what we do need, we need to recognize that this world needs a kind of a system where we all sort of see that, you know, what is, what is allowed and what is not. And that's a very human thing. You know, if you go to ask anywhere in the world, people always telling the same thing, you know. You know, we should love our neighbors, we should love our families, we should live peacefully, you know, we should not steal.

You're telling me you think it's not right that you can just walk into someone else's house and take something, let alone a whole other country without any repercussions and no one does anything?

Yeah, sorry, I'm quite bald on this. This is exactly what I think. And so we need to create a system that doesn't allow, you know, it's in which this is not possible to happen. We just need to be able to stop that.

I agree. I would love to know. I mean, you're dealing with people here. All right, how would you. I have a whole other question for that surprise thing that you saw me get when we were getting started. But I know exactly what I'm going to ask you for that, because I need to know the question answer. But how would. What would you propose in this, that, okay, so there's no world police, but people should be more accountable. Don't disagree. However, how would you.

Because even putting a law in place, I was actually going to consider a career in FBI, CIA, police. And I know one thing. You can make as many laws as you want. How would you enforce.

This?

Yeah, well.

That'S where I think that what I call the world government comes into play. So we should have a, in a way, kind of a world government that. That looks over these kind of pertinent issues that we all agree how. What are the right sort of ethical behaviors in this world? And, and we should just make sure that, you know, if those are violated, they are just simply stop. Because if there is a world government that has a power, mandate, mandate to look after these violations, then they would actually be able to do that and then we wouldn't see these crazy things happening anymore. I mean, absolutely, we should have that. Because. And you know, the argument is why? Yes, why? Because we are simply so much more interconnected in this world. So we are in the same boat. So if we are in the same boat or same team, but we are playing a very different goals, where does that lead us? Nowhere.

Yeah, everyone's rowing in a different direction.

Directions like crazy, you know, it doesn't work.

And we need to use our capacity as human beings to understand that, you know, there are certain principles which we all adhere to without any exception, actually. So if there are crazy guys around, we should be able to harness them. We should be able to say, no, you cannot do that. You know, we are not allowing this to happen. And, and even if this sounds kind of a naive, sincere. But no, it's not actually, because.

Say. Say it again if this sounds.

Yeah, I am. What I'm saying is that even if this sounds naive.

Oh, it's not naive one bit.

Kind of a, you know, simple thing. This is a very fundamental. Because the first time that we ever had something a little bit close to that was after the Second World War, because we had a world war and people realized that we cannot have these world wars anymore. It's. It's absolutely crazy. And we need to stop that. And we were able to stop that. There had never been a third world war. But now that is not enough anymore. We need more on that. So that we need to kind of. Because these rogue guys, they can do anything. They can steal some crazy kind of nuclear bombs to do whatever. So we need to be just very careful in this world which we have created and make it safe and good for all of us. And that needs a new kind of a superstructure. And even if we don't like the idea, that's the only way.

I agree with what you're saying, and I think it is crazy. I mean, when you said, I'm sorry, I'm being so bold, like, yeah, well, I'm greedy then, because I love my family and friends, want a roof over my head and food. You know what I mean? It's all contextual. People are like, oh, this greedy person here. And I have to amend one thing I said about the 18 cars. I know plenty of people who have that or more, and they're doing a lot of great stuff in the world. It's not. It doesn't have to be one or another. I have an issue with everyone painting one type of person one way and one the other. Like, you can do whatever you want. It's your choice. You don't have to fit into any one box as far as I'm concerned. So I don't think you need to apologize. And I wish more people were bold and agreed with us that, you know, maybe you shouldn't be able to just steal randomly and invade a country and not, you know, steal someone's car and then all the neighbors go, well, that's unfortunate. Like, really.

I'm so.

I appreciate what. Please go ahead.

Yeah, I think there's, There is a. There's another thing to this because.

You know, whether you have 18 cars or not is, is when you have 18 cars and you are basically just a family and how much you are using those cars, you know.

