What You’ll Take Away
◆ The best opportunities go to the people who position themselves early, not the ones who react fastest.
◆ Reading the market is a skill you build by staying curious, not by waiting for permission.
◆ Chasing trends is exhausting. Anticipating them is a career strategy.
The Room Before the Room
It was 2019 and the streaming wars were in full swing. Netflix had already transformed from a DVD mailer into a content powerhouse, and every cable executive in the country viewed them as the enemy at the gates. But inside a conference room at a cable company in Canada, I was making an argument that made people uncomfortable.
My pitch was simple: Netflix is not the competition. Netflix is a channel. No different than HBO.
The room went quiet. At the time, the entire cable industry was built on the idea that streaming was a threat to be fought, not a partner to be embraced. But I saw it differently. Consumers did not care about the war between cable and streaming. They just wanted great content in one place. The only question was whether we would be the ones to give it to them or whether we would lose them entirely while we were busy protecting the old model.
We chose to integrate. Netflix went inside the cable bundle for the first time, and it became one of the most talked about moves in Canadian media.
You do not win by reacting to the future. You win by standing in the spot where the future is about to land.
Why Most People Chase Instead of Anticipate
There is a pattern I have seen play out across every industry I have worked in. A new technology or consumer behavior starts to emerge. The early signals are there for anyone paying attention. But most people wait. They wait for the case study. They wait for the competitor to go first. They wait for their boss to give them permission.
By the time they move, the window has already narrowed.
The difference between leaders who anticipate and leaders who chase is not intelligence. It is curiosity combined with courage. They read widely. They talk to people outside their industry. They are willing to look foolish today in order to be right tomorrow.
When I joined TikTok Canada, the platform was still considered a place for teenagers and dance videos. The advertising community was skeptical. But the signals were everywhere: attention was migrating, content formats were evolving, and creators were building real businesses on the platform. Standing where the ball was going meant taking the role when others would have waited for validation.
The Discipline of Early Positioning
Anticipating trends is not the same as predicting the future. Nobody has a crystal ball. What you can do is train yourself to notice patterns before they become obvious.
Read outside your industry. Have coffee with people who do not share your worldview. Pay attention to what your kids are doing on their phones. Watch where venture capital is flowing, not where it already went. These are small disciplines that compound over time.
Curiosity is free. The cost of waiting is not.
When we built Out of Phone at TikTok, we were not following a playbook. There was no playbook. We saw a gap between the digital world and the physical world and believed that gap would close. We positioned the team, built the framework, and started creating before anyone told us it was safe to do so.
That is what standing where the ball is going looks like. It is not reckless. It is informed. It is intentional. And it requires the willingness to be early, even when early feels uncomfortable.
The Real Risk is Standing Still
People think the risk is in moving too soon. It rarely is. The real risk is in standing still while the world reorganizes around you. Every executive who dismissed streaming, who ignored social media, who thought their industry was immune to disruption, learned this the hard way.
You do not need to predict every trend. You just need to be honest about the ones already in motion. And then you need to move.
Stand where the ball is going. By the time everyone else gets there, you will already be playing.
Community Challenge: The Trend Scan
This week, set aside thirty minutes and do a personal trend audit. Look at your industry, your role, and your skills. Ask yourself two questions:
1. What shift is already happening that I have been ignoring because it feels too early or too uncertain?
2. What is one small move I could make this month to position myself closer to where things are headed?
The goal is not to have all the answers. The goal is to start paying attention on purpose.
If this resonated, drop ANTICIPATE in the comments and tell me: what is one trend in your industry that you see coming but most people are still ignoring? And if you want my personal framework for spotting opportunities before they become obvious, comment POSITION and I will share it with you.