Matt Britton Live In Philadelphia PA - Millennials A to Z (2.0) Keynote (GEN Y)

Okay. A equals access over ownership. In the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, people would represent who they were to society through the cars, houses, watches, and sneakers that they bought. It was the brands that they adore, and that signaled to society what they were all about. So in the 90s, if you had your Lexus SUV and you were rolling into the cul de sac listening to Shania Twain, you signaled to everyone out there that you are of a certain status. Because back then, actually, brands meant something. But the world is actually shifting. First of all, people are acting way younger. Later in life, experiences have now actually become the new currency. Back in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, if you saw a 55 year older dancing at somewhere like Burning man, you take a step back and say, this guy's probably 7 years old. What is he doing there? But now, experiences have actually replaced physical items with a way to people to represent to everyone else who they are. Experiences are the new social currency, not stuff. So much so that Eric Schmidt, who recently left as chairman of Google, arguably the most powerful company in the world, prior to that was CEO of Google, got his job at Google for being at Burning Man. And I don't know how many of you know what Burning man is, but it's a festival known for rampant drug use. Noodley. This is a guy who met the founders Larry and Sergey of Google at Burning Man. It's kind of a cultural test of could he run the most powerful company in the world? Just think about that for a second in terms of how much things have changed as a result. The status update is the new status symbol. The status update is the new status symbol. Your ability to share experiences dictates the jobs that you get, the relationships that you get into, in a way like never before. So the new Rolex is actually sneaking down to the front row of a game or traveling to a far off place. And. And if you think about it, before a tool like Instagram, if you had an amazing experience, the only people who you could actually share it to were the people who go to your photo album. So if you did something amazing, the only people who would know that is people who crowd around from you and actually look at your photo album. But now if you look at the massive growth of a tool like Instagram, you can quickly see why experiences have now taken over. And the reason why I put that as my a is that that has a massive impact into how consumers both spend their time and, and their money. And I'm gonna be bringing this up over and over at this Presentation. Cause to me, that's the most meaningful shift that we see. The collection of stuff is not as important anymore relative to the collection of experiences. V is for babies, because this actually starts as soon as kids are born. Instead of kids who are born in the 80s or 90s, early 2000s, staring to their mother's loving eyes, right? Their mom is filming the moment that they're born because they want to capture that experience, to share what they're doing. And by the time kids are 3, 4, 5 years old, they're dressing like social media experts in beanies, living in trendy hip locations. And by the time the kids are 10, 11 and 12 years old, they're having group status meetings, sharing their homework on the cloud. One incredible stat is that 45% of kids age 10 to 12 actually have a smartphone with a service plan. That is crazy to me in terms of the power of information that they actually have in in their pocket. And as a result of the access to information, kids are growing up incredibly fast. As I mentioned earlier, in the case of Eric Schmidt, adults are growing old slow, right? So basically everyone is striving towards youth. There's a magic age. It's definitely not 43 what my age is, but it's probably somewhere around their mid-20s. That's kind of the aspirational age. And the reason that kids are growing up to the aspirational age and the reason that people like Eric Schmidt are holding onto it for dear life is because that's where experiences traditionally live. And now it's socially acceptable for people to do things later in life that they were never able to do. Which connects to my C, which is that the version of the American dream has now taken a U turn. The notion that you're going to get married out of college and move out to the suburbs and get a two car garage where the white picket fence and 1.7 children is not the version of American dream anymore. Because cities, which is my C, is the new place that this generation wants to imagine for themselves. You know, with better schools, safer parks. They want to stay in cities because in a 24 hour news cycle, while all the action is going on, it's actually happening in the cities. And this is having incredible reverberating impact. It's basically expanding the livable boundaries of cities everywhere, creating massive urban development. Where I live in Brooklyn, the real estate costs in the last 10 years were up over 100%. But in neighboring suburbs like Long island and Westchester, it's up 2 to 5%. And the reason you're seeing this is that younger people don't want to move out there anymore because they are so focused on those experiences. And in doing so, they're sacrificing the space and privacy of suburban living for the connectivity and community of city living. And they have no interest in kind of sitting around or collecting stuff or even buying cars anymore. You look at the cost of a car in a city combined with gas, tolls, parking and insurance versus the ease and ubiquity of Uber, it's no wonder that last year auto sales in the United States were were down for the first time since the financial crisis. And