You can listen to the podcast and read the show notes here.
In this interview, I spoke with Euvie Ivanova and Michael Gilliland.
Michael Smith: I'm here today with Euvie and Mike from Future Thinkers. Maybe it's best if you pronounce your names for the audience.
Michael: Sure. I'm Mike Gilliland.
Euvie Ivanova: And I'm Euvie Ivanova.
Michael Smith: Thanks for doing that, I'm not sure I could quite get my tongue around those.
You have a great podcast “Future Thinkers” and I've also followed your stuff on Facebook and I'm guessing you have a website somewhere too, right?
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
FutureThinkers.org
Michael Smith: Excellent. Today we're going to be talking about how business is changing ever faster, and as we move into the future, the speed of change seems to be going vertically upwards, and how business intuition can help with that.
Can we talk a bit about the speed of change of business? Do you really think business is changing faster these days or is this just an illusion?
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael: We're part of a lot of entrepreneurship communities. We engage in a lot about entrepreneurship and discussions with people. We talk about the rate of automation and change. It's interesting to note that the product lifestyles of products and niche's and trends seem to be extremely fast. Six months to a year now. Whereas you could see a whole industry rise and fall within a decade just a couple decades ago. That's probably what's most interesting.
Michael Smith: How quickly are industries rising and falling now?
Michael: I think within a year and probably shrinking every year or two.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, sometimes down to a few months.
Michael: Especially if it's digital.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah.
Michael Smith: Wow. So that means within three to six months a whole industry could arise, be successful, then fall.
Michael: Yeah, and I think, not so much fall in a way that nothing replaces it. It's just that iterations, especially in digital technologies … A platform can rise and be replaced in that amount of time.
Michael Smith: What are some examples of platforms recently that have come and gone so quickly, or been replaced.
Euvie Ivanova: One interesting example was the DAO. It didn't even get the chance to really perform, but it was the biggest crowdfunding campaign that ever got funded. For background, it was a crypto-currency or cryptography based platform for … basically a venture capital investing platform. It got funded over 100 million dollars, then somebody used an exploit in the code, and basically they had to shut it down. It was a huge scandal.
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And not only that, you can go a layer deep on that and say the theory of the platform that the DAO … Which stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah.
Michael: The platform the theory of business is built on is now facing a lot of controversy because of that, and now there are new platforms for building decentralized applications popping up all over the place. We just heard of a new one that was funded yesterday. There's the situation of these giant organizations putting all this work in, than the next generation of innovators stand on the shoulders of giants, make a couple tweaks to the platform and rise to the top. And that can happen very quickly.
Michael Smith: So this will be like in the old days … Black and white television came out, and that lasted for several decades, then color TV came out, then high definition TV. What you're saying is … and those went on for a long period of time … You're saying with modern technologies, it might only be a few months for something to emerge then be replaced.
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah.
Michael: Exactly.
Michael Smith: That's pretty amazing. That sounds like it would create some problems for CEOs and other business leaders dealing with this. What kind of issues do you see people having?
Michael: A lot of people … I'm reading a book right now called Platform Revolution. I was just listening to about an hour of it right before we got on the call. What they talk about is that entrepreneurs need to find a good balance between openness and closeness of their platform. Companies like Apple right now are in trouble right now because of how closed their platform is. When they make a decision, that's the law. Other platforms that are more open tend to … In my personal opinion, because I'm more on the side of openness. I think those platforms tend to last a lot longer. But that's what this entrepreneurship is almost becoming about. It's not the products or services you sell, but the platform that provides products and services and connects peers to peers.
Michael Smith: So, an example of a platform would the IOS platform with the software approved to run on your iPhone.
Michael: Yes.
Michael Smith: And what you're saying is the phone makes a certain amount of money for apple, but really the platform where they approve and take a percentage of apps sold for the iPhone is where they really make their money.
Michael: Exactly. Then platforms, Air BnB, Uber, all of these platforms are making an absolute killing because of this peer to peer connection that they're making. Even that as a whole, the whole platform revolution that's occurring … If you look at what's happening in the Bit coin and crypto currency and blotching markets, you can see that there's a really fast moving trend towards decentralization of these platforms, which means the CEOs and shareholders are not going to kill to have their ownership of these platforms any longer. Or at least it'll change.
Michael Smith: Why do you think that decentralization and open sourcing of platforms is occurring?
