The Millennial Mindset – Episode 080

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel with my bestselling financial author and co-host Kim Butler. How are you doing, Kim? Very fine, Todd. Thank you. Happy to be here. Today, we’re going to be discussing the millennial mindset and kind of build off some financial ideas and stories and looking at how the economy is going to change. What sparked this was a survey that I saw that basically stated that 78% of millennials

[00:50] would rather pay for an experience than to buy a product. What do you think, Kim? Well, it is a very interesting survey because I am starting to see it and I love learning about and listening about things that the millennials are doing and thinking. And even in addition to that, the Gen Z, if you will, which is the group after that because that’s technically the ones that my two college age kids are in. And we’ve talked on the show before, I think, about Jason Dorsey, who follows those guys heavily. And I really enjoy his work. But the idea of experiences is very, very valuable to me because I tend to be, I guess you would say, not materialistic anyway. And so that’s a approach that I really appreciate.

[01:47] And it’s very interesting to me that these guys are deferring things like buying cars and homes to have experiences instead. And I just recently had the chance to go to Zappos in Las Vegas, where Zappos the Shoes, like Zappos.com, they have an unbelievable tour of their entire working environment, which is absolutely amazing. They have like 1,600 people that are on the phones from four in the morning all the way around the clock to two in the morning. They’re only closed for two hours. They help people all over the world. And they have the most vibrant, amazing community there. And their head, Tony Shea, who that last name is started with an H actually, is a huge believer in getting experiences rather than buying things.

[02:42] And so much so that he even chooses to live in a trailer instead of having a home. Not that people need to go that far, but he is single and that just works for him. He loves to go on travel experiences and have doors open to him that he wouldn’t maybe have available if he had to have more of a traditional home or there was care for it, etc. I have to admit he also has alpacas. So I liked that, too. But I love this idea of spending money on experiences because it helps you learn. Yeah, isn’t it interesting to meet someone who instead of showing you their home or impressing you with their car, would rather pull out their cell phone and share with you the pictures of the memories they’ve been able to create with the important people

[03:35] in their life. Yeah, that’s a great example of what the experiences do because not only do you get the learning, you get the relationships. And we know that that’s where things really can make a difference for people. Another experience that I’ve had recently is the attendance at Abundance 360, which is Peter Diamandis’ group. And we’ve talked about him numerous times, but I just want to make people aware of what he’s doing. If you want to follow him, PeterDiamandis.com, he’s got a great email once a week that shares all kinds of good things that are happening in the technological world. And you have to really expand your definition of technology. This is not just computers. This is all kinds of incredible things that are happening in material sciences, in

[04:26] virtual reality and augmented reality, in the area of artificial intelligence, and also in all of those things combined. And so he takes each of these various areas that I’ve just mentioned, the materials, the networking and the sensors. That’s one that I forgot. The artificial intelligence, the virtual reality, the augmented reality. And then he combines each of them in ways that really are amazing as to what’s going to be coming down the pike literally in the next three to five years. I mean, a lot of this stuff is not 20 years out, 15 years out. It’s the next three to five. And so we can have experiences without spending a lot of money. We can have a virtual or augmented experience that is absolutely incredible with some of the

[05:25] new pieces of machinery that are coming out. One of the things that I got a chance to have is, and I would have never bought this on my own, is something that Samsung makes, which is a virtual reality viewer. Most people think that that’s just for gamers. But inside that viewer, this is one of these big headsets that you see that is monster on your face and it completely blocks out your vision. It gives you a chance to, for example, surf on a wave. And I will probably never have the guts to get on a surfboard and go out into the ocean. I wouldn’t have the skill to be inside a wave anyway. And yet inside this virtual reality viewer, and these are available at Best Buy for two, three hundred bucks, I got to feel what it was like to be inside a wave with

[06:21] the water and the sound. And literally, I could look up, down, behind me, beside me, and I would see water everywhere in this roll that the wave was creating. And then over here is another surfer, etc. So there are just all kinds of things coming down the pike that we can be super excited about that don’t cost a lot of money that let us view and experience. I guess that’s why the word is experiences, right? We get to experience experiences. I think what fascinates me both about both of these gentlemen is that they are selling products. I mean, both are very product oriented while stating that experience is more important than product. So Tony Shea especially has created experiences around products that allows him to do both.

