Would you pay to sit in a meeting with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates?

There’s an interesting theme in my vlog about how I consider forecasting future trends.

If you’ve followed my content, you know how I tend to call things earlier than most in business.

I talked about how Facebook would acquire Instagram before most people saw it. I said it was underpriced when Facebook bought it at $1 billion. Most people thought it was overpriced.

I made a video on how Amazon stock would explode back in 2011. Now, the stock is up 8x from 2011.

I’ve talked about how the brand of colleges would collapse when the next recession hits. And right now I’m going around the world speaking on why Facebook and Instagram ads are so underpriced.

Last August (in 2018), I started getting more and more involved with trading sports cards. Today, Forbes is writing about them as an investment opportunity.

In the far future, one of my hypotheses is that virtual reality will get so advanced that people will be able to “sit” with me in meetings I have in my vlog. It’s a fascinating concept to think about how much you’d pay to sit in on historic meetings. Imagine the meeting when someone decided to sell bottled water or the first meeting between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

People always ask me how I come up with these hot takes on trends and what’s going to happen in business. Truth is, I don’t fully know, but a big part of it comes down to understanding human behavior.

Here are some insights on what drives consumer behavior:

1. Nostalgia

My ultimate strategy for buying the New York Jets is acquiring nostalgic brands, growing them, and “flipping” them.

Nostalgia is a big emotional driver for people. It’s why toys like GI Joe tend to recirculate in culture over and over again every 30-or-so years. It’s because the kids who played with those toys become parents, and the entire cycle starts again.

Nostalgia is a big reason why sports cards are exploding in culture today. Parents in my generation used to trade baseball cards as kids, and now the cycle is starting again. Many kids who cut their teeth flipping sneakers are going to really win big with sports cards.

2. Convenience

People love to save time.

Even fractions of a second matter. For example, people get upset on a plane when the WiFi is a tenth of a second slower or when a website loads slowly. We just value time so much.

The biggest companies in the world today are really good at saving us time. Uber saves us time by letting us order rides from our phones. As voice devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home gain more and more adoption, they’ll save us time by letting us order products and navigate apps without having to press any buttons.

Watch DailyVee 548 for more on my thoughts about future trends in business and investing: