FUTUREPROOF.

Send us a text

Today we're speaking to Bradley Tusk, one of the leading experts at the intersection of politics and business. Bradley is a fascinating guy: a venture capitalist, political strategist and writer. He created Tusk Ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund to work with and invest solely in high growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges. Tusk Philanthropies is leading the U.S. efforts to allow people to vote in elections on their phones. Previously, Bradley served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg, as Deputy Governor of Illinois, as Communications Director for Senator Charles Schumer and as Uber’s first political strategist. 

On this episode we discuss: 

• Going into the 2020 election, why doesn't the US have a better system for voting?
• What Bradley's Tusk Philantropies is doing to champion mobile voting
• Why mobile voting may become as commonplace as mobile banking has become
• Why US voting doesn't represent the mainstream's views, and what the long-term benefits might be for our society if the voting population comes closer to representing the actual population
• Why Bradley's old boss Michael Bloomberg didn't run in 2016 but might have decided to run in 2020

Want more of Bradley? He recently wrote a memoir called The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death By Politics (it's great), and also hosts a podcast called Firewall.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we're honored to be speaking to Beth Granger, one of the leading LinkedIn experts, and a well-respected master of social selling. 

On this episode we discuss: 

• How to represent yourself best on LinkedIn
• Why human beings are wired to seek out a separate "public square" for professional networking
• How we can build more humanity into their digital interactions
• The future of LinkedIn as a platform

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we're honored to be speaking (again!) to Jillian Ryan, Principal Analyst at eMarketer on a comprehensive report she developed discussing whether or not CMOs are going to be relevant in the future. 

Today we discuss: 

• Whether or not the CMO role is still relevant, and why
• What skills a chief marketing officer will need five years from now to be successful
• Why the CMO role will continue to be one that turns over every few years
• How brands will start to shift back to executives with brand marketing experience, as opposed to just performance marketing leaders

You can find our previous conversation with Jillian here.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we're honored to be speaking to Divya Gugnani, CEO and co-founder of one of the beauty industry's hottest new brands, Wander Beauty. After spending years in venture capital and private equity, Divya was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug (Wander is her fourth company). After having two kids in two years, she realized women like her are more time-starved and on-the-go than ever before. 

Today we discuss: 

• Why multitasking and traveling are global phenomenons and aren't going away anytime soon
• Why "clean" and "natural" are far from the same thing with respect to beauty
• Why today's consumers care about sustainability and inclusivity
• How entrepreneurs and futurists can create better products by correcting for their own biases

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we're honored to be speaking to Katica Roy, one of today's preeminent gender economists. She's an ambassador for gender equity in the workplace and beyond, and the CEO and founder of Denver-based Pipeline, an award-winning SaaS platform that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and drive economic gains through gender equity. 

Today we discuss: 

• Why gender equity isn't just a social issue
• How gender equity actually creates economic wealth for everyone
• Whether or not we're heading in the right direction as a society
• Why gender equity and women's rights are far from the same thing
• How to follow the data to make better decisions on an ongoing basis

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we're excited to have Jillian Ryan in the studio! In addition to being a longtime friend of Jeremy's, she's a principal analyst at eMarketer and one of the sharper analysts around, period. If you're looking to get better at using data to predict the future, this is the episode for you. 

Some highlights from this episode:

• How to acknowledge your own biases
• Jillian's research methodology
• Why you need to be a little cynical about where your data is coming from
• The importance of the peer review process

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

We made it to our 50th episode! And to celebrate, we're talking with one of Jeremy's favorite sources, Brian Solis. He's a globally recognized independent digital analyst and anthropologist, an award-winning author, and world renowned keynote speaker. 

In his new book, Lifescale: How to live a more creative, productive and happy life, Brian tackles the struggles of living in a world rife with constant digital distractions - fascinating to me, since he's studied all things digital for some time now, and even Brian can admit he's susceptible to the downsides of digital. His model for “Lifescaling” helps readers overcome the unforeseen consequences of living a digital life to break away from diversions, focus on what’s important, spark newfound creativity and unlock new possibilities. To create a better future, what could be more crucial than mastering that?

Some highlights from what we discuss today:

• What exactly is a futurist?
• Neuroplasticity, and how social media is rewiring our brains
• Whether or not multitasking works, and if technology is the problem or the solution

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Sarah Kugelman is a digital pioneer in the beauty industry. She revolutionized the beauty industry in 1999 by creating gloss.com, a multimedia beauty brand for which she raised $25 million in VC funding and grew to over 100 employees, and has also held senior marketing positions at L’Orèal and Bloomingdale’s. She founded skyn ICELAND in 2006, growing her own beauty concept into a thriving indie beauty brand.

Given that Sarah has seen it all, we wanted her to reflect on the future of the beauty industry, something near and dear to Jeremy’s heart. After all, he worked at brands such as Jurlique, Kiehl’s, and Temptu, incubated a prestige beauty brand for Unilever, and consulted on countless others.

Hear Sarah’s unique takes on some of the trends dominating today’s beauty industry, including CBD, personalization, diversity & inclusion, and more. Which of these trends are fads, and which are here to stay?

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

Today we’re speaking to Mike Messersmith, the General Manager of Oatly, everyone’s favorite oat milk.

We thought it was important to speak to someone in the rapidly-growing plant-based food startup world, since it’s such a hot sector today, to see what’s driving success in this world. Jeremy interviewed Mike at The Print Event in Minneapolis recently, so naturally we had a conversation about Oatly’s incredibly sharp advertising efforts, and how brands now and in the future need to think about using print and advertising in general to stand out from other brands. We also talk about measurability of advertising, since we are moving into a world where measurability is king, and what emerging mediums brands need to think about in order to be successful today.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play.

Send us a text

We're excited for this show since we’ve been trying to record it for almost two and a half months. Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and the host of Problem Solvers, a podcast about entrepreneurs solving unexpected problems in their business. He has been an editor at Men’s Health, Fast Company, Maxim and Boston magazine. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate, New York, among others. He is also the author of the Novel Mr. Nice Guy (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), which he co-wrote with his wife. He lives in Brooklyn.

Jason's a student of history, and why seem to always get everything wrong with respect to the future. He studies change, the thing that defines us and the thing that we fear the most. We all know that change is necessary, and yet, we fear it because we make it uncomfortable.

If you only listen to one episode of FUTUREPROOF. this month, this is probably the episode for you.