Euvie Ivanova: I think for a lot of people it's just a different ideology and they're seeing an opportunity to create platforms that can evolve to the needs of the users and be more democratic, rather than be centralized and behind a wall in some silo controlled by a few people.
Michael: It's about incentives in this situation. When you become a big centralized entity that you own the information or you own the platform, your incentives … once you have the monopoly in your industry … Your incentives are to defend your position. However, when the platform that you're operating in, you can't own the platform. You can't become the middle man and you can't create silos of information. You can't become dominant. So your incentive is always to benefit the entire network of users. When Air BnB or Uber, for example, become the dominant leaders in their respective stasis, their only incentive is to increase the friction for people to leave the platform and increase the percentage of revenue that they take from each transaction. That's the only way that they really add value for their shareholders is by doing that. They no longer have to innovate and improve the experience of users.
Euvie Ivanova: That's kind of what's happening with Apple right now. A lot of people are noticing that the quality of the products is going down , and you know the last iPhone release was a joke and it didn't have a headphone jack … They're not innovating, they're just doing ridiculous stuff for show.
Michael: Increase profit.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah.
Michael: And that kind of stuff would not happen in a truly democratic organization that was owned by the customers.
Michael Smith: What I'm hearing is it's a combination of people wanting to have more control over the platform they use by making it democratic, but also it seems motivated by the platform itself, if you regard it as having intelligence and wanting to evolve faster and be better.
Michael: For me it's about incentives for the platform creators. If you can … The new types of organizations that are evolving right now, a lot of people are trying to remove the incentive for becoming a silo or becoming a middle man, and that's … Yeah …
Michael Smith: So the result of this is that platforms are evolving much faster than when they were closed. Is that the case?
Michael: Yeah, it's definitely a result. It's one of many results, though. With more developers, more people participating in the growth of the product or the platform, yeah definitely the speed is going to pick up.
Michael Smith: Is this just applied to technology? Or are there platforms in other areas of business?
Euvie Ivanova: I think it's primarily applied to technology because technology has the ability to evolve much quicker than other things, especially digital technology, because it has, according to this law … It's price performance is improving and doubling every I don't know how many months now …
Michael: I think it's every six months or something, but there's a wall at the end of that though.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah and with quantum computing now they might be able to overcome that. In terms of physically technology, it's definitely evolving slower, but nowadays with the internet of things, even physical technologies are becoming linked to the internet and they are becoming digitized, so they will also evolve quicker.
Michael: Yeah technology is eating the world. There's not going to be too many things left that are not influenced or directly ported over into digital environments.
Euvie Ivanova: Including ourselves. We just did an interview that was really interesting. We talked about how artificial intelligence is not necessarily a stand alone thing. In the future, it will be something that we are connected to. We're already connected to it. Every time we use google, we are extending our intelligence by using artificial intelligence.
Michael Smith: Right. So this can affect all kinds of social interactions and forms of organization. What I'm thinking is yes the technology is in there and what the DAO was trying to achieve was to automate how companies were run and contracts and things like that and speed up that aspect of business.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael Smith: SO with the whole speed up of how things are changing … Lifestyles got a lot shorter, change is happening faster … Where does that leave people who want to lead a business?
Michael: I'm a little pessimistic for CEOs, but I'm optimistic for society. As an entrepreneur myself, I can definitely see a lot of opportunities still left, and I can see huge opportunities with crypto-markets and blotching technologies … I'm really on the fence about whether this whole organization system, whether capitalism is even something that is going to survive the next 10 or 15 or 20 years. So I might be the wrong person to ask about this, because I don't know that the entrepreneur or business leader is going to be so relevant in the future. It might have to change.
Euvie Ivanova: I think it's possible that entrepreneurs will have to be replaced by visionaries and inventors. You give birth to an idea or you inspire people to work on something together then you put it out into the world in a decentralized network. You don't really own it after that anymore.
Michael: So it's almost like … But then there's things that can happen out of that that are very positive. So I'm very optimistic in the social sense. In that way, I think basic income will really change how people view entrepreneurship and how commerce is participated in.
Blotching would be a way to implement a basic income, which I think is pretty interesting. All of a sudden if people are taken care of and they can focus on what they want to do, on their projects, their innovations, without the worry of paying rents or buying food, they may be a lot more willing to create these platforms and applications that solve big problems in the world. But then they have no more ownership than anyone who would donate money to create the application. Essentially they'd be donating the project.
