The Poultry Leadership Podcast
"Welcome to 'The Poultry Leadership Podcast,' where we dive deep into the world of poultry leadership to help you soar to new heights in your career. Join us as we sit down with some of the industry's most accomplished leaders, farm owners, and allied professionals. Gain valuable insights, strategies, and personal stories that reveal the secrets behind their success. Discover what makes these poultry visionaries the outstanding leaders they are. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, our show is your go-to resource for unlocking your full leadership potential. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey to becoming the poultry leader you aspire to be."
This podcast is brought to you by Prism Controls, the leader in Environmental Controls for the past 45 years! Check them out at http://www.prismcontrols.com
The Poultry Leadership Podcast
Anticipatory Thinking and the Future of Agriculture with AI - Daniel Burrus
What if you could harness the power of AI to revolutionize your approach to agriculture and beyond? Join us on the Poultry Leadership Podcast as we explore this fascinating frontier with Daniel Burrus, a visionary futurist lauded by the New York Times for his inspirational insights. Daniel takes us on a journey from his early days of federal research to his transformative ventures in the business world. He shares how his passion for teaching and critical thinking has fueled his innovative outlook, offering listeners unique perspectives on blending traditional wisdom with cutting-edge technology.
Our discussion moves into the heart of AI advancements, particularly in the realm of agriculture. Learn about the remarkable innovations like infrared sensors and vision systems that are reshaping poultry farming. We tackle the dual nature of AI, recognizing both its transformative potential and the challenges it poses. With practical tips and inspiring examples, Daniel illustrates how AI is not just a tool for automation but a catalyst for personal and professional growth, unlocking new avenues for efficiency and security.
Finally, we delve into strategies for maximizing potential and efficiency in everyday life. Discover how identifying underlying issues and streamlining processes can lead to more direct paths to success. From predictive technology in agriculture to the concept of anticipatory organizations, Daniel offers insights into leveraging technology for a brighter future. This episode closes with a special gesture—an opportunity for engaged listeners to receive a copy of Daniel's influential book, "Anticipatory Organizations," as we aim to inspire and empower through the power of shared knowledge.
https://www.burrus.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielburrus/
Hosted by Brandon Mulnix - Director of Commercial Accounts - Prism Controls
The Poultry Leadership Podcast is only possible because of its sponsor, Prism Controls
Find out more about them at www.prismcontrols.com
Welcome to the Poultry Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, brandon Mullnix, and today I've got an incredible guest for you, someone that changed the way I thought Over eight years ago. I met this guy when I was just mowing lawn, listening to an audiobook, and one of the ideas sparked. And then I reached out to him on LinkedIn and, next thing I know, a conversation starts. He's interviewing me for his blog and we were able to share an incredible idea with the world, all because I've got one of the greatest thinkers, the greatest guys, that is, a thought leader. He's recognized by the New York Times as one of the tech gurus that is just inspirational to all, and so who I have is Daniel Burrus, the author of one of my favorite books, Flash Foresight, as well as Anticipatory Organizations, and today I'm excited to have Daniel with us. Daniel, welcome to the podcast.
Daniel Burrus:Hey, thank you so much. What a pleasure.
Brandon Mulnix:Man, I can't believe. You know we talk, it's been eight years and you know, as we warmed up for this, there's so much change in eight years.
Daniel Burrus:Oh yeah, hey, there's been a lot of change in eight months.
Brandon Mulnix:Isn't that the truth? Yeah, Daniel, can you introduce yourself? I mean I gave some accolades and I mean I could talk about you all day long, and I'm going to include a lot of this also in the show notes so people can get connected with you. But tell the audience who's Daniel Burrus.
Daniel Burrus:Yeah, well, thank you for that. I'll make it pretty fast because I want to get get down to whatever we can do to help people out. You know, I found out years ago why I was put on the planet, because I think the two biggest things is, first of all, you know the fact that you were born and, secondly, why am I here? And I was put on the planet? To teach. So, rather than tell you some statistics, some trends that you can keep an eye on, what I want to do is to teach you a methodology. So that's for formal, so that you can use what we're talking about well beyond this time that we have together. So, speaking of teaching, that's really where I started out. I'll make this kind of quick. I started out as an undergraduate. Before getting my degree, I actually directed federal research. I was the first undergraduate in the nation to direct a federal research grant, amazingly enough, and that was kind of an interesting thing to have an office and a secretary. My professors didn't even have a secretary. But anyway, that's a longer, more interesting story that we can get into another time. But I started out teaching biology and physics and I did that for a number of years. I really loved it, got an Educator of the Year award my first year because, rather than teach a subject, I was turning students into scientists so that they could do critical thinking and problem solving and use new tools to shape a better tomorrow, which, by the way, is still a theme with what I try to do. I had an idea for an airplane design and I decided to build it one summer, test, flew it and turned out to be a great design. I ended up with 37 national locations in the first year. That was profitable.
