Faith Popcorn of BrainReserve
Why we should imagine the unimaginable.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 313: Faith Popcorn
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This is Season 3 - “Leading The Future.” These next few months are going to be chaotic. Industries are being reformed, culture is being redefined. New rules are being written and rewritten. It’s happening already. Decisions are being made today, literally today, about how to compete for talent and relevance in this new world. So, how should leaders lead as we meet a world of new possibilities and expectations?
I had a sliding doors moment this week. I ran over a rabbit. Technically, I think it was a hare. Either way, one moment it had a future, the next it was a memory. If I had been a second, less than a second, earlier or later, the hare would have made it across the road and tonight, would be curled up in its warren with its family.
I drove home, saddened. My head filled with what-ifs.
The future is fragile and unmapped. Anything is possible, including the possibility that there isn’t one.
We might die or be killed. We might continue uninterrupted on the path we think we have chosen. Or we might suddenly find everything we think we know has just been turned upside down.
For instance, what if UFOs are not the stuff of movies and make believe. What if they really are out there?
“So they're interested in watching us. So we have a giant like lab for them or are we amusement for them? They are definitely ahead of us because of how the ship moves and disappears. If they make contact and they must know why they shouldn't make contact, if they're advanced, they probably know that they will turn this planet upside down if they made contact. And it will be like a global riot.”
Faith Popcorn is a futurist. To many of us she is the original and still the best.
She told Kodak about digital imagery, Ford about electric cars and Coke about bottled water before any of them existed. In the 1980s she told P&G that everything would be home delivered. In every case they either laughed or threw her out of the room. That’s the price of forecasting change.
The ability to see the future is, by definition an uncertain science. No matter how often you are right, you will be wrong far more often.
And yet it is the what-ifs that we get remembered for. The what-ifs that change lives.
Life is short. And unpredictable. And we have much less control over it than we think.
Leadership is an opportunity to make a difference while we’re here.
And whether you believe in UFOs or not, developing your appetite for the unlikely and redefining your view of the impossible makes you an infinitely better leader of any business that depends on creative thinking and innovation.
What do you think will definitely not happen over the next five years?
And are you sure?
Here’s Faith Popcorn.
Charles: (03:26)
Faith. Welcome back to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Faith Popcorn: (03:30)
Oh, my pleasure, really, Charles.
Charles: (03:33)
This is obviously, it goes without saying, an extraordinary time. Do you think we've ever lived through anything close to this, do you think history has ever recorded a time as strange as this?
Faith Popcorn: (03:45)
Well, not with technology, so I guess that's the difference. The Spanish flu, in the roaring twenties, which is what we're looking at, we'll talk about further, you know what's going to happen, people burst out of their box. And malaria, all the horrible plagues, but not with this kind of technology. And I think that's what's made all the difference.
Charles: (04:11)
Yeah. It seems like to your point about bursting out of the box that people are just exploding or ready to explode back out, how are you seeing that show up most obviously at the moment?
Faith Popcorn: (04:21)
Well, we're working with an alcoholic beverage company at the moment, Constellation Brands, and we're also working with Canopy, which is … we help them with their work. They bought a marijuana company, which was brilliant of them. And we're seeing that people really want mood modulation. And it doesn't only have to come from Lexapro or Paxils. As a matter of fact, the psilocybins are, you know what that is, the magic mushrooms, apparently have replaced psychiatry in some quarters. Apparently it's good for depression and all. Constellation is not into that nor Canopy, but I'm interested in that.
And people are looking for various, like what's the exact right strain of marijuana. I'm doing this album on the future, a musical album with a woman named Karen Zoid who's a rocker in South Africa. I don't sing, I talk. But we talk about like when you pick your poison, make sure it doesn't kill you. It's one of our lyrics.
Charles: (05:23)
So you're seeing people self-medicate to a greater extent?
Faith Popcorn: (05:27)
Well, sometimes they use a little telehealth with it and sometimes they scan the internet, but yes, they want to lift themselves ... I think it's going to be a tough time for the pharmaceutical companies because I think people are looking for organic natural solutions. And if you look at alcohol, it comes from potatoes or wheat or something. And then you look at marijuana, that's natural and psilocybins are mushrooms. I'm seeing a real direction in that. It's taken the organic trend, if you want to call it that, to a mood altering source.
Charles: (06:14)
So do you feel like we've gone back to nature to some extent as a result of this?