Michael Smith: So you're seeing the end of business as we know it. Is that what you're saying?
Michael: Business in the form that it's in? I see the end of capitalism. I don't see the end of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, I think we might just change the way we look at it, because right now we're living in a centralized society, so it's … Put your wall around it. Intellectual property. You control and command. Whereas if we're living in a decentralized society, it might be more about creating and inspiring.
Michael Smith: Do you think whatever format this takes, whether it's capitalist, or business, or a cooperative society … Is the pace of change going to slow down? Will the number of decisions people have to make decrease in the future?
Michael: No. I think it just builds on top of what we've already done. I think with this coming change, it's going to bring more minds onto the game. More people will be innovating, more people will be creating applications … The incentives for doing those things might change. But I think people with free time and with capital will pursue grudge-ects that are of benefit to the world.
Michael Smith: What challenge does this give to whoever's doing this, whether they're CEOs or leaders of open source campaigns or platforms … In dealing with the pace of change and the enormous quantity of information coming in?
Euvie Ivanova: Well processing information is definitely going to be a problem, because our brains are limited in that way that we can only consciously process a certain number of bits at a time. I think we'll have to plug ourselves in or connect ourselves to some sort of artificial intelligence to help us process all that information.
Michael: The other option is the way the businesses have been typically going is to niche down further and further. You've got to find your market and your niche and go deeper into that direction.
Michael Smith: So either augmenting the human abilities to process the information and decisions with compute power or restricting how many decisions and how much information I have to process by niche-ing down even further.
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Euvie Ivanova: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Michael: Another thing I'm seeing, though, is that the solo-preneur is probably going to have less and less power to do anything. I think it's going to be more vital for people to collaborate together to build anything that's going to be of value or going to be able to compete.
Michael Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So where does use of the business intuition fit in to working with all this pace of change?
Michael: Again, I think it comes back to incentives. I think if people are not so focused on themselves and the benefit of their own project or their shareholders … Sorry, repeat your question again.
Michael Smith: Traditionally in business, people analyze things logically. They think through step by step. Okay, this is change, here's what I'm going to do to my business because of this technology change. Maybe they have documents and spreadsheets, but it's all thought out logically. What I'm suggesting is that there's just too much change and too much to deal with to be able to do that all the time and coming to things intuitively is a way to cut that …
Michael: Right, I remember. I was saying people's incentives change for innovations, so they're going to be more focused more on … I think, benefiting society. If you think of Maslow's pyramid of needs, when the basic levels of needs are taken care of … You know, food, shelter, clothing … You start to move up the change into more altruistic, externally focused, societally focused motivations. I think intuition plays a role into that, in that the individualistic way we operate now is against our evolved nature as primates that exist in a society and we're social creatures. I think this nearly psychopathic individualistic behaviour that we have is against the grain of what we naturally do. And by taking away the incentives to participate in that system, we'll probably naturally play into our intuitions, and intuitions will be a benefit to society.
Euvie Ivanova: And in terms of what you're saying with having too much information … Yeah, I definitely think we underutilize our subconscious mind. Especially … And it does have to do with incentives, because we're trying to please shareholders, or we're trying to make the most money possible … But a lot of the time, we make much better decisions when we're not focused on those things, and we just kind of … How do I say it without sounding too “woo”
Michael Smith: You can sound “woo,” it's okay.
Euvie Ivanova: I guess, listen to your higher self. That's how I would describe it. Because sometimes we just have these ah-haa moments when we're relaxed and when we're not trying to be scheming and calculating, and we get these ideas that are just larger than life. And if we follow those ideas we can make really beautiful things happen.
Michael Smith: Mmm. I'm just wondering … I think that's true. And also I think it's possible to separate the ego, scheming, calculating from the mode of thought used to express that, whether it's rational mind or intuitive mind. I can use my intuitive mind to serve my ego. My ego has some calculating business goal. Or I can have it serve my higher self goal for improving the world, or I can have my rational mind serve my higher self's goal. I can see the independent dimensions in this.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael Smith: … Which is kind of interesting. I see this as a thing that helps now. A typical situation that all business people have is hiring, where they are overwhelmed with choices and information. It's very hard to make the perfect hiring choice, because you don't have full information at the time you're doing the interviewing and selection. I find that's a good example of intuition together with rational selection.
