“Motivation is overrated in the face of better insight!” – Futurist Jim Carroll “Are you a motivational speaker?” Hell yes! But not really. That’s the question I always get from new people I meet when it comes around to the topic of what we do for a living. The question quite possibly could drive me nuts, because  I think “motivational speakers” like Tony Robbins and others who encourage people to walk across the fire to discover their ‘internal strength‘ are just a bunch of crackpots! And I know that I’m now headed into the season when I’ll get asked the question a lot – with my golf se ..read more

“It’s better to construct an understanding instead of manufacturing fear!” – Futurist Jim Carroll I’ve got a steady stream of keynotes on the books going well into the fall. One of them, in October, will be for the Chicago-based Great Lakes Construction Association. This is a union-based contractors association, so it’s fair to say that there will be a lot of sensitivity to the labor issues of AI in the room. Five other similar organizations are joining in with the event. We began to explore topic issues, areas of focus, and opportunities during a call yesterday, and I must say, I’m quite lo ..read more

“One day soon, we’ll recognize that at this very moment in time, we were on the edge of the arrival of the end of reality – and didn’t have a plan to deal with it” – Futurist Jim Carroll So this happened. You can scan to about 0:28 on the timeline for the actual incident – with the whole thing being captured automatically on 4 of the cameras on the car when it happened back on February 4. A Tesla Model 3 actually has 8 cameras though – and so I filled out the form on the Tesla site to get additional details of the crash, and received back this video, among a rather massive data set conc ..read more

Simply put. This was the reaction of a recent client. I take tremendous pride in my work and the level of customization I put in. I couldn’t have received nicer feedback for this event I did last month! Jim quickly became part of our team. He did not just walk in to give a speech, he wanted to understand our group, what their expectations were and what are their backgrounds. We worked together as a group to share what we thought we wanted and interactively worked together to produce something so targeted to our group it was remarkable. Communications is obviously one of his great skills but ..read more

“To be a part of tomorrow, you need to be a part of the journey!” – Futurist Jim Carroll An organization will never successfully get to where it needs to go if it doesn’t have the full support and understanding of its team – and in some cases, my role is to help to build that support and understanding. Here’s a photo from when I was doing a stage check on Friday in Birmingham, England, before my keynote Saturday for service managers of KwikFit, an automotive services company with hundreds of locations throughout the UK. It was a pretty large crowd, with about 500 of them in the room; my keyno ..read more

“Yesterday’s knowledge won’t cut it in tomorrow’s world” – Futurist Jim Carroll I asked an AI to draw a picture of a car from ‘the olden days,’ and this is what it imagined. It might be more complex than vehicles actually used to be! But let’s talk about cars. By the time you are reading this, I’ll be making my way over to Birmingham, England, where on Saturday I’ll speak to several hundred managers of KwikFit automotive service locations about the future of their industry. They’re in the business of tire, brake, air conditioning, safety and other repairs, and pride themselves on respon ..read more

Enterprise Bank, based in the Western US, has been running its virtual Enterprise University for 20 years! To kick off its 2023 series, it brought in Jim for a keynote that looked at the impact and opportunity of AI in a vast number of different industries, from retail to manufacturing, insurance, and finance, to healthcare and architecture ..read more

“Excitement should be your destination, and innovation your mode of transport!” – Futurist Jim Carroll Some of the events at which I speak feature a ‘graphic recorder‘ – an individual who creates a digital image-based overview of the key points in my keynote, doing this in real-time while standing next to my stage, This is the one that was created while I spoke at CattleCon 2024 in Orlando. Moments before I took the stage, the graphic recorder from Ink Factory was ready to go with a blank slate – and by the end of my talk, had created the moments of magic captured above. Visit their We ..read more

“Don’t just show up. Show up with ideas!” – Futurist Jim Carroll There are a lot of people who go through the motions. Put in the minimums. Barely get involved. Never contribute. The fact is, it never ends up working well for them. Are you one of those people? Consider how this puts you out of touch with the rest of those around you: No one likes the person who only tears ideas down rather than offering up their own No one remembers the person who doesn’t have ideas. No one gets inspired by the person who never contributes. No one finds optimism in someone who is always negative. No one like ..read more

“Retirement? It’s no longer a number, it’s a phase!” – Futurist Jim Carroll Years ago – many years ago, it seems – I wrote this into an article: “Are you ready for a world in which the concept of “retirement’ has come to an end? If not, you’d better be, as this is likely to rapidly emerge as the most significant issue for every organization through the next ten years. That’s because right now, we have a “perfect storm” brewing that involves three succinct but inter-related trends that will see the ongoing involvement in the workforce of people well past the age of 65.” In that context, yest ..read more