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Predicting the Future of Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 445)

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“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” These words from one of the 20th century’s most sagacious philosophers, Yogi Berra, take hold of my mind every new year as I think about the days and weeks and months ahead.

Far be it from me to reject Yogi’s wise words, but I’m not sure he’s right. Oh, don’t get me wrong the wrong. The future’s not always easy to see. But we can work to make it what we want. I generally think that instead of predicting the future for your business, you should take steps to create a future that works for you.

How can you do that? How can you make a future for your business that exceeds any prediction? And how can you plan for a bold future no matter what happens over the next few years? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Predicting the Future of Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 445) — Headlines and Show Notes

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You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Running time: 20m 53s

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Transcript: Predicting the Future of Your Business

Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud, your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. Happy New Year! This is episode 445 of The Big Show and our first episode of 2025. I am so thrilled you’re here.

I think we’ve got a really cool episode for you today. It is early January 2025 as I’m recording this and Everyone is out with their predictions for 2025 around marketing, around digital, around artificial intelligence, and all of these things. You know, here’s the top trends for you to watch. Here’s what you need to know, that kind of thing. Most of these predictions go out on a limb, they posit big ideas, the things you absolutely have to know, you know, as you go into 2025, as you go into the new year. I’ve done plenty of that myself, many times. I will again in the future, for sure. I’m going to talk more about artificial intelligence and digital marketing techniques and the like over the course of this year.

I guarantee that’s true. What’s also true is that I think there are a bunch of big ideas that matter beyond just trying to predict the future. For starters, you need to remember that predicting the future isn’t the point, right? The point Of any of these exercises is to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes to you in the future, whatever is coming down the road.

To me, that’s the point and that’s what I really want to talk about today, which are three surefire ways to be ready for whatever’s coming your way. And they’re really pretty simple. The first of them is being clear on what won’t change. And I’m going to talk about each of these in a little more detail.

The second of these is Scenario planning and making sure you’ve thought through the scenarios that are most likely to occur next year. And the last of these, if you don’t mind, I’m going to keep in reserve for a moment. I will come back to it before the end of this episode, I promise you. But I want to, you know, get through the first two first.

So, I want to talk first about what won’t change. You’ve heard this story before, either here or elsewhere. Our good friend, good friend of the pod, Jeff Bezos, Space Cowboy, says that when he started Amazon, he thought about what wouldn’t change. And then he built his company around those ideas. He was very confident that customers would always want broad selection.

They would always want fast shipping. They would always want low prices. And that those three things would never change. He even joked, I can’t imagine anyone asking me for fewer choices that take a long time to get here and that cost a lot of money. And generally speaking, he’s right. Yes, when you’re talking about commissioning a piece of fine art or a luxury experience, a high priced item in limited supply is often worth the wait and worth the cost to many customers.

But Bezos was absolutely right at scale. So as you head into the new year, what are the things in your business and your world that won’t change? We know for sure that customers want you to care about them. The best branding is a brand that people feel like is part of their lives. It’s one of the reasons that I always say that customer experience is queen.

I won’t belabor that point here, I’ve talked about it many, many times over the course of this show, but by far the most effective marketing ever invented is customers telling their friends and family and fans and followers online and in person about the products and services they love. The more you take care of them, The more likely they are to share that story with the people in their lives.

And happily, the people in their lives generally tend to have many of the same attributes as your existing customers, which makes them great potential customers for your business. One of the best ways to care about them is to think about how busy they are. Remember, your customers are every bit as busy as you are, if not more so.

You need to make their lives easier when they work with you. I’ve said before that we need, that we owe it to our customers to make their lives better. And if you think about the companies and the brands that you love, the ones that are most effective at doing that for you, those tend to be the brands that other people love and return to again and again and again.

You’re putting the needs of your customer first. That’s never going to change. Another thing that won’t change? Well, we live in a world where you always have to do more with less. As I’ve mentioned, you’re busy too. www. larryweaver. com So we need to think about how to do that most effectively. I’ve talked before about how to prioritize and focus when there’s too much to do.

And I’ll link to that episode in the show notes. The basic idea though is A, to focus on the core elements of your strategy. B, maybe leave 10 to 20 percent of your time to explore new ideas. We call this core and explore. And C, Create a to don’t list for all the things that you are simply not going to do.

They’re not going to help your customers. They’re not going to help your customer experience. They’re not going to help your business. Don’t spend your time on those. Just set them aside. Maybe you’ll come back to them later. But focus on core, and focus on explore, and make sure everything else is on a to don’t list.

They’re a distraction. Now, this is one of the places when we talk about, you know, doing more with less, it’s absolutely one of the places where artificial intelligence can be a huge boost to your work. I use AI constantly for brainstorming, and planning, and writing, and editing. It’s an external brain.

It’s, it’s an intern that I can rely upon to help me be more effective and be more efficient. One of my favorite techniques with AI is to coach it. While thinking through a wide array of ideas, I find that many people, when using AI, prompt it to develop, you know, three to five ideas. And I think that that’s not necessarily the best way to approach it.

It can generate enormous number of ideas. Why not have it generate 50? 30, you know, a some broad number that really cause you to think and might lead you in a new direction you hadn’t considered before. Take a minute to read through those ideas, then ask it to drill down on the 5 or 10 that you like the best.

Then have it rank which of those it likes best and have it explain why. Think through its reasoning. What holes did it make? What, what mistakes did it make? What didn’t it think about? Ask it to do the same. You know, what we’re trying to do here is create more, open up new possibilities, more possibilities.