Michael: Yeah, when you talked about the ego, you reminded me of a good point. I think when people think they're in a lot more control of what they do and what they think on a daily basis. But ask anyone who walks to work what they saw on the walk there, and most people are absorbed in some sort of past or future event and feel like they've teleported from home to work.
Michael Smith: (laughs) Maybe they did.
Michael: I think there's tons of examples of behavior that you can uncover that is completely unconscious. You're not making your … This is kind of a dumb thing to say, actually. You're not operating your body. Your body is pretty much autonomous. So you're not operating your organs or anything …
Michael Smith: That's true. Many people's businesses … They're not really operating their business. It's kind of autonomous.
Michael: Yeah. I think admitting that we're not fully conscious of every minute of every day, and that we're still operating functionally, then practicing with whatever kind of subconscious or intuition you might have, that might actually serve you a lot better. It certainly has for me. Because my upbringing, and the way I've always operated in business has been very cerebral, very forceful, very logical. And when I stepped away from that a little bit to just kind of go with the flow a little more and let my intuition guide me, I've made way better decisions. Things have happened way quicker. Yeah, I seem to attract the kinds of people I'm looking for.
Michael Smith: Can you give some examples of better decisions or better experiences that you've had since doing that?
Michael: Definitely … Maybe that's a little hard to uncover … Definitely I've been able to communicate the vision a lot more when I've just followed what's in my heart more than what the logical plan is. Let me think. I think generally, maybe it's part of the “woo” side of things, or maybe it's part of synchronicity, we've talked about these things a lot in our podcast. I think just not worrying about things, and letting things happen the way they will … I think that's very easy to say, but it's very difficult to turn of the worry … But if you can figure out a way to do that and operate comfortably in any situation, I think you make far better decisions.
Michael Smith: Mmm.
Michael: That's why they do training like that in the Army and for paramedics and that sort of thing. You need to be able to operate calmly without getting emotionally overwhelmed.
Michael Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Michael: That in itself plays a big role, but I think there's also some sort of, oh I don't know … Higher level, quantum probability fluctuation, quantum field thing that might be happening where you're actually able to be in the right place at the right time a lot more when you're in that sort of calm open state.
Michael Smith: So you're saying a lot of training that happens for doctors or surgeons, military is so that they're able to function in a chaotic situation and stay in that flow state.
Michael: Yes.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, exactly.
Michael Smith: Then it sounds like the same thing will be true for business people in the future.
Michael: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think people are emotionally stable and come from … You know how some of the best entrepreneurs, the most socially aware entrepreneurs are the ones that have gone through just the shit and the muck their whole lives and then come out of it and then became this big success story. CEO of Patrion is kind of like that. He's been an artist his whole life and musician his whole life. Then one day, he built this platform that solved exactly his own problem because he was immersed in it. I think that sort of immersion in whatever situation where you actually need to perform … Having practice over time is probably the most beneficial thing.
Michael Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Is there any other way to get intuition other than years of practice?
Euvie Ivanova: For me, it's about listening to the right part of myself. For example, if I'm just worrying. Worrying about money or worrying about some sort of outcomes I'm overly attached to, then I make terrible decisions, but there's always that other part of me, that if I listen to it, it often solves the problem in a very unexpected way.
Michael Smith: Makes an inspired leap in solving the problem.
Euvie Ivanova: Exactly. We were talking to a friend recently and he gave a really great analogy which is from, I can't remember, from which teacher. But it's the analogy that when we're using our rational mind, we can only see a few feet ahead of ourselves, and if we pick a destination then try to go there, it might be really hard. Because everybody else is also choosing the same destination and trying to go there and it's very crowded. But if we use our intuitive mind or higher self, or whatever you want to call it, then you're on top of a mountain and you see for miles around you. And you might see oh actually that's not even where I want to go. I want to go over there. And you can make that leap very easily.
For me, one thing that's really helped with understanding which part of me is talking is meditation.
Michael Smith: Yeah, I was going to ask you how do you manage to turn this on. So meditation?
Michael: Yeah, for me it happens in the span of five minutes of meditation. I think because I got the practice to get into that state very quickly. Where I can turn off thought and sustain that for at least five minutes. That definitely helps with solving problems and decision making.
