Hey, We're Still Relevant!

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As an economic developer, I spend most of my professional life thinking about issues and strategies related to a community’s economic and cultural health. In my various travels, I constantly hear the term “millennials” who I guess have inherited the earth. We need to attract millennials to our communities because they are our future! Let’s make sure we create the physical, cultural and political environments that they desire!

Unless you were born between the early 1980’s and early 2000’s, you really don’t matter, at least it seems based on this herd mentality. I guess you can detect my sarcasm in these comments. I don’t mean to negate the importance of people in this age cohort, but I think the herd misunderstands the cultural phenomenon we are experiencing. I want to make two specific points. First, millennial is not a demographic as much as it is a psychographic. Psychographics is the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Based on this definition, the millennial psychographic can represent someone in their late teens to early thirties as well as a sixty year old baby boomer like myself. In fact, I know many people in my age bracket who demonstrate the characteristics of a millennial.

The second point I want to make is baby boomers remain the largest driver of new business creation in the United States and the largest holder of wealth (except for me). As demonstrated by research at the Kaufman Foundation, baby boomers are the most successful entrepreneurs in our economy. Interesting, huh? So, here is my mantra. Gentlemen, we matter. In fact, we more than matter. We have the knowledge, experience, patience, and bruises to out compete any of these young’uns! It’s time we yell this from the highest place in our communities so that the millennials can hear us, assuming they take their headphones off. Cheers Bro’s.

#Relevant