Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. Thinking about the future makes a lot of us

anxious. It's tough dealing with day-to-day life during the pandemic, and a lot of us find it hard and worrisome to think about the future makes a lot of us anxious. It's tough dealing with day-to-day life during the

pandemic, and a lot of us find it hard and worrisome to think about the future. However, our guest

on this episode thinks about the future all the time. Our guest is acclaimed futurist Brian David

Johnson, who spent the last 25 years helping governments, corporations, and other organizations chart their

paths forward by showing them what the future will look like. And he's written a new book to help

individuals see their place in the future in a new light. The book is called The Future You,

Break Through the Fear and Build the Life You Want. Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

Gosh, great. It's wonderful to be here. That's quite the introduction. I think you should,

you both should come with me all the time. We're happy to. We're happy to. We can introduce you

casually in social situations, whatever you'd like. But tell us more about what a futurist does. Certainly. Well, as a

futurist, I work with organizations to look roughly about 10 years out into the future. And I model both

positive and negative futures. And then as an applied futurist, I turn around and look backwards

and work with that organization to say, what do you

need to do today, tomorrow, five years from now to move towards that positive future and away from

the negative. And I also, along the way, kind of will identify indicators that certain futures

might be starting to emerge. So then the obvious question is, how could these companies have possibly prepared

for what has happened with the pandemic? And how have your clients reacted? I imagine they must go to you

and say, hey, you didn't have us prepare for this. Well, it's interesting. So, you know, one of them,

as I say, most of my clients, they reacted very quickly. So very early on in, I would say, you know, one of them, as I say, most of my clients, they reacted very quickly. So very early on in, I would say, you know, early March, I was doing COVID-19 pandemic modeling, both short term and long term. And it's interesting that with, we went back, I do a lot of work with trade associations. We went back and looked at companies

that are doing this type of work, you know, people who do think about the future, who kind of

engage with futurists like myself. And maybe they didn't prepare specifically for the pandemic,

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