Faith Popcorn: (06:20)
I think we're trying to find a natural way, which is a little different than going back to nature because at the same time, we're noticing that the planet is in real trouble. I mean, yes, Corona had helped it, the emissions and et cetera, but a lot of people including Elon Musk, are talking about planet jumping. We wrote a song called “A Slow Boat to Mars”. So yes. I just think they mistrust. It's more our trend called “Icon Toppling' and they mistrust big organizations. They mistrust packaged goods companies. They mistrust pharmaceutical companies. They mistrust banks. They mistrust the CIA. Yeah. So I think it's more like, I want to get off the grid, I want to know where it came from, I want to know what's in it and I don't believe anything anybody tells me except a few people, which we could talk about.
Charles: (07:26)
I would love to talk about that. Who are the few people that they do trust?
Faith Popcorn: (07:29)
Well, one thing is, I thought it was very interesting, like you say, what's the future of advertising. And we saw Joe Biden jump in a Ford, an F-150, I believe it's a pickup truck. And it can by the way, power your house if you run out of power. And look at me, I'm the furthest, I think, person that you would ever think would be interested in a pickup truck. And so did I think that, and I put myself right on that list and put down a hundred dollars. Now I say, that's called conversion.
Another thing that happens, a woman named Kizzy Corbett invented Moderna vaccine. She's gorgeous. She's black. She's a doctor. She's phenomenal. So she gave a town hall. And there was this a young man in it, maybe he's early twenties or so, and at the end she said, "Well, now, are you convinced?" to the town hall. Everybody, "Oh, yes. Yes, Kizzy." And then he said no, and he was sitting next to his mother. So then she went down to the audience and she talked to him and tried to explain why it's safe and it's okay. And then when he went into the street, somebody interviewed him and he said, "No, I'm not taking it." And then he thought about it and thought about it. And then he decided with his mother to go to Walgreens and get the shot. And guess who met him there? Kizzy Corbett.
Now, I think it takes influencers to another level. I think Joe Biden takes influencers to another level. That's the kind of proof, we need involvement proof, somebody whose word we can really trust. It's not borrowed interest. It's essential core value, I guess you'd say, authority.
Charles: (09:22)
So you see that as foundational for brands, for instance, to build themselves around that kind of credibility and that kind of...
Faith Popcorn: (09:28)
I don't think they're going to be able to do it because most of them have nothing really much to talk about. They figure, oh, well, when I make it look cool or get on the socials, that'll take care of everything. They don't put enough real heart into their brands. They don't come out from behind the logo. I was going to write to a couple of them like J&J, they could be weaving. And I know why they don't want to do it because it's risky and it's scary. But why aren't they weaving the value? Now J&J has beautiful brand value with the baby stuff, et cetera. Why aren't they weaving that into the vaccine? Where is Pfizer, why are they being quiet? And Moderna comes out with the originator. I don't know if it was purpose or it was real. I like to think it was spontaneous and real. And I think that's what will be needed to convince people from now on.
Charles: (10:30)
What do you think are the industries that will do well coming out of this?
Faith Popcorn: (10:35)
Many of them haven't been born. It'll be like energy saving, electric cars, will Apple come out with a car, that could be interesting. Industries like the advancement of chips, brain inserted chips or memory chips or communication without words, DARPA is experimenting with that. It won't be what you're seeing right now as much. I think another kind of question is what won't come out of it very well or what will be relegated to really poor people or people that are not that well educated perhaps? I think big brands have a lot to worry about.
I remember in 1982, we told P&G not to worry so much about Walmart because everything would be home delivered. And seriously, Charles, they laughed. Not that many people laugh out loud at me, maybe they go home and laugh probably, but not right there in situ. And there you have it. People don't see an advantage of going to a supermarket. It's dirty, it's buggy, it's germy, it's crowded, it's ugly, it's everything. Why, why would they need to do that? And I think people are still, ‘My brand is different. People will go get my brand. My brand will ... or I'll slap some Black Lives Matter material on the brand and that'll be good,” but they don't integrate the brand or the company with the mission.
Charles: (12:22)
What other industries do you think would suffer? What about the travel industry, for instance, what do you think that looks like over the next five years?
Faith Popcorn: (12:27)
Well, we're dying to travel. So I think travel industry, I'm not the first one to say this, all the stock brokers are saying this, too. I think traveling industry is going to flourish. I think that they better clean up the planes. They're still disgusting and dirty. The help at the desk are still annoying and rude. The food is either non-existent or terrible. So I guess I don't see anybody doing much about that, but I think maybe service will come back to the travel industry. I think people will jump on cruise lines again. Even though Royal Caribbean has had trouble and others, I think people so want to get back that I think that they're going to travel. And I think interestingly, middle-class people, not rich, rich people, middle or around there, they're going to really want to get out.
