This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Brett King. Brett King is a futurist, an award-winning speaker, hosts a globally recognized radio show – Breaking Banks. He is also the CEO of Moven, a $200 million mobile bank startup creating the world’s first “smart” bank account.
And if that is not enough, he’s also the author of multiple Amazon best-sellers including one of the books I highly recommend to people wanting to know how technology and innovation will impact our future, "Augmented – Life in the Smart Lane."
Brett is on the forefront of technological change and its impact in our lives – so I had to have him on to discuss what the future holds, not only for our personal lives, but for entrepreneurship and business as well.
www.BrettKing.com
Brett has always been into technology and was a coder early on. He then got into working with companies in the financial industry as the internet was coming about. He has owned everything from an ISP to digital consulting and advertising. In 2009, he wrote the best-seller, Bank 2.0 and started to build Moven, the world’s first fully digital bank. The company has been funded through series C and the technology is being licensed around the world.
Explain the “Augmented” age and what that means…
- It is much different from the machine age and internet age
- The Augmented age is driven AI technologies, robots, etc. and has the ability to disrupt our lives completely
- The technology will change the way we live, work, interact, commerce, healthcare, lifespan, and much more.
- We will now be sharing our world with computers that have intelligence
What can we expect from the growth of AI over the next 10-20 years?
- Brett does not believe that advanced AI will be malevolent, but we do need to start making sure we are encoding ethics and empathy into these platforms.
- We will see dramatic changes in how we work and use resources, especially through automation. Right now, Foxxcon (who builds the Iphone) is replacing 6000 workers per week through automation.
- Autonomous self-driving trucks and delivery drones will displace those types of jobs
- High labor-intensive work – even accounting, legal, etc. has the potential to be disrupted.
- The role work will have in our lives will change – we won’t have to work to live necessarily.
- We will learn faster and better use resources to be more productive, live longer, and maximize what we have.
At the 13:30 mark, Brett talks about these changes shifting people back to being entrepreneurs and the origin of the word “job.”
- The current job apparatus and the ways society is molded is from the Industrial Age. Even our school system is built on that. It’s starting to change.
- The structured skills coming out of school are less and less relevant and this is causing people to adapt and naturally become entrepreneurs.
What has been the biggest development in the Augmented world since you wrote the book?
- We are seeing deep learning, machine learning, and quantum computing starting to become more mainstream.
- Self-driving car progress
- Most interesting is voice technology – the virtual assistant or agent is the next big thing emerging.
- This will change how we shop, buy things, and the interests we follow
At the 20-min mark, Brett talks about the 3 major technology disrupting themes he has identified.
- AI/Robotics
- Embedded Experiences
- Health Tech/Gene Editing/Life Extension
Do you see us moving away from the smartphone to more human integrated technology sooner rather than later?
- Yes, embedded sensors worn on the body or eventually ingested are here. Alivcor is an EKG you can wear on your wrist.
- The input mechanisms will change such as how data is received (think talking to your virtual assistant and getting answers from them instead of typing it out)
- We will also have “head up display” through smart glasses or contacts, etc.
What is the biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs right now in the Augmented Age?
- The big opportunity is thinking about behavior and how you can modify it or help facilitate it.
- Brett uses a great example of saving money and what an app could do to help modify and facilities the required behavior to save money.
- Look at the behaviors where you can insert technology to enhance or reduce friction.
How is banking going to change over the next 10-20 years?
- The biggest change in banking is accessibility. The majority of the world has actually not had access to banking. That is changing and by 2022, the majority of the world will be connected and be able to access banking online.
- The world will be able to transact on a much larger scale because of the technology making it possible.
What is most important for people to know about blockchain?
- The distributed nature of blockchain creates a whole new sense of accountability and auditability as well as whole new level of security/protection and speed of transaction.
- Blockchain will also allow the new types of commerce ecosystems to be available.
"You won’t be able to participate in the world of the future unless you are prepared to give access to your personal data. But, in this world, data has the ability to become a revenue source for each of us."
At the 36-min mark, Brett talks about how governments are going to adapt to the Augmented Age.
At 42 min mark, Brett talks about 3-D Printing and Material Sciences and some of the really unique innovations we will see from these areas.
What your thoughts on how to succeed as an entrepreneur now and in the future?
- Adaptability is key. The world change faster and faster.
- You must have the passion/belief in what you are pursuing and you must have the persistence.
- You must be able to infuse the passion and persistence into others.
- In the future, you will have to change quickly and be able to do this over and over.
- You will need to learn quickly and pivot almost constantly.
Best Quote: "You won’t be able to participate in the world of the future unless you are prepared to give access to your personal data. But, in this world, data has the ability to become a revenue source for each of us."
Brett's Misfit 3:
- Be Connected. Figure out who it is you need to know and be connected to and start the process of a relationship with them. (Social Media, etc.)
- Think about things you do in your daily life that are problematic and have friction. Think about how you can use technology to remove that friction and help people to not have the issues.
- What is the world you want to create for your children in the future? How can you start today to help create it? Even if it is something small, you can start to make a difference.