Charlotte Kemp — Futurist, Speaker, Author

Well, I'm not sure if she's got Bette Davis eyes, but she certainly has written a fascinating book. I'm joined on the line now by author Charlotte Kemp, author of a fascinating book called Future's Alchemist. Hello, Charlotte. Hello, David. Thank you very much for the invitation to join you tonight. Man, we certainly have taken long enough to get this thing sorted out, and mostly my fault. So thank you for your... No problem. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for having a chat to us. Let's start off at the very, very beginning, which is where I always like to start. Tell me a little bit about Charlotte, so where were you born, bred, and what led to writing this book? Ah, alright. Let me start with the fact that I went to about seven or eight schools in my lifetime, and I think they can kind of set a child up for either being very flexible and agile, or they can kind of retreat into their shell. So for a few years, I was very quiet, didn't make many friends, but once I got my confidence back, you know, that awkward kind of teenage phase, but once I got past that, I found myself really wanting to explore, have new experiences, I don't settle easily, we move around quite a lot.

So now, in my later years, I'm married to a very adventurous man, and we move house every year, and we kind of rent a furnished apartment for 10 months of the year, and then we travel somewhere in the world for two months there over December, January, so that we can explore other parts of our world. And we do that, now I'm putting my children through that, because my youngest daughter is a matric, and she's also had a whole lot of schools that they've had to go through, that they are kind of open to exploring the world, open to new adventures, and not so convinced that things are under their control, we've learned through all of these adventures that we kind of create our own future, our own lives, our own lifestyle, and that's the message that I eventually put into the book. Fantastic stuff, now. It's a fascinating book, okay, okay, let's start at the very beginning, because I jumped on this book way before it was even published in Ready or anything like that, and I've been banging at you at all. Has it officially been published now? Or are we still waiting? No, it's been published, I have a huge box of books here that we're sending out, I haven't done a big launch, because I've been sending them to colleagues and friends and clients who have seen the work that I've kind of progressed towards over the last few years, and we're about to leave in two weeks' time for our trip, so we're going to be away.

And when I'm back in the new year, they will do a lot more marketing, but the book is definitely available, we do have copies here, and I'll be very happy to also supply three copies to your listeners at the end of the call. Fantastic, you are very, very kind, thank you, Charlotte. Ah, my pleasure. Okay, so now, let's get on to the meat and potatoes, because what caught my attention is you had a four-word by Dr Graham Coddvington, I've known Graham for a couple of years now, and for Graham to do a four-word and speak so highly of people, you've definitely been doing stuff right. So talk to me about the book, because initially I thought, okay, you're a futurist, you know, you're a futurist and you're going to talk about stuff I don't understand, but it's not like that. I'm so glad it's not like that. I'll confess that when I started writing it, it was dull and tough and difficult, and I thought, goodness, I'm bored writing this, no one will ever read it. And then I thought, how do I make this different? And my oldest daughter is studying at university, and she's studying investment management. And I kind of grew up and started in the financial services industry, so I thought, how would I explain this to my young daughter?

And then it kind of all evolved out of that. Once we finished, I'll confess now, and if anyone's listening and they know Graham, I'm sure they'll end up telling him anyway, but my husband said, we've got to get some kind of comments or a four-word or something, and it's very difficult taking your creation, your art, and showing it to somebody else and asking their opinions. So I left that all in Richard's hands, and he contacted Graham, who's a friend and a colleague of ours from the Professional Speakers Association. And Graham came back with that, and I almost wanted to cry. It was such a validation of the fact that I've actually produced something that's worthwhile, and I do really highly respect Graham. And from the moment I decided to become a futurist, he would be the icon in our industry that we look to and kind of measure ourselves against, but he's done some phenomenal work, and I'm really, really very grateful for his four-word in the book. Well, it is a very, very interesting book. I was lucky enough, you were kind enough, to send me an advanced digital copy of it, and absolutely brilliant. But talking about people that you might know, I was chatting to somebody today who says that you are, and I think I quite directly, a fantastic lady, a gentleman by the name of Ross Saunders.

Yes, thank you. Ross and I are both involved in the Professional Speakers Association as well, and we're having a lot of fun working with him, he's really been making some amazing things at the association. Well, I'm bringing him in next week, so it's his turn for a roasting next Monday. Good. So, tell me about the book, Charlotte. Okay. All right, so the story's like this. I imagined how would I tell the story to my daughter, how would I explain things to her. And I kind of played around with one scene, and then I turned it into a narrative, I just imagined somebody discovering this and having a conversation and talking to people. And it worked so well, and it was a Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting in the lounge typing, and I thought, oh, that was fun. And then I wrote the next piece, and it just flowed out, it wasn't difficult like it had been before. And then I went back and I rewrote the entire book as a narrative. So it's not a novel as such, but it does tell the story. And what it is, it's a young girl, her name is Beth, and she's recently qualified from university and she gets a really good job at a traditional financial firm in South Africa. And she starts working there and she's excited, and she's honored to have this job.

