Life Moves Pretty Fast
I was listening to a presentation recently by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don’t know who he is, well, just Google him and you will find lots of results. Much of my approach to my articles and videos is from him, which means I give away my knowledge with no strings attached. You know, unlike the “attend a free dinner and buy my product” approach. Regardless, he said something that tied into a bigger topic I wanted to touch on – how things change.
Could you imagine that 30, or 20 or even 5 years ago a middle-aged parent would have been cool with their 14-year old child getting into a car with a stranger? Well, isn’t that what Uber is? You may have been okay with your kid getting into a fully licensed and clearly marked taxi, but not some nondescript gray Honda Accord, which is one of the most popular cars on the road. This was Gary V’s point. Amazing how times have changed.
This also comes into play when you look at companies and professions. You know my older son is in the college tour mode right now. As I visit these schools with him I wonder in the back of my head how different things will look profession-wise 10-20 years from now. Below are some jobs that did not exist 10 years ago, and I bet you can think of some people who work in these positions:
- Social Media Manager
- Mobile App Develop
- Uber Driver
- Drone Pilot
- Data Scientist
- Driverless Car Engineer
What about how quickly companies change? Companies and things that did not even exist in 2003 include Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, YouTube, Uber, Hulu, Fitbit, and lots more.
Let’s step back to the mid-50s to see how many Fortune 500 companies are still around today. Do you want to hazard a guess? 88% are gone. Companies such as Detroit Steel, Zenith Enterprises and National Sugar Refining have been replaced by Facebook, Home Depot and Microsoft. 439 of those companies have either gone bankrupt, merged with another, or dropped from the Fortune 500 due to size.
Even if you shorten up the comparison period you still have quite a bit of change. Looking back only a decade to 2008 vs today is eye-opening. Ten years ago Exxon was the largest US company. Now it is # 9. The top 5 are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Only Google and Microsoft were in the top 10 list in 2008. Interestingly, Microsoft has not moved positions while Google rose from #7 to #2.
If I were to assume you took a minute to read this article a lot has been going on. See below:
- 187 million emails
- 18 million text messages
- 4.3 million YouTube videos were viewed
- 3.7 million Google searches
- And my favorite – 67 Amazon Echo shipments
To quote Ferris Bueller – “Life moves pretty fast.” But in this case, it will be amazing to see what it is like in another 10 years.