when I say that in front of major automotive manufacturers, they always try to argue it, right? But the facts are really undeniable that this generation does not look at a car as a rite of passage that it actually used to be. E stands for the barbell economy. For the first time since the 20s, 0.1% of the population is controlling nearly 25% of the wealth. The eight richest men in the world control as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the people in in the world. Think about that for a second. The middle class is rapidly eroding. I travel to places in the middle of America, as I'm sure a lot of you people in this room do, whether It's Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. You go to Cincinnati, you go to the nicest hotel there and you go in the lobby, try to use the bathroom. You need a passcode there because they're trying to keep the homeless people out. Is that the case here in Philadelphia or New York or on the West Coast? No, but it is really a tale of two countries which obviously played out during the election. And what I believe in business moving forward is, is that if you're going to be successful, you actually need to pick a side. You either need to be a luxury brand or a value brand. If you're a value brand, your Dollar Tree, your Dollar Store, your Dollar General, your Vizio that sells flat screens for $199. Walmart, everyday low prices, Kia selling cars for $12,000. These companies are winning through supply chain innovation. They're providing the best possible product for the lowest possible price. Because they know many parts of the country consumers can't afford to get all the bells and whistles. They just need a car that they can actually get their kids to school and actually go to work. And there continues to be tremendous opportunity on the value side of the equation. And the luxury side could not be growing more. There is Porsche, there's Michael Kors there's services that actually shuttle people in the Hamptons for $600 because they don't want to actually drive three hours out to the Hamptons because they actually want to save time. If you're in a luxury space, there's endless opportunity. The iPhone, the iPhone X sold for $1,000. A phone sold for $1,000. Apple is feasting on the luxury marketplace. But who's really struggling in this barbell economy? The Gap is struggling. Who now has closed about 50% of their stores since they announced their decline. Why? Well, the value side of the equation, they're buying Lee jeans at Walmart for $25. The luxury side, they're buying J Brand jeans for $250, but nobody's buying $100 jeans. And every single category, there are companies selling their version of $100 jeans, whether it's airlines, whether it's restaurants, whether it's packaged goods. Let's look at Tide, for example, right? They have laundry detergent, the luxury side of the equation, they're buying method brand cleaning, no toxic ingredients, all organic. The value side, they're buying private label. They don't care what the brand is. They just want to pay the cheapest amount possible. So Tide, one of America's most beloved brands, they're stuck in the middle. And that's why Proctor and Gamble continues to cut costs, to actually try to make it up from addition through subtraction. So you're going to start to see this in every single category as the middle class erodes, as jobs gets outsourced and offshore, that the middle of the country is going to be where the value side goes, and the coast is where the luxury side goes. And companies in the middle are really going to find themselves in a tough place. Which leads me to F, which is Ford. Ford is now contracting their brand portfolio to only four brands by 2020 because they know that there's limited demand for cars because of urbanization. They know the barbell economy is coming, and they know that them having value and luxury brands and everything in between just simply isn't going to work anymore. And Ford, over time, is, I think, just going to go to the value side of the equation because they're not going to be able to ever compete with Mercedes Benz or Lexus, et cetera. So you're going to start to see a lot of brands just retreat. You're going to see Toyota have a bifurcated strategy where they're going to push Toyota more to the value side and Lexus more to the luxury side. And Remove the middle barriers and you're going to see it over and over again. G is for gentrification. Because as consumers actually stay in cities and they don't want to move younger consumers, the livable boundaries of cities continue to be pushed outward and outward. I just can look outside these windows and you obviously see it's happening in Philadelphia, it's happening in New York City where there's areas that you wouldn't be able to walk outside past 5 o'. Clock. 10 years ago, they're selling $2 million townhouses. As the livable boundaries get pushed outwards, the very fabric of this country kind of gets reversed. The notion of the inner city blue collar worker doesn't really exist anymore. Look at this graphic of New York City. The light blue is the working class. You see tiny little specks of the working class in all of New York. Not just Manhattan, but Brooklyn, Staten Island, Bronx. The working class actually can't even afford to live in any of the five boroughs of New York City anymore. Growing up in the 80s, it was the inverse. You wouldn't actually see any of the creative class or service class actually living in, in cities. So that has such massive impact on real estate businesses, how companies sell where companies actually need to be located. And I think this is going to continue, which is why you're seeing housing being the first thing really drastically impacted. So housing along with cars used to be the other rite of passage. You get a car, you get a house. That means kind of you made it. When I moved into New York, you had to have Rockefeller type money to have a townhouse. Well, now you need that to actually get a one bedroom apartment or maybe even a parking spot. So younger people have kind of waved the flag on buying apartments. They want to stay in cities, they know they can actually can't afford it. So they're renting that. They're accessing their house over owning it by renting their house. They're accessing their car over owning it by using Uber. And I thought this was really interesting. The high cost of a home is turning American millennials into new serfs. And it really is happening. But for these young people, it really doesn't matter. And for those who say, well, wasn't the home the bedrock of American savings? Well, look what happened in 2008. But if you look at this chart and you look at the massive downslide of home ownership in the United States, it's really shocking. I stands for Instagram. In my book Youth Nation, I talk about something called Diffty, which stands for did it for the Instagram, which is that experiences are so impactful that at people building their Persona, who they are, the jobs that they get, the relationships they get into, the social circles they're accepted to, that people are pursuing experiences not only to enjoy them, but just to prove to everybody else that they were there. This is Mission Peak in Fremont, California. Mission Peak's been around for a very long time because of the mountain. But in the last two to three years, Mission Peak is being plagued by overcrowding, lack of parking, pollution, noise complaints from local residents. Why? Well, Mission Peak, while it looks like these three women climb to the top of Mount Everest, it's only a 15 minute easy walk up a mountain. It's conveniently located next to two major highways and there's a Starbucks about two minutes away from it. But most importantly, there's a pole at the top which allows people to take the perfect selfie. And on a Saturday afternoon, while all their friends are looking at them, begrudging themselves saying, why am I so fat and lazy? While these three adventurous people are climbing top of Mount Everest, these three people are doing it with their phone in hand the entire time. And the second that they take that picture, they're going right down the mountain and back to Shake Shack. And this is how these consumers think they are pursuing experiences. Because these three women, when they post this picture, other people are going to look at them differently. And we may think it's crazy. We might say, well, isn't that silly? Why wouldn't you enjoy the scenery? But wasn't it silly that people actually cared about having a Platinum MX versus a Gold AmEx or would pay more for the same motor to have a Lexus versus a Toyota? It's just kind of manifesting differently. So everybody that says the millennials are a different generation, they have different values, I actually disagree. I just think the world around them has changed and they're adapting to it. There are narcissistic people, there are altruistic people, there are people who care about what other people think. There's good people, there's bad people. That hasn't changed over time, but the world surrounding them has. Which is why now this is the new brand logo to adorn pursuing these experiences. J stands for jobs. When I was growing up, we were always told, you know, be a doctor, be a lawyer, work for a big company and work your way up to the C suite. That was the way to get a six figure income, and that was the way where you can actually be successful. But the reality is that the average age of a company on the Fortune 500, while back in the 60s it was 60 years old, is now going down to almost 10 years old. Companies aren't around for much longer anymore. There's so much disruption going on. There's so much M and A that younger people coming to the workforce know that that is no longer the tried and true path. Which is why you see new collaborative workspaces pop up like WeWork, which I read an article in the New York Times. This company is now valued at $40 billion. Has anyone here heard of WeWork? Okay, so we're talking about a company disrupting real estate. The largest tenant of commercial real estate in New York, in Hong Kong and San Francisco, and very few people even in this room have heard of it. Which kind of emphasizes the point of why there needs to be more education about what's going on. What WeWork is, which was started by two guys in their late 20s, is basically they eat up warehouses in affluent, well lit urban locations around the world and people can pay to essentially rent a desk. So I can rent a desk sitting across from that guy in the snazzy blue shirt and he might be an HR specialist and the guy next to me might be a coder, and the guy next to that person might be a graphic designer. I have a culture that, that rivals Google. I don't have to work out of a Starbucks or out of my bedroom where I personally work when I started my first business. And now this is the new version of the American dream. And what these people are doing is they are offering their services as a freelancer to big companies to be the CEO of themselves. That is what they're trying to do because they know working for a company is no longer tried and true. So what does that mean? It means that they're deep into an art or deep into a science. They, they can actually market their skill sets and have enviable incomes and freedom and the ability to pursue experiences. So deep into an art means that you're a writer, you're creative, you're a graphic designer, you're doing things that actually the machines can't. Or deep into a science means you're an engineer, you're a coder, you can actually operate the machines. And if you have one of those two skill sets, you can go to a WeWork, you can make $500,000 a year, you can have health insurance through WeWork, which is what a lot of people, people's parents say. When you want to be a freelancer, it's like, well, what about health insurance? Well, wework takes care of that as well. And now all of a sudden you are following your own path. And big companies, well, now they're following suit. Instead of Microsoft being in Redmond or Visa being in Foster City or Pepsi being in Purchase, New York, in these huge suburban enclaves, these companies are giving up the tax concessions they were originally given to move back towards cities to be closer to these millennial workers who actually want to stay in cities. I worked for years with Kimberly Clark, a big packaged goods companies in Neenah, Wisconsin, and they wonder why they couldn't get digitally minded millennial talent. Well, what digitally minded millennial talent actually wants to be in Neenah, Wisconsin? Well, now they open up an innovation center in Chicago and lo and behold, now they're slowly moving their entire headquarters to Chicago. McDonald's just moved into a shiny new headquarters in Chicago from Oakbrook, just 40 minutes away. So companies I think are going to continue to, to contract their workforces, tap into freelance talent so they can actually be more nimble moving forward. And I think more and more millennials are gonna stop pursuing careers and start pursuing gigs. So I really believe in this freelance economy, which is why you see companies like WeWork valued so high. K stands for Kayak. Kayak is just one of many travel sites that allow people to book last second travel. Travel and leisure in that category is absolutely expensive exploding right now. People are waking up on a Friday morning and say, where can I check off the bucket list? Where can I actually go to? And again, showcase everyone else. I was there. So this experience driving I cannot make a big enough point of in terms of how it consumes people. Younger kids will post on Instagram and refresh with the fervor of a Fortune 500 company to see how many likes they have. It dictates where people want to have their bat Mitzvahs. It dictates where people want to eat at restaurants. It really dictates how people spend all of their discretionary expenditures. And because of it, we're seeing leisure travel exploding, we're seeing last minute travel exploding, and we're seeing explosion of event oriented businesses. This is the Electronic Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. It just happened a couple weeks ago. It's an electronic music festival that every year attracts more people than went to Woodstock. And no one in this room I'm sure has even heard of the Electronic Daisy Carnival. And this is only one of many festivals. And if you talk to Coca Cola like I did a couple weeks ago, they'll tell you Their number one growing channel is not Walmart or Target and selling Coca Cola, it's actually being at these events. Cause that's actually where people want to be. So while everyone says technology has brought people further apart, this is kind of proof, it's bringing them closer together. Another interesting point on travel is that when people go to a destination and they're trying to figure out where to go. So if you're in a leisure or hospitality space, they're not going to Fotors or a travel guide anymore. They're going on Instagram. They. They're searching that location. They're seeing where the most influential people posted pictures, and then that's where they're going. And why are those people going there? Because they can get good pictures. So if you're a restaurant or you're a hotel and you can actually have something that people want to take pictures in front of, and you're going to start to see it in front of every type of business, whether it's a museum, whether it's a university, that's what's going to dictate where they go and actually how they spend their money. Speaking of museums, there's a Museum of Ice Cream, which is now in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, which sells out in about 30 seconds when they start selling tickets. Now, the Museum of Ice Cream is not what you think. When you think about a museum, you don't go there to learn about the pasteurization of the ice cream or how they milk the cows or the history of Ben and Jerry's. When you walk into the Museum of ice cream, there's 10 rooms that you can walk into and get a perfect selfie. And for younger people, this is their version of a museum. It's not the Tate Modern, it's not the Museum of Natural History, it's not the Franklin Institute here in Philadelphia. It's not. It's this. Because the reality is they believe that most of the information that they would get at a traditional museum they can just get on their phone. And if they're going to spend their time and their money to go somewhere, it's got to be someone that will build their personal brand. Because in a world where we're going towards freelancing and in a world where people are staring at their phones, the personal brand is everything. It's how people are actually breaking through. And I've seen it. I've worked with people who were not as talented at major companies that I see shoot up the corporate ladder at Fortune 500 companies to just because they're building their personal brand better. It's not a meritocracy, it's just who can become most famous. I mean, look who got elected, right? So we're actually seeing it at the highest levels and it's happening throughout every organization. And this is fascinating to see. And now there's Candytopia in Los Angeles, and you're going to start to see it everywhere. Where these experiences that people can go to, to allow them to be creative and express themselves and share is going to continue to grow. N is for Netflix, which really to me stands for the end of the television revolution. I'm going to get more into television a little bit later, but one thing I'll say is that this whole tech movement that's happened, and without it, where would our country be? Without companies like Apple and Facebook and Amazon, et cetera. When it first started in the early 2000s, all the emphasis was in Silicon Valley because that's where the coding was. The engineers, they were actually building all these products. Then in the early to mid 2000s, everything shifted to Madison Avenue because all this technology had to be paid for and it went to advertisers. Well, in recent years, it's actually all shifted to Hollywood, which is why you see Amazon getting into Prime Video, and you see Apple really focusing on entertainment because they need to be able to engage consumers, and they're all digging as deep into their pockets as they can to actually pay for entertainment. And that's why the focus has shifted to Hollywood. And I actually think the next shift is going to be in Washington, D.C. because I think there's going to be tremendous regulation with these huge technology companies. So while right now the focus is on Hollywood, I think it's inevitable that you're going to start to see breakups like you did with Microsoft in the 90s. And that's the only thing that's going to stop Amazon and Apple and Facebook and Google from continuing to grow is they're going to be broken up. And I think that's kind of the next stage. O stands for opportunities. Because while I work with all these traditional companies and a lot of them aren't moving fast, there are opportunities here. There's a company called Dollar Shave Club that was started by somebody who grew up in Philadelphia that was sold for a billion dollars. And what Dollar Shave Club did was they actually had a subscription service to razors, and they were bought by a major multinational packaged goods company because the packaged goods companies don't have any data. So if you sell razors or Shampoo or toothpaste. Traditionally you would just sell through Walmart or Target, et cetera. You would sell to them, you wouldn't sell to consumers. But now, as consumers shift to buying online, you need data. So when I talk about opportunities, I just want to give you an example of some solutions. So I was at a company, it wasn't this company, Cascade, but it was a detergent company that I spoke to about a year ago. And they said, well, what should we do? Or how screwed are we? And what I told them is, okay, Millennials are living in cities. So if you ask them, they'll tell you. A lot of them are using their dishwashers to store their clothing because they order food every night. They don't actually ever wash dishes. So they don't need a big dishwasher, they need a small dishwasher. So if I were you, Cascade, or competitor like Cascade, I would buy a company that makes dishwashers and I would make small dishwashers. I'd take your manufacturing plant and make them super small. And instead of me calling Walmart or Target, I would call Related and XDEL and the biggest real estate development companies and actually have them install my washing machine. Cause they would be smart washing machines. And, and when they ran out of my detergent, they would immediately order more detergent. So no Walmart, no Target. Work with the homes and stall your hardware the same way Apple got their hardware in your hands. And until companies do this, they're all gonna go away. All the largest companies in packaged goods, whether it be Coca Cola or Pepsi or Hershey's or Procter and Gamble or Johnson Johnson, they all are. If they don't reinvent themselves in a way like this. And what's likely gonna happen is since they aren't listening, they, they don't have their ear to the sidewalk. Some upstart 20 somethings are actually going to do just this and it's going to put them out of business. And I think that's what you have to look at when you look at traditional companies. P stands for parenting. Since consumers are staying young later in life, they are doing a lot of things that kind of are emblematic of it. The median age of the first marriage in the United States continues to skyrocket in the next three to four years. For the first time in history, the average age of a male getting married for the first time is going to eclipse 30 years old. So as this younger generation stays in cities, they're not getting married as quickly. So when you think about selling to the American family and actually monetizing business opportunities. That has now taken a big shift again. People are acting younger, way longer in life, and along with it, the mean age of the first birth in the United states and next 10 years by women is going to eclipse 30 in the United States. So I just saw some celebrity was pregnant at age 60. I don't know if that was. I forget who it was, but it was on. I don't know, maybe one of you guys saw that. But that's crazy. But you're going to start to see it. You're going to continue to see this happen. And this is just another major trend, again driven by urbanization. To think that 10, 20 years ago, people were getting married five, 10 years earlier. I mean, that changes everything in terms of how you market your products, how you talk to younger consumers, et cetera. Q. Q is always a hard one for a letter. So I just kind of cheated a little bit on this one. I wrote, what's the number one question I'm asked? And number one question I'm asked when I speak is what do my kids do about it? And again, I'll reemphasize. What I said earlier is that if you are a jack of all trades, master of none, if you get a degree in liberal arts, right? If you want to be a middle manager, the fact is that your employer is gonna tell somebody in India or, or Costa Rica what to do for a fraction of the cost. So if you want to actually succeed in this new globalized economy, you have to go deep into an art, you have to go deep into a science. I want my kids to get an A plus in one thing and F's in everything else versus all B's, right? I mean, where would LeBron be if he wasn't an A plus in basketball? People are known for the one thing they do great. So I think that why our education system needs to really reinvigorate it is that right now I feel like we're pushing people to be good at everything versus being great in one thing. And being great in one thing is all we know in terms of people who are successful, not people who are just good in everything. That used to be okay before technology, before disintermediation, but now the world has changed. So I think things like trade schools and specialized skill sets are taught need to be done way younger in life. I don't think we should be teaching kids handwriting anymore at all. I have something. I always say that if you teach kids handwriting, their only use for handwriting in 20 years is going to thank a Chinese company for actually giving them a low paying job. That's the only use for handwriting in 20 years because I just don't think there's going to be many uses for it when we're typing and we're actually speaking into things. So I think that the whole education system really needs to reconfigure itself moving forward and I hope it actually does. So R is for retail. I mean, where do we start with retail? There are shopping malls that have trees growing in them and not because they're planted, but because they're actually abandoned. You look at the state of shopping malls across the country and that's just really emblematic of this younger generation staying in cities and shopping malls, traditionally being in affluent suburban areas. So that's changing the face of retail. And a lot of the companies that we talked about earlier, I mean this is where so much opportunity is. The next big opportunity, next big shakeout. It first started with retail, now it's going to happen with the companies that are selling into retail because all these companies have products that are in the middle that rely on selling through big box retailers. So it used to be if you were Coca Cola and you took a trip to Bentonville, Arkansas and you got three more inches of shelf space across all their stores, you're taking your family to Aruba for Christmas, right? It didn't matter what your advertising said, more people would buy your drink if you had more shelf space. Because everyone shopped at Target and Walmart and Walgreens for so long. But now they just don't do it anymore. And what's really fascinating as these companies don't understand is that, or maybe they do, but they're scared is that Walmart and Target are actually also creating their own brands that compete against them. They are creating private label brands. They're saying, thanks Coppertone, but we're going to create our own version of generic sunscreen to sell for the value sector just a little bit cheaper. And Coppertone saying we don't want to sell direct to consumers so we don't want to piss off Walmart. Meanwhile, behind their backs, Walmart's competing against them and actually taking their market share right away from them. So that's when I see the big shakeout and the multi billion dollar opportunity in business is companies like this and what they're going to do because it's such a big piece of GDP and that along with auto, you take all those out, forget about it. So what's going to happen? Who are the Companies that are actually going to be able to win. There's. And that all is because of Amazon, right? So this is the doorman. This is what doorman buildings look like in most major cities. It's actually what my apartment looks like the most days when I come home is Amazon boxes stacked up and up and up. Amazon has continued to get their claws into every version of consumer spending. They recently bought Whole Foods, which is one of the last bastions of consumer spending that they didn't own. And they're going to low involvement categories through Amazon Basics, which I'll get into in a second. And Amazon has that bifurcated barbell strategy as well. On the luxury side, they have Amazon Prime. How many people in this room are Amazon prime members? It's 100%, right? 100% or maybe 90. And the 10% isn't. You should do it. But Amazon right now, the average spending they're getting from a Prime member is actually around $1,600. And I think they're gonna be pushing it to six, $7,000 in the next two to three years, which is why easily they're gonna be a $2 trillion company. People are gonna be a one because. And the reason why is they're gonna get into predictive shopping. They're gonna have artificial intelligence that knows that's a mom. She ordered Huggies on the first of the month. For two straight months, we're just gonna send her Huggies. Whether she orders it or not, it's actually gonna happen. It's gonna be at your door and if you don't want it, they'll pick it up for you. They're looking right now into buying a FedEx or UPS competitor so they can actually build that into their system. They just bought a company called Ring that makes connected doorbells so they can actually get permission, actually go into people's homes. They're just going to make your life easier for you. And because of it, they're going to capture more and more and more of consumer spending, which is why them getting broken up is really the only option right now to actually stop them from eating up literally almost every company that sells things. And that's how quickly they're actually growing services is my S is another big opportunity I see this is glam squad, so think about it. In major cities, Main street prices of real estate are going up and up and up. So if you're a salon, right, and you're basically offering those services, it's really hard to make a profit right now with rising real estate Costs. What Glam Squad does is you hit a button. You have a team of stylists that come to your hair and do hair makeup blowouts in your apartment, they're actually coming to you. The uberfication of services, because as more people have two income households, they need the convenience of having people coming to them. And you're going to start to see this in many categories where companies are going to get into the services space to actually get into people's homes and collect their consumer data. There's Handy, where you hit a button. You actually have maids come to your house instantly. There's Wag, where you hit a button and they actually walk your dog. So anything that you need to do as a consumer, you can actually do without ever picking up the phone, you push a button. Which is why Ikea just made a huge acquisition of a company called TaskRabbit. That instead of when you buy that dresser with 110 pieces, but it only comes with 104 and for some reason it never works, Passrabit will actually come and actually build that for you. And they're doing that because now Ikea has a constant communication stream with consumers. Under Armour bought a company called MapMyFitness, which is a jogging app where you could track how far you run. Because without that, Under Armour didn't know who their customers are. So companies that are in the services space, if I were l' Oreal or Maybelline, right, Or Revlon and I was selling makeup, I would buy the Glam Squad instantly because that's gonna get me into consumers homes. If I were Clorox or Mr. Clean, I would buy Handy because now I'm gonna get my products into people's homes. So if you can go into a service layer and all these companies are gonna get bought up for huge valuations because they're collecting consumer data. And I think it's another huge opportunity. Television, another massive shakeout. You, you asked a 12 year old what Fox is, they'll tell you it's an animal. And what ABC is, they'll tell you it's the Alphabet. They don't know what TV networks are. They literally do not know what TV networks are. Yet 80% of all advertising dollars are spent with TV networks. So where's the rub there? When's it actually going to shake out? And what I see happening as the TV eventually becoming a giant iPad hanging on your wall, that's what it's going to be. Because kids go up to TVs and they try to swipe them because you should be able to swipe them right. Like who wants to deal with the Comcast remote control? It's a terrible experience. The TV and the computer is going to become one. So while Apple TV looks like this today, but it's actually just a connection, so you have to change the source. Apple and Amazon are actually both making TVs because they know they need the ecosystem, they know they need the hardware the same way that the dishwasher detergent company needs the hardware. So they're actually making TVs and those TVs are built for their software system so they can deliver the content and ultimately sell you more stuff. I think the future of Apple TV looks a lot like this, where the TV networks are going to go away. And right now what you're starting to see happen in the marketplace is them getting swallowed up with the companies with the pipes. So AT&T buys DirecTV. Why are they doing that? Because they actually want the pipes into the household. There's a Time Warner, Verizon, it's happening constantly where companies that make content are being acquired not by the Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix of the world because they can just buy the content directly, but the companies with the pipes. That's why comcast bought into NBCUniversal. They think that somehow that's going to help them survive. And I just don't see it because they don't have an ecosystem, they don't have an operating system like Apple or Google does, and they have no hardware. And I think without those things they're just rearranging the chairs. And I think there's just going to be bigger companies that are going to be swallowed up by the big tech titans eventually. And I think these are just short term moves. I don't buy into it long term. We've talked a lot about utility, which is my U, which is this was a recent report of the most valuable brands in the world. Everyone always asks me what number 10 was and some bank in China. But what all these brands have in common is you don't see Pepsi or Coke or Hershey's, right? America's Nike, America's most beloved brands here, they're not on this list because brand promise doesn't matter to consumers anymore. It's all about utility. How can you save me time? How can you save me money? How can you make my life easier? Brands don't really matter anymore. It's really what can brands do for me? And that's where all this is really changing. And you're gonna see us continue in terms of Utility, my V is voice I talked about. Handwriting shouldn't be taught to young kids. Moving forward soon, maybe typing won't either because anything that saves consumers time, they're gonna do more of. How many people have an Amazon Alexa device in this room? Okay, so for those of you who don't, the one thing I would tell you to do, one piece of homework assignment is, is go home, spend $50 on Amazon Alexa. It's their cheapest version and just get it and play around with it because it's the future of how consumers are going to interact with every device. And if you have it, you'll play around with it. It's 50 bucks. It's a good use of your time because it's really going to change the way that people shop and communicate and really order and do everything. And what's really interesting about the Alexa specifically is if you tell Alexa Alexa, but buy me batteries, Alexa will say I will send you Amazon Basics batteries. They'll say, no, send me Dora cell batteries and Alexa will say, I will send you Amazon Basics batteries. Because what Amazon is betting is that the ease and ubiquity of ordering without even looking at your phone will trump the value of a multi billion dollar brand. And they're probably right. Which kind of goes to what we're talking about with utility. And Amazon Basics is the scariest of all. They're making toothpaste, shampoo, batteries, all these things that consumers just want in their house and they want to make sure it's okay in terms of ingredients. They don't care about Crest or Colgate or these companies anymore. And what Amazon's doing is just making it easier to get their stuff by deploying Alexas in every room in the house and now probably 20 more rooms in the house because I just sold you guys one W is for Waze. And I think it's not just about Waze. It's about really the future of how people get information. Where it used to be, you'd look at a map or a navigation system and. And now people are crowdsourcing where you should go and the best direction of how you can drive from here to New York or whatever it may be. And I think in the financial services space, we're seeing a lot of crowdsourcing. Where it used to be, if you didn't have access to the biggest financiers or the biggest VC companies or investment banks, you'd be out of luck. But now you can go on Kickstarter and actually crowdsource an investment. So I Think the power of the people in aggregating data and helping people with decisions is really the future of, of where a lot of tech's going. That's what I'm focused on with my startup, Suzy, which allows you to make decisions based upon people's experiences, business decisions. And I'm going to end it out with just my easy X, Y and Z. In terms of where we were, where we are, where we're going. Where we were was Gen X. That was me. I think Gen Xers are in a place right now where they really need to embrace kind of the millennial ideals. And so many of them don't. I have so many friends in banking and, and real estate, and they're still on their BlackBerry, which is totally cool, because they know it's easy, but they don't know how to use these tools, and it's making them less effective and leaving them vulnerable to being disrupted. And I think so even people who are 40, 45, 50 years old, they are dinosauring themselves out by just not learning, by not knowing what wework is, by not knowing these things. Because when I wrote my book Youth Nation, it's not about an age, it's about a mindset. And the mindset is understanding where things are going and, and embracing it to your advantage. And I think too many Gen Xers out there have not been able to do so because they didn't grow up with it in the home. And I think that's a big missed opportunity, especially in industries that haven't been disrupted, like finance, like real estate. Those are going to be the next ones. We're already starting to see the fintech world exploding. There's cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. And so many things are happening that financial services companies need to get their arms wrapped around. Are they going to be. They're in grave danger of being disintermediated. Gen Y, which is the millennial generation, right now about age 21 to 36 years old. What's going to be fascinating to me about Gen Y is when they enter the C Suite, which is happening very soon, because the youngest millennials are 21. The oldest are 36. When they enter the C Suite, when they are actually in charge of the Toys R Us of the future, they're going to make sure it doesn't happen, because they're going to walk in on day one and say, why is the blinking 12 still on the VCR? And why do you have paper with holes on the side of it coming out of your printer? They're going to come in and actually disrupt these companies because they know no different because they were born with it. And then lastly Z, I often get asked, well, what about the next generation? What about Gen Z which is people aged one to 20 right now? It's crazy that kids one are actually a generation, but they are. And for me, I don't think that the difference between Gen Y and Gen Z is going to be nearly as stark, as disruptive as Gen X to Gen Y simply because the Internet was invented while Gen Y was growing up. And I don't think there's going to be an invention as crippling and as advantageous as the Internet itself in our lifetime is ever going to be created again. So while I think Gen Z has more ideals with them, they're definitely more mobile. Like they're shopping mobile first. Like desktops don't exist, the Gen Z. So forget about that everything. It's not mobile first, it's mobile centric, mobile everything. So there's certain traits about Gen Z, this personal brand building thing, hugely impactful to Gen Z, their exposure and access to information, the things that young kids know now, like what happens in politics, what happens in business, their access to the worst type of content possible really makes them grow old quicker. And I think that's probably the biggest difference with Gen Z is they are just growing up so, so fast. I'm sure every parent said that about the generation, but now it's just not even close in terms of access to information, what they know, what they're exposed to in young ages. So that is my millennial A to Z. Hopefully you guys got a lot of value of it. I'm going to be sharing this deck as well as a video of this presentation to anyone who you want to share it with and want to open it up for questions. Cool, thank you.