Daniel Burrus:In the first year Started, I left education because I liked making money, but I also was educating people about a new kind of plane and new types of ways of flying. So the educator was still there and I ended up starting. Within three years I had four different businesses in different areas, all growing fast, and I was about to open up a West Coast manufacturing plant and I asked a very important question. I thought to myself if I'm in my late 90s looking back at the professional part of my life and this is what I did am I happy? And the answer was no. So I know immediately I'd have to sell those companies and, by the way, the sooner the better. Why? Because now, that was not my future and it was now becoming an anchor, because you could take a long time to sell a company or a short amount. So I sold all of them and started many decades ago, what my main company is today, Burrus Research, and we research global innovations in all areas of technology lasers, robots, genetics, fiber optics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, all of those kinds of things and I've come up with over the years a way of separating what we know will happen from what might happen. We'll come back on that in a minute.
Daniel Burrus:So I've written six bestselling books. You mentioned Flash Foresight, which is New York Times, wall Street Journal bestseller, an anticipatory organization. There were four others besides that that were done earlier than that. Thousands of blogs that I've written, literally, and I do a lot of consulting. I'm a strategic advisor, for example, to the Department of Defense. I was on their. I'm a founder of their futures group, so I work on that end. But I'm also working with agriculture as well as education, as well as manufacturing, really just about every industry.
Daniel Burrus:But before we go any further, one little tidbit I want to give you. When I was a young guy and I'm talking about being in even before junior high. You know, seventh grade, sixth grade, that area. My parents lived up in Wisconsin but I talked them into putting me on a train and letting me go down to Texas to visit my grandmother who lived in a little place called Telephone Texas. Entering and leaving signs on the same post, all the young people were gone.
Daniel Burrus:It was subsistence farming, and boy they were doing it in the old way. This was again when I was young. So I learned how to plow a field with a mule. I picked cotton by hand. I've hoed peanuts with a hoe. By the way, what was the most important thing I learned about hoeing peanuts? Carry a file with you. You got to sharpen the blade. The sharper that blade is, the faster you can go the minute it gets dull, and it will when you're going through whole acres of field. By the way, we need to sharpen our blade, don't we? So that was a great metaphor and I learned many through that time.
Daniel Burrus:So I've been in farming. I know what it is to farm, to grow, to have animals. So that's matter of fact. I'll make one other quick statement. And so that's matter of fact. I'll make one other quick statement. If all of the kids in this country could spend a little time working on a farm, we'd have a much better country, all right, and I believe that with 100 percent, no question about it. So, with all of that said, let's turn our attention to the future After all. Hey, that's where we're going to spend the rest of our life.
Brandon Mulnix:You got a good point there.
Daniel Burrus:That's where you're going to make the rest of your money. Maybe we better be thinking about it. And you know the reason. A lot of people don't think about the future that much is because it's always changing. I mean, we talked about how fast things are changing and wow, now it's in hyperspeed. So much change. It's like why bother? The minute I come up with a plan, it'll be obsolete. Anyway, I've come up with something that can help all of you with all of that, because failing to plan is planning to fail. Let that sink in. Failing to plan is planning to fail. You need to have a plan and, of course, building change into the plan is planning to fail. You need to have a plan. And, of course, building change into the plan is a good thing because change will happen. But this is based on decades of research.
Daniel Burrus:As we look to the future, all trends are either a hard trend based on a future fact that will happen. By the way, the litmus test on that is if it can be changed. It's not a hard trend based on a future fact that will happen. By the way, the litmus test on that is if it can be changed. It's not a hard trend, but if it can't be changed. It is. And what hard trends do is it gives you certainty in an uncertain world, because it looks like everything is uncertain. Well, actually, that is not true at all. That's just what we think, other than death and taxes. We think that's it, but that is not true at all. That's just what we think, other than death and taxes. We think that's it, but that is not reality.
Daniel Burrus:For example, we've got 78 million baby boomers in the United States. Chronologically, they're going to get older. By the way, that's a hard trend. They're not going to all of a sudden get chronologically younger. And we're AI. Maybe you're saying I don't know if I like AI. Well, you can't just stop that train. It's growing at beyond exponential speeds at every single day. So that, by the way, another hard trend. And will we have more regulations on cybersecurity? Well, yeah, because there's some hard trends at play that government can't ignore, even if they seem to be divided.
Daniel Burrus:So when we understand hard trends and we're about to get into that a little further with you what do you have? Well, again, you have certainty in an uncertain world, and strategy based on certainty has low risk. On the other end, strategy based on uncertainty has high risk. So what I want to do is talk more about certainty and the other element of hard trends. The other really important thing to understand is you can see disruption before it disrupts, turning disruption into a choice. You see, I just want you all to have a choice, because today you're either going to be the disruptor or the disrupted. There is no middle anymore. You're either the disruptor or the disrupted.