One thing that's happened is people are saying, "Maybe I don't need that much money. Maybe I want to just move," because this allowed us to move. We were working from home so we moved far away, further away. Well, now they're saying, "I want to be near my relatives. I want family. I want friends." They did a study about what you consider rich. And I think it was $1.9 million, something like that. And now it's back to, I think $900,000 and a million, it's going down because people are like, really. You see everybody dying and miserable and you go like, "How much do I really need, I need to laugh. That's what I need."
Charles: (14:18)
What do you think the office looks like a year from now, five years from now?
Faith Popcorn: (14:27)
There's going to be a workers' revolt. I'm seeing it right now. That's not futurism. Employers want, especially big ones, want their people at work because they want to be able to what they think, it's a control issue, control them, watch them, watch them work. It's the way it's always been. And people, especially women, but people think, "I don't have to come in every day, I did fine. Look, best numbers I've ever had," let's say somebody says in this last year I worked from home. So there's a real tension with that. And I think a lot of people are going to jump out of those companies if they have to go back to the office.
Charles: (15:16)
So do you think will see hybrid models flourishing? Do you think we'll see people not having to come back in the office at all flourishing, where do you see the typical office?
Faith Popcorn: (15:25)
I think it will be a hybrid model, a grouchy hybrid model. So I think that, "Oh, I'll come in Monday and Friday," - no, they won't come in Monday and Friday. "I'll come in Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, but maybe not Thursday," that kind of thing. Because people have gotten, I don't know, their wings back, their freedom back.
And especially for people that live in Connecticut or New Jersey and spending an hour and 15 minutes, that's two and a half hours a day that's times five, you can do the math. It's a lot of hours where they could be kissing their kids or thinking or walking. And they finally see that. And they feel like, I don't want to do that again. And I don't like my boss that much actually. And when I see him on Zoom, he can't really ... intimidation is less onscreen. That's one thing. And the other thing is younger people or people without a lot of power or title can speak up. It's one of the good things that happened.
Charles: (16:31)
And how do you think the screen experience, the Zoom experience evolves and adapts? How does that change?
Faith Popcorn: (16:38)
Oh, it's going to be three dimensional. You're going to be in your room and no screen and you'll be sitting with people in a meeting holograms or it'll be more advanced than holograms, we don't have the technology yet. You'll be able to touch, maybe smell, see, it's going to be maybe better than seeing somebody in person. Maybe they'll look better, smell better, think smarter because of that brain chip, or be able to put something in the air, an answer or resource it from the internet and then put it in the air, go from your brain, which is connected to the internet or ... that's what the future of work will look like.
Charles: (17:25)
And how far out do you see that being ...
Faith Popcorn: (17:27)
Not that far. Three to five.
Charles: (17:30)
Three to five years from now we'll be working that way.
Faith Popcorn: (17:33)
Mm-hmm (affirmative), not all of us. But all those big companies, I see them trying. I feel bad for them in a way because they're trying to be what they call empathetic. They're trying to be not racially discriminatory. They're trying not to have unequal pay with females. They're trying, but they're not constructed that way. And you know this from your own life, people really don't change, companies really don't change. Not really.
Charles: (18:16)
What do you think society will be dealing with five, 10 years from now? Which of the isms, will we still be dealing with populism? Will we still be dealing with racism, misogyny, will that still be a factor? Where do you see the structure of society landing?
Faith Popcorn: (18:35)
Well, okay. Different for different people. These are complex questions. It's very, very complex. I don't have the whole answer here, but we're trying to get away from our monetary system. That's Icon Toppling, right? Blockchain. People go, is blockchain going to happen? I think so. It is happening. People with more money usually do better. They don't have the stresses. It depends on the mood of the country of people with more money are going to help people without more money. Is education going to take a different turn because we're going to be able to put a chip in? If you can put a chip in a person by the same people, and a lot of people that don't want vaccines are afraid of injecting something themselves. They have this idea that they'll be mind controlled or something. Well, are they going to put an education chip in? Or maybe they'll put one into their kids? People will be chipped. That's what I'm saying is, it's complicated.
And will we planet jump, will we realize that the planet is burning and we have to really - that's what Elon Musk thinks - we have to get off this planet. Will those things that we've been seeing flying around since 19, probably 58, that are now recognized, is there going to be, I don't want to call it an invasion, I hope it's a collaboration, but will we be able to have contact? That will change everything. That will just change our point of view. It's already making us feel smaller and a little bit jumpy for sure.