You want to use these tools to make yourself more efficient, but you also want to use these tools to make yourself more effective. To deliver results you maybe couldn’t get to on your own. There’s the joke. You’ve heard this before about two guys hiking in the woods who suddenly run into a bear. And the first guy quickly pulls running shoes from his backpack and starts putting them on.

And the second guy says, what are you doing? You’ll never outrun that bear. And the first guy responds, I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. Right? I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. AI is one of the ways that you can outrun the other guy and, consequently, the bear. That’s a great place to be.

It’s a great way to help you run faster. And you can use AI. As the next part of predicting the future, which is scenario planning. One of the easiest mistakes you can make when trying to predict the future is assuming that there’s only one possible answer. You know, this is absolutely what’s going to happen next year.

Well, that’s not true. There’s a lot of different things that can happen next year. In simple terms, we know that there are at least three. One of them is the best case scenario. You know, your marketing works perfectly, your customers love your new product, your team all performs at their best, you reach or exceed your targets for revenues and profitability.

You know, yay you, well done, everything went perfectly. On the flip side, of course, it’s the worst case scenario. Your marketing falls flat, your customers hate your new product, your team hates each other’s guts and, you know, exhibit behaviors that would make survivor producers jealous. You know, you’re miles away from your revenue and profitability targets.

I don’t mean to laugh, but I mean, that would be, you know, a disaster, right? That would be terrible. You definitely don’t want that. And the third scenario is, of course, your baseline. Everything you do more or less looks like it did last year, give or take a few percentage points. Everything it produces is more or less like what you produced last year, give or take a few percentage points.

It’s not a drag, it’s not a bummer, it’s not a party, it just kind of is. Well, using those three scenarios, you can plan for each. Think through what would cause each of these scenarios. Define the measures that help you recognize which path you’re on. And develop at least some high level plans around what you would do if you’re on each path.

What would you do to continue making it better if you’re on the best case scenario plan? What would you do if you absolutely found yourself on the worst case scenario plan? And what would you do to make things better if you’re on the baseline scenario? How would you move yourself in a more positive direction?

Pay attention to the metrics that indicate to your, your business which way you’re heading, so you can put those plans into action as needed. It’s all about setting yourself up for success. It’s not about predicting the future so much as it’s about being ready for any number of possible futures. There are other ways to do scenario planning, of course.

You can use your Explorer actions to test which scenario is coming true. You can use AI to help you workshop your ideas or simulate more nuanced versions of these broad stroke best worst baseline case scenarios. The point here is about ensuring that the future is what you want it to be. And that, by the way, leads to the last way to predict the future.

I told you I was going to come back to it. Here’s what it is. That is taking charge of your future for yourself. I talked about this a few weeks ago in an episode called AI Isn’t the Future, You Are. The future does not need to be something that happens to you. It can, and should, be something you make happen.

Scenario planning is one way you do that. It helps you visualize what are the possible futures that exist, and what would you do as those came to pass to move them in the direction you want to go. Setting big goals that matter to you and your business. Which I talked about in that AI isn’t the future episode, is another one.

What is it that you want? What is it that you’re working towards that matters to you and your business? And in your life more broadly? Have you taken a moment to look at what stands between those goals and where you are today? Do your plans all account for how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to be?

And have you put together scenario plans to help you understand if you’re on target and how you’ll adapt if you’re moving off the path. Another great tool you could use to help yourself do that, very, very much related to scenario planning, is what’s called a pre mortem. You select one of your goals and then picture yourself a year down the line.

Imagine the worst case scenario. You did not reach your goal, you didn’t succeed, and it could be a product launch, it could be a campaign, it could be whatever you’re trying to accomplish, but you came up short. Now, either with your team, or with an AI, or on your own, ask. What went wrong? Now, I find the more people you can bring into this exercise, the better, because you want some diverse viewpoints, and you want some people who might think of things you won’t.

So, if you don’t have a team, use an AI. If you do have a team, use your team and an AI. But try to understand the things that would get in between you and the success you’re looking for. These could include internal issues, you know, you don’t have the skills, you have you know, some sort of legal issue that you need to deal with, etc.

It could be external pressures like the economy or shifts in the way big tech manages their algorithms, you know, for a specific campaign. It could just be mistakes that you make along the way, even if you’ve got the right talent, you just don’t execute properly because of some reason. Make a list of all of those things, and then review the likelihood and impact of each of those obstacles that you’ve identified.

Once you’ve got that list, you’re ready to go. Develop plans to mitigate or eliminate the most likely and the most impactful obstacles. And then again, put measures in place that help you identify when it’s time to put those mitigation plans to work. You know, don’t let them sneak up on you. Be ready for them in advance.

Once you’ve got this planning done, then get to work at launching your product or your campaign, or moving towards your goal. Monitor what you’re doing along the way so that you can adjust to stay on track if you find yourself straying from the path, so that you reach your goal. Or better yet, exceed it, right?

The point here is that you’re in control. You’re not just trying to predict the future, you’re making the future you want happen. So to recap, there are three things you can do to predict the future properly next year, to predict the future you want properly next year.

First, identify what won’t change and what matters to your customers. Second, plan for at least a few different scenarios. And third, most importantly, take charge of your future.

Ultimately, you get to decide the future that works for you, that works for your business, that works for your life. I know you can make the future you want happen. I can’t wait to hear how you do. So please make sure to tell me what you find out over the course of the next, you know, month and year.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. Just look for episode 445 .

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Show Outro

Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week.

So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business.

So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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