Daniel Burrus:Actually, let me tell you what I'd like you all to do, and I know what you do for a living. I know the business you're in, I've studied this beforehand and I've been involved in agriculture quite a bit. As I said, I would like you to be a positive disruptor. Now here's what I mean by that. Negative disruption is disruption that happens to you, and now you've got to crisis, manage and put out fibers. But does a guy like Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, does he see disruption as negative? No, it's all the people he's disrupting. They see it as negative. Same thing with Elon Musk he loves disruption because he creates it. I want you to be a creator of positive disruption. So how would I define that? Creating the transformations that need to happen to elevate your relevancy, as well as accelerate innovation and profitable underline that word growth and you can do that in this business of avian flu and all the other things that we're dealing with. And, by the way, we're not leaving that off to the side, and we're not leaving AI, artificial intelligence off to the side either.
Daniel Burrus:I just wanted to lay out a framework for you all. So we have hard trends. There's only one other kind of trend, and that is a soft trend, and a soft trend is based on something that might happen. Now, I didn't say it won't, but might and for sure are two different things, especially when you're measuring risk. So an example of a soft trend that I'd love to point out, and that is our health care system in the United States, and that is the cost of healthcare that's been going up, up, up, up up for actually several decades. Every year it's going up, and most of us think, well, that's a hard trend, can't stop that. So all of our efforts are around how do we pay for the mess that baby boomers will create as they get older? By the way, that's a hard trend. So, but if we realize, actually, the rising cost of health care is a soft trend if you don't like it, you could change it, why we could do quite a bit. For example, we could put make a blockchain for health care.
Daniel Burrus:Now, for those of us who don't know what blockchain is, it is a way of creating transparency in a non-transparent marketplace. You can not change it. In other words, you can have high levels of trust and security. So what might we do with that? Well, let's take a look at healthcare. Did you know that an aspirin in a hospital costs $25? No, if you knew that, you'd have your spouse bring it, but you don't know that. That's why they can charge that. Did you know that that artificial knee you're having put in because you did too much kneeling around the farm or maybe you played too much tennis when you had some time off that artificial knee? Same price, not the same price. Same size, same manufacturer can vary in price by close to 100%. So what if we put all of that on a blockchain where we could all see the prices of things? By the way, competition would start happening. Prices would indeed come down, and there's already a blockchain for healthcare. That's a startup with $100 million in first round funding.
Daniel Burrus:So I'm just giving you a quick example of what could be done. So there are soft trends and hard trends, and I love them both. Why do I love about a hard trend? I can see disruption before disruption, giving me a choice, and I can actually identify a lot of problems before I have them, so I can pre-solve them and move forward faster. What do I love about a soft trend? If you don't like it, you can change it. You can change it.
Daniel Burrus:So I was speaking at a international poultry conference in South America back in 2019. I don't know if you knew about that or not. Nope, nope, didn't know about that. And one of the things I said back there because we did have disease back then as well, not just avian. There's other types of disease that birds get, and they're in close quarters quite often. So one of the things that I said is, first of all, you could have now finely tuned. By the way, you don't have to wait for future.
Daniel Burrus:Tech could be done right now infrared sensors that are very specific, so that you could actually see when a bird is getting warm. Oh, there's a red bird, all right, maybe we got to get that bird out of there. Why? Because it's probably got a fever. Another one that you could do is you can sense behavior changes. Sick birds behave different and that, by the way, is a really easy one.
Daniel Burrus:I know your company already has vision systems. The key is what Vision systems are changing and getting better all the time. If you've got an old vision system, you know what. You're not taking advantage of the opportunity that's right in front of you. The new vision systems you can actually build in, thanks to AI, that behavior of a healthy bird versus an unhealthy bird, and you can start to see where that is and where that's spreading, so that you can get them out very quickly. Also, we've got the contamination of other types of birds, especially if you have flocks outside. You've got migratory fowl. You've got other types of birds coming in. I mean, we've got to have this contained and it can identify other types of birds, even in an outdoor setting. So those are just a couple of things that I talked about down there that we can fully do, and there is a lot more. So I have just been going like crazy since we started. Let me let you ask me some questions.
Brandon Mulnix:Yeah, I mean you talk about hard trend, soft trend and let's just throw it out there AI, soft trend or hard trend?
Daniel Burrus:AI is a definite hard trend. Will you use it? Oh, that's a soft trend. You can't predict whether you're going to use it or not. That's totally soft. But will AI get more powerful every month? Much less every year?
Daniel Burrus:Well, absolutely, and I know many of us are thinking well, my work doesn't require AI. Let me just put it this way If you're doing anything repetitive that could be automated and in the past that would have been expensive Today, well, it's super cheap. He just didn't know you could automate that redundant task to increase productivity like we've never seen before. We're going to have an increase of productivity across the board, by everyone. Secondly, you don't have to be a programmer and, third, you don't need a lot of money. As a matter of fact, some of these tools are get this free. Some of them are $10 or $20 a month and they're unbelievably powerful. So, as a matter of fact, as long as we're talking about AI, let's just talk about one of our fears, and that is oh, it can do terrible things and, by the way, oh, yes, it can do absolutely horrific things. However, it can do unbelievably amazing things. I think the people I'm talking to right now are good people. Why don't we use AI to do amazingly good things, while we protect ourselves against the people that are doing the amazingly bad things. And since I brought the subject up, let me give you a couple of tips on protecting yourself.