Population rates are going down here. Why is that? Because people go, women are in charge still of having babies. So women are going like, "I don't want to bring a kid into this world and I don't want to be harnessed by a kid not be able to get ahead because I have to take care of the kid." And divorce is up, child bearing's down. How much confidence do we have in society? So it's just a vague little sketch.
Charles: (20:55)
Yeah. No, but I think a really insightful one. And I want to actually go back to UFO’s, because I think like a lot of people, I was watching 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago.
Faith Popcorn: (21:04)
Yeah, I saw that.
Charles: (21:05)
It's interesting, isn't it, how the tone of the conversation has changed. Rather than, ‘What’s the mystery behind this?’ to, ‘Well, no, in fact, we're pretty confident they are in fact out there, and they are in fact visiting and observing.’ So expand on your proposition that it changes everything. How do you think it changes everything?
Faith Popcorn: (21:30)
For some reason, I don't know what the reason is, it might be they can't, but I don't think it's they can't. I think it's they don't want to or see the value in invading us because they would have. So they're interested in watching us. So we have a giant like lab for them or are we amusement for them? They are definitely ahead of us, because of how the ship moves and disappears. If they make contact and they must know why they shouldn't make contact, if they're advanced, they probably know that they will turn this planet upside down if they made contact. And it will be like a global riot. People behave strangely when there is something like a fire, riot, mob. This is like uber.
So I think maybe they're saying that we're not sophisticated enough to handle it. Have they contacted a group of people that they felt could? The people that say they have had contact, I don't believe, because I don't think they'd contact anybody that would announce it. I think that they’d know. So is there a group? I don't think so. My father was in the CIA and he said this, "The only way to keep a secret is not to tell anybody." Simple advice, but excellent. So if these UFO people, I think that they would know that if you tell somebody, you talk to somebody, somehow it's going to get out. So if they really don't want anybody to know, I don't think they're going to be talking to anybody, but I could be wrong about that.
Charles: (23:18)
So given the context of that, what's your advice about how people should live their most meaningful lives today? What are the kinds of decisions that you think people should be making in terms of how do they live lives that are important, meaningful, impactful?
Faith Popcorn: (23:37)
Well, you see, I think the going advice is you have to do good. You have to be good. You have to lift other people. You have to ... it's like religiously based, I guess, or it's always been that thinking that we have to be good. I think for individuals, it differs. One of the questions is, how much money is enough? Maybe people are going like, enough. So maybe I'll just sit somewhere on Walden's pond or maybe I will help somebody, or maybe I will do nothing or read a book or watch everything I ever wanted to watch. And some people will say, because they have no inner lives really, they have to keep working and making money and keep going, keep going. So happiness is really very, very individual if it's not religiously influenced. I think people get a lot of their ideas from religion, which are sometimes not very accurate or good.
Charles: (24:51)
So within the context of all of that, what do you think we should ask of our leaders and what do you think we should expect of our leaders? Not government necessarily, but the people who actually influence us on a day-to-day basis, the people that we work with and around?
Faith Popcorn: (25:10)
I think what we should ask for is the truth as they know it. Now, it won't always be the real truth because they may be ill informed. I just heard this thing, I don't think I can talk to this person again. They're a good friend. And she said to me, "Well, what about the Bill Gates, Fauci thing?" I go, "What, what about it?" Yeah. And she said, "Well, that they brought the virus here so that they could make money getting rid of it." This is an intelligent person. I thought she was kidding. I said, "You don't mean that, right?" And she said, "Well, why aren't you more open to that idea?" I said, "Because just the way the Nazis said what Jews were doing, that kind of rumor, I think is so dangerous, being Jewish. And you're creating like a rumor that's undermining and dangerous." So yeah. So leaders, just try to tell the truth that you can see evidence of.
Charles: (26:20)
So do you think that people will become more self activated? I've always found that, certainly in a business environment, most people want to be led. They want to be given a direction, given a reference point, given a context, encouraged along the way, even if they don't necessarily agree with the vision or the mission, they like the fact that somebody has defined one. But do you see people, society, evolving so that people become more self determined?
Faith Popcorn: (26:51)
No. I agree with you, most people want it and that's what makes it dangerous. Because it's all about oratory, how convincing you are, how many influences you have, or how many, what, and what, how much money you have, how much money they need to get from you because they have to pay their mortgage and the kids. It's very hard to be self-actualized because that takes tremendous guts. Anytime I've gone into a company and asked them to do something brave, the first thing they think of is their mortgage, their family, the kids, are they going to get fired, suppose it didn't work? So I think people pass up good ideas.
