Young people, just do what you love and people will follow - Soul of Innovation

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I apologize about the background noise today. This podcast is coming from a playground, and I thought this would be the perfect time to shoot a podcast, including all the background noise of helicopters, cars, and everything. So just Making it all real. This is your host, Thomas Anglero. Today's date is Wednesday, August 23rd, 2017. And my— the reflection today, the thought of today was— wanted to share was based on a meeting I had this morning with the CEO of a consulting company that's based— started in Silicon Valley, based in Silicon Valley, and has had tremendous success with some of the largest IT companies in the US over on the West Coast. I won't name it because I didn't ask for her permission to reveal her name and the company's name, but yeah, let's keep privacy to privacy. So irregardless, we had a wonderful talk, we had a wonderful chat, and What she said, she said a statement that was quite interesting. She said that for the last 15 years, she's providing consulting services to these companies and taking them to the next step, which means that they had the traditional business model of providing services, selling things that come in a box, and that's it. And then advancing those people to then providing service contracts. Ooh, really exciting, innovative. And now these companies say, you know what, we want to move to the SaaS model, right? Subscription model. We no longer just want to sell boxes, we want to sell subscriptions. We have long-term value and we want to have a closeness with our customer after they did the other model for the last half a century. Fine, it's absolutely fine, great. She's now expanding her business to the Nordic countries. And what she found out was that here, that thought is just beginning. While in the US they've been doing this for many, many years, right? Service, SaaS models are known all over the place. And it's not only the hot thing, it's just the given. That's what you are moving your business model, revenue model to. So my question is this: if Europe is so lagging behind, some countries ahead of others, but in general, just not the Nordic countries who are usually taken or are statistically more advanced in innovation and taking risk, why is that? We all, we being all CEOs, leaders, and managers, including you and myself, we all read the web, we all read the latest news articles, we stay informed, we follow all the latest buzz, everything. So why is it we all have the similar sources of information, similar inputs, similar reactions, right? Because we're reacting to other people's reactions and that's what we talk about to our colleagues and that's what we talk about in meetings when we try to articulate ourselves to be sounding very important and intelligent. That's what we try to do. So why is it that some places or some people are laggards? Are behind. I think that comes from— and I have talked about this before and I will continue to talk about it— it comes from the sense of the fact that we are so comfortable from where we came from, what we've been doing, and that to change that is really, really uncomfortable. But today It is so easy to launch a company, especially on the internet, if I could use that horrible statement. And as long as you have a web address on the internet and you have connected, say, PayPal or any of these online payment services, Visa, whatever, it's so simple to do, especially if you use WordPress. These are just simple plugins. It's absolutely not a no-brainer. You can always go on to YouTube and they'll teach you how to do it for free. You have thousands of people every week launching global companies with, given, with by default their SaaS models. They don't even know what a SaaS model is. It's just, it is. And yet the biggest companies that are, have influence and continue to influence our current world are falling behind and they're afraid to do this. This is probably, this is one of the most disruptive times, this being 2017, for not just businesses, but I think really for people. This whole complaints that people have about Millennials, and there are a lot of complaints about Millennials, I think they don't understand that they're actually pissing them off because that group in a very quick amount of time could shift the whole dynamics of importance of brands. Where does the money flow? And the money will flow to within their own community. Think of that, where they're only buying from other people who are like them. What happens to the largest brands all over the world? And who gets the blame? I'm not predicting. I'm telling you that's already happening. Look at, of course, and I'm sick of everybody using this, but look at Airbnb and Uber, the whole sharing community thing. That was the— what's the expression— the canary in the coal mine, and it's getting larger and bigger. Neighborhood dog, he didn't like me talking. This is not about the sharing economy, this is about what's actually happening. And I think this is the biggest opportunity everybody has. I won't say to jump in on this, but actually to create something within it. What is your passion? Are you into shoes? Are you into— what's the shoes? Jimmy Choo? I hope I pronounced it correctly. Super expensive, very beautiful shoes women love to wear. I was watching— I was trying to learn today, you know, advance my knowledge on podcasting, and I ended up watching this, uh, maybe she's around 17-year-old girl podcaster. I'm not actually— she's a YouTuber and she has 21,000 people subscribing to her. She's only 17 years old. She's uploaded hundreds of videos, extremely interesting, extremely articulate, and she's got a movement. And all she talks about is style, fashion and style. And she's got 21,000 people subscribed watching her, and she posts every single day. How many CEOs have 21,000 people subscribed to them and watching them every single day? No CEO has that, maybe except for Elon Musk and those elite few. So let me flip it around to make it more profound. How many 17-year-olds that you know that have 21,000 people waiting for them every single day to upload something, to talk to them? How about we simplify it? And let me ask you this. Do you have 21,000 people every single day waiting for you to talk to them? That thought process was crazy a long time ago. Today it's called just expressing your passion and love for what you are into. And there are thousands of people— sorry, there are tens of thousands of people who are into it. As soon as corporations figure this out— when I say corporations, I'm talking about people like you and people like me and people in your office and the person in the cubicle next to you, the guy in the farm next to your property. It's no longer this big ambition. It's just, you know what, I'm into this and I want to tell the world. And that's the business model. And from that, this girl is doing quite well. She's funding herself. She doesn't have to get a job. Her job is YouTube. She makes revenue on that. She has a good living. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people like her. And they're not going to graduate school. They don't need to. They could probably teach in the old school graduate schools. They have a recurring revenue that's actually growing. They're doing what they love. How many people are 50, 60 years old and just waiting for retirement to start doing what they love? And this 17, 18-year-old girl is doing it already, and she has no plans on changing it. And then she's got 21,000 people who will make sure she doesn't. Today's reflection on the Soul of Innovation podcast. Just do what you love and people will follow you. So simple. Go forth and spread beauty and light. Until next time.