Daniel Burrus:Because I brought it up, let me just get into that. Number one I'd like you to have and this is personally as well as for your business I'd like you to have a zero trust in terms of how you approach a text message that comes in or an email that comes in, maybe from your bank or from someone I want you to verify. I want you I call them back through the number that you can trust, instead of just take it as it is. Secondly, um, so zero trust would be really good. Secondly, you need, um, a family code word. Need a family code word. Need a family code word right now. Need to work this out. Here's why Because, very quickly, I could clone your kids or your grandkids voice. Matter of fact, they're probably on social media. They've probably been doing some audio on there. Very easy to do that, so you might have a grandson or daughter call you or a son or daughter call you say they're in trouble, they need help, they need you to send them some money, whatever, and it sounds just like them. But how do you know? Well, what's the family code word? They don't know it. It's not them. So there's some. By the way, how much does that cost? Nothing. So there's some simple things that we can do to start protecting ourselves.
Daniel Burrus:On the other hand, as I said, I want to focus on the amazing things that it can do, and let me give you a resource right off the bat, because if you're not using AI, somehow, you're really missing out. I'll give you some examples of how to use it. It's a hard trend growing fast, and I have, in this last year, reviewed 1,200 AI tools. Now you have no time to do that. Oh, I did Good, I saved you a lot of time, and what I did is I came up with the top five tools in a number of categories. By the way, you don't even know what categories this thing can do, well, good't even know what categories this thing can do, well, good, you should know. And, by the way, most of these tools are like I said. You can try them for free $10, $20 a month. Do you need to get all of them? No, find the one or two that will do exactly what you need to have done To get that report and you can download it for free. Go to AISTrategyReportcom. Aistrategyreportcom, and you can download it for free, and I've got tips in there on how to use it, how to protect yourself. I've got the case studies of how every one of those categories, of how small medium-sized businesses are using it. It is amazingly powerful.
Daniel Burrus:As I travel around this is interesting I'll be talking to a young, an organization, right, or maybe even a conference, with many companies in it, and after I'm finished, this just happened to me I had a young guy come up and he was in a sales department and he was only in the company for about eight months and he said, man, am I killing it? I'm getting raises beyond the other guys. I'm killing it. And I said, well, how are you? What are you doing? I'm using AI. None of these people are using AI. God, they're stupid, but they're smart people, but they're foolish for not using it. And I said, well, is your company providing you with that AI tool? And he said, no, no, they're kind of slow in getting it to us. But so I just am using ChatGPT myself, and then I found a couple of others that I'm using in it. Holy cow, is it great for sales and marketing and promotion. My God, unbelievable.
Daniel Burrus:Well, I talked to another executive in that same conference. He was the CEO and again, this was a number of companies within this audience, because it was what? About 2,000 people in the audience. So this CEO said well, I had my biggest customer text me about two months ago and you know, when you have a big customer and you're the CEO, they have your cell phone number. You want to know if there's a problem. And he texted him and he was really unhappy with something and the CEO told me I was about to work out a response and I thought, hey, wait a minute, why don't I put in the issue? I won't use names or anything, but I'll put in the problem and say I want to have a response that converts him back into being a fan. And of course, it took 20 seconds to write that and he said it was perfect.
Daniel Burrus:Now he's breaking a rule of mine. Here's my rule It'll get you 80% there fast, but you need to correct it, you need to check it, you need to add you to it, you need to humanize it. Put in that last 20%. By the way, you're not starting from zero Now, you're starting from 80% on everything. But he broke my rule. He said it was so good I didn't need to change a word. So I said it to him and he said about 20 minutes later the CEO didn't text me back. That company CEO called me, totally happy, solved the problem. Now here's what the CEO told me. This is the important part I want you all to remember. He said I could have done that on my own, but this is my most important, biggest customer. He was mad. Probably would have taken me a couple of hours before I hit the send button. I could have done it. In this case it took me a couple of minutes and I could move on to something else and it solved the problem. Bingo. There it is Now on a personal level, let me give you another one.
Daniel Burrus:I mentioned this to a guy who's got a couple of young kids and he reads them bedtime stories. Maybe we've all done that for our kids or our grandkids. And what he did was he started thinking aha. He happened to use chat GPT for this and he asked the kids what kind of story would you like tonight? What kind of characters do you want? Who's the bad guy. What kind of let's describe the bad guy? What's the good guy? What do you want? Then he had chat create the story and he read that story to the kids. Wow, now you see where I'm going. He can use it for anything. So I was asked when ChatGPT first came out.
Daniel Burrus:I was asked will humans be replaced by AI? And I very quickly gave him the answer Humans will be replaced by humans using AI. This is not about taking away the ability for humans. We live in a technology world. You know what? We live in? A human world that's based on relationships. We are in a human world that is not changing. What I want to do is to have us work better.
Daniel Burrus:A good example I love to give is an oncologist is the kind of doctor that treats cancer patients. All right, and right now, ai knows more than any living oncologist. I mean, it has absorbed every single person that's ever had chemo, every single cancer salamate. It knows everything that's ever been done on a global level. No human can keep that top of mind and know all of that. Now let's say you know someone that has cancer. Heaven forbid, all right. So let's say you know somebody.