I brought Goodness to a company once who had Goodness in their DNA actually and they said, "Well, suppose somebody does something bad in the company?" I said, "Well, Goodness company would just say, 'we're a Goodness company. This person did something bad. They can't be in the company.'" And they didn't do it. And they missed the whole movement toward brands have to do something good. I can't tell you how many, many, many ...
We told Kodak that digital was the new film and they said, "We want to know about the new film." It's endless. I call it my business now, ’Marketing Masochism’. It's my pet name for what I do. It's a Cassandra thing; always be right, but nobody will ever believe you. That's the curse, the Cassandra curse. So, yeah. I agree with you. Many people want to be led. The risk is too great to be self-actualized.
Charles: (28:39)
If through the years, people have listened to you and responded to all the things you told them were going to happen that did indeed happen. Not just small things, but macro level that you've seen, they would be substantively better off in every way imaginable, not just financially, but in terms of their influence, in terms of their sense of satisfaction, in terms of the impact they've made in the world. What do you see as the difference between the people who listen to you and the ones who don't listen to you? What makes the ones who listened to you confident enough to listen to you?
Faith Popcorn: (29:16)
I think the ones that listen more are not making gobs of money doing the other thing. That sounds cynical, but I feel that way. Like we brought bottled water, we said water is in peril. And thank you for your thinking that about what I do. I really think this it's really kind. I appreciate that. I have a lot of respect for you.
Charles: (29:47)
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Faith Popcorn: (29:48)
I do, I really do. So you say to Coca Cola, "You have to bottle water. Water is going to be in short fall, demise, blah, blah, blah" so many years ago. And then Pepsi, neither one, for goodness sake neither one. Ordering online, no.
I think people listen, and this is not very nice of me, out of sometimes desperation. Well, they say desperation is the mother of invention or something like that. They're not doing that well or they need something or somebody has to make a mark in the company and they go like, "Whatever I'll do." Yeah, it's not usually because they're an advanced intellect or a superpower, they have a personal reason for wanting to do something different.
Charles: (30:45)
I think it's a very, it's a really fascinating area, because if you look at the history of the most successful businesses that have been around for more than 50 years, they're built on a series of S curves, S as in Sam curves, where they climb up the long element of an S and they reached the top of the S. And then the great ones jump off at the top into the next S and the ones that tend to struggle or not survive, and Kodak's a very good example of that, I think, tend to fall off the end of the S because they can see the future coming, but they can't do anything about it or they want to deny the future as somebody else pointed out to them.
Faith Popcorn: (31:19)
They can't see it. They can't see it. They argue with the argument. So both my parents were lawyers, so you can't prove the future, right, but I can build up exquisite, circumstantial case around it. And I think people choose. I think it's a choice - because I think our case is pretty good - not to do it, not to believe it. You know what it is, I've heard this, they haven't said it directly, this is what they say in the men's room, excuse me, "I'm going to be out of here in two years." Hey, that was fun to listen to. You got have a futurist. It's like marketing candy. It's like marketing arm candy having a futurist in your place, but I'm going to be out of here. I'm not going to do that.
Charles: (32:10)
What do you think coming out of the last 15 months will be the things that we are left with that are most important?
Faith Popcorn: (32:19)
The value of important relationships like your kids. I don't think people were ever so scared for their kids. I think we started to understand a little bit about education. You do homeschooling, you start to respect that teacher because man, it's hard. So I'm hoping that, that is something.
I think frontline workers, since 9/11, I waved to fire trucks and my kids do too. And we go, "Thank you." And I think those people; firemen, regular policemen, foot patrol men, most of them, 97% of them are protecting us and making very little money doing so. So we feel like, wow. And I think that for those of us who, maybe for the first time, planted an herb or a vegetable and thought like, this is really something and it really does taste better. And wow. So maybe we got a little bit more into not such packaged food, not so many chemicals. Maybe we want something pure and nice and real.
And then here's the thing, that most things don't matter, worrying about … Dale Carnegie said that in 1921, I didn't make that up. He said if you're worried about something, well, think back a year ago about what you're worried about, it went away. So most things except like let's say cancer for some or whatever, most things go away. So why worry? Be happy. Isn't there a song like that?
Charles: (34:08)
Faith, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's always so enlightening and thought provoking to talk to you. And I can't wait to be able to see you in person.
Faith Popcorn: (34:15)
Well, I'm available.
Charles: (34:17)
All right, we'll put something together. Thank you so much.
Faith Popcorn: (34:19)
Okay. Okay. Bye.
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