Bringing Up Hope

Inc Magazine is undoubtably one of my favorite magazines. It highlights innovations that are happening in entrepreneural businesses. I find it uplifting, exciting, interesting. There's generally something that makes me think differently or shifts my perspective.

I'd gotten behind in my reading recently. Buried under a pile was the June, 2008 issue of Inc. The front cover (shown above) were these two (young) guys in t-shirts and the headline "The Most Innovative Small Company In America." It made for great late night reading.

It makes me feel old to say, or think, this, but boy, these young kids are really interesting. It's a whole new world. Instantly I was reflecting on attachment and how these kids were brought up differently from those of us brought up with depression era parents. It's fascinating.

So, let me slow down. The guys on the cover are Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, executives of Threadless, which is a t-shirt company, well, not just a t-shirt company, they run design competitions on social networking sites whose members vote on the designs they like best. Threadless then prints up the t-shirts and sells them.

Well, if you're like me, one of the old folks, you'd wonder how t-shirts could be such a hot item. Hot they are. Inc writes, "Revenue was growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company had never advertised, employed no professional designers, used no modeling agency, ... had no sales force, and no retail distribution."

But more interestingly, from a psychological perspective, these guys are wired differently. They are connected in ways we (those of us over 35) never were growing up. Yes, it's obvious, we were never wired to the internet. But I mean wired for connection to other people.

Those of us with depression era parents grew up thinking we were on our own, it was up to us, we had to do it. This article illustrated what my younger clients have been describing. The Threadless guys are listening to people. There's a distance that's been eliminated. The roles have changed. It's not "I'm the company and I'll make what I think you need" but as Nickell is quoted in the article, "Why wouldn't you want to make the products that people want you to make?"

It really alters the power relationship, a movement away from passive consumerism. It makes me wonder -- who are you inside to hold power so differently? What kind of modeling did you have in order to have you think so differently? What environment supported you in being so related to others instead of having to do it alone, tough it out?

Reflecting on those younger than me coming of age, formed by relationships, connected to others, interested in what others have to say gives me great hope. It's intriguing to me to sit here in midlife seeing the hope and connection that those younger are bringing forward.