Daniel Burrus:I'm going to give you three choices. Choice one a great oncologist with a great reputation. Choice number two just AI. Choice number three a really good oncologist that has access to AI. Bingo, that is the future. Let's say, I'm a plumber coming over to fix your pipes. What am I going to do? I'm going to have a little thing in my ear that's going to my phone and it's going to be AI and I'm going to have a little hat on with a little 8K you could make it 4K if you want but a camera so that it can see what I'm looking at and it can actually help me to solve the problem and fix the pipes and do things that I, as a young, new plumber, may not even know how to do. This is called training in real time. Could we use that on the farm? Could we use Absolutely.
Brandon Mulnix:Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Burrus:Yeah, I mean, come on. So here's your homework assignment. If you haven't used it yet, you're missing the biggest opportunity that's ever happened since you have been alive, and I don't care how old you are. This is game-changing. It's happening now, it's evolving right in front of you and it is not expensive, by the way it is. You know what the cost is the cost of saying no, the cost of not doing it is really expensive because you're starting to lose your relevance already. And those competitors because we all have competitors don't assume they're not using it. The ones that use it are the ones that are going to win, so it can help you to do so much.
Daniel Burrus:Here's another example of a tool that's in my list of AI strategy report that you're going to download. I had a friend of mine that did podcasting, like you do, and does a lot of speaking, and he needed surgery on his throat and they said you're going to sound pretty bad for about a month and for about another couple of weeks that you're still going to be hoarse, but he had to use his voice. So he went to 11 Labs one of the tools that's in my report inexpensive tool and made a copy of his voice that he could use in real time, so he would be speaking in his garbled voice and have his clean voice come out. By the way, that was impossible two years ago. But my point is, we're doing things today that were impossible two years ago and, by the way, we're going to be doing things two years from now that are impossible today. That could really help you out. That's why we need to not be playing catch up. That's why we can't rely just on agility.
Daniel Burrus:By the way, agility is reacting quickly after disruption occurs. It's reacting quickly after a problem occurs. You're always behind on it. It's kind of like playing defense in sports, and being agile is good. You've got to know how to play defense. But what I want you to do is use hard trends and soft trends to learn how to play offense, to be able to pre-solve predictable problems before they happen, to use and to feel confident in playing with AI. So, to start with, I would get openaicom, slash chat, gpt and get an account and spend the $20 a month and it'll be the best point you ever spent to get the paid version. You agree with that?
Brandon Mulnix:Daniel, I'm absolutely agree with it. That's where I started, you know I got. You know I had some high school kids around me which they don't have to learn it the old way. They get to start like way ahead where, because they get to focus on all the newest stuff. And so they introduced me to chat GPT and I tried it at first and then, as I developed this podcast, I used it to create the name, used it to create the content at the beginning, and then just hey, who should I have on the podcast? And it gave me a list of titles of people, because at that point it wasn't even connected to my database. And then, pretty soon, every single tool that I have in Google has Gemini built into it and we pay for it. We give licenses to our entire team now, because if we're not using it, how can I ever expect the industry to use it?
Daniel Burrus:using it. How can I ever expect the industry to use it? Yep, yep, exactly. And not all of the tools are created equal. So you know you might want to start with Gemini from Google. By the way, gemini 2 is a game changer. That's new right now. And then, or chat, chat GPT is unbelievable what that can do, and they do a little bit different things. Now, to start with, just get one of the other, just get started.
Daniel Burrus:And, by the way, you said something about the kids being around some high schoolers. So here's an opportunity I want to share with all of you, whether it's kids or grandkids. You've always been the teacher, and let's reverse the role. Why don't you go to one of those young kids by the way, the younger the better. If the high school kids are busy, try the elementary school kids and have them be your mentor and say look, I need to get good on this fast and I'm not sure how it works. Can you help me? And you know what they would love to help you? It works. Can you help me? And you know what they would love to help you? They would just love to help you, because you have always been the teacher for them to help you, whoa. So don't miss that human opportunity, whether it's a grandkid or a kid or a neighbor kid. Oh my goodness, how wonderful would that be.
Brandon Mulnix:Well, daniel, you know you talk about all this, you know this technology and it requires data. I mean it requires sensors, it requires a lot of things to really provide accurate, good, trustworthy data, because so many times you know people are writing numbers on a paper and handing it up to the manager who then types it in All of these repetitive tasks, that honestly, with the power of the tools that are already available, that data can be in the cloud automatically, instantly. It's accessible to make great business decisions. But let's just talk about thinking about problems a different way. Okay, because so many people think, man, I got to go from generation one to generation two to generation three before I can get there. Talk about that problem.
Daniel Burrus:Yeah Well, you already know where it's going because I know you've read my books and one of the principles I have many principles in the books, as you know, but one that I personally love a lot is I call it the skip it principle, and the idea is think of your biggest problem right now. Just take a second, think of your biggest problem, and here's what I'd like you to do how do I get a skip it? Now, there's two different ways of skipping it. One is to realize whatever problem you've identified, that's not it. There's another one underneath that is solvable and is the real problem. So you've got to bore down and get to the real one. I mean, you're smart, you would have solved it by now, and I'll give you a simple example.