We need to be heading into much more kind of a. Be resource intelligent so to, to use our resources much more wisely. We all know that it's. There's a huge issue about this. You know, we are, we are squandering our natural resources. That's what we basically do. And most of the troubles that we get now, you know, from climate change and all that is because of that. So there's something in our behavior that we need to be kind of redirecting to kind of a, you know, to balance with the earth, balance with resources that we have. And we come to realize that. So I think.

But for the people who aren't thinking this way, why would you need to balance resources? When you run out, you can just take someone else's.

Right.

Well, let me come to this other thing that, you know, you're not supposed to steal too much. Well, you can borrow, of course, if.

No, the ruling is you're just not supposed to get caught.

You're not supposed to.

Yeah, you know, I'm teasing, but.

Yeah, there's. We could go like hours on this. I'm glad you're mentioning it. And I think it's a great use of. For the people who have the vision and can do futuristic planning and all this. I'm glad you are helping companies with it and sharing it with us because it's one thing I actually like to talk about. But so it seems like so few people are. And I feel bad, truly, because there's so many people that are so caught up in their world because it feels like that's imploding. I mean, I would never tell anyone, forget your family, to go solve some other issue.

That doesn't relate to you and have your family suffer. However, I'm not saying that should be skipped over to begin with. Like, I would love to see everyone so empowered that they're good and they have the time, energy and money to go, all right, we're good. Who else can we help? And then empower other people, lift them up and go, well, they're good now, who else can we help? But there's other people who, that kind of undermines their whole M.O. if you will. Like, oh, people can think for themselves and you know, they're going to be a lot harder to go steal from. I'll just leave it at that for now. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's one for sure.

And that's not the only factor. But I have a.

Let's do this. Is there anything else you would like to add on to this while we're on it?

Well, maybe one thing.

I, I like to say that.

When we're thinking about the future and our goals, our, you know, we setting the, the targets for our company, say, let's say.

I always kind of invite people to think it this way. Well, future is an invitation. So. And when we need to be listening to those invitations and once we kind of get that invitation, it usually comes after some sort of a, sort of serious contemplation discussions.

And it also comes out of the fact that we are more kind of a reflecting what's going on now around in the world. So understanding where, you know, AI is taking, where climate change is taking us, you know, all these kind of factors that are at play and that have the decisive role on our future, we need to consider them. But on the top of that, we need to be able to place ourselves in that future. So because the human imagination is the most precious thing that we have, this is the very, very fundamental human faculty. And we are able to step into the future by using that imagination and then from that future to look ourselves to the present reality and think about those steps that we need to be making. And that is a inspiring and powerful force that we can tap into. Once we use that power and wants to put ourselves in the future, that sort of generates the energy that we need to go sometimes uphill battle. Because it's not, if you want to achieve something, it's not going to be an easy ride. It's not the, you know, walk in the park necessarily. You need to do more than that, but the rewards are also great. And that's why to start this type of process, we first need to take ourselves into the future and imagine ourselves in that future. And that's where the whole kind of a journey begins.

Very great expert authority effect insights. I so I'm so thankful that you're sharing on this and agree. Because if you're only looking at present day, it's always only going to be present day and you're going to get kind of what life gives to you instead of creating what you want. I leave myself notes all the time that say, for the Mario of next week or the Mario of next month. And then I'll read it down the road. I'm like, thank you.

Because right now, today's priorities are today's. But here's a really great idea that in three months from now, I'll have the room. Was it the bandwidth, I think is what the keyword. All the cool kids say, the bandwidth to explore it and do something new. And it's a lot of fun. So I'm glad you're encouraging others to do it.

Right? Yeah, yeah, I do. I certainly do. That's been my. The kind of life work, really. Yeah.

It must be fun being able to do this all the time. I do have the special question. This is the wheel of whatever. And you need to pick a yellow or black.