And then she starts running like any young new person in a job, making some suggestions and every suggestion she makes that it's kind of innovative or modern or forward thinking gets shut down. It's very frustrated at the post-minded approach of the people that she's working with. And then she starts exploring and she comes across my website, Futures Alchemist, which is not quite ready. So that's why the book has been, you know, normally delayed a bit because the site has to match the book and we're just tweaking a few more things on that site. I can't wait. I have to tell you, I cannot wait for that site. If the book is anything to go by, I'm going to go and sort out my own futures there. Map Compass Guide, I'm there. It's all there. So she discovers that site. She learns about the Map Compass and Guide, which is the model that I use to explain all of the academic models that we use for future studies. And then she goes back, her company is not listening, she discovers a FinTech company. She makes a friend in the startup and the friend invites her over and she meets the founder of the startup and she presents them with her ideas just to share them. Just because that's our modern world, that when we come up with something that's great, we want to share it with our community and see what we can co-create.

And it just takes off from there and then she gets offered a job and she moves over. And she moves over to teach them kind of like two versions of this. One is to help their clients, the startup's clients, to run a futures thinking project. So to actually apply these models to create new products or new services. But then also to challenge that startup to always have that kind of framework of thinking about the future as a lens to every decision that they make. So they're not just making normal regular decisions, but actually thinking, how could this be better? How could it be more sustainable? What are we missing? What trends might be out there that are going to affect us? And she needs to get that whole company to keep thinking like that so that they can be innovative and cutting edge. And so the whole story unfolds with that. And then there's a hint of new adventures at the end. And I think that's my little encouragement to myself to write some more stories along those lines, using this for different industries to just demonstrate that the futures thinking models that we are using are really good. They're robust. They're academic. They're taught at university at postgraduate level.

And they can be applied from everything from a huge multinational corporate to cities and governments to small startups and to individuals to our own careers. We can apply exactly the same thinking at every level. When we come back, I want to talk to you a little bit about this whole thing about being a futurist or whatever, because the traditional thinking is futurists, you the strange people that say we're going to get color television when we only have radio and stuff like that, because I got to tell you, the first futurist I ever met, and it took me quite a while to figure this whole thing out, was a gentleman you may have heard of by the name of JP Luntman. And I got to tell you, yeah, it sort of my head was a bit broken afterwards. So hopefully, when we come back, we'll be able to chat and you'll be able to explain to me what is a futurist and who would want to become a futurist? There we go. That's my special guest that we're having a chat to right now, author of a book called Futures Alchemist. It's just written in such an engaging way. It is Charlotte Kim. The book is available. She's agreed to send out three copies again. How lucky are we? So we'll be back and chatting to her in just a little bit.

My special guest, I am chatting to Charlotte Kim, author of Futures Alchemist. Okay, Charlotte, now that I've finished my running, what is a futurist and how does one become a futurist? All right, well, I think just like every profession that in there and kind of discovering the range of things we have to take care of in any other academic model, any other academic studies you do, you have to stay in your lane. So if you are a sociologist, you don't talk about psychology. If you're an economist, you don't talk about sociology. But when you come to become a futurist, you really need to pay attention to everything from demographics to environment to politics, economics, as well as all the business things and innovation. So it's a huge, broad spectrum of work, which means that when you actually meet futurists who are working in that space, they kind of specialize in certain fields. So we have a lot of – I'm a keynote futurist, so I speak at conferences and I share the model, share the ideas, but when it comes to the deep research and studies and working inside of a company for a six or nine month project, then I refer those to my academic colleagues, the ones who have done that kind of level of work and an engagement in an association called the Association of Professional Futurists.

And then they go in and they'll do that kind of deep work, but we all kind of know the space we work in. So there's some people who focus on politics and what the future of politics means for us, the everyday people, and there are other people who focus on the environment and they will raise those concerns that we need to hear about. And so you just find different futurists in different spaces. Okay, now when you talk and when you do your keynotes, what do you base your talk on? What do you talk to people about? Or does that depend on the business? Well, that's how I came up with the map. Well, yeah, I know. Certainly it does. I mean, I tailor – I've got a basic message that I'll share, but I will tailor everything to a specific event. I speak at a lot of associations, and so whatever that association industry is, we'll talk around that when people think about futurists or thinking about the future in terms of an actual study, the two things we always come up with that we understand are trends and scenarios. So everybody talks about trends, and we understand trends and fads, and we got a bit of an idea about that because there's a lot of commentary on that in the media. And then the scenarios we in South Africa know about because Kim Sunter did some really great work years ago before we had our democratic elections, and he created the – with his whole team and the studies that they were doing with Royal Dutch Shell, they talked about the high road and the low road of South Africa's future.