Daniel Burrus:I had a niece call me. She has her first job and she said she can't save money. Name is Hallie. So Hallie called and said Uncle Dan, I can't save any money. I'm trying really hard to save money, but I can't save money. And she knew that it's possible because her older sister, audrey, can save money like crazy, but somehow Hallie can't save money. She said I'm really trying to save, I'm really working at it, but I just can't save any money. And I said well, hallie, you're working on the wrong problem. You should work at how you spend money. And once she started working at how she spent money, she found herself saving money. See, saving money was not a real problem. So, again, what's your real problem? Secondly, I said there were two ways of skipping. The other way is skip it all together, like I got, to go from step A to B to C to get to D is where I really want to go. And I said well, why don't we just see if we can go straight to D? I'll give you an example.
Daniel Burrus:I was just a week ago talking to a guy that has been a super rock star in real estate. This was out in Boston and he had developed a really great motivational speech and he's got a really amazing personal story and people have heard his motivational speech and said, wow, this is killer great speech. So he wanted since I've given thousands of speeches and have done well, he wanted some advice. And before giving him advice, I said well, why don't you tell me about what's your ideal future? Five and 10 years from now? Tell me your ideal. And he said well, five and ten years from now, tell me your ideal. And he said well, I'd actually like to make a movie about all of this and what I've done. And I said well, then why are you working really hard at becoming a great motivational speaker? See, he thought he had to do speaking, then books, do speaking, then books, this, this, this, this and then maybe a movie someday. But today it's easy to go straight to the movie idea and skip all those other phases.
Daniel Burrus:I had another guy that had been in marketing, head of marketing in a company, and he wanted to. He left the company and he decided he wanted to teach marketing and consult with companies on marketing. So he said so I only have a bachelor's degree. I think I'm going to go back, get a master's degree in marketing and then start consulting with companies on marketing. And I said well, you've already been a marketer, you've already been a C-suite marketing guy, you've got the experience. You're going to take your time to go get a degree, thinking that's going to help you. By the way, nobody will care if you have a master's degree, they care more about results that you can get. Ended up skipping getting the degree. He ended up doing teaching as well as that. He thought he had to do these things?
Daniel Burrus:Do you really have to do all of this stuff? There's another thing I want to tag onto, though if you don't mind, it's a little bit of a change. So the skip it principle we want to use. What's the real problem? Ask why a number of times. That's how you can get down to what the real one is. It's always solvable. Or look at can I skip it altogether? Am I doing it the way I always have, because that's the way we've all done it? But could AI help me? Matter of fact, ask AI how could I skip it and it might be able to help you out. I mean, I've published thousands of articles. It already knows a lot of my stuff, so you could even try that.
Daniel Burrus:The change of subject I'm going back to something you said earlier. You talked about data and sensors. Let me just get back to that, because that's really important. Today you can make anything intelligent, whatever you want. All you have to do is add some sensors and the ability to communicate Could be wireless or wired, so sensors can be extremely inexpensive, even biodegradable.
Daniel Burrus:At this point and, by the way, what's the cost of sensors Going down hard trend? Been that way a long time. What's the power of sensors? Well, going up hard trend, by the way time. What's the power of sensors? Well, going up, hard trend, by the way. I've been doing that for a long time as well, will continue to. So where do I put sensors? Better question is what would have more value if it was intelligent, giving me information? Maybe it's a device that I want to do predict and prevent, instead of break fix. By the way, your company already offers that so that I can predict. Let me give you an example of something that is still not done today. I know that you live up in Michigan. This time of year gets kind of cold up that way, and I'll bet somewhere in your life you've had a battery that died on you in your car. And they always die at the worst time, when it's really cold and you don't even want to be outside of the car, and that's when it dies. Isn't that right?
Brandon Mulnix:That's absolutely right. You grew up in Wisconsin. You guys had such mild winters over there compared to us. You know like effect guys.
Daniel Burrus:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it would be so easy to put a sensor on a battery a car battery, by the way, it could be a tractor battery, any of the kind of battery and it could send you a text message in today's world because you don't need a whole cell phone. Actually, a cell phone can be that small, that's a teeny thing, and it could send you a text saying I'm going to die in seven days. You a text saying I'm going to die in seven days. Well, thank you, I'd rather get it ahead of time. You see what I'm getting at. Well, you see what I did is I said how can I make the battery intelligent? Why, well, I'd rather predict and prevent than break fix. So there's a lot of things already in your operation that is not intelligent, that you could make intelligent. You just got to go around and ask yourself the right questions and, given the technology advances we have, let me give everyone that's listening another free resource.
Daniel Burrus:Every year, I publish a list of the 25 technology hard trends that are shaping the future. Just now put out a new one for this next year, and if you go, actually the easiest way to find it is to go to my website, which is burruscom. You'll find plenty of other resources there, but you can download that 25 Tech Trends report and it will show you how to use it for your planning. It's not just about the technology, because you're saying, god, I don't have time to look at 25 trends. Wait a minute. These are game changers.