Yellow.

Okay.

Good one. Look at that question right there. All right, so I've been waiting to ask you this. So this has probably nothing to do with business. In this specific question.

You had mentioned about.

Someone just going from one country and invading another without any repercussions and was able to do it pretty flawlessly. And you said, how was he able to do that?

How do you think?

You think? He was just so calm about it. No one noticed three months later after the fact.

Well.

Basically what happened was.

This guy was ruthlessly determined to do that, and then he actually did that. And nobody believed that he would do anything like that, but what, what he did. So he had on his side this kind of a surprise factor that he did that nobody else thought that he would actually do. And so maybe that's kind of an example that we always have to consider.

Also the alternatives. That doesn't look so good to. Because we always like to think that, well, let's keep on our comfort zone. And if this looks like a rogue guy, maybe it's not like that. Maybe it's just the one of us, you know, who. Who don't want to, you know, go and steal their stuff, you know, neighbor stuff. But. But this. Then there are these guys that just far beyond that and, and we should be able to recognize them and.

Kind of a frame it in the right.

Way and say, hey, be more aware when it's happening.

Yeah. Don't you? Don't you? Don't you do that you know because we going to be acting on the day one if you do that. And so that's a kind of a key learning here. You know, don't be naive. If you see something, something like this might happen and, and, and this is what we future is called, you know kind of a scenario thinking. So you need to open up all different kinds of scenarios. That's the kind of the idea not just to look at the particularly nice scenarios there but look at also the kind of the, the, the, the the.

What'S the bad stuff that could happen. You would think after thousands of years of conflict. Peace, wartime peacetime. Wartime peacetime people would go there's a pattern here.

There is a pattern here.

Oh, that's outlandish. That could never happen. Really. Have you seen what we've done before?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ok so be aware. I like that.

That's, that's how it is.

All right, well we are going to thank our sponsor and come back with the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book including yours and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

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For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio.

There's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. If you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation and is our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Marcou, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Absolutely.

All right, I got three questions for you. Rapid fire answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

It is of course to realize where the biggest gains for your customers are and hit for that road.

All right, number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

I think that we have ourselves kind of belief systems that often kind of prevents us from seeing where the real kind of profits are and that often kind of takes us away from the, from the potential that we might be seeing otherwise. So. So we need to be looking at our limiting beliefs and break through them.

Very good. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

I think there is only one way which is that you need to serve your customer the best way you can. And that means that you need to be thinking as if you were in his or her shoes.

Which is kind of what we call usability, empathy. If you are able to take that road, you understand the needs of your customers much better and you create much more loyalty then very good.

Being a publisher, you know, I have to ask about books and what your favorite ones are and which ones helped you in business and life the most. So what books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Well, my all time favorite.

Book is called Competing for the Future and that was published at the time by Gary Hamill and Seki Prahala and it became a classic. And even if after all those years that it has been published, I read it today and I still see that there is a lot of fresh and good thinking in it's really, really amazing book. And that often makes me to think that, well.

Competing for the future is actually competing with yourself to become a better one.

And when you do that, you also think, okay, what I'm serving as my company the way that we are serving now, tomorrow we're going to do a better job. So there's always this idea of doing better and making things better. And if we are strived by that, if we, we are not kind of, kind of stopping to turn the rest on our Lauras, then, then we on the right track, trying to improve our own performance the way we do things every day.

That's a great answer. A great answer. Anna, appreciate the recommendation. I don't think I've had that one yet, so thank you.

Go ahead.

All right.

Where would you like people to learn more from you?

Well, I think that what I can sort of bring to the table is really this, that how you can use the future more intelligently with your business, with the way that you see the world as a person. Well, I've been doing that with a lot of governments as well, so.

Oh really?

And, and, and, and you know, I, I was couple of just tell you a little story. I was couple of years ago, I was working for quite some time in Dubai for the Dubai government. And you know what they are facing, they are facing that there is going to be the end of the oil era basically.