Michael Smith: I'm going to imaging, for some people listening, the idea of turning off thought is somewhat frightening.
Euvie Ivanova: (laughs)
Michael: You could rephrase. You could say anything is frightening before you do it, then it's not. I think once you do it, it becomes more of a blissful state than a frightening state.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, I think in western society there is definitely such a focus on thinking. But there are many ways of thinking. It's not even turning off thought so much as turning off sort of rational, logical thought. Because your body can have it's own way of signaling or “thinking” but it's not the same rational thinking. That “Oh, I need to get from point A to point B, and this is the most logical path.”
Michael Smith: So it's only turning off the part of your mind that would get in the way of having these intuitive thoughts.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, exactly.
Michael Smith: You're not killing it, you're just putting it to one side.
Michael: Yeah, but then you've got to wonder what is that … If you're turning off the logical, intuitive, self talking, monkey mind, whatever you want to call it … Then who are you if you're not those thoughts. And we could go down a rabbit hole for a long time in that discussion. I think meditation is also a self discovery process.
Michael Smith: You mentioned turning off worry earlier. Can we dig a little more into why that's an issue for a CEO if they have a lot of worries going on in their head? Because isn't that a very common experience for business leaders. That they're constantly worrying?
Michael: We've got some friends staying with us right now and we've talked a bit with them. They've had some financial troubles, and we've talked about us being in that situation many times in the past. And about the kinds of decision making that you have when you're in financial trouble versus when you're comfortable. You tend to cast a lot of lines to bring in any money you can, and you flip from one project to another. You do things for money, not because it's the right thing to do or the thing that's in line with your vision or your purpose. I think your decision making is actually ruined by worry.
Michael Smith: So it's kind of a corrosive effect on making a decision that would be best for your business and best for you.
Michael: Yeah.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah, and if we look at the health side, chronic stress is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. It's up there with smoking. It's really really bad for health. In the long term, if a person is constantly worrying, they're just destroying their health and destroying their ability to do things in the future.
Michael Smith: Do you imagine in the future, airlines will ban worrying on flights and all these special worrying rooms at the airport for people who have to get their worrying sessions in?
Euvie Ivanova: (laughs)
Michael: Well in a society where people are not so worried all the time, other people being worried is nothing to worry about. Anyone can go be worried and do their thing. You're not worried about it.
Euvie Ivanova: Basically, not being affected by other people's worry is the next level of that skill.
Michael Smith: How do you achieve not being affected by other people's worry? Because many people are affected by other people's worry around them.
Michael: Well your own worry is far more powerful, so if you get your own worry taken care of, I think it's a lot easier to not worry about other people. Plus you'll find yourself leaving the room a lot more in that situation if you find someone else is causing you stress and you're managing your own worry first, you'll just figure out a way not to be there.
Michael Smith: Mmm. So we don't have to worry about second hand worry from other people.
Euvie Ivanova: Second hand worry (laughs)
Michael: Worry about it if you don't know how to solve your own worry, for sure.
Michael Smith: Worry is one of the forms of negative energy that other people give out. What about other negative emotions that staff or customers may give out.
Euvie Ivanova: Trying to be overly controlling. We kind of touched on that earlier, but being overly attached to specific results or behaviors or trying to meet certain numbers on a spreadsheet … Although that is the way our society is currently built. A lot of the time people have quotas to meet and things like that, but actually I think that focusing on those things can sometimes prevent them from happening, because I don't think the world is linear. I think we exist in this 3D space that appears linear, but there are actually other layers to it. And quantum physics has shown that. That there are more dimensions to reality than what we normally perceive. I know that's a far out there thought, that people don't usually think about on a daily basis. But yeah, trying to force things to happen sometimes is not the best way to make them happen.
Michael Smith: So by using the intuitive part of yourself and your higher self, you're able to access more dimensions and more information effectively.
Michael: You don't have to subscribe to that belief, but just letting your mind stop focusing so heavily on the problem allows you to sometimes see the solution. Just sort of relaxing and waiting for the intuition to hit you … You could come up with a thousand reasons for why that happens, or sources for that happening.
Euvie Ivanova: I think if people don't subscribe to the multiple layers of reality, they can think of it as using their left brain and right brain. If you're always using your left brain for the logical, and the A to B kind of linear thinking, you're only using half your brain. And if you relax and allow your right brain to take over, then those kind of creative, holistic, big vision solutions can come to you easier.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael Smith: And you know that's maybe why so many problems get solved when somebody's taking a shower or a walk.