Daniel Burrus:One of them, maybe a combination of two, could solve your biggest problem right now the real one. Maybe one or two could give you a competitive advantage you never had before. Maybe a combination of these three could actually help you deal with the avian flu epidemic before they come out with a vaccine. You see, I want you to have your biggest problem, the real problem, in mind. Look through that list with a opportunity, antenna up and you know what you'll. You'll find something. So take a look at that report. I think you'll find some heavy use in there.
Brandon Mulnix:So you know you, you talk about predicting the future. I mean, what are some of the some of the foresights that you're talking about when it comes to agriculture and farming? You know we've talked about our, our audience. You know what are some of the things you're seeing that could really help outside of some of the things you've already presented.
Daniel Burrus:Well, you know, long ago there was a worry about family farms going away and I and I said, well, family farms is different than families. That farm, so every employee you've got is in the ag business, it isn't just the owner of the facility and there's a bright future for agriculture because we do like to eat, us humans, and we got to have something on the plate. And especially if we've been paying attention I know you have we know eggs have got a very good track record for protein, as well as chickens for that matter, and you know we're on the right area, we're in the great spot, we're in a good zone. The key is we need to be able to deal with problems that we have in a better way, meaning what's the real problem? And then looking at is there tech that can help us? Probably, yes, probably yes, tech that you're not even using today. And you might think, well, I don't have a budget for all this stuff. That's an assumption. You're making an assumption that may be totally invalid. A tech may be far less expensive than you. Actually, the expense may be not putting it in. You could make it back in 12 months in savings and then have the rest be profit. So we've got to think different about expense, about tech and about how we might deploy it. But there is a bright future for agriculture and there's a bright future for people in agriculture Because what we've got is probably one of the biggest productivity booms in the history of mankind.
Daniel Burrus:Thanks to AI oh yeah, because it affects all of us. Kind thanks to ai oh yeah, because it affects all of us better ways of cleaning, better ways of doing employee education. Whatever issue you're dealing with, there's ways of making it better. Matter of fact, that's one of the reasons I am really excited about the future. Everything can be better, everything can be made better, right, great, you see, if everything was perfect, the world wouldn't need you and I. But actually everything is not that great. Good, wonderful. I love that.
Daniel Burrus:By the way, I want to empower that with my people. I want every employee to have their opportunity antenna up. How could we make this better? And know that they can speak up, know we want them to speak up, every single employee, regardless of what they do, you'd say. You know, I'd like you to experiment, try experimenting with AI, and here's some guidelines. Again, you could give them that report. That way, they've got actually some things to draw from. Pick one of those things that you might find helpful or useful and again, if you're stuck on something, ask a kid. You need a techno mentor. I define your techno mentor as a kid.
Brandon Mulnix:So, daniel, if I remember right, you're a Harley guy, right?
Daniel Burrus:Yeah, yeah, I've been riding them a long, long time. Matter of fact, my first vehicle was a motorcycle, so yeah, been a long time.
Brandon Mulnix:I love the Harley. I don't have a Harley, I have a Spyder, so I have the two wheels in front to help me guide, because for some reason, I just love that ride.
Daniel Burrus:Well, it doesn't matter, You're a, you're out there and you're a, you know it's your iron horse.
Brandon Mulnix:So a question I like to ask leaders that I I didn't prep you with, but leaders overcome things adversity in their lives. Would you be willing to share one thing that you've had to overcome and a little bit of advice on how you overcome it?
Daniel Burrus:overcame it yeah, I think the um and this would be going way back before I started Burroughs Research. But I was, uh, thought I was thinking big about my future, but I was thinking too small, because there's always a bigger big. Now, here's what I mean by that. Regardless of your last year of schooling whether it was high school or college or whatever it might be when you were graduating, you were probably thinking big about your future. But if you think back now to that point in time in your history, you realize, oh man, I was thinking way too small. Well, my point is you're thinking too small today. There is a bigger big. So here's the strategy let's put this in strategic terms, something that you all can use, rather than just the bigger big and that is that you want to come up with your big thinking and your. Here's the best strategy I got right now for our operation or for what I do, if you're a manager or whatever it is. There's my best thing. And then what happens? Well, that big idea, we start implementing it and I would say, right, that's when you stop Whoa, whoa, hold it, hold it. Let's step back, let's make sure that we're thinking out of the box a little bit here. Let's think a little bit bigger. Let's take a look at those tools Remember they can change reality and see if we can come up with even the bigger big. Are there some things that we could skip in that big idea to get to where we really want to go faster? Are we heading in the ideal direction? And it is powerful.