And, and they need to think how they are gonna kind of strive and how they can able to build the business and attract, attractivity of the, of the, of the town those days and, and, and the whole region also. So that means that there needs to be a very different way of understanding that okay, that era will be completely different than what, what we did with the oil. But we can still use for instance the sun power and you know, solar comes, you know, solar power comes there every day almost, you know, from the kind of a blue sky and, and, and so to, to harness that energy and, and use that for, for, for how to run the cities, how to build the materials, how to produce energy, all those things. So they, they, so we were exploring those and how to produce let's say hydrogen which will be also very important for the future of the energy system. So future will be always different. And this is what I've been kind of teaching exactly how different it is. Well, we need to explore, we need to have assumptions, but we need to be based on something and so forth. But that's the work that we need to be doing, not just repeating the stuff that we have done in the past.

That sounds like fun honestly, because.

There'S a lot of people now freaked out about the AI going oh, it's going to replace my job. And it's like if a robot my thought, not in 100% of scenarios, but if something like that can replace your job, elevate your skill set to something that's harder to replace or irreplaceable. You know, the whole kiosk versus the cash register attendant or whatever they're called.

Now everything's got self checkout. I can imagine an entire country going oh, everything's going to evolve. No one's going to need oil anymore. That might frighten some people the same way computers did frankly 30 years ago. Oh, who's going to be doing this, this and this. It's all going to be on computer. Well, learn computers then, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's going to be industries that will go down. That's obviously.

One for sure.

But there is an interesting aspect to this, what you were actually referring to, which is that, well.

Everything that can be repeated or can be recreated, even with a little bit of more information will be done by these machines, will be done by AI. So what is left for the human being?

It's all about the creativity, thinking, creativity.

Imagination, all the stuff we're designed for and do naturally.

Well, exactly. So those are the types of things that, you know, if there is a final, you know, post there somewhere where, you know, AI has invented all others, invented all other spaces, then this, this, this creativity that is very typical for humans. And it's very hard to instill kind of a, kind of install any of these.

Intelligent machines. This is something that, that we, we need to be using and training ourselves to use because that's. That as long as you are on that path and you are able to deliver and kind of a demonstrate and, and offer something from there.

That kind of a. Is the highest security for you to have some kind of a job in the future.

Another great expert authority effect insight. It. You know, there's this funny show I like at the American version of the Office. And there's this one scene, he's. They're doing a job interview and the guy walking by, he's like, who's that? He's like, oh, he's a Rhodes scholar. He, you know, built an airplane. You know, he invented an app that invents apps. And it's like when you mentioned the AI replacing everything, I think people just jump to this extreme of like, in the next six months everything's gonna disappear. It's like it might down the road, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball either. But slow down. Like, it's really good at certain things, but it's horrible at other stuff currently.

Yeah.

So play over here and don't worry about spellcheck. Do you have a website or LinkedIn profile? Like where would you like to send people to learn more and get, get info on you?

Yeah, well, the easiest way is to do this. Just type my name and you will very easily to find that I have a YouTube channel.

Okay.

And also that I have, I have a LinkedIn. Of course, I have an Instagram, which is also quite popular these days. And I have a TikTok. So. So I have all these channels that you can find very easily with my name is so peculiar. There's no other Marco Villeneuve around. So once you see my name and.

You'Ve accomplished a great deal as well. It's not just that. Like I was reading your one sheet and I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to mention all of this in one breath. But we're going to make sure the it's in the show notes the links as well on eainterviews.com and I know you have a website and other stuff so it'll all be there. I just didn't know if there was one you wanted to shout out. But thank you so much for everything you've been sharing with us. And I told you we were going to have fun, didn't I?

Oh my Lord, we have had a lot of fun. Thanks for that Mario. This has been great. I really enjoy that.

I have too. Thank you again. All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethod book.com to get started. Now once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn LinkedIn lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.