Euvie Ivanova: Exactly.
Michael Smith: They've turned off that logical mind and the problem went on the back burner and that's when it gets resolved.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael Smith: And if we're always running around busy trying to do logical tasks or cram as much as into our day as possible and never be “bored” by doing nothing like meditating, then we're not allowing that extra ability to come in.
Euvie Ivanova: Yeah and I think that's another reason why travel can be so helpful, especially unstructured travel like you're not part of a tour group, you just go and you explore a new city by yourself or new location, it doesn't have to be a city. I think a lot of people start to see their world in a different way after these kinds of experiences. And it's the same thing. Because you're out of your normal routine. Out of your normal problem solving state, which can help you connect the dots in a different way that you didn't even think was possible before.
Michael Smith: That makes sense. Can we extrapolate a little further into the future, here. If right now the top business leaders are using their intuition to get decisions done faster and to live in more flow, what's the next level of this.
Michael: It depends what you're trying to achieve. Every individual is different. I do think about incentives and what drives people quite a lot. And I think about needs. I use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in almost any discussion the future, because right now I think in our society, especially in western society, we're in the higher levels. At least we should be in the higher levels because most of our needs are taken care of, but we're wrapped up in things that are not really a threat like food and worrying about your job security and this kind of stuff. We're wrapped up in things that aren't altruism and benefiting the planet. But the rest of the world is actually literally stuck there. They cannot graduate up those the hierarchy until their needs are met.
As far as what people want to accomplish like CEOs and that sort of thing. I think the world would benefit a lot more if everyone just kind of rose up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. That could be, for the western world, information about how things are not as bad as you think they are. Let's focus on how to make the world better instead of pad your bank account or achieve status symbols or status in your business. But I think for the rest of the world, literally doing the work to get them up the ladder. Providing food, providing energy, that sort of stuff. I think if everyone moved up the ladder, we'd see a lot more benefit in the world. Collective benefit.
Michael Smith: Right, because when people aren't stressed about their lower level needs, they can be more relaxed about creating new things.
Euvie Ivanova: Exactly.
Michael Smith: So is this moving more towards a more global consciousness. As Kevin Kelley puts it the [inaudible 00:36:44] where all computers and all the minds on the planet are engaged together.
Euvie Ivanova: I definitely think so. Yeah, in the interview that I just mentioned earlier, we were talking about that. Currently our brain to computer to brain interface is really primitive. And as that improves, we'll be able to communicate a lot more easily. We'll be able to have AI and databases that are extensions of our mind that are seamlessly integrated. So when we're thinking, for example, trying to remember something, it's not a forceful thing. It happens instantly. Or we're trying to, right now if we look at big data and we have some computer crunching the numbers and trying to understand what it means instead of looking at that on a 2D screen, we could be in it in VR and we could be plugged in a perceiving that data into our mind and integrating with our existing concepts. I think that brain to brain and brain to computer interfaces, as they get better, we will reach almost a high mind. I don't think it will be like the borg “we are assimilated, we are one.”
But I think we will be a lot more connected and it will definitely be a new level of consciousness.
Michael Smith: Well it sounds a very exciting future that we're heading towards.
Michael: There's a lot of turmoil, but I'm very excited.
Michael Smith: Great. It's been great talking with you, Euvie and Mike. My name's Michael Smith with the Intuitive Business [inaudible 00:38:27]. Tell our listeners again where they can catch up with you.
Euvie Ivanova: They can find us at FutureThinkers.org. That's where our podcast lives. And that's where some of our new projects live. I think by the time this will be released, it will probably be further along. We're actually in the early stages of building a new type of [inaudible 00:38:53] accel ator and incubator in Bulgaria which will focus on decentralized technologies and VR and some of these futuristic ideas.
Michael Smith: That will make Bulgaria more than the next [inaudible 00:39:08], it will be beyond that.
Euvie Ivanova: Hopefully.
Michael: Someone said the Mecca of [inaudible 00:39:15]. I like the sound of that.
Michael Smith: Yeah. Well it's been great talking with you. Thank you so much for all your interesting ideas and questions.
Euvie Ivanova: Thanks for inviting us.