[07:19] Kim, you mentioned that you bought a vacuum cleaner that separates everything into recyclable components. In the past, you sold vacuum cleaners because people wanted a clean floor. They’re now sold you a vacuum cleaner that you want to vacuum and use the vacuum for the experience of watching it sort into the different components. Isn’t that interesting? Yes, it really is. And it’s just so cool that we can be confident that a lot of our problems in our society today, many of which are economic or financial problems, are going to be solved by the various aspects of technology that are coming down the pike. And that’s one of the biggest learning aspects that I got out of attending both the experience at Zappos and the actual conference at Abundance 360.

[08:21] Is confidence that we can solve problems that entrepreneurs are out there in the world thinking and learning and creating good things. And consequently, we’ll solve the economic challenges that we have. So if you’re ever feeling like, oh my gosh, I’m overwhelmed. What are we going to do about these negative interest rates and the dollar and all these various things that are happening on an economic environment? We can turn to the good that’s going on in technology and feel confident that entrepreneurial thinking, growth mindset thinking, will solve the economic and financial challenges that we are going to be experiencing as we go forward in the year 2016. All right. Most important question of the day.

[09:13] You keep mentioning coming down the pike. What is a pike? It’s a thing that water flows down, I think. Like in the ocean, in my house. Do I have a pipe somewhere? No, it’s a saying that just says they’re coming there. They’re on the road ahead of us. That’s what that’s all it says. That’s not a saying you’d heard. There is no physical pike. Not that I know of. Okay. All right. Well, I had to ask that. That’s pretty funny. Now, here’s the impact financially. Again, we’re talking about prosperity economics is that as we transition into this newer way of thinking, both as business people and as personal people, we need to prepare financially for an experiential economy versus a product-based economy.

[10:13] It influences the way that we’re going to spend our money and influences the way that we’re going to save and invest our money, doesn’t it? Absolutely. In fact, one of the things that Peter talks about all the time is the concept of dematerialization. Dematerialization just means that the things that we’re used to being in a very physical world, like our cars, as an example, are going to be dematerialized and that’s already happening. Uber is a great example of that. The self-driving cars, of course, is another example of that where these physical things that we have existed with for so long are literally being dematerialized. That is a stretch, I think, for some people’s mindsets, but that’s good.

[11:04] That’s what we want you to do is stretch. The first principle of our seven principles of prosperity is to think. If you think from a growth mindset and you think about things being dematerialized, then you can actually create some good things in your life that will help you move forward. Even if it’s just in thought right now, that’s where all creativity begins. Peter’s actually got six Ds that he talks about. One is digitized. The second is deceptive. Then things get disrupted. Then they get dematerialized. Then they get demonetized. And then they get democratized. And what that last democratized term is implying is that they become available for everybody because they are so inexpensive. Just think about the digital book world right now.

[12:00] We’re able to put our books out on Amazon so much less expensively than we could even just five or ten years ago through the traditional publishing realm. In fact, we couldn’t have gotten them done through the traditional publishing realm. That’s an example. And then, of course, you have the whole Kindle thing, which is what is dematerializing the book. It’s an interesting perspective to have this growth mindset that we’ve talked about before combined with the Tony Shay or the Peter Diamandis or the Dan Sullivan mindset, if you will, and these are Peter’s specifically. Digitized, deceptive, disruptive, dematerialized, demonetized, and democratized. And what that’s doing in our society and the good that it is creating.

[12:47] I’d say the biggest example I can think of of that are apps, APPS that we put on our cell phone, many of which are now absolutely free that are more powerful, are based on physical programs that we would have bought and paid hundreds, maybe potentially thousands of dollars for just a few years ago. Absolutely. Well, we’re grateful that it’s out there. There’s going to be solutions coming down the pike, as they say, and we just need to keep looking for them. Super. Well, I’m probably going to do a Google search on Pike, which Google is a whole thing that meets that criteria too. Costs us nothing, but look at all the good it does. So, well, we’re going to wrap this up today. Kim, really appreciate you.

[13:31] This is Todd Strobel, the No BS Money Guy for the Prosperity Podcast. Say and take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.