And so as we heard that, we've kind of grown up hearing about those scenarios, so we get an idea of that. So when I go and speak to any company or do a keynote, I use my model of a map compass and a guide, and then I put the trends and the scenarios and all the other models that we can use into that model so that people can see that this isn't wishful thinking. It's not motivational speaking, that there are real things that we can do to understand the directions that the future can possibly go in, and then there are real things that we can do to actually determine to a certain extent which future we go in. So we are not at the mercy of the future. We have influence over it, and we as individuals and as companies and cities, we have agency over our future. And I think that is my primary message, we're not victims, we can actually determine which future we're going towards if we co-create it. Which is, I think, fantastic, because if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. That's it. In terms of the book, though, who is the book aimed at? In your mind, when you were writing this book, and the book is now out, it's been published, as we said, we cannot wait for the companion website, because I'm going to go searching on that, but who is it aimed at?

I mean, would it benefit your average everyday South African? Is it more for business people? I've tried to write it as accessible as possible, although it's still jam-packed with a lot of information. So a lot of my friends who are reading it feel a bit like they have to go back and read it apart again, because they didn't quite grasp the depth of it, or they can't see the implications. But I think the most important part for me when people read the book is they come back. One of my friends says, there's a character in the book called John, he says, I want to hit John, because John is a bit of a, he's a jerk, and he's so arrogant and dismissive. And for that to evoke a reaction from somebody, it means that it is actually touching people's emotions as well as their intellect, which is exactly what I meant for it. So I don't think, I didn't have a specific kind of industry in mind, obviously it's based on financial services, but I think it's clear that these things could be used in other places as well. But it's not whether, it's not an individual or a company or anything like that, there are certain people who will respond to this, who will read this and go, wow, I get it, I can do something.

There's obviously a lot to learn here, but we can create the future. There is possibility in the future. This is not a utopian, optimistic thing that we're talking about, but actually we can get our hands dirty and make things happen. And if somebody feels that they read the book, they're going to get some tools to work with. Other people will read it and they might be like the character John and they go, well, this is rubbish and you know, you're being naive and it's not as simple as that. And for them, the book won't appeal and they won't be interested in the work that I'm doing. And that's okay. What about? Because you can't cater to everybody. Yeah. What about people who relate to Ian? Well, yeah, that's good. Ian is one of the characters, he's older and he's kind of, he's not a retirement age yet, but he is older and then he gets a job in this fintech startup where everybody is younger than him and so much younger that they have to kind of gently kind of reverse age mentor him and show him a few things. But the point is it's not about the age. It's about the mindset. So my husband is in his late sixties, he's a lot older than I am, but he has the heart and mind of a millennial and he's always exploring things and wanting to try new things.

And he's not at all old in his mind. So it's not about, you know, the age that somebody is. It's just about their mindset and their approach to this is possible or this is impossible. You know, I often do that. I'm not quite as old as Ian in the book yet, but I certainly have passed the 50 year old mark. I see myself as old and yet often I get challenged and then some of my thinking is definitely quite old fashioned, particularly when you get to deal with the millennials and those kind of guys because yeah, it's a challenge. That's what I like about the story though is it can actually be a workbook, a roadmap for self-development. Yes, absolutely. And that's important. I mean, we don't, and I'm trying to tell my children, I feel the same age inside as I did when, you know, when I was in my twenties or thirties, we don't necessarily feel older until we really do feel older. And then we come up with a whole lot of excuses and we're whining about health and that there are people like that, but for most of us, we have a mindset of, you know, we wanted to explore the world, we're open to ideas, but you know, after 20, 30, 40, 50 years on the planet, you get some habits, you work inside of a framework, we can't recreate ourselves every single day that would be impractical and not at all efficient.

So we do have some things that we believe, we've grown to believe. But if we are open to hearing a conversation with somebody who has a different idea or opinion to ourselves and have that conversation with respect and discuss the topic, you know, as a separate entity, so it's not like you and I are having a conversation and I'm getting angry with you because you believe something different from me. But if we can have that conversation about something different and both of our minds are opened and expanded, and we may or may not change our opinions or may or may not adopt new technologies or new approaches to life, but we've had that conversation. And if more of us did that, there would be less conflict in the world. But instead, we have this polarization where, you know, if you and I disagree on something, you know, we can't be friends, we can't be Facebook friends, we can't, you know, we can't ever agree to even meet and have a decent conversation. And that is not at all helpful. Well, I got to say, it is a book. It's not a light read, I'm going to be honest, it's not something you'd pick up on a Sunday afternoon for a quick read. Although when I first read Future's Alchemist, I thought, this sounds like my kind of fantasy adventure and then I realized it's a whole lot deeper, it's a whole lot more serious.

