Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading futurists on global trends and disruptive innovation. The New York Times has referred to him as one of the top three business gurus.
He is the CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology-driven trends to help clients profit from technological, social, and business forces that are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities.
He is a strategic advisor to executives from Fortune 500 companies, using his Anticipatory Business Model to develop game-changing strategies based on his proven methodologies for capitalizing on technology innovations and their future impact. He has delivered over 3,000 keynote speeches worldwide.
Daniel is the author of seven books, including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Flash Foresight, and his latest best-selling book, The Anticipatory Organization, and he is a syndicated writer with millions of monthly readers on the topics of technology-driven trends, disruptive innovation, and exponential change.
Burrus is an innovative entrepreneur who has founded six businesses, four of which were the U.S. national leaders in the first year.
His accurate predictions date back to the early 1980s where he became the first and only futurist to accurately identify the twenty exponential technologies that would become the driving force of business and economic growth for decades to come. Since then, he has continued to establish a worldwide reputation for his exceptional record of predicting the future of technology-driven change and its direct impact on the business world.
“The more you find what is unique in you and leverage it, the more power you have.”
Daniel Burrus
Worst investment ever
Daniel has always been interested in science and technology. He started his career teaching biology and physics. Now he is a respected technology futurist. Naturally, he invested in technology and did well with that.
Diversifying his portfolio
Daniel wanted to diversify his investments, and so he decided to get into commercial real estate. However, this was an unfamiliar area for him, and he did not know anything about it. Daniel had a couple of people who gave him some advice and took it without doing any research independently. Daniel invested in some high-rise buildings.
Things take a turn
After investing in the highrises, some things shifted. Daniel and a few other people that had invested in these highrises decided to take the matter to court. They later found out that the company behind the highrises was Berkshire Hathaway, a big company controlled by Warren Buffett with much deeper pockets than they had to fight them in court.
Pushing on with the fight
Daniel did not let the company bully him into dropping the court battle. Unfortunately, the court battle took years, and in those years, his investment was dying as he could not sell them because of the court case.
The entire court process was super stressful for Daniel. He put so much of his time and energy into it and ended up distracted from his other ventures. In the end, he lost most of what he had invested.
Lessons learned
Invest in your area of expertise
Invest in what you know instead of getting outside of your area of expertise. If you do, you must spend a lot of time researching to make that investment a worthy investment. So always ask yourself what is your area of expertise and can you invest in it and make money from it instead of getting into uncharted waters.
Let go of all your distractions and focus on your success
Let go of all the things that are distracting you from focusing on your goals.
Andrew’s takeaways
Focus on what you enjoy doing and are good at
We enjoy the things that we do well. So if you are struggling with something that you have no interest in, focus on what you like, what you are good at, and make it excellent, rather than focusing on what you are not good at and making it average.
Learn from your struggle, then let it go
Whatever struggle you are facing right now does not have to become your worst investment. Learn from it and let go.
Actionable advice
Ask yourself right now what is distracting you from your focus. Is it something negative? Is it something tied to emotion? Probably it is keeping you awake, and it is distracting you? Just let it go so that you can get back to your focus. That focus is going to be vital in elevating your significance and your success.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Daniel’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to get as many people as possible worldwide to be anticipatory versus reactionary.
Parting words
“Good news does not sell; bad news sells, and it creates a fog. Blow away the fog, and you will be amazed at the mountain of opportunity that is there right in front of you.”
Daniel Burrus
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