Daniel Burrus:You've got Glacier National Park in back of you in a picture and you and I talked a little earlier because I asked you about that picture. I've been to Glacier and actually I turned 30 years old in Glacier long ago and I remember thinking to myself I've got to climb a mountain today. So I looked at the top of the mountain. That was my goal, that was my. I was thinking big and I actually did backwards planning, which I like. See, I never planned from the present hour. I planned from the ideal future back towards the present, so that I know I'm going in the right direction. So I looked at the top and I could see it was a little easier going that way and this way and I started seeing a route and I never had to even look all the way down to where my feet were, because I already had direction. I just started going. As I got to a certain height, all of a sudden I realized the top that I thought was the top wasn't the top. There was another top, because you can't really see the top from the bottom. You think you are, but you actually aren't. So you have to get to a certain level before you can see it.
Daniel Burrus:You see, I want you to come up with your big idea first, so that you can actually come up with the bigger big, because that's when you can even see it from that point. And here's something I've discovered, because you know, I've started six companies. Five were profitable in the first year, four were national leaders in the first year. I've never had a business loan and I started out as a teacher, which meant I had no money. So what am I getting at? And that is that you can make the impossible possible. It's you can make the impossible possible, you and it's going from the big idea to the bigger big. Here's what I've discovered the bigger big is easier. That big insight for me was to think bigger about my future and whatever that means to you. And I do that again and again and again.
Brandon Mulnix:In trying to do that, Well, the world is a much better place because you think big and you don't settle on big, because you keep going bigger. And I really appreciate the fact that you know. You're a keynote speaker in front of thousands of people and here you are giving your time to talk to our farmers.
Daniel Burrus:Well, I'm not giving my time. I'm investing my time in your farmers because I think this is a good investment. Actually, I think this is an amazing investment. You know why we need you. We I'm talking about all of us out here we need you and we need you to be profitable. We need you to be thriving. We need you to create a good employment workplace. We need you to be hiring more young pups. Why? Because they know more about these sensors and tools than we do. So we need you. So I'm investing in my future and your future with this.
Daniel Burrus:And again, as I said in the beginning, I was put on the planet to teach, not just to tell. So the key here is you need to take action on something. So you might want to re-listen or re-watch this podcast. Take a look through those. And big lists never get done, and you might already have a big list of notes just from hearing me. If you had a chance to write, if you weren't driving or something. Here's what I'd say big lists never get done. Boil it down to one or two things that you consider a must do, because there's a lot of things you should do. You got no time for that. There's a lot of it's the must dos, one or two and then make it happen. Put it in your calendar, start acting on it and you'll turn 2025 and beyond into far more than you thought it was going to be.
Brandon Mulnix:Wow, daniel, thank you so much. I'm going to put all those links you talked about in the show notes so that way folks can easily click on, go to your resources on your website, download those great articles. You know, I've been following you for eight years and you know, seeing the content that you provide for free, just because of your passion and your willingness to teach I mean, that's a college level education, mba program, guys that we got just by tuning in, just by reaching for change and trying to grow. And that's what I love about you as an audience, about listeners, is the fact that you're not here because no one's making you be here. You get to be here because you want to see change in your life. So, daniel, is there any last minute things that you want to see change in your life? So, daniel, is there any last minute things that you want to share?
Daniel Burrus:Well, you just said the word grow and in this plant, animal world we live in and, by the way, we're part of that it's interesting. All things that grow change and all things that change grow, you know, if you kind of think about it. And there's an old saying you can't teach an old dog a new trick. The good news is, hey, we're not dogs. So if you aren't interested in learning new things, if you aren't interested in finding out, you know what's the even better version of you that you could create for yourself, you're probably not going to like the future. If you don't like change, you're not going to like the future.
Daniel Burrus:But I would like for all of you to prosper, enjoy the future. Actually, I'd like us to make change and disruption our biggest advantage, from a personal standpoint and others, and the way to do that is to not just be reacting to it after the fact, but to be anticipating to it, and there are a lot of great resources you can download for free on my website. Also, I'm on LinkedIn. I've got over a million followers. Join me there if you'd like. I share a lot there.
Daniel Burrus:But I also don't want to keep you from buying a copy of Anticipatory Organization, my last book or the other one, flash Foresight, I mean, hey, they're easy reads, they're good reads, I think you'd find a lot in there, and I also have a learning system for individuals that I keep the price very low on, where I'm teaching you specific tools and actually helping you to do it. So there's a lot of ways to continue your journey forward. Let's just make sure that we're shaping a better future for ourselves and for others, rather than passively receiving the future as it unfolds. Let's be active shapers. That's how I'd like to close that message.
Brandon Mulnix:Excellent, and listeners, if you've made it this far in the podcast, I'm going to offer you something special. For the five people that reach out to me and tell me what this podcast meant to you and what you learned from this podcast, I will send you a copy of Daniel's book anticipatory organizations, because it meant the world to me. It changed the way I thought and it helped me in my career skip problems, think big, only to know that I succeeded even bigger, and so I know that from my heart, that sometimes it's just reaching out. So reach out to me, please share this podcast with your friends, your colleagues, your boss I don't care, because this is the kind of content that, honestly, will change our industry for the better. So thank you again, daniel, I just appreciate you.
Daniel Burrus:That wonderful offer you're making them. That makes my heart warm. So thank you so much.
Brandon Mulnix:Excellent and thank you, poultry Leadership, podcast listeners and you guys all have a great day.