But it is a great read, and particularly if you are curious, and I think that is, I don't know, for me, that was one of the takeaways is be curious. Take the leap, take the journey, dive into the unknown. We don't know all the answers, but we're never going to know them unless we start looking for them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, and the adventure that we have is our own life adventure. You know, when I start with a map, we have this present moment in time and we all look at this present moment through our own lens, but then we have to understand that we come from a history and we can look on the map to the left-hand side, that is our past. And whatever team is gathered there in the present moment, all have different pasts and those pasts color our perception of the present moment and our opinion of how much influence we have over the future. So people who've had a very difficult past and they've never been able to resolve that have limited options in the future, but especially with our younger generations, I mean, every young generation feels open to exploring things. They feel like they can go and change the world, you know, we send them to university and tell them to learn stuff and change the world and open their minds, and then we get frustrated when they try and do that, but they're meant to do that.

But the modern generations, the younger generations at the moment are just open to so many new ideas and so much courage and boldness to do these, to do the things that we need in this world. And if we can allow them or ourselves if we're on that journey to look at the scenarios for the future and choose the one that is full of adventure and opportunity, then we can create that adventure for ourselves. Otherwise we end up like you're saying, you know, any road will get you there and you get there and you say, oh, this isn't what I wanted, but then we hadn't actually planned it. So let's take this moment to plan the future and come up with something that's worth living. Fantastic stuff. Charlotte, the book is, as you say, it's available now. Can we purchase any bookstores or online now? You can order. So order directly from me and there is a web store on my website, which is charlottekemp.co.za. And you don't want to go to charlottekemp.com that's, that's a porn star. So I have a brand new problem. So dot co dot za. Okay. So let's just help people out here, charlottekemp.co.za. Charlotte spelt C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E-K-E-M-P, charlottekemp.co.za You can go there to order the book. Charlotte, what I'm going to do is I'm going to, I'm going to ask, you know, just real make it easy for people.

Are they going to WhatsApp me? And then I will then forward the winner onto you when you then organize to get the book through to them. Absolutely. I'll be delighted. Fantastic. Can we be cheeky and ask you if we can make it a signed copy? Absolutely. No problem at all. Fantastic stuff. Charlotte, thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat test tonight. I know it particularly in terms of this interview, it was a bit of a rocky road for us to get here, but we're here. It's brilliant. In closing, okay. What next? What's next for you? Because I think just from reading the book, you know, they often say people have one book in them. I think you may have more. No, definitely. It feels like there's more stories to be told. I'll tell you what the next project is after this is as I was writing it, I was talking about, you know, I honestly do believe that we're all futurists. We can be better futurists, but looking at the values that are really highlighted in our conversations today, I think we should be conscious futurists. And so I'm working on some material around what it means to be a conscious futurist and how we can take that kind of as a framework for our lives and our decision making, whether it's at home with our families or in the workplace or in the cities, you know, how can we actually be conscious about the future we create and not just create something that satisfies ourselves and our in-group that rather is better for more people and more inclusive.

Fantastic stuff. Charlotte, thank you so much for taking the time out having a chat to us. I wish you every success with the book and I do look forward to chatting to you again in the future. Yes. David, thank you very much for the invitation. I've enjoyed this. Appreciate it. Wonderful stuff. Enjoy the rest of your evening. There we go. That's my special guest. On the line, Charlotte Kemp, author of Futures Alchemist. If you'd like to order the book, go to charlottekemp.co.za. Otherwise, if you'd like to win a copy, you can WhatsApp me. WhatsApp me now on 0848220938 and just go, I want to be a Futures Alchemist. If you get chosen from our randomizer, I'll send that info out to Charlotte. So WhatsApp me, I want to be a Futures Alchemist and bang, you could be a winner. And the number again is 0848220938, 0848220938. Coming up next, I told you it was a jam packed show tonight. Coming up next, we're talking to two people who are going to be exhibiting at this weekend's upcoming cannabis expo. That sounds like a lot of fun and I'll be giving away a set of double tickets to that one as well. So there you go. Waiting for your WhatsApp. You can even SMS me, 01348 if you'd like, those SMSes are going to be charged at 150.